The Word of a Child. Janice Johnson Kay

together, Connor studied her in genuine perplexity. “Why?”

      Her gaze skittered from his. “I don’t know. I didn’t even realize…” Her breath escaped. “No, I do know. You dominated. Compared to you, she was a shadow. And then there was the way you said it. ‘Even in a whisper, Zofie’s daddy, was clear as a bell.’ You see, I remember that, word for word.”

      He swore.

      Mariah gave a crooked, sad smile. “That’s why I hated you. Because you were Lily’s voice.”

      “I’m sorry,” he said again, inadequately.

      “No. You did what you had to do.” Visibly composing herself, she glanced at the clock. “My next period students will start arriving in just a few minutes. I’m afraid we’ve wasted our time.”

      He shook his head. “I don’t think so. We had to get past this.”

      She gave him a brief, almost vague smile. Class dismissed. “I’m going to eat my lunch, very quickly, if you don’t mind.”

      “No. Listen. Can I come back later? After your last class, maybe? Or do you have to pick up Zofie right away?”

      Pulling a sandwich out of her brown paper bag, Mariah shook her head. “I do have that planning period, remember.”

      “Oh, right. One o’clock?”

      She agreed.

      He stood. “I’ll get out of here, then, so I don’t start whispers.”

      Mariah looked surprised and as innocent as he suspected at heart she was. “Nobody is talking about Tracy yet.”

      What he’d meant was that they might whisper about her. He didn’t say so. “Good. I want to get to her friends before she can. Her mother promised she wouldn’t let her call any of them until I say it’s okay. I’ll do some interviews here at school, others tonight in the kids’ homes.”

      Her brow creased. “I’m not sure I know who her best friends are. Her crowd, sure, but if she had a really close friend…”

      “I’m sticking around school today to talk to some of her other teachers, too.”

      “Oh. Of course.” She tried to smile. “Poor Gerald.”

      “Maybe.” Connor hadn’t made up his mind yet.

      He left, then, to hit up the next teacher on his list.

      The consensus among the faculty, he found, was in agreement with Mariah’s brief sketch of the girl. “A smart mouth,” the math instructor said. All equivocated when asked about her academic potential. “She’s got the ability,” conceded the social studies teacher grudgingly. “If she’d ever pay attention.”

      Several had also had meetings with her mother. They were guarded in their assessment, but having met Sandy Mitchell, Connor could read between the lines. She was apparently still married to the long-missing husband, which didn’t stop her from replacing him with a rotating succession of men. She claimed to want the best for her daughter, but she let Tracy baby-sit until the wee hours on school nights, wrote excuses for skipped classes and apparently paid more attention to her current boyfriend than she did to whether her daughter had missed assignments or flunked tests.

      When asked how truthful they thought Tracy was, each and every teacher hesitated. But once again, there was general agreement. “Hard to say,” the social studies instructor said at last. “She’s darned good at making up excuses for late assignments. I bought a few of them before she tried one too many.”

      Her art teacher was a standout. This was the one class where Tracy excelled. Even Connor could see real talent in the sketches Jennifer Lawson showed off. “Look at her clay project compared to the other kids’,” she said, leading him back to a worktable beside a kiln.

      He studied the rows of squat pots, as yet unglazed, constructed with coils. Only one had character and unexpected grace; it was both taller and narrower than the others, the neck taking an intriguing curve. Connor indicated it, and Ms. Lawson nodded.

      “She’s very focused in here. I don’t get the excuses from her I know the other teachers do.” She added simply, “Tracy Mitchell really has artistic ability. I hope she chooses to use it.”

      Tracy’s mother had given permission for him to read her daughter’s school file, starting with a pre-kindergarten assessment—“bright and eager”—and ending with the sixth-grade report card, which consisted of Bs and Cs. There had been up years and down years, he discovered; teachers who had seen promise in the girl and worked hard to cultivate her enthusiasm and ability, and teachers who had disliked that “smart mouth” and early budding of sexuality.

      Nobody particularly noted lying as a problem. Yeah, she probably made up excuses for undone homework, but what kid didn’t? Connor knew he had.

      His one interview with the girl had left him undecided. Usually he had a gut feeling. Strangely, this time he didn’t. Sitting in the living room of the apartment where she lived with her mom, she had told her story in a disquietingly pat way. But then, Connor had reminded himself, this was the third time in one afternoon she’d been asked to tell it. Wouldn’t be surprising if it didn’t come out by rote after a while.

      If she was lying, she was smart enough not to let any smugness or slyness seep through. He had detected some real anger at the teacher, but not the distress a girl raped at her age should feel. If she was already sexually active, the actual act might not have disturbed her as much as it would have your average thirteen-year-old. Even so, how much experience could she have? Shouldn’t she be traumatized?

      But he wasn’t making assumptions too quickly. Sometimes the trauma was buried. It could take time to claw its way to the surface. Or, hell, maybe she’d seen her mother trading sex for favors over the years, so this swap, a grade for a quickie, had seemed normal to her, something a girl did.

      Could she, at thirteen, not be traumatized by forced sex with a man three times her age?

      Connor was more depressed by that possibility than by any of the others. Damn it, a thirteen-year-old was a kid. A little girl, who shouldn’t be seeing R-rated movies, far less be numbingly sophisticated about sex.

      Anyway, assuming she was that sophisticated, why had she decided, after the fact, to tell her drama teacher what had happened? Because she was upset? Or because Gerald Tanner hadn’t kept his side of the deal? Say, he’d decided she should put out a few more times if she wanted that passing grade?

      The bell rang. Knowing better this time than to try to force his way up three flights of stairs against the lemminglike plunge of the middle-schoolers toward their next classes, Connor waited outside in a covered area. Shoulder propped against a post, he watched thirteen-and fourteen-year-olds flirt, gossip with friends, struggle to open ancient metal lockers and act cool.

      On the whole, they hadn’t changed since his day. Haircuts and clothing styles were a little different, but not the basic insecurity that was the hallmark of these young teenagers.

      He didn’t see a girl hurrying by who would have been as calm as Tracy Mitchell, talking about the first time her computer teacher exposed himself to her.

      The crowd was thinning out, the next bell about to ring. Connor shoved away from the post and through the double doors into the tall A building with its Carnegie-style granite foundation and broad front entrance steps. Stragglers on their way to class cast him startled looks. He was an alien in their midst, an adult who wasn’t a teacher or a known parent. He smiled and nodded when they met his eyes.

      Tracy could be lying, all right. She wouldn’t be the first teenager who’d decided an allegation of sexual molestation was the way to bring down an adult she hated.

      But Gerald Tanner was also the classic nerd who had probably been hunched over his computer when his contemporaries were developing social skills. Not to mention fashion sense. Even Connor, who didn’t give a damn about clothes, had shuddered