By 4:41 p.m., the chair already had a first name.
Nora saw it before she saw Lucie.
It stood in the corridor of building B, against the wall leading to the principal’s office. An ordinary school chair: a scratched gray plastic back, metal legs scuffed pale by shoes. Someone had taped a sheet to the seat with two strips of clear tape.
**YANNIS VALÉRA — CLASS 3B**
Beneath it, in blue marker: **WE HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN YOU.**
Two students waited near the water dispenser. They stopped talking as Nora passed. One held his phone too low not to be filming.
“Put that away,” Sophie Menard said from her office door.
The boy slipped the device into his pocket.
Sophie still had her coat on. She offered no coffee, did not ask how things were at the town hall, and did not say the word APODYOPSIS. Nora was grateful for about three seconds.
“Lucie’s with her father in the meeting room. She’s fine. She tore the sheet off the locker, not this one.”
“Where did this one come from?”
“A classroom. And if I have it removed now, eight parents will accuse me of erasing a student.”
“If he isn’t enrolled, he isn’t a student.”
Sophie looked at her.
“Try saying that in front of Malo.”
Nora said nothing.
The meeting room was directly opposite. Through the frosted glass, she could make out Mathieu’s seated figure and Lucie standing by the window. She could have pushed the door open. She had said she would come. Lucie had asked her to come.
Sophie handed her a clear sleeve.
“This first. It’s why I brought you this way.”
Inside was the sheet of graph paper Lucie had photographed: two columns, **REMEMBERS** and **DOESN’T REMEMBER**. The first names had been copied by hand. Beside Lucie, **DENIES IT** almost crossed out the red line of the grid.
Nora turned the sleeve over.
“The original?”
End of excerpt. Discover the other stories in this universe.