No Time for Goodbye - Linwood Barclay [38]
I put my head in my hands, my eyes landing on, “Mr. Whitman’s most famous writing was ‘Leaves of Grass,’ which some people think is probably about marijuana, but it was not, although it’s hard to believe that a guy who wrote something called ‘I Sing the Body Electric’ wasn’t stoned at least some of the time.”
The next day, Lauren Wells wasn’t wearing her traditional tracksuit. She was in a snug black T-shirt and a pair of designer jeans. Cynthia would have known, at twenty paces, what kind they were. We were watching American Idol one night, on our tiny, non-high-definition screen, when she pointed to a contestant screeching out her own version of Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings,” and said, “She’s wearing Sevens.”
I didn’t know whether Lauren was wearing Sevens, but she looked nice, and the male students were craning their necks around, getting a peek at her from behind as she made her way up the hall.
I was coming the other way and she stopped me. “How you doing today?” she asked. “Better?”
I couldn’t recall admitting to feeling anything less than perfect the last time we’d spoken, but said, “Yeah, I’m good. You?”
“Okay,” she said. “Although I almost took yesterday off. This girl, who was in my senior class in high school, she was killed in a car accident up in Hartford a couple of days ago, and this other friend I keep in touch with on MSN, she told me, and I just felt so bad about it.”
“She was a close friend, was she?” I asked.
Lauren offered up half a shrug. “Well, she was in my year. It took me a couple of minutes to place her when my friend mentioned the name. We didn’t actually hang out or anything. She sat behind me in a couple of classes. But it’s still a shock, you know, when something like that happens to someone you know. It makes you think, makes you reassess, which is why I almost didn’t come in yesterday.”
“To reassess,” I said, not sure Lauren’s predicament warranted an outpouring of sympathy. “These things happen.” I feel as bad as the next guy when someone dies in a traffic accident, but Lauren was using up my time to discuss a tragedy involving someone that not only did I not know, but it was becoming evident she didn’t know all that well herself.
Kids shuffled past, dodged and weaved around us as we stood in the middle of the hall.
“So,” Lauren said, “what’s she really like?”
“Who?”
“Paula Malloy,” Lauren said. “From Deadline. Is she as nice as she seems on TV? Because she seems very nice.”
“She has wonderful teeth,” I said. I reached up, touched her arm, motioned her toward the wall of lockers so that we weren’t blocking traffic.
“Listen, um, you and Mr. Carruthers, you’re pretty tight, right?” she asked.
“Rolly and I? Yeah, we’ve known each other a long time.”
“This is kind of awkward to ask, but in the staff room the other day, he was there, and, well, I think he might have, what I’m saying is, did he mention seeing me put something in your mailbox and taking it out later?”
“Uh, well, he—”
“Because, okay, I did leave something there, but then I thought about it, and thought maybe it was a bad idea, so I took it back, but then I thought, oh great, Mr. Carruthers, Roland, if he saw me, he’d probably tell you anyway, and then I thought, shit, I might as well have left it there because at least then you’d know what it said instead of wondering what it said—”
“Lauren, don’t worry about it. It’s no big deal.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what the note said. I didn’t want any further complications to my life at the moment. And I was certain I didn’t want complications with Lauren Wells, even if the rest of my life was as smooth as glass.
“It was just a note to you and Cynthia, that maybe you’d like to come over sometime. I was thinking of having