Page 27 of Poison Wood

“Young lady, you just got yourself detention.”

“Cool.”

And she walked out of the classroom.

The float up ahead starts to move and the guy gives a thumbs-up. Several of the cars in front and behind me honk again. The car in front of me lowers a window and claps for the men to see.

I grab my phone and googleborderline personality disorder. The descriptions include acute fear of abandonment, self-harm, risky behavior. A picture of a painting by Edvard Munch appears next to the description. The title isDespair.

I study it and don’t like the way it makes me feel, like the ghost of Edvard somehow painted this after looking into one of the rooms in my mind I keep locked away. The one that holds the emotions I buried at my mother’s funeral. For years I’ve believed I buried them with her, when really I only buried them within myself. A toxic little jewel box filled with pain and anger instead of gold and diamonds. No ballerina twirling in the middle. Only the wispy ghost of my mother.

I keep my eyes darting from the slow-moving parade to my phone as I exit that search and start another one for oppositional defiant disorder. It’s generic to the point of being useless. Every kid has that one. I move on tohistrionic. This one doesn’t seem that bad to me. Dramatic and flirty. Actresses, women who like to be on camera. Women like me.

I glance down at the folders. These forms should have been shredded when the school closed. They contain confidential information about every girl who entered those ridiculously large wooden front doors.

My phone rings and I jump. It’s a number with a 305 area code.

“Rita Meade here,” I say when I answer.

“It’s Detective Mulholland,” she says. “We need to talk about Laura Sanders.”

“Yes, we do.”

I shove the folders back to my tote and pull the lid off the box. Inside are several college-ruled writing journals in one color, dark green. The same green from our uniforms.

There are no names on any of them. They are labeled with plant or nature names from the Kisatchie National Forest. Some odd wayto connect us to our environment. Ivy. Meadow. Holly. Honeysuckle. Jasmine. Fern. Cedar. Cypress.

“When did Laura Sanders contact you?” Mulholland says.

I pull my gaze back to the front windshield. “The night of February tenth. After my live interview. She told me she wanted to talk in person on the twelfth. I booked a flight down on the eleventh, though. I like to arrive early so I’m ready to go when my source is ready.”

“Did you and Laura Sanders confirm a time and place to meet?”

“No. She never responded to my text messages.” The people on the makeshift float in front of me throw beads and candy at the bundled residents sitting on the side of the street. “Detective, what’s going on with her? Something feels very off to me.”

“Something’s off all right,” she says. “Of all the reporters she could have reached out to, why you?” Mulholland says. I swallow. “You going to clam up on me like you did the other day?”

“No,” I say. “She chose me because she wanted to talk about a school I once attended. And about a girl who went missing from that school.”

I hear the shuffling on her end like she’s digging through papers. “What state is this school in?”

Prickles thread up the back of my neck. “Louisiana. Why?”

“Appears Laura Sanders lived in New Orleans at one point. When her maiden name was Smith.”

If Laura Sanders once lived in New Orleans, could she have attended Poison Wood? Like nurse Grace, she could have been in another class than me. But I don’t recognize the name Laura Smith.

“What’s the significance of that?” I ask Mulholland.

“Just something that doesn’t add up. Hang on.”

The parade finally turns off, and I find a spot on the shoulder to pull over. The white car and the line of cars behind it go around me.

I keep Mulholland on speaker and open my recorder app. “Are you okay with me recording this?”

“I was contacted by an Erin Stockwell about this case. She said she’d be handling this for NCN. Are you working with her?”

“No. I’m not. Not yet anyway.” I put my phone away. “No recording.”