The music comes slowly. The piano key rings out like a punch in the air, and I write down the note. I still have to count them out—run the scale in my head—but I’m getting better. Quicker. I’m not sure if she’s patient or if I just can’t tell that she’s frustrated. One note, a pause as I write it down, then another. When I’ve written several down, she’ll play them back so I can get the tempo. I fill in the sheet music, and we move on. Usually, after an hour or so, the notes stop. The song doesn’t feel complete yet; it’s as if she’s worked out a certain amount and has to stop and think. Or maybe she gets tired; I have no idea how hard this is for her. Regardless, when the notes stop coming for fifteen minutes or so, I tell her good night and take the music back to my apartment in the dorm building, to safeguard it. Sometimes, I watch TV. Sometimes, I grade. Maybe I have a glass of wine, or maybe I stare through the window into the lonely streetlight I can see at the top of the hill and think about regret.

My classes used to be fun, which is not to say that I appreciated them. Teenagers have an energy about them, a verve, because, I think, life hasn’t beaten them down with its disappointments, yet. Some of them, anyway.

I teach literature, various kinds to various grades. My students used to be funny, enthusiastic, distracted, brilliant, the gamut you’d expect. If I were being unkind, I would say Mandy was lackluster, maybe distracted would be a better descriptor. She often stayed after class, which was just before lunch. This was not unusual. There were always students hanging around.  Usually a group of international students—Chinese or Korean—sat in one corner, eating, because other students wouldn’t let them eat in their rooms. She would sit on the other side, a couple seats back, reading anime. She never talked about class, never had questions. If I asked her about an assignment, she’d smile and deftly change the subject.

Looking back, I realize there was something unsaid, an uneasiness I ignored. We all did, of course. The troubled students, the ones who feel that they don’t fit in, linger in my room, knock on my door. Sometimes, they tell me their problems, sometimes, they sit quietly somewhere.  I’m not the best teacher on campus, but I don’t judge. I don’t joke with them the way some teachers do, which is often just mocking. I don’t ask anything more of them. I don’t try to pull what they’re hesitant to say out of them. I just give them a space to be.

Mandy was late for dinner check in. The dorm parents checked her room, the classrooms, the library, everywhere you’d expect she might be.

She was in the theater. A security guard found her. The reason we have a security guard is that there have been kidnapping threats made against some of the Mexican students’ families—political families. That’s what they told us, anyway.

Jeanie was the second one to see her. All schools—all organizations—have a person who really runs things, who gets things done. That was Jeanie. She wouldn’t talk about it afterward, and we didn’t ask.

I thought it was a song, at first, but it’s something larger, something more complex. I had to get Jerome, who teaches music, to show me how to read and annotate music. He has a little office in the basement, but he’s rarely there. He only teaches part-time, here, and part-time at two other schools. When he’s on campus, he’s usually in the music room, but not in the evenings, when I am. Maybe that’s why she comes to me instead of to him. Maybe she can only come at that time. I don’t try to play the song myself. Aside from my lack of musical knowledge, it just seems wrong, like wearing another person’s underwear. It’s not my song to play. I’m just writing it down.

Someone knocks on my door—the one connected to the dorm—at 2:17. It’s Charlie, a junior from my American Lit class. I give her some ibuprofen and water because it’s too much trouble to wake the nurse. She sits at my dining room table and cries for a long time. I keep catching myself trying to take her hand. I just want it to stop, for her. I give her tissues, a snack, pat her on the back when she walks back to the door. I hold it open, and she wraps her arms around my torso, quickly, before I can say anything, and then she recedes into the darkness, a scared, hurt little girl.

I never married. I was engaged a couple times, but it never stuck. I think about my single state often, and every few years, I attempt and fail at something foolish. My situation is unusual—a single male living in a girls’ dorm building—but unusual paths are common in boarding schools. None of us took a straight path to get here. I make sure all the parents know me. I make sure my door is always kept open when kids come to my room. I avoid going into the dorms at all, unaccompanied, if I can. At the very least, I get a senior to come on room checks with me. Charlie—that worries me for a couple days, her being in my dining room alone with me. These are things I must do to protect myself, to make sure no one thinks I’m the monster some men are.

After class, now, students meet in my room to complain about the school’s handling of “The Situation.” That’s what the administration calls it. The yearbook staff says the Head won’t let them dedicate a page to her—don’t even want her picture in the yearbook. The faculty advisor claims solidarity, but I doubt she’ll follow through. Someone took down all the team photos in Main that included Mandy. The students come to me for help, but I can’t help them, officially. I tell them to celebrate her.

“No one can take away how you feel,” I say.

It doesn’t help.

There’s something in their eyes as they leave, something between betrayal and anger. It’s disgust, I suppose. I want to tell them that most of the pain they’re going through will fade. They’re learning grief - not an easy lesson.  Those looks—they’re another feather to stack on top of the rest of it.

It snows, a light dusting, covering the quad. I don’t see it happen, but someone stamps out the words, “We Love You Mandy” in the snow, along with a giant smiley face. We don’t know if the administration sees it. All of us—the faculty—without discussing it, know that this is something we must try to hide from them. When I pass students in the hall, they’re red-faced, defiant. The message stays for the rest of the day, the letters growing strange as the snow melts. Over the next few days, the letters become incoherent, but the smiley face stays.

One day, after classes, before sports, they all gather. None of us would’ve admitted to knowing the time or place of the gathering, but all of the faculty knew. Some of those attending distribute candles, and they stand in silence until the candles burn down. Corie from admissions comes to the quad, blood rising in her cheeks. Several of us stand on the walkway overlooking the students. She looks from them to us, sputters something we ignore. Eventually, she walks back to Old Main, where the administrative offices are housed. It surprises us when she doesn’t come back. After a half-hour, as though an alarm has gone off, the students blow out their candles. A couple of them gather them together and bring them to an art teacher. One girl brings several to me. I hold them carefully. The act makes me feel not healed, but as though healing  could be possible. The students disperse. Eventually, so do the faculty.

I’m not sure how long the music lasts. Several days. A few weeks, perhaps. One evening, the keys stop. I wait, as I have each evening, but they don’t start again. I can feel it in the air—a coldness. Distance. I continue going, just in case she’s forgotten something. After two days, I ask Jerome to meet me in the practice room.

“Did you write this?” he asks, scanning the handwritten pages.

“No,” I say.

He plays a few bars, tentative at first, but with growing confidence. I feel like she’s there, listening, but I can’t really know that. When he’s done, he studies me.

“Mandy wrote it,” I say.

He holds my eyes for a long moment and then nods, clears his throat, and plays it again. When the last note rings out, I feel the tears on my cheeks. He pretends to read over the music and doesn’t say anything. Or maybe he really is reading it again.