Band Room Bash by Candice Speare Prentice

emphasizing she had an important appointment.
    Normally I would have been curious, because Shirl never goes out to lunch. Instead, she frugally packs a sandwich, which she eats in the conference room in front of a tiny television we had installed for her. There she reads a romance book while she watches one of her favorite daytime shows.
    Today, however, I was too busy wondering what Max was hiding to think about Shirl. When her car pulled from the lot, the war began. Bad Trish began to argue with Good Trish.
    I wanted to search Max’s desk to see if he had left anything behind that would give me a hint about what he was hiding. I could temporarily turn off the security cameras and lock the front door so I wouldn’t be caught.
    I took a step toward the front door then stopped. My mother raised me on clichés. They still live in my brain and come back to me in her voice at the appropriate moments. Like when you hear an annoying song on the radio, and the dumbest line in the whole thing repeats itself over and over again in your mind until you think you’ll go crazy.
    I could hear my mother speaking right now. “Trish, one day your curiosity is going to get the best of you. You know what they say, don’t you? Curiosity killed the cat.” When she told me things like that, she added object lessons when she could, like smashed cats in the road. “See?” She’d point with great enthusiasm. “That cat just had to cross the road. Too busy being curious to watch for cars.”
    Yes, but this is my husband. I argued pointlessly with her in my head. He shouldn’t keep secrets from me. I’m not a cat, and I’m not crossing the road.
    I looked around the empty office. I didn’t have to worry about being smashed by a car unless someone accidentally came barreling through the front window.
    No one would ever know. Except me and God.

Chapter Seven

    Good Trish triumphed over Bad Trish. I didn’t search Max’s office. To reward myself, I got three different flavors of ice cream when I stopped by the Shopper’s Super Saver after work to pick things up for dinner.
    At the checkout, a young man with more piercings and tattoos than I cared to look at was shoving my purchases into plastic bags with abandon.
    “Um, those are eggs there,” I said.
    “Sure are.” He crammed more items into the bag. I was too tired to argue. Besides, trying to write my check and simultaneously recall whether I had hot fudge at home for the ice cream was daunting enough. That’s when I heard Georgia’s murder being discussed with great relish at the checkout behind me.
    “. . . We’ve never had a tragedy like this at my school before, and I don’t intend for it to ever happen again.”
    I recognized Carla Bickford’s voice and turned around to look at her. She was holding court two checkouts down from me like the queen of England, with a sensible purse that coordinated with her proper suit. The whole outfit was an echo of what she’d been wearing the day before.
    She met my gaze, and her eyes widened. “Why, Trish. I didn’t recognize you from behind.”
    What did that mean besides instant insecurity for me? Was my behind different than it used to be? Had I gained so much pregnancy weight that I’d become unrecognizable? Or did it mean she just never really saw me from this angle before?
    With a small wave of her hand, Carla motioned toward me then gazed slowly from person to person, acknowledging her subjects. “Trish is the one who found Georgia.”
    Everyone’s eyes fell on me. The low, confiding pitch of Carla’s voice had given her words just enough drama that I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear everyone ooh and aah.
    I recognized one of my mother’s friends in line, and she nodded and smiled at me, as though I had done something terribly special by finding a dead woman.
    “Oh wow,” my cashier said.
    “Dude,” the bagger said, looking at me with a sudden new respect in his eyes.
    I felt like saying, “Aw, shucks,