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Up until today, it had been a good plan.
Near the end of class, however, Mr. Swanson gave them a reading assignment to finish while he went around the room, handing back the pop quiz on The Crucible he’d sprung on them the Friday before break.
Even though Isobel had missed only one of the questions, she found a neon-green Post-it affixed to hers.
Please see me after the bell, it read, the words scrawled in her teacher’s loopy cursive writing.
Wonderful, Isobel thought.
Whether she was up for one or not, it seemed she was in for a Swanson chat after all.
13
Grave Danger
When the bell did ring, Isobel’s first impulse was to pretend she hadn’t seen the note and book it straight out the door. One fatal glimpse in Mr. Swanson’s direction, though, and she knew there would be no slipping past his radar, especially since it seemed to be aimed straight at her.
Like a chess club’s version of a bouncer (complete with sweater-vest and tucked-in necktie), Mr. Swanson stood poised beside the door as everyone filed out. Hands stuffed into the pockets of his pleated khaki pants, he shot several pointed glances her way between quick exchanges with the students now headed for the lunchroom.
Already halfway out of her desk, Isobel gritted her teeth and sank back down again.
She felt a surge of sudden resentment toward him for making her stay like this, for breaking his unspoken promise that he wouldn’t bring up Varen unless she came to him first.
But maybe he’d begun to sense that that was never going to happen.
Trapped, she waited for the classroom to empty.
To avoid fueling the gossip mill, she did her best to appear as though she was only taking her time in pulling her things together. Tugging her backpack into her lap, she rifled through the front pockets like there was something inside that she just had to find before heading out.
She looked up only when she heard the door click shut.
Staring straight at her, Mr. Swanson wore a blank expression, which Isobel thought must be his stab at a poker face. The fixed, deadpan look gave her the distinct impression that he was pulling a Clint Eastwood, waiting for her to draw first. It was like he hoped that any second now she would freak and launch into a word-vomit session of the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Isobel tried to keep her face as blank as possible as she held up the quiz paper, Post-it side out. “I didn’t cheat,” she said.
Mr. Swanson frowned, his wiry white-and-gray eyebrows drawing in close enough to touch. He pressed his thin lips together, rocking on his heels with his hands still tucked inside his pockets.
“I know you didn’t,” he said. “Actually, this isn’t about the quiz.”
Shocker, Isobel nearly muttered. Instead she did her best to look perplexed.
“It’s about your project paper on Poe,” he said.
This time, his words did manage to catch her off guard.
Isobel watched him as he went to stand behind his desk. He slid open the top drawer, extracted a small stack of stapled papers, and dropped them onto the desktop. “I’d like you to tell me how much of it you actually wrote.”
Uh-oh, Isobel thought, realizing that Swanson must have made copies of all the papers before handing back the originals. Of course he had. Knowing him, he probably kept a backlog of every single assignment he’d ever given. He probably had an FBI-style database of every student he’d ever taught too.
Isobel picked up her pen, twisting it around and around, trying to think of an honest yet nonincriminating way to answer his question.
There wasn’t one.
The truth about the gargantuan ten-page essay was that Isobel hadn’t written a single word of it, something Varen had assured her wouldn’t be a problem.
Obviously, among other things, he’d been wrong about that.
But it wasn’t the possible change in her grade that made Isobel nervous so much as the prospect of a call home from a teacher. After the night her father had found her swinging the fireplace poker in the living room, he’d of course drawn the false yet inevitable conclusion that she had smashed the lamp. Even though Isobel had been able to convince her dad that she’d been sleepwalking, she didn’t need another reason for either of her parents to reconsider the Maryland trip. And she certainly didn’t need another instance of her involvement with Varen being brought up, least of all by Mr. Swanson.
