If We Had Known by Elise Juska

Author:Elise Juska
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2018-04-17T04:00:00+00:00

She dismissed class fifteen minutes early and when she stopped by her office, an email from Bill Wall was waiting on the screen. Please contact me at your earliest convenience. For the moment, she ignored it; she had to. She couldn’t talk to Bill until she knew exactly what the article said. She hurried to the student union, where at least a hundred newspapers sat in slippery piles by the main entrance. CLASSMATE REMEMBERS KILLER. The headline was a bright red. Below it floated a pair of photos: Nathan Dugan, Luke Finch. Both of them looked like high school portraits, probably retrieved from their freshman year viewbooks. At the sight of Luke’s photo, Maggie’s old student came back to her more clearly. The hunched shoulders, shy sweater. Nathan’s photo was familiar too, though it took a minute to remember where she’d seen it: on the mantel in Marielle Dugan’s living room.

Maggie was tempted to just stand there and tear through the article—tempted, for a moment, to take the entire pile—but was conscious of the students grazing in the vicinity, glancing now and then in her direction. She grabbed a single copy, shoved it in her bag, and walked back out the door.

Her breaths were shallow as she made her way toward Strathmere Hall. At five thirty, the quad was already beginning to darken, the clock on the chapel glowing like an eye. Just one week ago, it had been light out at this hour, but now the shadows were bowing across the footpaths. It was the time of day Maggie always thought the campus looked most poignant, the very essence of college—a world-within-a-world—but tonight it felt like a rebuke. “Evening, Maggie,” she heard, and looked up, startled—Marta Crane. Was she looking at her with suspicion? Disdain? Marta was just the type to have read the article and formed a quick opinion on it. By the end of the first faculty meeting, she’d requested an office on the second floor to minimize the chance of being shot at her desk. Maggie could only imagine how she might have handled actually teaching someone like Nathan. “Have a good night,” Maggie said, and kept moving, trying to ignore the growing seed of panic in her chest.

She pulled open the glass door to Strathmere, thin as a window but surprisingly heavy, then rushed up the stairs, down the glass-walled corridor to the faculty offices on the second floor. “Hi,” she said, shutting his door.

Robert was standing in front of his desk, sleeves pushed to his elbows. At the sight of him, she felt briefly comforted, then registered the grim expression on his face. “Have you read it yet?”

There was a copy of the Sentinel in his hand. Maggie unshouldered her bag and set it on a chair. “I just got out of class,” she told him. “I haven’t had the—” but before she could reach for her own copy, he’d handed her his.

CLASSMATE REMEMBERS KILLER

By Juliet R. Brody

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