The water in the fountain at the Children's Museum was giving off a rank odor.  Mrs. Mays, the grandmotherly preschool teacher noticed it as she stood in the courtyard behind the old museum.  She dismissed it originally, being quite used to strange odors among her short pupils.  A breeze picked up and carried the fumes into her face.  It wasn't vomit or human waste.  She was familiar enough with these to eliminate them from the list.  She made a quick count of the kids eating their sack lunches.  2, 3, 4, 5, she counted quietly to herself, there's James by the garbage can, that makes six . . . and number seven is. . . .  A tug at her polyester trousers turned her attention to a peanut-butter-faced informant.  One of the other rugrats wasn't sharing.  "Sharing what?" she asked, still scanning the area for number 7.  "Her carrots," said Peanut Butter.

"You have your own carrots," she said as she turned his shoulders and sent him back to his place by the fountain.

Number 7, number 7, number 7, she repeated the mantra under her breath as her pulse began to rise.  She held her hand to her chest as she paced around, tracing the T-shaped scar beneath her blouse with her thumb.  She made her way around the fountain and up the steps toward the large museum doors and back to the fountain again.  Where the hell is number 7?  She couldn't remember his name.  She couldn't even picture his face.  She just knew that she came to the museum with 7 children and 8 sack lunches.  Was it even a boy she was looking for?  A pig-tailed little blonde ran up to her side.  "Miss Mays, the water is stinky!"  "I know, Emily.  Go finish your lunch."  "I'm Megan," said Pig-Tails.  "Of course you are," said Mrs. Mays with a nervous laugh.  A large, pasty security guard approached Mrs. Mays as she rounded the fountain for the third time.  "Is everything all right, ma'am?" he asked.  Mrs. Mays' cheeks reddened.  She hadn't wanted anyone to notice her panic.

"Oh, I suppose so," she said and glanced up into the branches of the tree they stood beneath.  "Looks like you lost something," he said.  "Lost?  I am a responsible adult woman.  What would I possibly have lost?" she gave another nervous laugh and then looked up into his large heavy-lidded eyes, "I should think your time would be better spent monitoring the gift shop," she said in the tone of voice she only used on her now-grown son, "I saw a couple of teenagers in there as we were passing through, and they looked awfully suspicious."  The guard glanced up into the tree before turning and heading back up the steps to the large red doors.  He turned around as he opened one and called to her again, "If you need help," he shouted, "please let me know."  Mrs. Mays brushed him away with her liver-spotted hand and ignored the momentary stares of the few other patrons wandering the courtyard.  Damn boy, she thought.  She made way to her little cluster of 4 year-olds.

"Boys and girls," she said with a large smile, "it's time to put all of your garbage in your sack and line up."

"But I haven't finished my cookies!"  shouted Peanut-Butter. "Yeah!"  shouted two or three more.

"That means you spent too much time playing and not enough time eating," she said and began grabbing the brown lunch sacks from their hands and stuffing them into the large garbage can.  She ignored their whines and lined them up.  "We're going to play a little game," she said in her cheeriest voice, "kind of like hide-and-seek, except that today, only one person is hiding, and we have to find him."  "I want to hide!  I want to hide!"  yelled Pig-Tails.  "Billy is already hiding," she said over the high-pitched wail, "now let's see who can spot Billy first."  "Who's Billy?" asked someone in the back of the line.  "Why, you know, Billy," she said.  "You play with him every day at Mrs. Mays' house."  "I don't know no Billy!"  said another.  "Me either!"  said another.  "Oh, of course, of course, you're right.  I've got him confused," said Mrs. Mays with a clap of her hands, "Look around you in our line, and see who's missing.  Then you'll know who's hiding."  Six little faces looked each other over with scrutiny.  "It's Tyler!"  yelled one.  "No, it's not," yelled Tyler, "I'm right here!"  "I know - it's Emily!"  yelled another.  "No, it's not," yelled Emily, "I'm here too!"  The little crowd began to giggle and soon it became the funniest joke in the history of four-year-olds.  "It's Timmy!"  yelled Timmy [laughter] "It's Amanda!"  yelled Amanda [more laughter] "It's James!"  yelled James [laughter and squeals] "Dammit children!"  Mrs. Mays hissed, "This is NOT a game!  Now look around you and figure out who's missing!"  "Mrs. Mays!"  Said wide-eyed Amanda; "You said a bad word!"  "Yes, I did," she said, "Now look around and see who's missing!"  The group was quiet and stared at each other while Mrs. Mays rubbed her scar across and down, across and down.  "It's Mrs. Mays!"  shouted Tyler and the tiny crowd burst out laughing again.

Mrs. Mays left the museum that afternoon in her large white economy van with six children.  The six children she had arrived with that morning.  The class had trailed behind her playing her version of hide-and-go-seek through every room until she finally thought to look at the reservation card and receipt for her group's admission to the museum.  Six children and one senior citizen she had paid for.  The search ended promptly and the six children were soon filed out to the van and buckled in.  Her hands gripped the wheel as she drove out of the city and although the van was filled with chatter, she heard nothing.   Linda Rondstadt was crooning from the cassette deck, "You're no good, you're no good, you're no good, baby, you're no goo-ood."

Mrs. Mays pulled in the driveway of her old brick rambler home.  One last string of Christmas lights dangled from the roof above her bedroom window.  Her forty-four year old son, Roy, had managed to remove one string every month since January, when she'd first asked him.  This remaining strand was due to come down sometime in June, as far as she could figure.  She shook her head at the site and wished again that her husband, Wayne, could be raised from the dead if only to keep her from the humiliation of a yard and home that she could not keep up with, and couldn't depend on her ne'er-do-well son for either.

Her troops filed out from the van and down the back stairs to the basement that had been known as "Happy Days Preschool" for the past 27 years.

"Miss Mays, can we play with the toys?" asked Pig-Tails, as she did every day.  "Yes, that's fine," said Mrs. Mays, who had a short lesson planned, including Children's-Museum-Bingo to review the things they had seen on their field trip.  She had played the game 26 times, 26 previous years, with more than a hundred kids, but they had spent too much time playing hide-and-seek at the museum and so she sat in a short red chair, while the children played and giggled and learned nothing until it was time to go home.

The phone rang in the dark house at 7:22 P.M., and Mrs. Mays who had drifted off to sleep in Wayne's favorite chair with a novel, awoke abruptly to the piercing noise.  Damn you, Roy!  He always set the phone ringer to maximum volume when he visited, because he was convinced she was going deaf and didn't answer when he called.  She had tried to explain, on several occasions, that she would rather miss a call or two than be sent into cardiac arrest again, due to the blasted phone.  She made her way into her avocado colored kitchen, turned on a light, and picked up the receiver.  "Hello," she said.  "Hi, Mrs. Mays," said the perky young voice in the phone.  "I just called to see how you were doing."  "Oh, fine," she said, trying to identify the voice.  It must be someone from preschool, or perhaps someone from the hospital billing department; no one else referred to her as "Mrs. Mays".  "Well, I hope so, considering the trouble you almost had at the museum today," said Perky.  Mrs. Mays' patchwork heart began to beat rapidly, and her hand went quietly to her chest, as if to keep things in place.  "Oh?" she said "Well, sure," said Perky "I mean, can you imagine if you'd lost any of the kids today?" Mrs. Mays choked on a piece of oxygen.  Damnit, damnit, damnit, her mind went reeling.  Which one of those kids was smart enough to catch on?  Which one of them snitched?  "I'm sorry," said Mrs. Mays, "but who did you say you were?" "Oh, forgive me," said Perky, "This is Darcy - Tyler's mom."  Tyler?  Obviously, she had underestimated Tyler's intelligence throughout the year.  "Well," said Mrs. Mays, "you see, it was really just a misunderstanding, that's all.  No one was actually ever lost, I had simply miscounted for a moment."  [A slight pause.] "I don't understand," said Darcy, "miscounted what?"

Mrs. Mays suddenly remembered that she had never liked Tyler, or his mother.  Is this really necessary?  She thought.   She was not a woman who had admitted wrongdoing more than two or three times in her life.

"I miscounted the children," said a humble voice she did not recognize.  "Mrs. Mays, didn't you see the evening news?" The evening news?  For hell's sake, what exactly did Tyler say?

"No," said Mrs. Mays tracing the T on her chest, which surely stood for Trouble.  She would have retired eight years ago if it weren't for this scarlet letter on her chest.  She would have been playing Bridge, instead of babysitting, this afternoon if it weren't for the hospital bills from her unwanted tattoo.  "There was an explosion at the Children's Museum this afternoon.  Some kind of gas leak.  A dozen people were injured.  You haven't heard about it?" Mrs. Mays stood still.  "No," she whispered remembering the odor from the fountain.

"Yeah," said Darcy, "I guess it was pretty scary.  They interviewed a security guard.  He said that a preschool class had left less than 10 minutes before the explosion.   They were the only kids scheduled to be there today.  I'm sure he was talking about you.  Kind of gives you the creeps, doesn't it?"

There was silence in the avocado kitchen.

"Mrs. Mays?" said Darcy "Are you still there?"

Author Bio

I am ridiculously afraid of dogs, so if I were an animal, I would want to be something that scares the crap out of all canines.  That would be nice for a change.  Maybe a giant tiger with two heads.