The Most Dangerous Place on Earth(23)

He released her hand. “Principal Norton, my daughter always tells the truth. I think we’re done here.” He plucked his iPhone from the desk, and both he and Abigail’s mother stood up. Abigail stood too.

Ms. Norton nodded. She got up and walked around the desk and opened the office door to show them out. “Well,” she said, hesitating with one hand on the doorknob, staring at Abigail. “Thank you for coming in. I’m sorry to have taken your time.”

Abigail’s father was turning something over in his head. He said, “You know, Ms. Norton, I have lost half the workday, as has my wife”—Abigail’s mother nodded in solidarity—“but that’s fine. I don’t care about that. I’m just not sure what you were thinking here. Pulling my daughter out of class, accusing her? Like she’s some kind of juvenile delinquent?”

Ms. Norton closed the door again. She steepled her palms. “Mr. Cress, no one is accusing—”

“Where is this teacher, anyway? I’m just wondering. Why don’t you drag him in here for questioning?”

“I have spoken to Mr. Ellison.”

“And what does he say for himself?”

“His statements align with Abigail’s.”

“He denies it?”

“Yes.”

“I want to talk to him.”

“I don’t think that would be a wise course of action at this time—”

“I don’t see why not. I’m here already.”

Ms. Norton looked miserable, out of her depth; Abigail almost felt sorry for her. “I’m sorry, Mr. Cress. If Abigail said nothing happened, if she is telling us the truth—”

“Of course she’s telling the truth,” Abigail’s mother said. “Do you know our daughter at all? She doesn’t even care to date boys her own age. The fact that she even has to hear about something like this—”

“Get your things, Abigail, we’re going,” her father said, and opened the door himself.

Ms. Norton trailed them to the hallway, prattling uselessly. “Let’s no one leave angry,” she said. “I feel we should pause for a moment, reflect…” Abigail couldn’t believe the principal was so na?ve as to think everything would be so easy to fix, like “I Statements” were actual problem-solving strategies and not just the nonsense that the Conflict Mediation Club posted on its Facebook page.

Ignoring Ms. Norton, Abigail and her parents hurried down the hallway toward the exit. The fluorescents formed a tunnel of light. Abigail’s father’s phone buzzed again, and this time he sped ahead to answer it.

Abigail’s mother walked close beside her, pressing at the small of Abigail’s back. They were silent except for the clicks of her mother’s heels, which echoed through the hall. She wore the same Chanel perfume she’d worn forever; its jasmine mixed with the sharp scent of the damp silk blouse beneath her suit and Abigail could not remember the last time she’d been close enough to her mother’s body to smell this smell.

Mr. Ellison’s classroom was the fifth door on the left. Three doors from where they were. The door was open.

Abigail slowed her steps. She could run back to Ms. Norton’s office, lead her parents down a different hall—but no, it was too late. Mr. Ellison’s voice carried far. He was talking to someone—a boy. What was he saying?

As they came closer, she recognized the voice of Dave Chu. It sounded desperate.

Mr. Ellison was reassuring him about something. He was gentling his voice the way he used to do for her. And suddenly she hated Dave, who still got to be soothed by Mr. Ellison, who still got to believe in love and teachers the way that she did not.

When they reached the classroom, she stopped.

Seeing her, Mr. Ellison stood up behind his desk; his chair scraped the floor. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple jumping in his throat. With arms by his sides, he clenched and unclenched one fist. It was the hand with his wedding ring, the silver titanium he’d let her weigh in her palm that first night in his car, to let her feel how light it was. How insubstantial. How he could slide it off and on and off again. Facing her in his blue striped shirt and jeans, his square-framed glasses and stupid braided belt, he was all the layers of the man she knew. He was Mr. Ellison and Doug and Mr. Ellison again.

She wanted to run to him, to claim him. She wanted him to claim her, to tell her parents all the wonderful things about her that they had never bothered to know, things she herself had not known, that she could be not only smart and self-sufficient but loving and kind and sweet—even, in the right light, beautiful.

But the main thing, the important part, was how he looked at her. The rash of shame on his cheeks. His worried brow. His fear. Not the fear of what might have happened to her, not the fear even of losing her, which he’d professed so many times, his freckled head rolling in her lap, but the fear of getting caught. And she understood, or rather felt, that everything Ms. Norton hinted at was true.

Love is love. What did it mean?

“Abigail?” he said, and his voice tore on the edge of her name. “Did you need something?”

“Abby?” her mother said. “Honey, who is this? Is this him?”

Abigail shook her head. Her brain strained to catalog, organize, everything he’d ever done or said. Real: When he pulled her hair, and the shivers down her body made her gasp. Not Real: When he told her, You’re the one I didn’t realize I was waiting for. You’re a miracle, Abby, you’re mine. Now his eyes begged her to leave and she told herself, Nothing he has ever done or said to you, none of that happiness, was as true as this is.