The Fever by Megan Abbott Read Free Book Online Page B

be okay?”
    â€œDid you talk to her?” Skye asked, head tilting.
    â€œTalk to her? No. You don’t get it. She’s…”
    Skye looked at her. They both were looking at her, both so tall and heavy-haired and clustered close. Waiting.
    She didn’t know how to talk about it, about what she’d seen. Her face, it wasn’t hers. It wasn’t her. It was two pieces that didn’t go together and neither of them was Lise.
    â€œSomething happened,” she finally said. “To her heart.”
    â€œIs she going to be okay?” Gabby asked, her chin shaking. “Is she, Deenie?”
    Deenie didn’t know what to say. Her mouth opened and nothing came out.
    *  *  *
    â€œWe haven’t been able to find out much,” Principal Crowder said to Tom. “The hospital won’t release information without her mother’s permission, but Mrs. Daniels hasn’t returned our calls. Understandable, of course.”
    â€œRight,” Tom said, recalling the way Sheila Daniels had looked in the waiting room. He’d tried phoning her twice, thinking that’s what one did. “If I can help…”
    A teacher for nearly two decades, Tom still felt vaguely uncomfortable in the principal’s office. Even though the principal—Ben Crowder, a shiny-faced former “curricular specialist” from the state education department—was only a few years older. Once, he’d flagged Tom down at a local gas station as he struggled to remove the frozen fuel cap from the tank of his Volkswagen.
    Help a brother out? he’d asked, a desperate gleam in his eye.
    â€œI’ve talked to all Miss Daniels’s teachers,” Crowder said, tapping his fountain pen on the desk, “but I wanted to talk to you too. I heard you left campus to see her.”
    â€œYes,” he said, noticing his phone was flashing with that red zigzag of a missed call, something that always snagged at his nerves. “My daughter’s best friends with her. But I guess I know about as much as you. It was a pretty chaotic scene.”
    â€œWe followed all the procedures on our end,” Crowder said. “But apparently things took a turn when she got home. Some kind of arrhythmia brought on by a seizure. Of course, there’s already rumors.”
    â€œRumors?”
    â€œI wondered if you’d heard anything.”
    â€œNo,” Tom said. “Like what?”
    But Crowder only leaned back in his chair and sighed.
    â€œWhat a thing. I’ve only met the mother once, at a school-board meeting last fall. She seemed like a…cautious woman. The anxious type. So this has to be especially challenging.”
    â€œWell,” Tom said, his fingers resting on his phone, “I guess all we can do is wait. I’m sure we’ll know more soon.”
    â€œRight,” Crowder said, tapping his pen on the legal pad in front of him. “That’s right.”
    Â Â 
    From the entrance of the breezeway, Tom watched the throngs of woolly-hatted kids and pink-necked seniors pushing their way out of the school and over to the parking lot, the slightly rusting bus-stop sign quaking in the hard wind.
    He sent Eli a quick text, hoped he’d get it.
    Can you take D home and bring car back before yr practice?
    He wanted to take her home himself, but he had detention duty.
    And there was the missed call: Lara Bishop.
    Gabby’s mom.
    Â Â 
    â€œLara,” he said, “how are you?”
    It seemed like a silly question, but he didn’t know what she’d heard about Lise. And he’d never felt particularly at ease with her. She had a look about her, a wariness, a watchfulness. He’d once heard the phrase cop eyes, and when he looked at Lara he thought maybe that’s what cop eyes looked like. Or maybe it was just that he knew what she’d been through.
    Maybe, really, it was the way he looked at her.
    â€œTom,” she