Page 8 of Bows & Eros
He tapped on the break and shot me a look through narrowed eyes. The reality of the parking situation may have been lost on this man, but boy oh boy, Ethan Weaver was savvy to my passive-aggressive subtext!
"Maybe just drop me by the door and meet me inside," I suggested with more than a little sarcasm, crossing my arms over my seatbelt. The too-short sleeves on the coat I was wearing rode up to almost my elbows, and though I'd turned my face to the window to pointedly ignore him, I thought I saw a flash of amusement on the reflection of his face.
"Ah," he said, pointing forward without lifting his properly placed hands from the wheel. "There's a spot."
I refused to look. It was too ridiculous.
He slid into the miraculously empty space and powered us down, whistling jauntily to himself as he went. I fumbled around with my too-big mittens at the seat belt release, only managing to free myself after Ethan had left the car, circled around, and wrenched my door open for me, grinning at my ineptitude like it was a comedic pantomime for his personal amusement.
"Do you need help?"
"I'm fine." I pushed myself out of the car and onto the curb, sucking in a breath of crisp air in the hopes that it would clear my head. I pointed down the pathway that wound around to the left and said, "This way. Hopefully he's still in the auditorium."
I didn't turn to ensure I was being followed. That was a rookie move for a 4th grade teacher, anyway. The trick was tolistenand react accordingly, so that the child would believe you had otherworldly powers and could observe them with your back turned. I was almost disappointed to hear the dutiful shuffle of Ethan Weaver's scuffed boots hitting the sidewalk behind me as I went.
Either I was nursing a pressing need to snap at someone to relieve some stress via my temper, or he just irked me in a special and singular way that kept flinging me between hypnotized with attraction and prepping to strangle.
At least it was keeping me alert?
I used my staff keys to get us in through the faculty doors, and though I was bracing myself for noisy chaos once we were inside, it was somehow infinitely more disturbing to encounter silence. I tossed a baffled look over my shoulder at him and inched toward the auditorium. The sounds our shoes made on the ground seemed like the type of thing that gets a heroine in a horror movie eaten, but there was nothing to be done for it right now.
Even the easy listening music that had been thrumming on the undertones of the day in the auditorium had been cut off. As we drew closer, we could hear the muffled sounds of a couple of voices, but nothing like what I'd expected given the pandemonium I'd left behind.
The guests had largely cleared out of this space, I realized. There were a handful of glassy-eyed high school students sitting near the door, whose heads turned in unison as I entered. They had been eating what remained of the finger foods laid out for today's festivities.
"We didn't think anyone was coming back," said the one closest to me, a girl with tightly braided pigtails over her shoulders. "Hungry?"
I blinked at her, uncertain how to respond. The place was a mess, with streamers and popped balloons piled on the tile floor in front of the stage. Tables had been shoved off to one side, which meant several had toppled, and it looked like there had been a stampede directly over some of the games that were set up in the far corner.
An icy sense of foreboding was overtaking me, gradually increasing with each new spot of destruction I took in. All over the room were brightly colored paper airplanes, many of which had been flattened underfoot once they'd met their targets. Even here at the door, just at the toes of my boots there was a ripped bit of lime green construction paper, with crinkles folded on what used to be a wing.
I didn't see Aaron anywhere, and that frigid foreboding was going to give way to panic very, very soon.
"What happened in here?" Ethan asked from behind me, his voice so calm and warm that it made me physically shiver. That was the second time today he'd pulled me in from the cold, whether he knew it or not. "Where did everyone go? Their cars are all outside still."
"Oh, they're all still here," answered a boy with a half-eaten slice of pizza in his hand. His big, brown eyes slid from Ethan over to me. "We weren't hit, so we helped put people in classrooms. Your kids are with Miss March. She has most of the little ones. She put on a movie."
Hazel.
I blew out a gust of held breath, my cheeks puffing out in relief. If Hazel had all the younger kids, that's where Aaron would be.Andshe hadn't been struck by one of the little rascal's magic airplanes if she was behaving sensibly, so that was good news.
"What do you mean,hit?"Ethan demanded with wide eyes.
"All the parents are still here?" I asked over him. "It's just that it seems like the airplanes got out into the town, from what we saw on the drive over."
"Oh, they did," said the girl with pigtails with a hoarse laugh. "They were everywhere. Maybe someone cracked a window? I just know I saw a whole bunch of them out on the yard."
I nodded in thanks and told them to stay put, giving a little tug to Ethan Weaver's elbow as I turned to head back into the halls.
"What did they mean byhit?" he asked again, speeding his stride so that I couldn't outpace him. "Airplanes?"
"I'm going to make Aaron explain it to you," I told him, pulling off the mittens one at a time and shoving them into the coat pocket. "Because I can't. I can't explainanyof this, and I'm going to sound stupid or crazy if I try."
"Lord forbid," he muttered at a volume that I'm entirely certain was meant to irritate me.
Hazel's classroom was indeed dark, with the gentle flicker of the wheeled television we shared between us in the elementary wing illuminating a sea of little heads spread out between the desks and the floor of her classroom. Hazel herself was leaning against the side wall near her chalkboard, one hand spread over her forehead and the rest of her face shrouded by her hair.
I held a finger up to Ethan so that he would stay behind for a moment and eased my way into her classroom for the second time that day. She didn't notice or even move from her exhausted pose against the wall until I'd drawn near enough to touch her elbow.
