Free In the Dead of Summer by Gillian Roberts Page A

She knew Vo Van, the young man who was shot a few hours later in that same park. And she always checked before she went outside. Do you suppose all of those things are connected? Maybe she was afraid of Vo Van?”
    “Don’ badmouth history,” Mackenzie said. “You should give it more of a try.”
    I bit at my upper lip. He was injured, petulant, not himself.
    Not himself.
    Please God, let this not be himself!
    “This drive-by thing,” I tried again. “If April—”
    “Shhh.” He looked shocked that I was making any sound, and he waved toward the stage where, indeed, Dutoit had entered and was tapping his baton on the podium, then lifting and holding it aloft.
    I looked at the conductor and then at Mackenzie. Sometimes, for all my long-suffering tolerance of his pain and inconvenience, the man just plain got on my nerves. I should read history, indeed.
    I wondered whether Mackenzie would get out of that cast before I read about us—when we, too, became history.
    *
    Normally, when I can’t find something, I keep looking. My organizational powers are peccable, which is to say, things are often out of place.
    But sometimes I instantly know that the object is not only not where it should be, but that it’s lost forever. I get a specific, sick feeling in the vicinity of my belly button. It is a nearly infallible predictor. Once I’ve had that queasy presentiment, I just about never have found the lost item. Gone is gone.
    That’s how it was with April Truong. As soon as the morning section entered the room and didn’t include her, I felt a nauseating, dread sureness in my stomach.
    Lost. She’s gone, my belly button said. Something terrible has happened to her. Even as another part of my brain started the counterrefrain: Nonsense! She’s late, she’s ill, she had an appointment. You’re becoming a hysteric.
    But the feeling in the pit of my stomach persisted, and April never showed up.
    I stopped Woody as he was leaving the room. It wasn’t easy. He was built like a Doberman and moved quickly, and he pretended not to see me at all. “Could I have a second?”
    He grimaced, then sulked his way over to my desk. His pals stayed outside the classroom, watching, their arms crossed like mob bodyguards. I wondered what they expected me to do. I was tempted to close the door, but this wasn’t top secret, only a question.
    “Do you know where April is?” I asked.
    “Me? Why would I?’
    “She isn’t here. I thought maybe she might have told you where she’d be.”
    “Why would I know anything about that? Why’d I know anything at all about her? I’m not like a truant officer.” His T-shirt looked as if it had been custom-fitted to highlight his pecs, and, like his friends at the door, he now crossed his arms, accentuating their every muscle. The official thug pose.
    “But … I … I thought the two of you…”
    “Me and a gook?” he demanded loudly.
    “Really, Woody—please don’t use words like that.”
    “Are you crazy? Me and her?”
    Outside the doorway, Tony elbowed Guy in glee, then licked his forefinger and chalked one up in the air for their team. Woody wasn’t taking flak from the teacher. Woody was giving back in kind.
    “Didn’t I see the two of you…yester—”
    “I don’t know what you saw ever,” he said, “but it wasn’t me and her. Not me and her.”
    I gave it up. What was the point? I wished I could close the door, wondered if it would make any difference. I felt as if he were performing for his pals, but on the other hand, maybe I had misinterpreted the scene outside yesterday afternoon. Maybe their encounter had been accidental. Maybe April had cried because he’d called her names.
    “My mistake,” I said. “I’m sorry to have bothered you. Hope I didn’t delay your lunch too long.”
    “No problem,” he said, already loping toward the door. But just at it, he turned his back to his friends and gave me a small salute. “Thanks,” he whispered, so softly that it