Chapter 8
Slide
Maryanne
“And side A, Ms. Hemlock?”
The question caught Maryanne off guard. She dragged her attention back from gazing out the window to the illuminated diagram on the Smart Board. After a brief pause, she answered. “Side A equals 6.78 centimeters.”
Phew! Thank goodness this was math. It had always been her strong suit. Had it been anything else, she likely couldn’t have produced an answer so quickly.
“Very good,” the teacher said, but he wore a tight look on his face as he turned back to the board. Disappointed, probably, that he’d failed to embarrass her even though he clearly knew she’d been daydreaming.
In truth, Maryanne’s mind had been drifting through most of this first-period class, far away from the parallels and bisecting angles and congruent triangles in front of her. Now, she sat up a bit straighter, adjusted herself in the seat, and tried to pay attention to what he was saying. Tried to focus on Mr. McKenzie’s geometry lesson. He didn’t make it easy, though. The guy had no enthusiasm for teaching, and it showed as he stood in front of the class. She’d had teachers like him before, men and women who’d found themselves in the wrong profession too late to do anything about it. When you got stuck with one of them, it sure made for a long academic term.
McKenzie’s story—so the schoolyard gossip went—was that he’d applied for several principalships, but found himself second-best man for the job every single time. And every time, he’d been beaten out by a woman. Apparently this pattern of losing to women only helped cement him as a total misogynistic prick. McKenzie loved to grill the girls on the tougher questions. Then he would sigh and roll his eyes when they flustered over the answers, or better yet, got them completely wrong. If he found a crier in the class, the man was reputed to be relentless. It had taken Maryanne all of two days in his class to realize this guy’s rep was bang on.
But still, even after nearly being caught daydreaming, she couldn’t keep her mind on the class today. Not for 6.78 seconds. Not that she tried very hard. She found her head turning and her gaze drifting back to the window and the gray day beyond. She couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying. Not with everything happening in her world. And of course, not with this being a Jason day.
Jason. Her dead little brother. It was another counting day.
Maryanne had woken this morning shortly after 6 a.m. as she always did, glanced at the calendar and saw it was the 15th of the month. Another monthly anniversary of Jason’s death. Tonight at approximately 9 p.m. would mark the last time she’d heard his cry.
Despite what she’d told them.
Maryanne knew that right about now in Burlington, Ontario, her mother would be riding the GO train in to work, no doubt with the newspaper opened in front of her. But she wouldn’t be reading a single word of it. Her father would already be in Jason’s room, most likely. Perhaps determined to finally take the crib down. Skip Hemlock hated that crib. Standing there silently in that boy-less room, that mournful piece of furniture owned him now. Which was why Maryanne knew the chances were that it would still be there when this counting day rolled to an end.
As for Maryanne herself... well, she’d get through this day somehow, in her own way.
Ty Piper waved a hand from his desk and Maryanne caught the movement in the periphery of her vision. Ty smiled widely. Oh, crap! From his seat by the windows, it must have seemed like Maryanne had been staring at him rather than the outside world. Now what?
Ty was one of the few local boys who actually attended the Streep Academy. He was a tall, gangly farm boy who stuck out hopelessly, with his shy quietness and slightly-too-small school clothes. Obviously smart—brilliant, actually—he shared several other classes with Maryanne. And right now, his face was glowing red as he waited on Maryanne’s acknowledgement of the wave and smile that must have cost him to toss her way. Maryanne offered what she hoped would be construed as a ‘friendly’ smile, not an ‘I’m interested’ smile. Then she looked up again at the board. Guys were the furthest thing from her mind this year.
“Ms. Saunders? The answer... ”
“Nine?” Brooke ventured in a bored voice.
“Wrong!” There was true glee in McKenzie’s voice.
She shrugged. “Okay, how about sixty-nine, then?”
There was a short-lived chorus of snorts and giggles.
Mr. McKenzie’s face burned. Brooke would be the absolute last one in this class he could reduce to tears. Or rattle. He should have learned by now to stop trying. And despite her apparent inattention in class, Maryanne knew Brooke was fine with math. Not a whiz, but comfortable enough that she’d pass. And that seemed to be all she was looking for.
As if feeling Maryanne’s stare, or maybe just to share the moment, Brooke turned in her seat. She smiled at Maryanne, but as always it slid to a slightly snide expression before she turned herself back around. It was as if Brooke couldn’t help it. Or as if she raced to get that snide look in, before anyone else trumped her on it.
Maryanne was truly grateful for Brooke’s intervention the other night when those local girls had surrounded her. And Brooke, of course, had delighted in administering the shitkicking. Had grinned all the way home. But Maryanne had seen the anxiousness rising in Brooke as she told the story to Alex. It climbed even higher as Brooke elaborated on the fast one she’d pulled on Seth—proclaiming their mutual STD before his new girlfriend. Maryanne recognized that anxiety. Hard as it was to believe of Brooke Saunders, the girl desperately wanted to be liked, to belong. And it made the other girl spill her words out quickly, even while she somehow tried to bite them back.
That anxious desire for friendship had crept out again before the three girls left their third floor room at Harvell house this morning. They’d stood in the middle of the quiet room, beds made behind them, book bags at their sides as they looked from one to the other. And they’d stood there with the promise that this evening, they’d return to the attic.
To read more from Connie’s diary.
Maryanne hadn’t seen the old diary since the night Alex’s accidental... adventure. She was quite sure that Brooke hadn’t seen it either. Though she was equally sure Brooke had searched for it amongst everyone’s things in their shared room at Harvell. But there were stretches of time when Alex would be gone for an hour or more at night. Only to return ashen and quiet and so lost in thought. Maryanne expected she had been reading the words of Connie Harvell. From the little she already knew, that was one sad tale.
Once, when Alex had crept into the room and crawled into bed well after lights out, Maryanne had heard soft crying from the other side of the room while Brooke gently snored and she herself pretended to be asleep. She had said nothing, of course. Not then and not the morning after when Alex had awoken with her gray-blue eyes red-rimmed.
Jason’s eyes had been gray-blue.
“I’ll ask you again, Ms. Hemlock!” McKenzie snapped his pointer on the whiteboard, bringing it down hard on the triangle’s lower corner. “What is the answer?”
Maryanne started. Crap! Had that question been directed to her? Had she been that zoned out? But ten studying seconds later, Brooke answered for her:
“Seventy-two degrees.”
With obvious disgust, Mr. McKenzie cast a dirty look at both Maryanne and Brooke before he turned back to the board.
And that was a very good thing because if he’d stared at her for one minute longer, he might have seen the tears welling in her eyes. And she didn’t want him to think they were because of him.
The tears that threatened were for her little brother, not this jerk of a teacher. They were for this counting day. And maybe too, a bit for herself.
At least tonight she would have some distraction. She, Brooke and Alex had agreed that they would sneak up to the attic again after lights out to hear more from Connie’s diary. But they wouldn’t stop there. This morning in their room as they’d prepared to go off to school, they’d agreed
to simultaneously tap on that window and beg to fly out through the pane as Alex had done once before. As Connie Harvell had done. If that couldn’t distract her, nothing could.
Much as part of her yearned for it, Maryanne was terrified of what the night might bring.
I bet poor Jason was terrified that night, five months ago today.
One tear slid slowly down her cheek, followed by another. It was just a small mercy that Mr. McKenzie didn’t turn around to see. But shy and quiet Ty Piper was watching her, she saw through tear-filled eyes. A couple others too, no doubt. More than anything right then and there, Maryanne wanted out of that classroom.
She just wanted out.