When Women Were Dragons(74)

I swung my leg over my bike and kicked it forward, skimming across the wide, dark puddles, leaving long, smooth tidal waves in my wake.



Once at school, we all found our way to our classrooms, and the PA system made the same announcement that it had made every single day for the last month. “Any . . . erm . . . unusual sightings or rumors need to be reported to the authorities immediately.” None of us took it seriously. It was, to us, like the grim warnings about possible Russian spies or the advertisements for prefabricated fallout shelters or the occasional air raid drill. We were old enough to know that the posters warning of reefer madness were fully bogus and that there were plenty of girls who went parking with boys in cars and still maintained their grade-point averages and their status in school. There were a lot of falsehoods in this world, and it seemed a large percentage of them were posted in hallways and announced on the school’s PA system. I tuned them out.

Sister Leonie, my French teacher, smacked her desk with a textbook, exhorting us in French to pay attention.

“Oui, ma soeur,” we said meekly.

There was another announcement in the middle of third period. I didn’t listen to it. My bra itched and my back hurt. I wasn’t sure why.

The bell rang and I went to calculus. Mr. Reynolds grimaced when I walked through the door. “You’re late!” he said. But I wasn’t. That’s just how he greeted me most days. What he meant to say was “I needed your assistance at some point earlier, and you failed to materialize.”

I was about to respond, but the bell started to ring and did not stop. Air raid drill. Mr. Reynolds nearly jumped, his expression transforming quickly from alarm to exasperation. “Well for crying out—” He threw a notebook onto his desk with frustration. “We just had one of those.” He glared at me, as though it was somehow my fault. “These boys need to get ready for their state exam. My reputation’s on the line.”

What reputation? I thought waspishly. I opened the door and saw students filing into the hall.

“You know what to do,” the teachers called out, as everyone sat on the floor with the wall at their backs and a book clutched above their heads. Mr. Reynolds directed the boys in my class to do the same. I didn’t sit down. There was something about this drill that didn’t seem right. Suddenly, I became acutely aware of the distance between Beatrice and me. I tried to ignore the twist of anxiety in my gut.

“Well?” Mr. Reynolds said, motioning to the floor.

“I’m sorry, sir. This will only take a minute,” I said. I showed him my empty hands. “Forgot my book.” I dashed back into the classroom and looked out the window.

There weren’t any fire trucks parked in front, but I could hear the sirens coming from far away. Which was odd. Usually it was the firefighters who would arrive early and set the alarm in the first place, and then pace the hallways, giving kids tips on the best ways to use a biology textbook to protect a human skull from nuclear annihilation. They mostly were able to do this with a straight face. In any case, it was a planned event. This didn’t look planned. If the firefighters weren’t administering the air raid protocol, who was? Was this an actual air raid? I certainly hadn’t heard any planes.

The fire truck finally arrived, followed by a second, and they screeched to a halt. The firemen poured out, but they didn’t come inside. Instead they crowded on the sidewalk, shoulder to burly shoulder, and looked up at the top of the building. One man pointed. Their mouths were open.

“Alexandra!” my teacher shouted.

“In a minute!” I called back, but I didn’t move. The firefighters fixed their gaze a couple stories above the window where I peered out. And then their faces tilted in unison up and up and up, and then began to trace a slow arc over their heads. It took a moment for whatever they were looking at to reach the angle of my vision, and even then I couldn’t really see it clearly. Something large. And flying. Whatever it was, its surface reflected the sunlight so brightly that I had to squint and I couldn’t watch it head-on, I could only catch its shape through the corner of my eye. It flew too low for a plane. And anyway, it had been on the top of the school. Hadn’t it?

The firefighters gave the all-clear and the bell rang and everyone stood and filed back into the classrooms. I didn’t move from the window.

“Alexandra?” my teacher said.

I watched as the firefighters climbed back into their truck.

“Alexandra, I think you were about to hand back the tests?”

More sirens sounded. The truck tore off toward the west. Two police cars squealed around the corner and followed it, their lights flashing.

“Alexandra, are you listening to me? These students have questions about their tests.”

They told us to be good children. I had always been a good child. I always did as I was told. But now . . . I turned and faced the classroom. The boys in my class all stared at me, a look of bewilderment on their dull faces. My teacher held the instructor’s manual as though it was a life preserver. He gestured to the stack of exams on the desk.

“Well?” he said.

Once, when I was very small, my mom taught me how to set my face. How to erase the mad or the sad or the disappointed. “Not too eager, not too happy, not too anything. Just pleasant. And unflappable. You can get a world of work done with a pleasant face. Nobody interrupts and nobody gets offended. Like this, darling.” And she showed me.