The Morning Victor Had Me Removed Beneath The Paper Stars

Victor waited until the sixth graders had found their seats before he called me a thief.

He stood under the dome with two school guards behind him. My sunrise test still glowed above his head. Thirty children watched a pink sky spread over Newark while he held out his hand for my keys.

"The portable projector is gone," he said. "You signed it out yesterday."

"For a lamp check. I signed it back in."

"We have camera footage."

I was Nazanin Shafiei, twenty-seven, an Iranian American woman with brown skin, thick dark eyebrows, and black curls I pinned above my collar.

My badge said PLANETARIUM TECHNICIAN. At our public school planetarium in Newark, New Jersey, I earned $26 an hour fixing focus rings, checking dome seams, and teaching children why the moon did not make its own light.

I also drew stars on the backs of old work orders. I joined them into things no sky had ever held: a kettle, a bent spoon, a hand carrying a chair.

That morning, the scrap beside my console held the constellation of a stapler.

Victor Sloane was a broad white man of fifty-one, with pale eyes, silver hair combed flat, and a gold tie clip shaped like a key.

He tapped that little key whenever he wanted someone to feel small.

"Don't make this harder," he said.

Leif Andersson stepped away from his class. He was thirty-two, Swedish American, tall enough to duck beneath our service door, with fair hair that never lay flat.

"Take this outside," he told Victor.

"Your students can learn that actions have consequences."

A boy in the front row tucked his school bag between his shoes. He looked at mine as if the missing machine might be inside it.

The projector cost $11,864. It traveled to classrooms too far from the dome and schools whose buses never got approved. Its case had one crooked wheel. I had asked for a $38 replacement twice.

"Show me the footage," I said.

"Personnel will handle that."

"Then give me the complaint in writing."

Victor's thumb pressed his tie clip.

One guard, Mr. Bell, lowered his voice. "Please, Ms. Shafiei."

I placed my keys in his palm. They sounded very small.

At the rear of the room, above the last row, my calibration rig showed a steady amber light. Its two wide lenses faced opposite ways. During an empty-room test, it captured the dome, the floor, and both doors in one joined image.

The district security cameras belonged to Victor's office. The calibration recorder had no network cable. I was its assigned records keeper, and every test lived on a card behind a numbered seal.

Victor had once called it my expensive little hobby.

Now he pointed toward the exit.

"Leave the bag."

"You may inspect it with a witness. You may not keep it without a receipt."

Leif moved beside the console. "I'll witness."

They found my lunch, a bus pass, a paperback, and eleven scraps of invented sky. Victor lifted a drawing of the crooked wheel between two fingers.

"Quite a lot of spare time."

Nobody laughed.

Outside, the wind lifted grit from the curb. A bus idled by the school fence. I stood beside it while Victor told Mr. Bell to make sure I left district property.

I walked toward Broad Street with my bag pressed to my ribs. Beyond the buildings, the Passaic lay under the same pale morning I had just made on our ceiling.

My phone showed a message from personnel before I reached the bus stop.

Paid administrative leave. Do not enter the building. Do not contact visiting students. Attend a fact-finding meeting Thursday.

The last line said I must preserve district records in my possession.

I read that line twice.

Then I called our union office.

"They walked you out in front of children?" Rina Cross asked.

"Yes."

"Write down every word you remember. Don't guess."

At my kitchen table, I used the back of an overdue gas bill. The balance was $94.17. My hands shook enough to turn Victor's name into a dark knot.

I wrote the time. I wrote who stood where. I wrote that he had refused to show me his footage.

Then I opened my work email from my home computer, which my leave notice still allowed. I sent personnel and Rina one short note.

Please preserve all security video, access logs, checkout records, and the calibration recorder and its card for this morning. The recorder is district property. Its empty-room sequence may be relevant.

I attached the rig's service sheet. My name appeared in the box marked RECORDS CUSTODIAN. Leif's name was below mine as the teacher who checked each weekly seal.

I did not claim the camera had caught Victor. I had not seen its images.

I only knew that the room had a second memory.

At 4:46, Leif called.

"I have to tell you something," he said.

Through his phone, I heard the slow click of the dome cooling.

"Victor ordered me to clear your rig before six."