Free Truth and Lies by Norah McClintock

the auditorium. I didn’t see Riel, but I was willing to bet serious money that the briefcase that was sitting on the stage was his. Curious—where there’s briefcase, there’s teacher—I pushed open the door. The auditorium seemed deserted. I stood at the back for a moment, quiet, listening, and finally caught the hum of a voice. A masculine voice, coming from up near the stage. Riel? If so, what was he up to?
    I crept up the aisle—which was easy in sneakers—until Riel’s voice became clearer.
    â€œIt was the right thing,” he was saying.
    What was the right thing? Who was he talking to?
    â€œBut it was in the paper,” another voice said. A woman, maybe. Maybe a girl. Her voice quavered. “It took me four whole days to tell my mother. Then my mom and dad argued about it, you know?”
    Argued about what? Who was Riel talking to? And why were they talking in here, of all places? Why not out in the open? Why not in Riel’s classroom?
    â€œMy mom, she wanted me to call the police right away. My dad was dead against it. He said, what good would it do, especially if I didn’t see anyone clearly enough to identify them? He said, what if one of themsaw me clearly, though? He really scared me, Mr. Riel. I mean, what if he’s right? What if those kids I saw were the ones who killed that boy? And what if they saw me? I mean, it says in the paper the police have a witness who saw kids in the park. What if one of them recognizes me and thinks I know something?”
    So,
she
was the one.
    Riel didn’t jump right in with an answer, which didn’t surprise me. Sometimes when you asked Riel a question—a serious question, not a have-you-seen-my-math-book question—he would just look at you, like he was the one who had asked the question and now he was waiting for you to answer it.
    â€œBut I couldn’t just say nothing, could I?” the girl said. I was sure it was a girl now. A student at this school. Maybe even someone I knew. “I mean, my mom’s right, right? You have a duty to come forward, right?”
    Another few heartbeats of silence. Then, “You did the right thing, Rebecca.”
    I ran through every girl I knew. There were no Rebeccas.
    More silence. Then, “It’s just that … ” Silence. “They
killed
a kid, Mr. Riel.” More silence. A whole long stretch of it. And this time it was Riel who broke it.
    â€œIt’s not always easy doing the right thing,” he said. “If you’re worried about anything, if you feel something isn’t right, if you get scared, you can call the police. The detective you talked to gave you his card, didn’t he? If anything comes up, you call him. Or come and see me.And next time, I think it would be okay if you saw me in my classroom.”
    I heard a scraping sound. Chairs, maybe. Maybe they had been sitting down and now they were getting up. I started to back away from the stage.
    The girl appeared just like that—now you see her, now you don’t. She stepped out onto the stage. Maybe she’d been planning to jump down off it, but she froze when she saw me. I recognized her immediately. She was the girl I had seen in the alley the day that I’d run into Vin. The girl with the fat beagle. She wasn’t giving me the same look as she had that day, though, like I was something nasty to be scooped up off the street. Instead, she looked scared. She had a long, slender neck—I don’t know why I noticed that, but I did—and her head turned on it as she glanced back at Riel, who was coming out onto the stage to retrieve his briefcase. Riel frowned when he caught the expression on her face. “Mike, what are you doing here?” he said. Then he nodded at the girl, a little gesture that said, it’s okay, nothing to worry about, off you go.
    Rebecca—I wondered what her last name was—jumped down off the stage and landed