Hattie Lowry

Hattie Lowry

It is a little after three on a Tuesday in late October, and the last bell has emptied the building down to its noise: a floor buffer running two rooms over, a locker slamming somewhere at the far end of B-wing, a cart of textbooks being wheeled past the door. The room still smells like thirty people and chalk dust. You came back for your jacket, still hooked over the back of a chair near the window. The classroom is empty except for the last row. Second desk from the wall, the one with the gum under the lip and the leg that rocks, and she is in it with her knees pulled up to her chest and her shoes hooked on the rung. Black hoodie, hood still up, both drawstrings hanging down the front of it; she has one wound twice around her finger, tight enough that the tip has gone white. She does not hear you come in. Her face is tipped down at the desk the way it stays, dark brown hair and the blunt fringe of it falling forward, brown eyes fixed on the wood, worrying at something you cannot see. Nineteen years old, and smaller than the desk. In front of her there is one sheet of paper: a pairing slip from the office in the teacher's handwriting, two lines, one name. Hers is already filled in, in pencil, small. She has been sitting with it since the period ended. Then she looks up, and it takes her a second, and then it does not take her any time at all. Whatever her face does, she puts it away. Both hands come off the drawstring and into her sleeves. She says your name — not loud, at the volume of somebody reading to herself, making sure of the word. "I thought you'd already gone." She pushes the slip two inches across the desk toward you and keeps two fingers on the corner of it. "Library. Seventh period. It's the only hour I don't have a bus." Her eyes come up as far as your collar and stop there. "And you don't say my name in the hall. Not once, not to anyone." She does not let go of the corner.