Page 10 of Love By the Slice

SHELLY STARTED WITH, “Can I make an anonymous report about one of your students?”

She’d asked to be put through to the vice principal rather than the guidance office because guidance had never been the best experience in her own school. To become a school guidance officer, apparently, you needed a Master’s degree and certification, but Shelly had always wondered whether the ones in her high school had found a bunch of credentialing papers in a recycling bin and realized they had a ticket to a new career.

If Hartwell held true to type, then the principal was soft-spoken and level-headed, whereas the vice principal would be viewed as the hard-nosed disciplinarian who let nothing through the cracks. Given the two, Shelly knew which one she’d prefer to look out for her interests.

She was making the call from one of the soundproof study rooms in the collegiate library. No one would overhear, plus if she started glowering, no one would fear for their lives.

The vice principal said, “If it’s a police matter, then we might need to take your name.”

“Sounds good. Let me tell you the matter, and then you can decide if you need my name.” After which, she broke every promise she’d made to Rowan because she might be involving the police after all. But not against Rowan. Against whoever was neglecting Rowan. The police ought to be involved in that.

The vice principal gave a lot of mm-hmms, but Shelly had everything bullet-pointed in front of her. “Rowan was dumpster-diving to find food,” she began, and from there, she listed every other point of concern. The ill-fitting clothing. The fact that school was the only place Rowan was getting regular meals. The other middle schoolers who said Rowan smelled bad. The way Rowan seemed to have no friends. (She was making that up, but based on Greg’s report, it wasn’t a far leap.) She ended with, “The school needs to make sure your student isn’t in an unsafe home situation.”

Those last three words, Shelly had overheard from a social worker who’d used them in the opposite direction: her family wasn’t an unsafe home situation. Well, not at that moment. And yes, they’d all grown up and no one had gotten grievously harmed so far. But come on.

The vice principal said, “That does sound concerning. I’m going to have our school guidance counselor talk to Rowan to do an assessment.”

Shelly fought a groan. Hartwell’s had better be more on the ball than her own was. “Can you check in with Rowan yourself?” she prompted.

The vice principal said, “Yes, but you do understand that I can’t tell you anything I discover due to student privacy concerns.”

Oh. No, that hadn’t occurred to Shelly.

The vice principal continued, “I promise you we’ll take it seriously, but part of taking it seriously is protecting the student’s information, not to mention their dignity.”

Shelly said, “But I’d want to help.”

The vice principal said, “Rest assured, you already have.”

“No.” Shelly paced the Loveless kitchen while Greg assembled a pizza order. “No, I didn’talready helphim. All I did was kick the problem over to someone else, and who even knows if they’ll look into the problem and what’s going to happen if they do?”

Greg had an annoying, low tone. “I think you need to relax. You don’t even know if something is wrong.”

“We most certainly do know something is wrong!” She reached a wall and paced back to the other side, unable to keep still. “I don’t trust that they’re going to really listen. Or if Rowan lies to them and says everything is fine—”

Greg looked up. “Did you lie and say everything was fine?”

Shelly pivoted again and kept pacing.

Greg said, “Why would you do that?”

“It’s not hard to convince a social worker that you’re fine at home, or something was a one-off.” Shelly shook her head. “Mom told us if they took us, we’d all get separated and put in terrible homes, and—”

Greg raised his hands. “It’s okay. But we don’t know Rowan is going to lie. We don’t know it’s even a terrible situation.”

Shelly kept pacing.

Greg finally said, “Hey, what’s your favorite pizza topping?”

Shelly huffed. “Are you going to make me feel better with a personal sized pizza that we don’t make?”

He made sad puppy eyes. “You’re worth a full sized pizza to me.”

She snickered. “I think that’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

He wrinkled his nose as he pulled up the pizza peel to send these pies into the oven. “Or the cheesiest?”

“Plenty of cheese on that one.” Shelly stepped around the counter so she could watch Greg slide three pies into the oven one after the next. “Or am I just saucy?”

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