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had been one of those.
    â€œWhy was she in the special ed room?”
    â€œHer mother requested it.”
    â€œSo she had an IEP?”
    â€œYes. A child can’t be placed in my classroom without one.”
    â€œWhat do you remember about her mother from the meeting?”
    June remembers a thin woman dressed in a grape-colored suit whose primary goal seemed to be getting Amelia placed out of a regular fourth-grade classroom and into the special ed room. These days, most parents want the opposite: aides, interpreters, whatever it takes to keep their child in the regular classroom. Usually June’s room is the last resort, the final straw after months of disruptive, explosive behavior. Because the mother wanted Amelia in special ed, the meeting was a relatively brief one. June must have asked what Amelia liked to do and what she was good at, because she made a point always to ask those questions—to give parents a chance to talk about their child’s strengths. She vaguely remembers the mother saying that Amelia loved to draw, but she didn’t elaborate, which was odd. Most of those conversations go on and on and have to be stopped by someone coughing and pointing to the wall clock.
    â€œDid you have any contact with the mother after the initial IEP meeting?”
    â€œYes. Once a week or so, she brought Amelia into school, which isn’t uncommon. Sometimes parents do that to check in regularly.”
    â€œHmm…Any particular conversations or exchanges that you remember?”
    â€œI remember one time she asked if I knew anyone Amelia could be friends with. It was hard for her, because she was the only girl in the class.”
    â€œDid you have any suggestions?”
    â€œI told her I would ask some fourth-grade teachers. Sometimes we try to pair kids in my room with their regular ed peers who may need a break from their classroom for whatever reason. We give them a project to do. Measuring all the doors in the school, something like that. We’ve found that’s a good way to get math in with active boys.”
    â€œBut she wasn’t an active boy.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œSo what did she do with her partner?”
    June hesitates. What else can she do but admit the truth? She meant to follow up on the mother’s request, partner Amelia with another girl. She was going to—she’d even approached one teacher—and in the end, she hadn’t done it. She’d never found a friend for the student.
    Later, after the police have left with as many of Amelia’s belongings as June could find—her writing journal, her notebook, her backpack, even her pink cardigan sweater, still hanging neatly on the back of her chair until the senior officer picked it up, pinched between fingers wearing latex gloves, and placed it in a Ziploc bag—it occurs to June there is one story she didn’t tell, one she’d almost forgotten about completely.
    It happened late in the morning, the second week of school, or the third, when the room was enjoying a brief quiet spell. Liam, her usual troublemaker, was in with the guidance counselor and Jimmy was home sick, so it was three of them, actually working, bent over a reading assignment, pencils in hand. It was such a rare moment of peace that when the smell first wafted in her direction, she feared the morning would be lost to fart jokes and accusations. But nobody spoke. The stench remained, so heavy in the air that she quietly stood up and opened the door (they were windowless, of course, a center room, low priority), and when it lingered for five, then ten minutes, she quietly asked if anyone needed to use the bathroom. No one did.
    She didn’t move through the room, didn’t try to pinpoint the source of the stench, though she must have suspected. She let it go, released them to the cafeteria for lunch, and staggered to the teachers’ lounge. Later, when the afternoon passed uneventfully, smell