“The only thing that could ever come to get a person like you, Minerva Hall, is a person like that bus stop killer.” Haley said in a whispered tone, her voice echoing in the large attic bedroom. A hushed silence fell over the girls in the room, one by one. Marissa sat up immediately, Gwen began to wring her pillowcase in between her fingers, Lisa lifted one pale eyebrow and lowered the cigarette from her lips, and Minerva froze, solid as an ice sculpture.

“Of course your ‘bus stop killer’ could get Minerva, Haley.” Lisa spat, leaning her head back into the room. Minerva’s parents had a thing against smoking, and so Lisa had to make do with a compromise unbeknownst to Mr. and Mrs. Hall: she would sit in the window of Minerva’s room and smoke there, her legs dangling over the front yard. Minerva shook her head fiercely, leaning over to flick on the lava lamp on her bedside table.

“Bullshit, Gordon.” She said angrily, standing up abruptly and marching over to the window, slamming it shut and nearly cutting off Lisa’s feet before she jerked herself back into the attic.

“Don’t think so, Hall.” Haley snapped back, putting down the tube of mascara she had been holding up to use on Gwen.

“Well, I do. And I called you on it. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.” Minerva turned the window locks, despite the fact they were in a third floor room, and sat back down on the edge of the bed, scrutinizing her freshly painted fire-engine red toenails.

“Not my fault when you get snapped up, Minnie,” Haley spat, venom oozing out of her voice like a snake’s hiss. “You think you’re so collected and calm, but really, you’re not. Not at all.”

“What kind of a friend are you, anyway?” Marissa snapped, backhanding Haley across the cheek in a light manner. “Minerva should never have invited you over here. It’s not your birthday, is it?” Minerva, visibly shaken but trying hard not to show it, blinked her pale blue eyes rapidly and ran her fingers through her thin black hair.

“Stop being an ass, Marissa.” She said softly, but it was lighthearted.

“Do you not watch the news, kids?” Haley’s voice came back stronger. “Do you not see the two or three kids a day who just get snapped up quicker than a camera flash? Poof, they’re gone? It could happen to you, Hall, it could happen to you just like it could happen to me or Marissa or Lisa or anybody else in this room.” Lisa let out a hollow laugh and circled Haley, the wooden floorboards letting out tired moans with every step of her feet.

“Oh, no, it couldn’t happen to me. You know why? I’d just kill the sucker right back. Trying to mess with Lisa Hollowell…I laugh!” A tired smile ran over Minerva’s features, and she picked up a bowl that once held tortilla chips.

“I’m going to go get some more chips and salsa…anybody want a soda?” Nobody really answered, they were too busy listening to Lisa as she exaggeratedly hopped around the room, proposing fisticuffs with the serial killer that had been stalking their area in the past few weeks. Minerva eased open the door to her room and pulled the chain overhead in the stairwell, making her way down to the second floor. She was easing open the door that spat out in front of the linen closet when it hit something.

“What is it?” she said, hoping her voice didn’t vibrate too much.

“Nothing.” The voice was panting hard, long and fast.

“Kestrel.” Minerva said, sliding through the crack in the door to see her ten year old sister Kestrel standing flat against the wall, red shame pouring across her facial features.

“I wasn’t up there listening, Minerva, honestly.” Kestrel began to walk back downstairs, but Minerva took a few steps in front of her.

“You were. I’m eight years older than you, I’m no idiot.” Kestrel blanched.

“I’ll stay in my room.” She said flatly.

“You’d better.” Minerva snapped, heading down the second flight of stairs to the kitchen.

“Wait, Minnie?” came her sister’s voice from the stairwell.

“Yeah?”

“That bus stop killer can’t get us, can it?” Kestrel’s voice sounded absolutely petrified, and Minerva sighed, blowing a strand of hair out of her eyes.

“Of course not, Kess.” She said quietly, before refilling the bowl and padding back upstairs to play Never Have I Ever.

000!000

Ellis Pritchard had never really considered herself to be so concerned of a teacher that she would think of her pupils constantly outside of class, put them on various prayer lists, ask them to purchase Girl Scout cookies in February from her eight year old daughter. But sometimes, when she least expected it, they bounced right into her home life, shocking her.

She had been cleaning out some old filing cabinets in her office, and the kids were upstairs playing while David was off on business. Ellis had been looking for some old lesson plans she had used the year before in her Junior English class, and had forgotten about. Hell if she was going to write all new lesson work for Scarlet Letter, she hated the book just enough to write about it once, no more.

When she opened one drawer and extracted what looked to be the right folder, she flipped through the tests she’d kept and the test scores, and an envelope came fluttering out to land on the carpet beside her. Ellis stooped to pick it up, resting on her knees as she read the letter.

Dear Mrs. Pritchard, it began innocuously enough, Thank you for being one of my favorite teachers so far in high school. It’s not easy being a Junior, and without you, God knows where I’d be or if I’d ever manage to come up from the whirlpool of negativity that pervades into high school. Without your guidance and support, who knows if I’d ever be truly as well-off as I feel now. – Minerva Hall.

Ellis sat back completely, falling onto her rear. A slow, lazy smile crept across her features. Minerva. That gorgeous, mixed girl who had the Chinese hair and features of her mother and the precocious, charming looks of her New Jersey father, a professor who taught Latin at a local college. Minerva had been fairly quiet throughout her class, only really coming to life during Socratic Seminars, when they all sat in a circle and punched ideas around like so many balloons. Ellis never made her kids sit in desks when they did things like discussion…it just confined the physical bodies, and oftentimes the conversation as well.

But Minerva had shone so far and brilliantly when they debated as a class. She brought up symbols, complex metaphors, literary analysis, even things that most kids didn’t know, like synechode and asyndeton and how they effected the work as a whole. She constantly got the highest marks possible in her papers and essays…Ellis wanted to say, originally, that it was because she had an Asian mother, stereotypically, but that wasn’t true at all. She had checked the records, and Minerva made As and Bs throughout high school: her strongest subject just seemed to be English.

Minerva was so quiet, though…Ellis thought hard, trying to think of something Minerva had ever told her that had nothing to do with English. But she couldn’t. Ellis tucked the letter back into the folder for it to shock her again one rainy day when she needed the ego fluff. Some kids were just shockers, and she never knew when Minerva Hall would one day pop back into her classroom, and heart, again.