The Graduation Trap novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Spring Concert

I had run the sound board at Hollis High's concerts for six years, and I still knew every fader by touch.

The booth sat at the back of the auditorium, up a ladder stair, behind a pane of dusty glass.

The school's tech was a quiet man in a gray fleece who had been wiring that stage since before I was hired.

He looked up when I climbed in on Friday evening in my coat.

"You're on leave," he said.

"I am."

"The principal told me no Ms. Gidley on school property."

"This is a booth," I said. "It's not a property. It's a booth."

He studied me for a while.

Then he got up from his stool and stepped outside onto the ladder.

"I'm going to get a coffee," he said. "I'll be forty minutes. Don't touch the house lights."

"I won't."

"You always say that."

He climbed down, and I sat.

Below me the room was filling with parents, folding programs, whispering, holding up phones.

Four hundred people.

In the second row sat Cynthia in her pearls, with the Auxiliary women on either side.

In the last row sat Sullivan and his mother, side by side, his arm along the back of her seat.

He looked up through the glass and found me, and he did not wave.

He only nodded, once.

Braden stood in the side aisle with his hands in his pockets.

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