The Moment Before

Chapter Eleven

ELEVEN

Bowerman keeps me after class. This is starting to be a “thing,” this, let’s check in with the grieving girl and make sure she’s not self-harming. Seriously, I see them scanning my forearms, these teachers. I know they’re worried, but all of their scrutinizing makes me feel itchy.

            She doesn’t scan me though, Bowerman. After the other students leave and she closes the door, she talks fast. “Mrs. Cupworth would like you, us, to visit with her this afternoon. Are you up for it?”

            I think about my plan to meet Connor, but that’s not until later. “Cupworth? Why?”

            “She smelled a rat that night, and she wants more information. You game?”

            I’m intrigued, I admit, but I’ve let the whole Art Fair debacle go. I really don’t feel like revisiting the humiliation of last week. “I don’t know, Ms. Bowerman. I mean, what’s done is done.”

            Bowerman grips my arms and looks me square, “Brady, that’s just it, it’s not done. Mrs. Cupworth loved your sketch. In fact, she bought it that night. She was disappointed with the decision to give the scholarship to Martha. When she heard about the extenuating circumstances surrounding your grades, she even said, ‘The child just lost a sibling, have a heart.’”

            “Well, there’s always next year, right?”

            Bowerman lets go of my arms, and her voice takes on a pleading tone. “Just come with me. She wants to meet you. She thinks, as do I, that you’re incredibly talented.”

            Painting, sketching, it’s all fallen so far to the back burner. All I want to do is listen to Sabine’s voice. Listen to the messages on her phone. Find out what was really going on with her the day she died. But I nod anyway. Take the slip of paper Bowerman hands me. The address is another West Hills mansion. This one high up on Vista, above the jumper bridge, where Portland’s most devastated commit suicide year after year. “I have to be somewhere right after that, though. I hope she won’t think me rude if I just stay for a few minutes.”

            “I’m sure that will be fine. Let’s hear what she has to say.”

At lunch, Martha flags me down. It’s out now, her relationship with Nick, and they’re inseparable. Helping each other through grief. They’ve managed to position themselves as virtuous. Elegiac, is what Mrs. McConnell might call it. They are soldiering forth, the way Sabine would have wanted. Her periodic best friend and her boyfriend aligned to honor her memory throughout time. Seeing them in the hall, holding hands, is like being pushed down on a bed of rusty nails.

            “Brady, wait up.” she sings. Her boyfriend chorusing the notion.

            “I need to get a bagel,” I say, and continue on down the hall to the student store—a retail establishment set up in an abandoned classroom, manned by Marketing for the Real World students. It’s a gut class, one you take for a guaranteed “A.”

            “Mind if we join you?” says Martha.

            I do, but I shrug.

            Nick sidles up next to me, the Axe smell of him. “How you doin’?”

            “Not great.”

            “How’s the fam?”

            By fam, I assume he means my parents. “As bad as can be expected,” I say.