Page 64 of The Last Love Song
When the PA system crackled she startled, her notebook falling off her desk as she knocked it with her elbow.
“Mrs. Wyman,” the office secretary said over the loudspeaker. “Could you send Megan Bryer to the office?”
Yes! Talk about a “get out of jail free” card.
Straightening, Megan gathered her things, hopeful she could stretch the office visit to the end of the period. She’d been distracted all day between thoughts of what happened with J.D. last night, Wade’s unexpected kiss, and now, the weird note from Bailey. Megan couldn’t wait to leave school grounds behind and see Wade at the Owl’s Roost.
“Better take your things, Megan,” Mrs. Wyman intoned, still pacing in that slow, plodding shuffle. “The homework assignment is online.”
“Yes, ma’am.” She couldn’t pack her patched denim book bag fast enough. She passed Bailey’s desk on the way out.
Megan hurried to the office, figuring her dad had brought her an umbrella or something like that. It had started raining an hour ago, and her dad wouldn’t want her out in the downpour. Then again, the office wouldn’t have called her for one of Dad’s visits. He dropped stuff off to her all the time—an extra sweater if it was cold or her lunch if she forgot it. One time, he’d brought her new sneakers when she’d said she wanted to try out for track and her old tennis shoes had a hole in them.
Yes, he was sweetly goofy. Embarrassingly so. But the school clerk didn’t mind. Ms. Bartinello seemed to have a crush on him, in fact, always chatting with him long after he was done with his drop-off errand.
Stepping into the office, Megan didn’t see any sign of her dad or an umbrella. Ms. Bartinello didn’t look up when she entered, either, her expression fixed on what she was reading. Who’d called her down here then?
“Excuse me, Ms. Bartinello.”
The school clerk peered up from her reading. “Oh. Hi, Megan.” The woman’s guarded smile put Megan on alert. “They want you in the guidance office.”
“Okay.” She padded down the carpeted hallway connecting the two sets of administrative offices. The assistant at the guidance front desk pressed her intercom when she saw Megan.
“Mrs. Trestle? Megan Bryer is here.” The clerk nodded, hanging up the phone. “Hi, Megan. You can go right in.”
Curious now, and a little worried, Megan hoped there was nothing wrong with a standardized test score or anything. What if she’d bombed one of the big tests?
When she arrived at her counselor’s office, she saw Mrs. Trestle wasn’t alone. A woman dressed in gray pants, a black T-shirt and a gray suit jacket sat across from Mrs. T. The stranger’shair was in a tight twist. No makeup. Clipped to her gray pants, just peeking out from the jacket glinted…
A silver police badge.
Megan tried to swallow down the bile at the back of her throat. But all she managed to do was gape at the women through the office door, her mouth hanging open like a gulping fish. Had something happened to her dad?
Or was this about something else? Could she get in trouble for that smutty social media page? Her name was on it. It advertised illegal services.
“Hi, Megan.” Mrs. Trestle must have spotted her in the corridor. Normally bubbly and smiling, the counselor’s face was pinched and serious. “Come on in. I’d like you to meet Linda Marquette from the sherriff’s department.”
Oh. My. God.
No.
Megan’s feet couldn’t work any better than her mouth did. Nervousness made her whole body shake. For a second, she remembered how some people peed themselves when they were terrified. Would that happen to her? It felt like a distinct possibility.
If she didn’t pee herself, she’d start retching on the bile in her throat.
“Megan?” Linda Marquette stood and approached her. “Are you okay? I wanted to ask you a few things, but if you’d feel more comfortable with a parent present, we can ask your father to join us. He’s teaching today, but we did alert him that we planned to speak with you.”
“No.” That loosened her tongue. Got her feet working, too. Megan hurried into Mrs. Trestle’s office and closed the door. Why had the police spoken to her father? How much did he know? “Please, no. I’m happy to talk to you.”
But within thirty minutes, Megan’s worst nightmares had come true.
The police knew about the website, thanks to her interview with the mayor. The sheriff’s department would investigate, which, on one hand, sounded great. The huge, awful, unfair downside? Her father knew about the harassment and planned to meet with Megan and another police officer at their home once his work commitments were finished for the day. And while Megan’s name would be kept out of any official reports made available to the public, thanks to privacy laws, the truth was that the whole town would puzzle out her identity based on whatever facts the cops released.
It was a small town. That’s how things worked.
So not only did her dad know, the whole school would see that website even though it had been taken down. Heartache, Tennessee, would probably crash the internet trying to find that page the moment the news of it got out.
“Megan?” the policewoman stared at her, and Megan realized that Linda Marquette had stopped talking about the ways the sheriff’s department and the school could protect her.
