“I’m so sorry…I didn’t sleep well last night,” I say as soon as I’m called in. “I had a call from my dad about my stepmother. She’s…she’s dying.”

Karen stands behind the desk, her hands gripping the edge. The way she looks at me makes me aware of the shadows under my eyes I can’t cover with makeup, my unwashed hair.

“I’m sorry,” I say again.

Why did it have to be Rebecca Martin? She sits at the front of the class, all hostile eyes, challenging everything I say, criticizing me with a look every time I fumble over a lesson or forget where we are in a book. The sick feeling is back, rising higher until it’s difficult to breathe. Rebecca Martin, whose parents come storming in here every time their precious daughter gets into trouble, always blaming someone else, insisting on an investigation into whoever was unfortunate enough to give her a detention this time.

Karen looks nearly as upset as I know I should be. “Tess, this goes beyond an apology. This is not you sleeping through your alarm or missing the bus or losing coursework. You assaulted a pupil in full view of the class. Jesus Christ—Sophie told me she heard you threatening to throw Rebecca through the window.”

“That was just words. I never would have done it. She wasn’t hurt. I—”

“And thank God she wasn’t injured or the police would be here right now. As it is, I can’t guarantee that her parents won’t want to press charges. We’ve had to call them. They’re on their way in. Jesus, Tess—why did it have to be Rebecca Martin?”

“You know she’s had it in for me since…”

“Since what? Since you stole her phone last term?”

“I didn’t steal it. She had it out in class—I saw the pictures she was flashing around. I was trying to help her.”

“You took her phone out of her bag and called the damned police.” Karen shakes her head. “You should have come to me. We could have had a word with her, spoken to her parents.”

“She’s a kid—a child.”

“She’s over sixteen; so is her boyfriend. What they get up to, what messages they send, has nothing to do with us. If you’d told us, we could have disciplined her for showing the photos in school, but you took the phone without her permission. You called the police.”

“But—”

“But nothing.”

“I thought—”

“You thought wrong. We talked her parents down that time. But this? You can hardly claim you were trying to help her this time, can you?”

Oh, why did I have to be so stupid? When I saw the texts she was showing her friend, that damned porno close-up of someone’s penis, I thought…

I really did think I was helping her.