Have You Seen Her? Read Free Page B

dreams. Lucas was intensely focused on sinking a putt into an overturned plastic cup. Lucas tended to become very unhappy when his putting was disturbed so Jenna turned her attention back to Casey.
    Casey’s hand appeared over the top of the leaning stacks of folders and grabbed another theme paper, sending the stack swaying. Standing, Jenna grabbed the closest stack to avert certain disaster.
    “Don’t even think about it,” Casey snapped, not even looking up from her grading.
    “Dammit!” Lucas bit out.
    “Just put them back and nobody gets hurt,” Casey continued, as if Lucas hadn’t spoken.
    Jenna looked up in time to see Lucas’s putt go wide, winced, meekly put Casey’s folders back, and sat down. “Sorry, Lucas.”
    “It’s okay,” Lucas responded glumly. “I wasn’t going to make it anyway.”
    “What about me?” Casey demanded from behind the wall of folders.
    “I didn’t do anything to you,” Jenna shot back. “I was just trying to bring some order into chaos.” She waved her hand at Casey’s leaning stacks. “You are a disorderly person.”
    “And
you
are a procrastinator,” Lucas said mildly, sitting down next to Jenna.
    Casey’s hand appeared to grab another theme. “Why are you procrastinating, Jen? That’s not like you.”
    Lucas slid down in his chair. “Because she doesn’t want to grade Brad Thatcher’s chemistry test, because she knows he probably failed it, and she knows contacting his father about his sudden personality changes is the right thing to do, but she’s scared to call any more parents because Rudy Lutz’s father cussed her out on Wednesday”—he drew a deep breath— “for failing Rudy in remedial science and getting him suspended from the football team,” he finished. And exhaled.
    Jenna looked at him in annoyed admiration. “How do you do that?”
    Lucas grinned. “I have a wife and four daughters. If I don’t talk fast, I’d never get anything out.”
    Casey’s chair scraped against the tile floor and her blond head poked up from behind the paper wall. Five feet tall on her tiptoes, she was only visible from the chin up. “Brad Thatcher failed his chemistry test?” Her brows scrunched, making her look like a profoundly perplexed disembodied elf. “Are we talking about
the
Brad Thatcher, Wonderboy?”
    Jenna looked down at the purple folder, sobering. “Yes, only he’s not the same Brad. Not anymore. He got a
D
on his last test. I’m afraid to grade this one.”
    “Jenna.” Lucas shook his head, taking on the quiet, thoughtful persona that made him a wonderful mentor to new teachers like herself. “Just do it. Then we’ll talk about what to do next.”
    So Jenna grasped her red pen firmly, opened the purple folder, and found Brad’s test at the bottom of the thin pile. Her heart sank as she marked an “x” next to every question, feeling hopelessness mount with each one. Brad had been her most promising student. Bright, articulate, a veritable shoo-in for a prestigious scholarship sponsored by a group of Raleigh companies. He’d all but thrown that opportunity away. One more test like this and he’d fail her class, jeopardizing his chances at admission to the top colleges he’d chosen. And she had no idea why. With another sigh she wrote
F
on the first page, top and center. She looked up to find Lucas and Casey quietly waiting.
    “I didn’t think I’d ever put an
F
on anything Brad Thatcher did,” Jenna said, putting down her pen. “What’s happened to him, Lucas?”
    Lucas picked up Brad’s test and flipped through the pages, her concern mirrored in his dark eyes. “I don’t know, Jen. Sometimes kids have problems with girlfriends. Sometimes their problems are at home. But you’re right. I never would have expected Brad to change like this.”
    “You think he’s into drugs?” Casey asked soberly, voicing their collective fear.
    “We all know it can happen to kids from good homes,” Jenna answered, slipping Brad’s