Touch-Me-Not by Cynthia Riggs Page B

shirt. Her silver hair was perfectly coifed and she wore pale pink lipstick and matching pink nail polish.
    “I’ve called the police. Chief O’Neill should be here momentarily with Mrs. Trumbull. I wanted to speak to you and your husband privately.”
    “The police!” Sarah gasped. “What happened?”
    “Please, sit down,” said Mrs. Parkinson.
    Sarah continued to stand. “Tell me what’s going on!”
    Mrs. Parkinson, still standing, pointed to the chair in front of her desk. “I think you’d better sit down.”
    Sarah slumped into the chair, not aware that she had done so. Mrs. Parkinson, too, sat.
    “We wanted your husband to be here, but as you know, we were unable to reach him.”
    Sarah sat on the edge of her chair. “What’s—”
    Mrs. Parkinson held up her hand and Sarah sat back. “The boys came to school this morning with what they claimed was a toy gun. According to them, your husband’s office manager gave it to them.”
    Sarah edged forward and put her forearms on Mrs. Parkinson’s desk, hands clasped. “Maureen knows we don’t allow the boys to play with toy guns. She knows that!”
    Mrs. Parkinson held up her hand again. “Let me finish, please.” She waited for a few moments.
    Sarah, feeling as though she herself were in fourth grade, moved her arms off the desk.
    “At recess this morning, the twins were taking turns showing off this so-called toy gun, pointing it at other children and pretending it was a death ray.” Mrs. Parkinson folded her own hands on her desktop. “The teacher’s aide took the weapon away from them and brought it to me.”
    Sarah gawked at the principal.
    “The so-called gun is actually a Taser, a sophisticated police weapon.”
    Sarah sat still.
    “Do you know what a Taser is, Mrs. Watts?”
    Sarah shook her head. “I’ve never heard of it.”
    Mrs. Parkinson reached into her desk drawer and brought out a blocky weapon that looked like a cartoonist’s drawing of a ray gun. She set it down on her desk with a heavy metallic clunk.
    “Do you have any idea where the boys might have obtained such a weapon?”
    “N-no.” Sarah stared at the Taser.
    “Or where your husband’s office manager might have obtained such a weapon?”
    Sarah didn’t respond.
    Mrs. Parkinson pressed a button on her phone, and when a voice said “Yes?” she asked that the Watts boys be brought to her office.
    Zeke and Jared slunk in on either side of a teacher’s aide, a young man barely out of his teens with short, neatly combed brown hair.
    “We weren’t shooting anyone!” Jared exclaimed as soon as he saw his mother.
    “You won’t tell Daddy?” said Zeke.
    “Sit down, boys,” said Mrs. Parkinson. She dismissed the aide with a nod and a “Thank you, Charles.” When the boys were seated, she said, “Why don’t you tell your mother and me how you got the weapon.”
    The twins looked at each other.
    “Where did you get that thing?” Sarah’s voice verged on hysteria. “Did Maureen give it to you?”
    “Please, Mrs. Watts. Let the boys answer.” The principal turned to one of them. “You’re Zeke?”
    “No, ma’am, I’m Jared.”
    “Tell me from the beginning, Jared, when you went to your father’s shop and he wasn’t there but Maureen was.”
    Jared nodded but looked down at his sneakers.
    “Well?” asked Mrs. Parkinson.
    “Maureen gave it to us to play with.”
    “Look at me, Jared,” said Mrs. Parkinson. “Are you sure Maureen gave that gun to you? Think again. You must tell the truth.”
    “My boys don’t lie,” said Sarah.
    “Mrs. Watts!” warned Mrs. Parkinson. “Well, Jared?” When Jared still looked at the floor, she turned to Zeke. “Would you like to tell me exactly how you happened to have this gun, Zeke?”
    “Yes, ma’am,” said Zeke, so softly that even Sarah wasn’t sure she heard him.
    “Speak up, please,” said Mrs. Parkinson. “Was the weapon in your father’s desk?”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “Where, then?”
    “In