Track

It’s terrible the things we don’t notice. I didn’t even realize the train had stopped until we’d been sitting on the tracks for who knows how long and my phone rang.

“Miss Keane?”

There were a limited number of people in the world who called me “miss”, almost all of them my students, and there I preferred being “Miss Rachel” to

“Miss Keane” which made me feel like I was in trouble.

“Yeah.”

“Is now still a good time to talk?”

“Oh yeah. It is.”

We were stopped in the middle of Nowhere, Connecticut. Outside my window a field of tall swamp grass dried a rustling November brown. There was nothing out there, no houses or lights. Just a yellow line on the horizon like watered mustard, where the sun was setting below the clouds.

“Great. You’re a tutor at Lincoln Middle School, correct?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“And you worked with Mr. Abott’s class?”

“Yeah, Mondays and Thursdays since the middle of September.”

I’d known this conversation was coming. Not only because I’d been hounded with emails all week trying to get me on the phone. But because there’s no way a teacher disappears in the middle of the year and you don’t have to talk about it.

“What was your impression of the classroom environment?”

“Oh, um... there’s a lot of high energy students in that class which can be challenging.”

In layman’s terms, chaos. But that’s never the kids’ fault. Mr. Abott didn’t really know what he was doing.

“And how would you characterize his interactions with the students?”

“To be honest, they didn’t like him. I mean, they told me they thought he was boring. Or weird.”

Their store of insults was limitless and spanned three languages. I had to admire their creativity, while just praying they didn’t talk about me that way.

“Anything else?” she asked.

“Well, one time, a student said he was creepy. She told me he talked to her before school and always asked how she was doing.”

Which is the kind of thing you’re supposed to report if you’re in my position but I’d only been in that position for two months and when I tried to imagine forming the complaint— “Yeah, he says good morning and asks her how she is. Total creep.”--- the whole thing fell apart. It reminded me of when I was in sixth grade and Joey Riech asked me to homecoming. I told my mom I wanted to report him to the principal. “Really?” she’d asked. “For asking you on a date?” It only made sense if you knew that his friends were watching and daring him to make the frizzy-haired fat girl say yes was the funniest thing they’d ever thought of.

“Did she say anything else at that time?” the woman asked. “Or later?”

“No,” I said. “Just that.”

“Did you ever see him touch a student inappropriately?”

“No.”

I would have reported that. I’m not stupid.

The people around me on the train were starting to fidget. We’d been stopped for too long. I worried all of a sudden that there was a body on the tracks. Whenever the commuter trains back home stops running, nine times out of ten, it’s because someone walked out in front of the train.

“Did you ever see him touch a student at all?” the woman asked.

“Huh? Oh um... sometimes. Like, brushing their shoulders as he walked by their desks or steering them back to their seats. That sort of thing.”

“Anything else?”

There’s a whole spectrum of behaviors that seem innocent until they aren’t. I thought about the students who liked to run up and hug me when I got to class. I suddenly felt like I had to confess.

The lights in the train car went out. The P.A. system crackled to life overhead and the conductor made an announcement about what was holding us up. But the woman on the phone had started talking again and I had to press my hand to my free ear to hear her.

“Do you know Lillie?”

“Yeah,” I said. “She’s a good student, raises her hand a lot in class, always has the right answer.”

“How about Nina?”

“I don’t know her as well. She mostly works independently. But I think she does all her assignments.”

“And do you know Maddie?”

“Yeah. Yeah she’s the one who... who said the thing about him being creepy. She hasn’t gotten along well with him this year. She calls out a lot in class, can sometimes be disruptive. But that’s just... I mean, she has a lot of energy and likes to talk to her friends.”

Honestly, Maddie’s “creepy” comment had made me more nervous for him than her. I knew the kids would love to see him replaced. They were at an age where they knew the power that kind of accusation had but don’t always think about the consequences. Except that wasn’t
my decision to make.

I could hear a keyboard clacking on the other end of the line, and imagined a file with Maddie’s name on it somewhere marked “Disruptive” in red letters. It was a slippery slope from there to “Troublemaker” to “Made this whole thing up.”

“She’s very bright,” I added, like a weak apology. “She wasn’t being challenged enough by the curriculum.”

“Right. Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”

Sorry seemed like it should have been on the table but I realized, wasn’t. The P.A. system started blaring overhead again. “No. That’s all I can think of right now.”

“Thank you, Miss Keane. We’ll be in touch if we have any more questions.”

She hung up. I stuffed my phone away at the bottom of my bag.

“We’ll get moving in a couple of minutes here folks,” the conductor announced. “Thanks for your patience.”

“Hey, do you know what happened?” I asked the guy across the aisle.

“We hit a deer.”

“Shit. Is it okay?” I asked.

He gave me a stunned look.

“Sorry,” I said, sinking back into my seat.

My phone buzzed and I jumped to answer it. But it was only my mother texting to ask when my train would get in.

“Not for a while. Hit a deer. Stopped on tracks. Moving soon.”

“What? A deer? How?”

I didn’t answer. I looked out the window instead and thought about the day the teacher disappeared. One morning he was sending me his lesson plans for the week. Minutes later, my reply bounced back. They’d wiped him from the server.

My high school had had some teachers like that. Every four years or so, one of them would disappear without a trace. Usually, it wasn’t a surprise to the students. I remember freshman year passing my class schedule to my older sister’s friends for approval.

“Good thing, you didn’t get Mr. Martin,” one of them told me. “He’s rapey. If you ever have him, don’t wear V-necks.”

I told my mother about this afterwards. She said that couldn’t be true. “If it was, he wouldn’t still be working there.”

I think he disappeared the year after I graduated.

I’d be back at work in the sixth-grade classroom on Monday. Eventually they’d hire a new teacher who was older than my dad and stood way too close when he talked to me and everyday asked me how I was doing. On the last day before Christmas break, he asked me if I wanted to go for a drink. But all the kids seemed to like him, so better me than them.

I looked back out the window. There was a deer standing maybe ten feet away from me, flush with the tall brown grass. It looked young, half-grown. There were still a few white spots on its back. I wondered if it had been there the whole time. It’s terrible the things we don’t notice.

The train started moving again but slowly. It creaked down the tracks the way I get out of bed after a bad day. It had to be careful with itself. Something was weighing it down. A few miles down the track, the PA system cut out entirely and I wondered if it was possible for a train to be haunted. Maybe it just wanted to be quiet for a while. I thought it was sorry.