The Girl Is Trouble by Kathryn Miller Haines

won’t matter.”
    “We’ll be together. Please. Think about it.”
    “I’m sorry, Iris. I just can’t.” Her eyes watered. I knew her fear was real, but that didn’t make it any less frustrating. “Please don’t be mad at me.”
    I wasn’t mad, I was sad. It appeared the only two people I could rely on had completely abandoned me.
    *   *   *
     
    NOTHING HAPPENED DURING our divided-up stakeout. I watched the lowerclassman lockers until right before the last bell rang, but no one except the proper owners of those lockers ever appeared. I wasn’t surprised. With the men installing what I learned was fire prevention equipment, there were far too many witnesses for our note-writer to risk striking again.
    During my first period—Personal Hygiene—Mr. Pinsky, our saliva-stricken instructor, lisped that a representative from the American Social Hygiene Association would be giving a presentation entitled “Hygiene During War,” a topic that set off a titter of whispers that the real topic was venereal disease. We weren’t the only class that would be listening to the lecture. Several others would also be congregating in the auditorium.
    As we gathered our things and marched toward the hall, my frustration reached its breaking point. I couldn’t spend an hour sitting still in an auditorium, not when there were so many questions swimming about my head. Who cared about the stupid war when Mama had been murdered and nobody cared?
    Pop may have given up on her, and Pearl might be too afraid to help me, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t do this on my own. And if I was going to do it, I better do it now, before I lost my nerve.
    As we passed the girls’ restroom, I took the opportunity to duck inside the door. I waited for someone to call out my name, demanding to know where I was going, but the rest of the class passed without noticing me. I half hoped I’d find Suze inside there, killing time with a cigarette, but the room was empty. I waited until the hall was silent, then left the restroom and rushed toward the main doors of the school—
    Where a hall monitor was standing.
    “Um,” I said, as soon as he eyeballed me. “I’m turned around. Where’s the auditorium?”
    He was sitting beside a small table with a stack of tardy notices to hand out to anyone who arrived once first period started. He barely looked up from the Archie comic he was reading as he pointed me in the right direction. I thanked him, followed his finger, and turned the corner out of his sight.
    There was another entrance to the building, at the rear of the school, where a series of crash doors let students leave but kept them from returning the same way. The only problem was that it required going past either the auditorium or the front office. I started toward the lesser of two evils, only to find that Mr. Pinsky was stationed just inside the auditorium doors, smoking a cigarette. I tiptoed toward the doors. The auditorium lights were down and a projector whined as a film filled the screen at the front of the room.
    “GERMans are the Enemy,” read the screen as bacteria goose-stepped in formation.
    Mr. Pinsky coughed and turned my way. I moved back to my starting place just in the nick of time.
    There would be no getting past the auditorium. He’d spot me for sure.
    I doubled back and started toward the front office. A sour-faced woman in a tiny hat stood with her hand wrapped around a lanky boy’s collar. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but the boy blushed a deep purple as the woman railed at the secretary about something that required effusive gesturing with her free hand. I couldn’t have asked for a better distraction. Whatever the woman was talking about, the secretary couldn’t take her eyes off her.
    I ducked down so that if they did look my way, they wouldn’t see me. I was almost past them when—
    “Shouldn’t you be in class, young lady?” a deep voice in front of me asked.
    Nuts—the jig was up. I began