The girl frowned, seemingly sullen at being told of her mother’s achievements.

“That is, she scored quite well on tests. She wasn’t always the most meticulous on her written work, or in keeping deadlines.”

“Are you sure you don’t mean my Aunt Vonnie? She’s the smart one. My mom says she just got by.”

Oh, didn’t she. “Your mother was always modest. Is she home? May I come in?”

“She’s-” The girl was struggling. Her mother wasn’t home, but she wasn’t supposed to reveal that information. She probably wasn’t supposed to answer the door to strangers. “She had to go to my school, but she’ll be right back. Right back,” she added.

A dog poked its nose through the door opening and gave a tentative growl. Trudy offered her closed fist, allowed the dog to sniff it.

“Shush, Reba.”

“Is that your dog?”

“Not really. I would have chosen a better one.”

“May I come in and wait for your mother? I don’t get up here very often and I’d hate to miss her.”

“I don’t know…”

“You can call her if you like, tell her my name. Tell her Mrs. Tackett has stopped by.”

“Oh, Mrs. Tackett. The one who left the note. I thought Mom said she went to school with your daughter.”

That hurt, but Trudy didn’t care, for the door was now open wide to her.

38

STRANGELY, OUT OF ALL the things that should have bothered her, it was the logistics of the call from school that had floored Eliza, at least in the initial moments of trying to take in the information. Iso had been caught stealing and was suspended from school, effective immediately. This meant Eliza had to come to school to pick her up, then return for a meeting at two, but that would make her late to pick up Albie for their walk home, so she had to arrange a playdate for Albie, a situation made more difficult by the fact that she didn’t really know the mothers of Albie’s friends. Desperate, she had done something she had never dreamed she would do-withdrew Albie early and taken him to the Barnes & Noble on Rockville Pike, then parked him in the children’s section with strict instructions to sit there, read a book, and speak to no one. If asked where his mother was, he was to insist she was in the store. She gave him Iso’s cell phone just in case. Lord knows, it would be a long time before Iso was allowed to use her phone, if ever.

Then it was back to North Bethesda Middle, where she had to sit through the humiliating recital of Iso’s transgressions. Stealing, lying-

“About the lying,” she put in, wishing Peter could have gotten away for this meeting, but it had been impossible. (“Even if I could get away from work today, I’d never get there in time,” he had told Eliza.) “It’s my understanding that she lied when asked if she had stolen something.”

“Yes, but that hardly mitigates her behavior,” said Roxanne Stoddard, magnificent today in a bouclé purple suit.

“No, but-she lied to cover her ass.” She flushed for speaking so crudely in front of the exemplary principal. “Sorry. It’s just that I understand why she lied, although I don’t condone it. We’ve always told our children that lying is the least acceptable offense.” In her disordered, rattled state, she went so far as to think-And she didn’t lie to me, her mother. She lied to you! As if that mattered. “Still, it’s harder for me to understand why she’s stealing something she already owns-an iPhone. She has one. Well, not an iPhone, but a perfectly good cell phone.”

“Mrs. Benedict-based on what teachers have told me, Iso is a very angry, unhappy girl.”

“Well, she’s moody. She’s an adolescent.”

“Yes,” the principal said dryly. “I have some experience with adolescents.”

Eliza blushed, although she didn’t believe that the principal’s life among hundreds of young teens gave her any moral authority in this discussion. She may have more quantitative experience, but no one could know more about her children than Eliza did.

“I want to show you an assignment that Iso wrote for English class recently. The teacher asked students to recast a real-life experience as the plot of a well-known television show.”

Eliza decided this was probably not the best time to roll her eyes, but really? A television show? Peter would be apoplectic when she told him, probably start talking about private school again.

“This is Iso’s story.”

The principal passed three sheafs of paper across her desk to Eliza. On the first page, in Iso’s almost too-neat handwriting, was the title: Everyone Loves Albie.

Iso: Let’s get a dog.

Iso’s mother: No, they are dirty and have fleas and Albie might be allergic.

Iso’s father: I don’t have time to walk a dog.

Iso: I’ll walk the dog.

Iso’s parents: NO!

Albie: I would like to get a dog.

Iso’s parents: OKAY!

She skimmed down the page, to the next and the next. “It wasn’t anything like this,” she said. “It’s true, we didn’t choose the dog that Iso wanted, but Reba was so forlorn, so needy. But it was Peter’s idea-”

“No one assumes it’s a factually accurate portrayal of your home life, Mrs. Benedict. I don’t think even Iso would maintain that. She was clearly going for humor-in fact, you’ll see she got an A, because she fulfilled the main objective, which was working within an existing form.”

Great. North Bethesda Middle is training my daughter, thief and liar, to be a sitcom writer. I feel so much better now.

“By the end of the semester, they’ll be writing sestinas,” the principal said, as if privy to Eliza’s thoughts. “Mr. Klemm knows what he’s doing. Which is why, given all the other things going on with Iso, he knew to share her written work with me. This is an angry child.”

“I honestly don’t know what Iso has to be angry about. If she thinks we favor her brother-that’s all in her head.” The principal kept her gaze steadily on Eliza’s face, and she found she couldn’t stop talking. “But it is a vicious circle, in some ways. Albie is a sweetheart, very kind and compassionate, he’s like a little love sponge, soaking it up, giving it back. Iso has always been cooler, much more self-contained.”

“Has she ever told you how distraught she was to leave England?”

“Distraught? Far from it. She treated it as an opportunity, a chance to fashion a new identity for herself.”

“Just because she treated it as an opportunity doesn’t mean she really feels it is one. She lived in London for six years, Mrs. Benedict, almost her entire school life. She’s homesick.”

“This is home.”

“To you.”

Not really, I have fewer friends than Iso.

“Well, she’s never said a word to us.”

“No, I imagine not. And if it weren’t for this, I’m not sure I would understand how desperately she misses it.”

The principal passed the contraband iPhone toward Eliza, its screen showing the latest log of dialed calls. The numbers all began with the 011-44 prefix for England.

“But…we would have let her call from home. Peter even has Skype on his computer. She could have used that. We encouraged her to stay in touch with her friends.”

“Yes, but then she would have had to tell you who she was calling.”

“And that would have been so difficult?”

“The texts are rather explicit. Not what people call sexting-I think that’s overblown-but a little provocative. And the boy is seventeen,” the principal said. “Iso thinks you wouldn’t approve.”

“Seventeen? I don’t approve.” She realized her voice was too loud, but she couldn’t help herself. Her mind was racing, trying to figure out who the boy was, when the connection had been made. Iso must have been sly about it, because Albie would have spilled whatever he knew, no matter how keenly he yearned for Iso’s approval. What had Eliza told Peter, not so long ago? Iso was good at keeping her secrets, no one else’s.

“They’ve been communicating via Facebook, on the school’s computer,” the principal said. “Iso was sophisticated enough to know how to get around the school’s block-you just add an s to the http address-but didn’t realize that she was still leaving a trail despite cleaning out the cache. She was lectured on this earlier in the semester and she begged the media center director not to turn her in. At the time, the messages and postings were pretty innocuous, so we let it go.”