Heat Wave Read Online Free Page A

department loves you.”
    “The department doesn’t know that I flashed
everyone at the town beach on Sunday.”
    “Stuart probably doesn’t know, either,”
Henry pointed out. “Go see him. Then buy yourself a ‘Kiss the Cook’
apron to wear at the barbecue.”
    Managing a weak smile, Meredith preceded
Henry out of her classroom and strode down the hallway to Stuart’s
office, which was located near the main entrance. The high school
building was ten years old and had been designed by an architect
apparently determined to defy the logic that ought to inform school
buildings. Hallways slashed off at odd angles, sloping up and down
to be wheelchair-accessible, although it would have made more sense
for the floors simply to be level so ramps wouldn’t be necessary.
The classroom doors were featured glass sidelights, so people could
see in and out, but the glass was laced with meshy wires so
terrorists or vandals couldn’t break them. The lockers lining the
walls were the colors of bright balloons—vivid red, blue, orange,
green, purple and yellow—but a decade of sunlight seeping through
the skylights had leeched some of the color from them, so they
appeared to be wearing a thin film of dust. As teenagers raced past
her down the wide corridors, eager to escape the building, they
shouted at one another, and their voices echoed against the hard
surfaces and vaulted ceilings.
    Ordinarily, Meredith or some other teacher
would have asked them to keep their voices down. But it was June,
just a few short weeks before summer vacation began. An epidemic of
spring fever had overtaken the school—faculty as well as students.
If the kids wanted to holler, let them.
    Meredith reached the main office, waved at
the administrative assistant and the two parent volunteers who were
conferring around a work table, and continued past them to Stuart’s
office. As bosses went, he was all right. Not as young and dynamic
as the principal of the high school in Lawrence where Meredith had
worked for two years in the Teach for America program, where she’d
decided that she really, truly wanted to make teaching her life’s
work. Teaching in a struggling urban environment where many of her
students didn’t speak English at home had been challenging, and it
had demanded teachers and administrators who weren’t afraid to take
chances and try risky strategies. Compared to that school, Brogan’s
Point High School was safe and comfortable, if just a bit too
conventional. It had its share of at-risk students, but Stuart had
been the principal for longer than school building had been
standing, and he liked doing things the way they’d always been
done. Taking chances was not his style.
    She pasted a smile on her face as she swept
through the open door to his office. “Hi, Stuart,” she said,
determined to be a good sport about any of the Senior Week
activities he assigned her to. There were worse tasks than flipping
burgers at the barbecue, she knew. Chaperoning the all-night sober
party that followed graduation was one; she’d gotten stuck with
that assignment her first year at the school.
    “Meredith! Come on in!” In his early
sixties, Stuart exuded the kind of beaming good nature that hid an
array of deficits. He was no longer as sharp as most of his staff.
He probably didn’t understand half of what was taught in his
school’s classrooms. He saw his primary job as keeping the troops
in line, bolstering morale, and winning the battle, whether that
battle was having his students score high on the statewide
achievement tests or wringing extra money out of the town
budget.
    Meredith’s smile began to ache as she
crossed his small office to his desk and settled into the chair
across from him. He resumed his seat. His smile looked as forced as
hers.
    “Well,” he said, apparently struggling to
sound casual, “I heard there was an episode at the town beach this
past Sunday.”
    How had he heard? Caleb
Solomon had texted done . She