Invaders From Mars Read Free Page B

brow as she held out a handful of pennies, giving him a quizzical smirk. “You did, huh?”
    David opened the pouch and she dropped in the coins. “Through my telescope,” he added. “I have a . . . a telescope in my bedroom window.” Dumber and dumber, he thought, embarrassed. “I live just over the hill from you. I think.”
    She picked up some more of the coins. “Do you always watch people through your telescope?”
    “No. Usually just stars. At night, I mean. Tonight there’s gonna be a meteor shower.”
    “Really?”
    “Yeah. My dad and me are gonna watch it.” He couldn’t hide the anticipation in his voice.
    “Here.” She handed him the last of the pennies and stood, brushing off her knees. Leaning toward him conspiratorially, she whispered, “Don’t let the hall monitor catch you.” She waggled her fingers at him as she started to walk away. “Enjoy the meteors.”
    David headed for his classroom, stuffing the pouch into his backpack. Impulsively, he spun around and said with a smile, “You smell nice!” Then, before she could look back, he turned away, giggling into his palm.
    Linda Magnuson was still smiling when she got to her office. The boy reminded her of the crush she’d had on her fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Scribner. He’d been a tall man with thick dark hair and a craggy face. Had it been possible, she would’ve watched him through a telescope, too. She wondered if the boy’s parents knew he was standing at his window spying on the school nurse in the mornings. Oh, well, it happened to everybody at that age, and usually more than once, before adolescence. Before that sort of thing got complicated and painful. The boy was at least normal, which was more than she could say for a few of the staff members at W. C. Menzies Elementary School.
    Mr. Cross, the principal, was a nice enough man, but during the short time Linda had been at the school, she had yet to see a single sign of leadership in the man. He was tall, thin, and bald, walked with a bit of a hunch in his back, as if to compensate for his height, and seemed more eager to please everyone than to run the school responsibly. His attempts to welcome her and settle her into the routine at W. C. Menzies were comical. For the first week, he was always poking his head into her office and saying, “Hi-de-hi! How are we getting along?” His intentions were good, she was sure, but rather annoying.
    Linda seated herself at her desk and found a note written in small, economical handwriting.
Ms. Magnuson:
    Sorry to see you were unable to make this morning’s faculty meeting.
    — Mrs. McKeltch
    “Yeah, I’ll bet you were,” Linda muttered, crumpling the note up in her fist and tossing it into the trash can.
    McKeltch was another odd duck. Crimson bitch is more like it, Linda thought, slipping off her coat and hanging it on the back of her chair.
    Mrs. McKeltch seemed to be the one who ran the school. She’d been there longer than anyone and seemed to be the type who would stay until she dropped dead. Stuffy and unpleasant, neither smiling nor expressing any feeling other than, perhaps, silently boiling contempt for everyone and everything around her, Mrs. McKeltch stalked the halls like a warden in a low-budget women’s prison movie. Linda supposed she ran her classes the same way, and she pitied the woman’s students.
    From what little Linda had heard about her—and it was very little since the other faculty members did not speak of her often, and even then in hushed, fearful tones with cautious glances left and right—Mrs. McKeltch had been married briefly, many years ago, to the local librarian, a timid little man who, only a few months later, left town suddenly, leaving behind an unattended library and an unfazed wife. No one knew if the divorce had ever been made official, although it probably didn’t matter because Mr. McKeltch had never been seen or heard from again. Some joked that she’d murdered him and buried him in her