Martha did not look up from her stack of manila folders, her fingers moving with the quick, dry rhythm of someone who had worked in the school district office for twenty years.
“The district changed the registration codes again,” Martha said, her voice dropping into her usual low hum.
I reached into my middle desk drawer to find my black felt-tip pen. My fingers brushed against a thick, rubbery cord that had not been there when I locked the office on Tuesday afternoon.
It was a bright orange phone charger, coiled tight like a small plastic snake, with a USB plug on one end and a thin silver tip on the other.
“Martha, is this yours?” I held it up by the cord.
Martha squinted through her reading glasses and shook her head.
“I only use the gray ones,” she said. “Maybe one of the counselors left it during the department meeting yesterday.”
The department meeting had been held in the library across the courtyard, not in my small office, and my desk stayed locked after four o’clock. Only the evening janitor and Daniel had keys to this wing of the building.
