"What do you want to make the robot do?" I asked my star student, Alyssa. At just nine years old, Alyssa was already showing an aptitude for robotics that made me wildly proud of her.

The gig at Kids' Science Lab was originally supposed to end after the summer, but when school started in the fall, I couldn't bring myself to leave it. Mr. Chu, the owner, said I could just teach two classes a week if I wanted, and I immediately laid claim to the Wednesday night "Little Tinkerers" class. I loved watching the looks on the kids' faces the first time they realized they could make their Lego robot do whatever they wanted simply by programming the actions into a tablet.

I also worked with some junior-high kids on Saturdays, but they honestly weren't as much fun. By that age, the kids didn't have the same sense of wonder watching a robot walk three steps and take a bow. They mostly just wanted me to help them with algebra and show them how to make stink bombs by exposing ammonia sulfide to oxygen. It got old pretty fast.

My Wednesday night class usually had six kids in it, but on this stormy evening, only Alyssa and young Diego had made it. With just five minutes left in the class, Diego had already checked out, his eyes trained on the door waiting for his father to relieve him.

But Alyssa wasn't going to waste those last few precious moments, not when she could be using them to complete a makeshift Rube Goldberg sequence in which her robot walked forward fifteen steps and landed on a lever, thus opening the compartment where we had stashed the umbrellas. She completed her experiment just as the clock struck five, and the bells above the door in the lobby announced the arrival of someone's parent.

I busied myself with putting away extra Lego pieces while the kids headed to the lobby to retrieve rainboots and jackets.

"Marina," Mr. Chu popped his head into the room after seeing the kids off, "you're not biking, are you?"

I listened for a moment to the rain tickling the roof and realized that my plan to bike home after the weather cleared wasn't working out. "I'll text my dad."

"Okay," Mr. Chu said, checking his watch.

"If you have to go, it's fine," I assured him.

"It's just with this rain, it'll take half an hour to get to my son's daycare."

"It's fine," I smiled. "I've got homework to do. I'll wait in the lobby."

"You'll lock up when you leave?"

I smiled and nodded, appreciating that Mr. Chu always seemed to genuinely care what happened to me. His wife Holly and my stepmother Laura had become friends over the summer, often chatting over coffee during my Saturday class.

Mr. Chu turned to leave, but then the bells jangled over the front door again. "Shoot," Mr. Chu said, once again eyeing his watch. "Someone must've forgotten something."

I grabbed my backpack and headed to lobby with him, but froze when the man who had entered moved a dripping umbrella out of way, exposing his face.

It was Mr. Martel, a fact which took me a moment to process. It would have been weird to see any teacher from school out of context, but especially this one. He hovered in the doorway a moment as he shook the rain off his feet.

"I'm afraid we're closing up for the day," Mr. Chu informed him.

"Oh," said Mr. Martel, smiling as effortlessly as he had when I'd first seen him at the whiteboard. "I was hoping to sign up for a class."

"Adult classes are on Saturdays," Mr. Chu said as he grabbed his briefcase from behind the front desk and threw on his coat. "Ten a.m."

Mr. Martel turned to me. "Hello, Marina. I heard you worked here. Looks like the rumors were true."

In his distracted state, Mr. Chu didn't seem to think much of this interaction, but he looked at me for some sort of confirmation.

I cleared my throat. Mr. Martel and I had left things rather awkward, not getting a chance to discuss what had fallen out of his pocket.

Of course, maybe I was overreacting. Maybe the flattened penny in Mr. Martel's pocket wasn't from the train. Hell, they have machines at the zoo that flatten pennies, engraving them with little panda bears or sea otters. Maybe it was one of those, and I had just jumped to conclusions.

But then why did he follow me to work?

Should I ask Mr. Chu to stay, making him late to get his son? He would demand an explanation. What would I say? I decided to give Mr. Martel a little rope and see what he did with it.

"Mr. Chu," I began, "um, this is my history teacher, Mr. Martel."

Mr. Chu turned to him with an outstretched hand.

"Adam," Mr. Martel corrected. "It's just Adam."

"Nice to meet you, Adam." Mr. Chu turned back to me, one foot practically out the door. "You'll be okay, Marina?"

I debated for a split second what to do, but then I realized I was going to have to talk to Mr. Martel at some point. Now was as good a time as any. So I smiled at Mr. Chu, reassuring him.

"I'm a big girl," I said. "Everything's fine."

I waited several seconds after Mr. Chu left, until I could hear his car starting in the small parking lot, before turning to Mr. Martel. I decided to let him make the first move, just in case this was all in my mind.

"So, yeah, the adult classes are on Saturday. Maybe you should come back then."

"I think you and I need to talk, Marina."

The alarm bell that had started when he walked into the door was blaring louder in my head now, not so much because of what he just said but because of how he said it: his voice low and cool, his eyes unwavering.

"About what?" I asked, feigning a naiveté while I furiously ran through the options in my head.

"I think you know," he said, stepping closer.

I curled my lips into the slow breathing I had been practicing. My heart was pounding, but I couldn't let him see that. I didn't know if this guy posed a threat or not. Maybe he really did just want to talk.

But then something occurred to me: in his classroom, when I had seen the flattened penny, the look on his face—he was petrified. He knew immediately that I recognized the penny, that I didn't think it was from the zoo the way most people would have. He seemed terrified of being exposed, terrified of... of me.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"I'm just who I say I am..."

"No, you're not."

He eyed me a moment, measuring what to say, or perhaps what he didn't need to say.

"Okay, let's talk," I offered. "The second that penny fell out of your pocket, you knew you couldn't let me see it. You knew that I would know what it was. How did you know that about me?"

He smiled slightly, unsurprised by the question. His shoulders drooped, as though he was giving up some sort of ruse. "Because," he shrugged, "you're Rain's daughter."

And with that, the alarm bells exploded inside me. This man knew my mother's nickname from high school. I wasn't safe here. Run, Marina. Run!

I tried bolting past him, as his body was blocking mine from the front door. As I approached, he reached out to grab me. I could feel his hand attempt to clasp around my arm, clenching just short of it, giving me an opportunity to slip by him. But as I made it to the exit, he caught up with me and slapped his hand against the closed door, barring me from opening it.

"Let me out!" I screamed.

"Let me talk first."

"No!"

Instinctively I thrust my elbow into his side. The jab was supposed to land in his kidney, but Mr. Martel spun at the last moment and I got his ribs instead, which sent a jolting pain through my arm.

Still, it seemed to work. He doubled over with a grunt, allowing me to get my hand on the doorknob and get it open.

But once I had run out into the bombardment of rain, I realized I had nowhere to go. My bike was still in the lobby. I hadn't called my father. Could I outrun him? An absurd thought popped into my head: Angela Peirnot slobbering over Mr. Martel's fit frame in class. He looked like he worked out every day. The answer was no.

So I turned to face him, and he was already standing out in the rain, hunched slightly, eyeing me like a tiger assessing the vulnerabilities of its prey.

"I'm not gonna hurt you," he said, rain plastering his button-down shirt against his formed chest.

I pushed the hair out of my face, shivering already as my finally dried sweater was dampened again. Thunder clapped above me like a steel drum, reverberating through my skin. "What do you want?"

"Like I said, just to talk."

"I don't trust you."

"You should," he immediately retorted. "I'm the only one who can help you. Please, Marina, come back inside."

I looked around for an escape, but I was trapped. Taking deep breaths, I let the rain wash over me for a moment longer, as though it could carry me away somehow, take me somewhere magical, a place where Kieren or Robbie or even my dad would be waiting for me.

Somewhere I'd be safe.

But there was no magic here. There hadn't been magic here in a long time.

Reluctantly, I walked towards the building again, around Mr. Martel, who knew better than to try to touch me, and into the lobby, where I shook myself off.

And a second later, the bells above the door told me he had followed me inside.

****

Keep reading for Chapter Five! Please leave a comment and vote if you're enjoying the story! 

XO- Rebecca