Then she wrote it on the board: Pearl as a concrete manifestation of guilt.
“Does anyone want to expand on this?”
No one did. In front of me, Tom Ritchie and Jeremy Sayers were flicking a paper football back and forth, mock cheering each time one of them got it between the uprights of the other one’s hands. Alice and Jenna were still watching Tate, whispering and then covering their mouths like they’d just said something so shocking it needed to be contained and giving each other significant looks.
Mrs. Brummel was making bullet points with her back to us, waiting for someone to start filling them in.
I watched Alice. When she’d taken her seat at the beginning of class, her skirt had slid up far enough to show the tops of her thighs, and I was enjoying the fact that she hadn’t adjusted it yet. Her hair was loose down her back and looked almost like bronze in the fluorescent light.
She propped her elbows on her desk and leaned forward so she could whisper into Jenna’s ear. “I heard that her mom won’t get out of bed since it happened. Like, not even for the funeral. I can’t believe she’s acting like nothing’s wrong. I just wouldn’t even come to school.”
Apparently, that one was loud enough for Tate to catch some or possibly all of it because she stood up fast enough to send her desk screeching along the floor. Her gaze was hard, sweeping over us, and I couldn’t tell if I was dizzy from the screws and wires in the walls or from the way she was looking at me.
“Oh,” she said, in a clear, challenging voice. “Was this what you wanted? Did you want a good look? Take a good look—I don’t mind.”
And maybe no one had really been excited about Hester Prynne and her illegitimate daughter, but they were paying attention now. I kept my head down, hunching over my desk, trying to get smaller. My heart was beating so fast that I could feel it in my throat and I kept telling myself that everything was fine, that I’d imagined she’d looked at me, because I had to believe that. I had to believe that no one in Gentry would ever hear the words child of the devil and then look at me.
No one said anything.
The room was so quiet that all I could hear was the buzz of the fluorescent light. I had the idea that it was buzzing right over me, like some kind of signal or alarm, but no one turned to stare accusingly. No one whispered or pointed.
Mrs. Brummel stood with her back against the whiteboard and the marker uncapped in her hand, staring at Tate. “Is there something you needed?”
