Aurora, Illinois

A Realer Day of School

"Hey Tim, come in my office," said Sheriff Wilhelm.

"Sure thing," said Tim and dropped his file for the moment.

"Forensics sent this to me regarding Adelina's case. It's an electrophoresis gel. Ever seen one?" asked the sheriff. He pointed to his desktop PC's screen which was covered with stubby black bars.

"Uh, maybe once but I'm not sure. How do you read it?" asked Tim, not wanting to sound like a total fool.

"It's okay; this is high-tech stuff and I wouldn't expect you to know yet. Each line going from left to right  represents a person whose DNA we found when Adelina's body was swabbed. If the line is exactly the same, it's the same person. But -"

"If it's different, it's different people," chimed in Tim.

"Right. Over here, it's black in the top line, but it's white in the two that follow. Then over here, it's white in the top and black in the two that follow," said Wilhelm.

"So that would mean there were three people - Adelina and two others?" asked Tim.

All of a sudden, Wilhelm's voice became a low whisper, "The sample's from her vagina."

"Christ, she was 17," whispered Tim.

----

The bullies took the day off at Adelina's high school. Even they could understand that this was no time to shove the foreign kids into lockers.

Mr. Jorgenson turned his Trigonometry class into a group therapy session where kids could recount memories of Adelina and talk about their feelings. Two girls had to go to the bathroom because they were embarrassed by their tears. Jorgenson's lesson plan about the Law of Cosines stared at him but it was useless today.

Miss Ellis tried to continue with her scheduled lesson on political themes in the novel 1984. She was practically booed by her class. She made an attempt to connect disappearances and violence in fascist countries to what may have happened to Adelina.

"Miss Ellis, are you saying Adelina was murdered?" asked Cristina Vargas. She was one of those kids who always sat in the front row if you let them.

"That's interesting. I brought up Adelina in relation to disappearances because it's unclear what happened to her. Now I could ask you, do you think Adelina was murdered?" asked Miss Ellis. She immediately regretted the question. If kids discussed a classmate being murdered in her class, she would catch hell.

"I thought maybe she was sick. The announcement today said she was found dead. Wouldn't it be different if they thought someone killed her?" replied Cristina.

"I, I don't think we should be talking about this," offered Julius. Julius had a tendency of being the voice of reason, even when adults were talking.

It wasn't the worst day of school. There may have been more crying than normal but there was more laughing too as kids tried to cheer each other up. It was realer.