She couldn’t have wished for a more beautiful school building, either. It was brand-new construction, just finished last August, and the cafeteria was state-of-the-art, with modern skylights, shiny tables with blue plastic seats, and cheery blue-and-white tile walls. Bulletin boards around the room were decorated for Halloween, with construction-paper pumpkins, papier-mâché spiders, and black cats, their tails stiff as exclamation points. A wall clock covered with fake cobwebs read 11:20, and most of the kids were stowing their lunch-boxes in the plastic bins for each homeroom and leaving through the doors to the playground, on the left.
Rose checked Melly’s table, in dismay. Amanda and her friends Emily and Danielle were finishing their sandwiches, but Melly’s lunch remained untouched in her purple Harry Potter lunchbox. The gifted teacher, Kristen Canton, had emailed Rose that Melly sometimes didn’t eat at lunch and waited out the period in the handicapped bathroom, so Rose had volunteered as lunch mom to see what was going on. She couldn’t ignore it, but she didn’t want to overreact, walking a familiar parental tightrope.
“Oh no, I spilled!” cried a little girl whose milk carton tipped over, splashing onto the floor.
“It’s okay, honey.” Rose went over, grabbed a paper napkin, and swabbed up the milk. “Put your tray away. Then you can go out.”
Rose tossed out the soggy napkin, then heard a commotion behind her and turned around, stricken at the sight. Amanda was dabbing grape jelly onto her cheek, making a replica of Melly’s birthmark. Everyone at the table was giggling, and kids on their way out pointed and laughed. Melly was running from the cafeteria, her long hair flying. She was heading toward the exit for the handicapped bathroom, on the right.
“Melly, wait!” Rose called out, but Melly was already past her, so she went back to the lunch table. “Amanda, what are you doing? That’s not nice.”
Amanda tilted her face down to hide her smile, but Emily and Danielle stopped laughing, their faces reddening.
“I didn’t do anything.” Emily’s lower lip began to pucker, and Danielle shook her head, with its long, dark braid.
“Me, neither,” she said. The other girls scattered, and the rest of the kids hustled out to recess.
“You girls laughed,” Rose said, pained. “That’s not right, and you should know that. You’re making fun of her.” She turned to Amanda, who was wiping off the jelly with a napkin. “Amanda, don’t you understand how hurtful you’re being? Can’t you put yourself in Melly’s shoes? She can’t help the way she is, nobody can.”
Amanda didn’t reply, setting down the crumpled napkin.
“Look at that bulletin board. See what it says?” Rose pointed to the Building Blocks of Character poster, with its glittery letters that read CARING COMPASSION COMMUNITY, from Reesburgh’s anti-bullying curriculum. “Teasing isn’t caring or compassionate, and—”
“What’s going on?” someone called out, and Rose looked up to see the other lunch mom hurrying over. She had on a denim dress and sandals, and wore her highlighted hair short. “Excuse me, we have to get these girls out to recess.”
“Did you see what just happened?”
“No, I missed it.”
“Well, Amanda was teasing and—”
Amanda interrupted, “Hi, Mrs. Douglas.”
“Hi, Amanda.” The lunch mom turned to Rose. “We have to get everybody outside, so the kitchen can get ready for B lunch.” She gestured behind her, where the last students were leaving the cafeteria. “See? Time to go.”
“I know, but Amanda was teasing my daughter, Melly, so I was talking to her about it.”
“You’re new, right? I’m Terry Douglas. Have you ever been lunch mom before?”
“No.”
“So you don’t know the procedures. The lunch moms aren’t supposed to discipline the students.”
“I’m not disciplining them. I’m just talking to them.”
“Whatever, it’s not going well.” Terry nodded toward Emily, just as a tear rolled down the little girl’s cheek.
“Oh, jeez, sorry.” Rose didn’t think she’d been stern, but she was tired and maybe she’d sounded cranky. She’d been up late with baby John, who had another ear infection, and she’d felt guilty taking him to a sitter’s this morning so she could be lunch mom. He was only ten months old, and Rose was still getting the hang of mothering two children. Most of the time she felt torn in half, taking care of one child at the expense of the other, like the maternal equivalent of robbing Peter to pay Paul. “Terry, the thing is, this school has a strict zero-tolerance policy against bullying, and the kids need to learn it. All the kids. The kids who tease, as well as the allies, the kids who laugh and think it’s funny.”
“Nevertheless, when there’s a disciplinary issue, the procedure is for the lunch mom to tell a teacher. Mrs. Snyder is out on the playground. These girls should go out to recess, and you should take it up with her.”
“Can I just finish what I was saying to them? That’s all this requires.” Rose didn’t want to make it bigger, for Melly’s sake. She could already hear the kids calling her a tattletale.
“Then I’ll go get her myself.” Terry turned on her heel and walked away, and the cafeteria fell silent except for the clatter of trays and silverware in the kitchen.
Rose faced the table. “Amanda,” she began, dialing back her tone, “you have to understand that teasing is bullying. Words can hurt as much as a punch.”
“You’re not allowed to yell at me! Mrs. Douglas said!”
Rose blinked, surprised. She’d be damned if she’d be intimidated by somebody in a Hannah Montana headband. “I’m not yelling at you,” she said calmly.
“I’m going to recess!” Amanda jumped to her feet, startling Emily and Danielle.
Suddenly, something exploded in the kitchen. A searing white light flashed in the kitchen doorway. Rose turned toward the earsplitting boom! The kitchen wall flew apart, spraying shards of tile, wood, and wallboard everywhere.
A shockwave knocked Rose off her feet. A fireball billowed into the cafeteria.
And everything went black and silent.
Lisa Scottoline is the New York Times bestselling and Edgar® Award-winning author of sixteen novels. She has twenty-five million copies of her books in print in the United States, and she has been published in twenty-five countries. She teaches a course called Justice & Fiction at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, her alma mater. She lives in Philadelphia with an array of disobedient pets.
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Lisa Scottoline, Look Again
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