“Believe it.” Brandon zipped up his backpack and swung it onto his shoulder. “My dad found her wandering around outside the store last night. No collar.” He shrugged. “He posted to LostPets and called the shelter this morning. No one’s reported her missing.”

“Huh. Well, someone probably will soon. She’s beautiful.”

“Yeah, and a real pain in the butt.” The dog barked and hopped off the couch, sniffing around Brandon’s feet and wagging her tail. He gave her a crooked grin. “I’ve got nothing for you. The food lady’s upstairs.”

Genevieve rose and headed for the stairs. “Will you take her to the shelter then?”

“If no one claims her, I suppose,” Brandon said, following behind her. “My dad’s allergic, so.”

“Oh yeah.”

On the way to school, Brandon started teasing her about Tyler again, and suddenly Genevieve remembered something.

“I forgot to tell you,” she said. “After he stomped away to the back, Kristin pulled me aside and said she recognized him. Apparently, he used to go to Pinewood High and ran with a pretty bad crowd. She says he got into all sorts of trouble, had a really bad temper, and was suspended for fighting.”

“No kidding?” Brandon said. He reached into his backpack, pulled out a granola bar, and began unwrapping it.

“You literally just ate!”

“How’s she know him?” he asked, taking a bite and handing her the other half. It was almond and cranberry, her favorite. She shrugged and took it. “I guess Kristin’s brother hung out with him for a while. He’s four years older, so that makes sense. I think Tyler’s around twenty. Anyway, Kristin says after his last suspension he dropped out of school and moved up north. She says she heard rumors he’d spent some time up there in juvy, and that was the last she knew.”

Brandon huffed out a spray of granola. “And this is the guy your dad hired to protect you from potential criminals? Do you think he knows all this?”

“I mean, it’s my dad. You’d think so.” She maneuvered the car into the Pinewood parking lot. “Anyway, not that people can’t change,” Genevieve added generously. “But he sure looked like he wanted to throw a punch at someone.”

“I wonder what set him off.”

“You and me both.”

Genevieve walked into Economics, flush with anticipation over their supply and demand activity. School would be much more fun if every teacher was like Miss Love and taught with projects and hands-on activities, she thought, and the thought brought inevitable comparisons to Ms. Pierce. She hoped her favorite Pinewood High teacher had recovered from that awful confrontation yesterday with the bullying substitute.

Taking her seat, she pulled out her meticulously color-coded notes, which she’d stayed up until midnight preparing. While waiting, Genevieve paged through them and tried to reformulate her thoughts from the night before. It had sounded much better then, she thought with a frown.

When the bell rang, she looked up, and her frown deepened. Their teacher was nowhere to be seen. Miss Love was always there to greet them at the start of class, but this morning her desk sat vacant. Genevieve glanced around; most of the students were gazing drowsily into their laps at their phones, still half asleep and oblivious to the fact that they seemed to be missing a teacher. She drummed her fingers impatiently on her leg and watched the clock on the wall. One full minute passed, and then two. A handful of latecomers sauntered through the door and paused there, looking puzzled but relieved, then took their seats too.

Carlos Martinez, who sat two seats in front of her, turned and raised his eyebrows. She shrugged. As morning announcements crackled over the PA, more students began to look up in bewilderment. A low buzz of voices murmured and grew louder.

“Where’s Miss Love?”

“Didn’t someone say she looked sick yesterday?”

“I heard she had a fight with another teacher⁠—”

Genevieve did not join the speculation. She’d begun to feel a stirring of unease, seeing clearly in her mind the way the young teacher had looked so afraid yesterday, remembering the soft sounds of crying behind the closed door.

“She’s probably in the bathroom tossing up her cookies,” Devine Jackson said loudly. “Didn’t y’all know she was pregnant? Bet you’ll never guess who the daddy is...”

The class was getting out of control. Genevieve stood up to do something and then sat back down with a thud. The room had instantly gone quiet. Ms. Pierce, her face smugly satisfied, had walked into the room.

“Now, now, Miss Jackson,” Ms. Pierce said sweetly. “We all know better than to spread nasty little rumors, even if they may be true.” She set her purse down roughly on Miss Love’s desk, knocking a stack of papers to the ground. “Because I once again seem to be left with no sub plans, it looks like we will be reading silently from the text.”

“Um, what text?” Carlos asked.

“Oh, you haven’t been provided with your required reading material for this class? What a shame. And not at all a surprise,” she added contemptuously.

Genevieve balled her fists against her thighs in fury. “We’re supposed to have a discussion today,” she said firmly. “Where is Miss Love?”

Ms. Pierce slowly turned her head toward Genevieve and stared at her coldly before answering. “I don’t believe that is any of your business, Miss Winterland. I am the teacher of record today, and as such, I will choose how you spend your time in my class.”

Genevieve flushed but said no more. Engaging in any conflict with this woman was a losing battle; she was determined to hate everyone around her.

Ms. Pierce called on two students in the front row to pass out stacks of textbooks. “When you have your book, open to chapter one.” She began walking the room, monitoring.

Feeling rebellious, Genevieve whipped out her phone, barely attempting to hide it. You are not going to believe this, she typed to Brandon. Miss Love is missing! She tucked the phone beneath her knee and flung open the cover of the book that had just been set heavily on her desk. Her heart was beating fast.

Ms. Pierce continued to patrol the next aisle, her back toward Genevieve. Genevieve quickly pulled out her phone again and read the reply with dismay.

What do you mean “missing?”

She gritted her teeth. Brandon was always so concerned with semantics.

She’s not HERE. And guess who’s taking her place? She punched in a string of witch emojis and fired off the text, glancing up to see Ms. Pierce berating a student in the front row.

Brandon’s reply was swift. Then you shouldn’t be texting. Talk to you after class.

Genevieve glared at the screen, but she had to admit he had a point. If she was caught with her phone again, Ms. Pierce may not give it back this time.

The rest of the period passed in miserable silence. Genevieve paged dully through the two assigned chapters, her thoughts circling over the issues of the past few days—Ms. Pierce’s verbal attack, Miss Love crying, Tyler and his scowl and the way he’d smashed the glass. The trail of blood on her ice cream parlour floor. Soon the swirl of her thoughts whipped their way into a full-blown tornado and she was caught up in imaginary conversations with her father, heard him again push her toward college and away from Pinewood. Away from Sweet Dreams.

Genevieve sighed and tried to shove aside the thoughts, tried instead to think of the things that brought her joy. That was easy—she began brainstorming next week’s special: Sugar cookie... cookie dough... Sugar Cookie Cookie Dough? She sat up straighter. Brilliant! A vanilla ice cream with chunks of both cookie dough and baked sugar cookies. Or cookie dough ice cream sandwiched between sugar cookies? No, the first was better.

When the bell rang, Genevieve felt a million times better. Creating new dessert flavors and recipes always cheered her up. She stuffed the tome of an Econ book in her bag, stood, and joined the mad rush to escape the stuffy and oppressive room 209.

Math went by quickly, and the energy and focus required for the class kept any anxious thoughts from creeping back. Afterwards, however, Genevieve’s anxieties were reignited. She met up with Brandon as usual by the double doors of the cafeteria and filled him in on the situation with Miss Love in an attempt to solicit any concern on his part on the way to English Comp. Naturally, her efforts were in vain.

“No offense, but don’t you think you’re overreacting a bit?” he said. “I mean, she’s absent, so what? Maybe she’s sick.”

Genevieve was unperturbed. “You didn’t hear her yesterday,” she insisted. “I’m telling you, she was scared. And Ms. Pierce knew something about it—she was so snotty in class today.”

Brandon snorted. “As opposed to any other day?”

“You know what, never mind,” she said, waving him off crossly. They’d reached the outside of the classroom, where a group of students had clustered in the doorway, engaged in an animated discussion which Genevieve realized was about Ms. Pierce and Miss Love.

“She actually said that?” Carly Jamison asked in shocked disbelief.

“I heard her say it; I was right there,” Bree Thompson said firmly. Bree was a studious, practical girl who’d already earned her associate’s degree and was preparing for coursework in pre-med. She was certainly not inclined to gossip.