Till the End of Tom by Gillian Roberts Page B

sound as if I’d simply noticed trash and mentioned it to the crime-fighters.
    Needless to say, the excited newscasts and headlines did not make for a smooth workday. Now the students knew I’d discovered the body and the drugged cup—the latter in their very classroom, which became, therefore, a crime scene, and made them part of an investigative team. Each class in turn scanned for additional clues and evidence in corners and under desks. I could almost hear their excited thoughts: This time, they’d be the—plucky—ones to spot something and make the eleven o’clock news.
    This is the result of too many reality shows. Or too much reality.
    I felt as if I were hauling the curriculum behind me on a rope, trying to tug it into a room already overstuffed with yesterday’s news. I didn’t want to talk about the things the students chose as topics: how it felt to find a dying man; what the police asked me; whether I’d have to testify when they found out who had drugged Severin and probably killed him.
    Now and then I tossed a little of the lesson plan into the
C.S.I.
talk and the day progressed. By the time my seniors entered the room, most of the crime-talk was over. Unfortunately, so was the day.
    Even there, one adamant youngster came up with a new question. Faye Horrell, who was too cute and smart to be as afraid of speaking her mind as she appeared to be, protected herself by avoiding all direct statements. Every sentence out of her mouth was in the form of a question, even when she was suggesting that her teacher might be a criminal. Especially when she was suggesting that I might be in trouble with the law.
    In her own interrogatory way, Faye delighted in all things deadly. I stood at the side of the room, where I could see the books stacked on her desk and, with her permission, I lifted the stack and looked at the titles. One was
Stiff,
by Mary Roach, one was
Corpse,
by Jessica Sachs, and one was
Declared Dead,
by Suzanne Proulx.
    “For research?” she said. I didn’t ask of what kind.
    “So . . . have they said anything about your being under suspicion?” she asked in her tiny voice.
    “Me? Why on earth? Because I found him?” I sounded just like her. Maybe my level of panic equaled hers then, too, because I flushed with the fear that she somehow knew about Severin’s note, about Edwards’s suspicions that I was involved in Severin’s end.
    “Because . . . the article?” she piped. “In the
Inkwire
? Remember?”
    Of course I remembered it—with pride and pleasure in the students’ accomplishments. It was the article I planned to submit in the journalism competition.
    Faye wrinkled her forehead, looking pained and frightened. A “don’t hit me!” face was one of her most-used expressions. I had worried about that, about her interest in all things morbid, about possible abuse, but Rachel Leary, the counselor, had quelled my fears. “She’s pretty happy and normal. I had to ask her outright, and she basically told me that her cringing questioning style makes her distinctive. Kind of a trademark? As she would ask-say. She thinks it makes her cute.”
    Her writing was assertive and question-mark free. Someday I’d figure out a kind and polite way to let her know that the persona she’d adopted was annoying, not adorable.
    “Nobody mentioned anything about the school paper,” I said. “And even if they did, that doesn’t make me a criminal.”
    “But wouldn’t it have to be somebody who knew about the drug who did this? Somebody who knew where to buy it?” Faye’s face scrunched still more intensely. I wouldn’t have believed that such young skin could produce that many wrinkles. The child was going to need Botox shots before the semester was over. “You remember what Zach wrote?” she asked.
    “Of course.” Zachary Wallenberg, one of the outstanding seniors and one of our true success stories, had gone underground, with permission, and only to a preagreed-upon extent, and then