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An eraser bounced off Tallulah's head. It wasn't a very big eraser. It was the normal, thumb-sized pink kind, but it was more than enough to jog her awake with a jolt and get her to raise her bleary head enough to take in the scene: the empty classroom, the row of desks, and her English teacher leaning against one of them right in front of her, resting both of his hands on the desk's edge.

Mr. Gordon didn't look annoyed. He didn't even look grave. What he also didn't look was cheerful, which was a bad sign. Mr. Gordon was always cheerful. Mr. Gordon would be cheerful when World War III started and bombs rained down from the sky. The only times when he was noticeably not-cheerful were when a student had genuinely disrupted the class -- or, once, when there'd been a school shooting scare at Meadowview (two years ago, when he'd been homeroom teacher) and he'd locked the classroom door, pulled down the blinds, and then stared at the door for a minute or two before cracking a smile and going on about his lesson like everything was normal, or like the dad from Life Is Beautiful, one of the two. It had turned out the gun the kid in the other building had brought had been unloaded, and it was just some stupid punk pulling something stupid. The incident hadn't been that memorable. It had been a little more memorable for the instance of Mr.-Gordon-not-being-cheerful.

"Hey, Lula," he said, with his arms crossed over his grey button-down. He had a tie patterned all over in binary today. "You feeling all right? C'mon, why don't we go back to my office, I've got some Motrin."

The swarm of kids in the hallway parted like the Red Sea at the taller head of a teacher, which made Meadowview High between classes a lot easier to walk around than Tallulah was used to. Mr. Gordon had his briefase in one hand and a stack of papers under his arm -- papers that looked worryingly like in-class assignments given today. His office wasn't far away. Along the way he waved at one student, snapped his fingers at another and threw what appeared to be a gang sign at yet another, which set off a wave of laughter; in response he grinned, saluted, and stepped into his office, admitting Tallulah after him before closing the door.

"Go on and have a seat," he motioned for her to do so. "Any seat. Or the floor. Whatever's clever." There were only two other chairs in Mr. Gordon's office, both of the cloth-padded metal kind you sometimes saw in teachers' offices. He claimed his desk chair, a swivel chair with a red back, and swiveled around in it once for good measure. "I'll write you a note for Dr. Westerman."

The issue of her lateness for Bio thereby being resolved, he leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head and assessed her. He still didn't look angry, but cheerfulness had definitely taken a holiday: he looked serious. He looked like he was waiting for her to say something, or thinking about what to say, or something else grueling -- as the silence was a bit grueling stretched on as he pursed his lips, put a pen between his teeth, chewed on the pen, glanced at the ceiling in thought and then at the floor.

"Lula, you're not a fifth-grader, so I'm not going to treat you like you are," he said. "You realize that if I think you're in a dangerous home situation I'm required by law to report that." He was looking at her. Up close his eyes were about the same color as Frank Sinatra's. "But I don't want to go over your head without talking to you."

"Look," and now he sounded exasperated, like there was an easy way and a hard way and Tallulah was making him do it the hard way, "the only roller derby team in the neighborhood is the Destiny Divas. They're all over 25. They practice after work. You telling me the Divas let you in special, or would you like to tell me what team you do compete for?"

No answer. He fixed her with a level stare, being one of those interrogators who had long since learned that silence was the most terrifying thing you could introduce to a conversation: other people yearned to fill it. Mr. Gordon was waiting for Tallulah to fill it. She didn't bite. He waited longer. They were trapped in this standoff a while longer before he picked up a water bottle off his desk and took a swig. He screwed the cap back on in silence with a thoughtful expression.

"I don't talk to the swim team. I don't know how I'd go about talking to the swim team. I don't even know who coaches the swim team." He gestured with two of his fingers. "All I've got is my own two eyes, and kiddo, they're telling me and anyone else who's also got a pair that something or someone is whaling on you something fierce. If you keep avoiding me, I won't have any choice but to deal with this the only way a teacher can deal with a student who might be in danger."

Mr. Gordon looked at her a little longer and his expression softened minutely. "It's never come to that before," he said. "I don't want it to come to that now."

Mr. Gordon stood up, swiveled his chair around, and then sat back down on it so he was straddling it with his arms resting on the seat back. "If it's a boy," he said quietly, "I promise you that no one will retaliate if you tell me."

It was a story all too depressing and all too familiar from the TV: girls afraid to tell on boys who'd abused them in one way or another for fear of in-school retaliation, ostracism, ridicule. Meadowview didn't seem like that kind of school, but then again no school seemed like that kind of school -- it was just a matter of social cliques, he-said-she-said with a tendency to believe the he in the equation, uncaring authority figures. Well, Meadowview couldn't quite be said to have the last. Mr. Gordon looked sincere: he looked resolutely sincere about his promise there, and from what people knew of Mr. Gordon he probably meant it, too. He didn't break eye contact even as she wavered.

"Tell me the truth, Lula. I'll send you to the nurse's with a note and no one has to know," his eyes flickered to her injuries, "as long as I'm convinced it won't happen again."

He didn't look surprised. "I don't want to tell on you." With a sigh he took off his glasses and rummaged through one of his desk drawers for a cloth, which he used to clean his glasses, which looked pretty clean already, honestly. Maybe it was just a habit. "I'm really not interested in telling on you. Child Protective Services is a mess, you realize. Has a tendency to burn the village to save the village." Mr. Gordon replaced his glasses. "But I'm even less interested in knowing you could be getting hurt again, or worse, and knowing I didn't do a damn thing about it, you hear me?"

Looking even more serious now, he went on, "You're not my daughter, Lula. The moment you step out these doors at 3:30 I don't have any authority over you. But from 7:30 to 3:30, your parents and the state have entrusted me and the rest of the staff of Meadowview High School with your safety and I'm not going to turn a blind eye on that. You understand me?"

He was immediately handing her the box of Kleenex from his bookshelf, the cardboard of which was pink and patterned all over in hearts. Either this had been a gift or Mr. Gordon had exceptionally odd tastes in toiletries. Not that this was out of the question. "I'll write you a note for the rest of the school day," he said, placing his hand on her shoulder: he had a firm, fairly reassuring grip. "But I'm going to have to send you to the nurse's office. I can't send you off looking like this. If nothing else, you need to be checked for anything that might get worse."

This was a delicate way of saying you need to be checked for sexual assault, but it was known as well to Tallulah as to anyone else that the nurse would be looking for signs of that on anyone who looked like her right now. "I'm going to ask you something, and I need you to answer me truthfully." Mr. Gordon put his other hand on her other shoulder and bowed his head so they were eye to eye. "Were your parents aware of what happened to you, or was the situation caused by either of them?"

Mr. Gordon scrutinized her face for a moment. "Okay," he said finally, sounding like he believed her this time. On that, anyway. He waited for her to blow her nose a couple more times before he cleared his throat. "I'll write you a note," he said, and pulled a pad of paper out of his desk to do exactly that. All his office pens looked like they'd been cheap freebies from somewhere -- in fact, a good number of them were pharmaceutical freebies. Currently he was writing with Claritin-D. He had pretty good handwriting, for a teacher, and signed the first note: "This is for the po-po," he said. (No student still had ever heard him call Principal Johanssen anything different.)

He signed and dated the second note: "This is for the candy cane corps," he said, meaning the nurse's office. "If I let you go would you go straight there?" Or do I have to escort you, he didn't have to say.