Mia smiled at her friends and seated herself at the kidney-shaped table in front of the smart board. Jill offered her a brownie her daughter had made.
“Oh, yum. Your daughter has mad baking skills.” She accepted a chocolate peanut butter fudge confection and bit into it, rolling her eyes as the smooth flavors burst in her mouth. “Wow. This is amazing.”
“I know. She definitely didn’t get that from me.”
They all laughed. Jill’s baking fails were legendary.
The door opened, and Lori, the speech pathologist, ran in, her face pale. She dropped into the last empty chair. “Did you guys hear?”
They stopped eating and looked at her.
“Hear what?” Jill asked.
“About Crystal Martin?”
Crystal was a sophomore in Mia’s class.
“Not a word.” Mia sat forward, her stomach cramping. Very little got to Lori. For her to look this distraught, it had to be bad.
Lori swallowed hard, her eyes glittering with tears. “She’s dead.”
Mia froze. Even her lungs seemed to stop working. Finally, she managed to squeak out a response. “Dead? How?”
Kim covered her face with her hands, shoulders shaking. They’d all worked with the bubbly student. Mia had tutored her last year to get her through her biology class so she wouldn’t be put on academic probation and expelled from the girls’ volleyball team.
“The rumor going around is she overdosed on some new drug.”
Mia blinked back tears. Beside her, Kim sobbed into her hands. Why would Crystal take drugs? She had everything going for her. Pretty, popular, and goal-driven. The only reason she’d struggled last year was because she’d been sick and had gotten behind. She needed help catching up.
Mia excused herself. She needed a few minutes alone to get control of her emotions.
By the time three o’clock rolled around, her fragile composure was back in place. She arrived at the conference table and hooked her computer to the main screen. Linda Bush was the regular education teacher again. Mia looked around but couldn’t find the pages Cynthia Reese would need to sign. She slipped into the main office to run off a few copies. When she finished, she left the office and nearly ran into Cynthia.
“Cynthia! I didn’t mean to run you over. Is Dylan coming?” She’d encouraged all her students to attend their meetings.
“No. He went camping with Reggie yesterday and hasn’t come back yet.” Cynthia clenched her hands on her purse.
“That doesn’t sound like Dylan.” Mia bit her lip. She shouldn’t have said that. But Dylan had always been responsible. She’d been sure he’d come to his own meeting.
Cynthia hiked the purse strap higher on her shoulder. “I’m sure he’s fine. I texted his brother. He’s checking on it for me.”
His brother. Jackson Stewart.
Mia swallowed, then her lips tightened.
“What’s that look for?” Cynthia asked.
She tried to smile at Cynthia through stiff lips. “What look? I’m fine.”
“That look that says you want to say something but know you shouldn’t.”
She wasn’t wrong. “It’s nothing. Jackson and I went to school together. We didn’t have a great relationship.”
Her mind was briefly mugged by images of him leaning in for a kiss.
Her face heated. Now was not the time to recall that. Bitterness swelled inside, but she held it in. While she might want to spew abuse about him and how he’d destroyed her life, Dylan thought the world of his brother. She wouldn’t tarnish that.
She had plenty of reasons to doubt Jackson’s reliability, but his care for his brother wasn’t one of them. Even in high school, he’d talked about his baby brother with affection. Since moving back to Renegade, Mia had only ever heard Dylan sing his brother’s praise, and Jackson had a great reputation as a paramedic.
