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Chapter ten

Astrid

The counselor has left the library door open.

I can see Tova from the corridor without going in.

She sits at a table meant for four with a book propped against her water bottle. The chair on her left is empty. So is the one on her right.

Two boys argue over a computer by the window. A girl with silver headphones eats grapes one at a time.

None of them are cruel. That is what I keep arriving at, and it is worse than the alternative. If one child in this room had decided to be vicious about my daughter I would know the shape of the problem and I would go and find its parents. Instead there are twenty children in here who have simply never thought about her, and there is no office in this building where a person can report that.

She turns a page.

She does not look lonely.

That is not the same as not being lonely.

Ms. Ruiz stands beside me with both hands around a paper cup. “No new incidents. No visits to the office. Her teachers say she’s doing the work.”

“And lunch?”

“This is where she chooses to eat.”

“Every day?”

“Most days since the suspension.”

“Does anyone sit with her?”

“Sometimes.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It’s the answer I have.”

I look at her.

She does not apologize for it.

Good.

“Has the other family been in?”

“Mrs. Brantley came on Tuesday.”

“Tuesday.”

“Yes.”

Nobody telephoned me on Tuesday.

A woman I have never met sat in this office and spoke about my daughter, and an appointment was made for her, and somebody offered her a paper cup, and the first I am hearing of it is on a Thursday in a corridor.

I put that beside the name on the form.

She gives me a page about two lunchtime groups. I take it, because refusing would be stupid, and I do not decide what it means before Tova has seen it.