Stop looking at the door, Vera told herself. Aloud, she said: “All right, Loo. What’ve you got?”
Harmony Phelps raised her hand and began speaking before Vera called on her. “Is it okay if we don’t talk about this? I don’t think it’s right after what happened to Sufia.”
“This has nothing to do with Sufia,” Loo shot back.
“It’s in poor taste to talk about stuff like that now.”
Almost merrily, Loo said, “But check this out—it comes right from the book’s title. Holden mentions how he wants to be the catcher in the rye after he hears this poem that goes, ‘If a body catch a body coming through the rye.’ Get it? Catch a body?”
Before Vera could stop her, Harmony, lips pressed together and shaking her head in disgust, scraped away from her table and exited the classroom, slamming the door behind her to underscore her point.
“I’ll go get her,” Cecily-Anne said, already starting to rise from her seat.
“Would you, Cecily-Anne? Thank you,” Vera said. She knew she had to regain control of the classroom somehow before things got worse. Turning to the rest of the girls, she said, “Let me clarify something that might make you all feel a little bit better. The poem Holden refers to is by the Scottish poet Robert Burns, and Holden misunderstands its meaning. It’s about a man coming through the rye—you could think of it as wheat—and stealing a kiss from a girl he knows, who’s presumably wet from walking near the river.” She turned to the computer to find the poem on the Internet, turned on the overhead projector, and read it aloud to the class from the movie screen, ruing her lack of a Scottish brogue:
O Jenny’s a’ weet, poor body,
Jenny’s seldom dry:
She draigl’t a’ her petticoatie,
Comin’ thro’ the rye!
Gin a body meet a body
Comin’ thro’ the glen,
Gin a body kiss a body
Need the warld ken? . . .
The poem’s last syllable was still ringing when Loo said, “Yeah, but even so, Holden thought it was a body, and he wants to stand there at the end of a cliff catching kids’ bodies. That’s what he wants to do with his life. It’s like he wants to be a child killer. Or maybe a future child molester. Or maybe both.”
“Can we please just change the subject?” Autumn Fullerton said. “Seriously.”
Vera saw that Autumn and Harmony weren’t the only ones bothered by this turn in the discussion; almost all the other girls looked worried. Only Loo Garippa remained unperturbed. Under different circumstances, Loo Garippa and I might have been friends, Vera thought. She may be a poser and an undercover pill-popper, but she’s got spirit. “I agree about changing the subject,” she said, “but let me just make a few more points for your consideration before we put a lid on this.”
Vera spent the next ten minutes trying to disabuse the class of this distressing notion Loo had put forth, citing instead Holden’s own childish nature and his unrealistic desire for heroism—a would-be savior to children rather than a destroyer of them. But at least half the girls seemed stuck on the other interpretation, as though catcher in the rye might be a synonym for bogeyman. Frustrated by her failure to contain the discussion and increasingly worried when it became evident neither Harmony nor Cecily-Anne was coming back and that Jensen Willard was not going to show up at all, Vera let the class out ten minutes early.
She was nearly an hour into correcting papers when someone rapped on the door frame of her open classroom. The force of the rap caused her to look up with a start. Without waiting to be invited in, a man had already advanced halfway to Vera’s table.
He wore a spotless white collared shirt and dark-colored pants and carried a clipboard and some folders under his arm; for a minute Vera entertained the idea that a Mormon missionary might be making the rounds, intending to convert the Wallace School teachers one by one. Did that actually happen? She had heard stories of incensed Christians showing up at the school in the past, protesting the inclusion of an elective class called the History of Paganism.
The man had reached her table before she had decided if she should stand up or not. There was something about the way he walked toward her, something purposeful in his stride, that suddenly gave her a sense of real trouble.
“Vera Lundy?”
“Yes?”
He reached into his pocket, took out what looked like a leather wallet, and opened it matter-of-factly, flashing a police badge and replacing it before she could feel anything other than stunned. “I’m Detective Ray Ferreira with the Dorset Police Department. I understand you have some time between classes right now.”
Another figure appeared uninvited into the classroom then—a woman. Vera had just registered the newcomer’s impressive height and her faded red hair, which pointed wildly in all directions, when Ferreira said to this newcomer, “There you are. What took you so long?”
“I got waylaid talking to the department chair,” Detective Helen Cutler said. “Chatty little thing, isn’t she, Vera? Hope I didn’t miss anything good here. I take it you’ve met Detective Ferreira.”
“Yes,” Vera said. “Is this about Sufia again? I still don’t remember anything other than what I’ve told you. But please . . . please have a seat, Detective. Sit down, both of you.”
Cutler shut the classroom door while Ferreira pulled up a chair across from Vera’s table, then a second chair for his partner. Sitting there, Ferreira looked like an aging, oversized student with an adult man’s face; Vera wondered how she could ever have mistaken him for a clean-scrubbed missionary. His features were far too angular and knowing for that. As for Cutler, her complexion looked like she exfoliated with sandpaper. The bemused twitch of her lips that had been present during the school assembly was nowhere in sight.
Clearing his throat, Ferreira said, “Jensen Willard is a student in one of your English classes, is that right? I understand you’ve only been subbing a short time.”
“That’s right. I just started.” Stricken, Vera realized that somehow, deep down, she had known as soon as he’d flashed his badge that this would not be about Sufia but about Jensen Willard.
“When was the last time you saw Jensen in class?”
“Last Friday.”
“That squares with what’s on the attendance records. Any chance you saw her after that? Outside of class?”
Vera fell silent. “No,” she said. The word escaped from her before she premeditated the lie. All she could think was Jensen’s run away. She’s found her own way to escape somehow, and she wouldn’t want me to let on that I know. She looked from one detective to the other, wondering why Cutler was so quiet, why she was just taking notes while Ferreira did the talking. “Detective, please. What is this all about?”
“Jensen Willard hasn’t been seen since Friday night. Her parents have filed a missing persons report.”
“Does your niece know this?” Vera asked Cutler.
The female detective raised an eyebrow in response, still jotting something down in her notepad. “She doesn’t yet, although I don’t see what that has to do with anything. Chelsea will be told later today.”
“But . . .”
“But?” It was Ferreira’s turn to cock an eyebrow, wreathing his forehead in deep lines. His eyes held hers with an alertness that made her feel quite exposed. He wasn’t stupid, this detective—that much she could tell. She couldn’t assume that Cutler was stupid, either. Vera thought as fast as she could, sorting out fiction and fact and erring on the side of the latter.
“I called Jensen’s house on Friday night. Her mother said she was at a sleepover.”
Ferreira nodded. “Jensen’s mother indicated that you had called Friday night. I wanted to check in with you about that. What were you calling about on a Friday? Did it have anything to do with those journals she was writing for you?”
“No,” Vera said
. “I mean, sort of. I did want to talk about her writing.” He already knows about the journals, Vera thought. Maybe he’s even read them.
“And this couldn’t wait till Monday?”
Vera frowned. “I guess it could have,” she said. The stunned feeling was beginning to wash away, replaced by an engulfing sense of shame. She was thinking so many competing thoughts that no single, clear idea could emerge. All she could see was an image in her mind of Jensen waving good-bye as she crossed the street, her hands looking like small, white mittens in the dark. What could possibly have happened to her between there and her house, just a few yards away from where Jensen had left her? “Wow,” she said, beginning to realize the implications of it at last, “this is terrible. Is that why you’re talking to me? Because I spoke to her mother on the phone? Or is it . . . is it because of Sufia? Of me finding Sufia?”
“We’re asking some routine questions of some of her teachers, Vera, and we plan to speak to some of the students, too. You just happen to be first on our list.”
“I see,” Vera said. She didn’t buy it. “The other teachers—well, I don’t know that they’d have much insight to offer. Maybe you could try talking to Melanie Belisle? She was her teacher from September to February, and she might know more than I do.”
“She’s already on our list.”
“Oh, good. What about talking to Jensen’s friends? I know she doesn’t have very many. She used to be friends with a girl named Annabel Francoeur, who lives in her neighborhood. She had a friend named Scotty from her previous school. I don’t know his last name. Oh, and she had a boyfriend who goes to Columbia now.”
“Boy, you’re right on top of things, aren’t you, Vera?” Cutler said, looking up from her notes. “But you’re not ahead of us. You can be sure of that.”
Feeling herself blush, Vera said, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to imply that you aren’t on top of things yourself. I guess I’m just trying to be helpful. Can I ask you something? Do you think—You can’t possibly think Jensen’s dead, do you?” Her shoulders jumped as the word dead came out of her mouth.
Both Ferreira and Cutler seemed to give this some thought, as though deliberating whether the question was worth answering. “Can’t really speak to anything at the moment,” Ferreira said at last. “We’ve taken the hard drive from her computer. Kid didn’t use the Internet much—no social networking stuff, which is rare for kids these days—but it turns out she wrote a lot. School files, poetry, stuff that might be fiction. Hard telling what’s what. Then there’s that journal. That’s the other thing we wanted to ask you about.”
Ferreira took out one of the folders he was carrying and, with a knowing glance at Cutler, tossed it in front of Vera. The gesture was intended for full dramatic import, she knew; he could have simply placed it in front of her instead of chucking it like that. She also knew what it was without opening the cover. She made no move to open it.
“Here’s the hard copy of something we found in her room. School assignment. I assume you’ve read it since it’s got your comments on it.”
“Yes,” Vera said. She made herself look at the folder, turning some of its pages. “Those are my comments. I wrote those.”
“Interesting little writing exercise. Fifteen-year-old kid writing about bombs . . . guns . . . suicidal thoughts. Any of that strike you as cause for concern when you were reading it?”
Detective Cutler wasn’t writing anything in her notepad now. She was staring Vera down. “The things you talk about in class might also be considered cause for concern. One has to wonder what place they have in an English class.”
Vera shook her head, the sort of head shake tourists give when asked for directions in a language they don’t understand.
Ferreira took the folder from Vera and turned to a page that was flagged with a Post-it note. “You say in your written comment, ‘You make some statements that might alarm some readers. I want you to know that I don’t disregard these comments, but I am not easily shocked by them, either.’ You don’t think it’s shocking, a kid writing something like that? You don’t think you maybe should have reported this to someone in the school?”
She found her voice. “As I say later on in that written comment, I was aware that Jensen had had some therapy in the past and apparently had been referred by the dean. I felt she was covered and cared for.”
“You also say, ‘I am someone you can always come to with such thoughts and issues, and if coming to me with them helps, then so much the better.’ Did she come to you with any issues outside of what she wrote here, Miss Lundy?”
“Nothing beyond what she wrote here.”
“You seem a little nervous.”
“I am nervous. This is extremely upsetting. Jensen Willard is a good student. A very bright young woman.” Vera was finding it hard to keep up with both the detectives’ unrelenting eye contact. “I’m sorry about the nerves. I don’t know why I’m like this.”
“With all that you’ve experienced lately, I think you’ve got a pretty good excuse.”
“You aren’t suggesting anything, are you, Detective? You’re not suggesting . . .”
“Look, ma’am . . .” (Vera closed her eyes for a fraction of a second, annoyed that Ferreira had called her that). “We aren’t suggesting anything. Nine times out of ten, these missing teenagers turn out to be runaways, and there’s plenty reason to believe that the Willard kid falls in the same category. But with some of the things this kid has written, we’ve got to look into this seriously. Not to mention the recent death of one of her classmates—of which you are fully aware.” He got up without ceremony from the chair, not bothering to put it back where he’d dragged it from.
“We good here, Hel?” he asked his partner.
“We’re good,” she said.
Ferreira gathered up his clipboard and folders. “Some advice for you,” he said, looking down at Vera, who was still seated. “Trying to be the ‘cool teacher’ really does your students a disservice. Don’t be surprised if I come back to speak to you again. Here’s my card if you think of anything you want to add in the meantime.” And with that he was done with her, but on the two detectives’ way out the door, Cutler gave Vera a parting look that she could not interpret—was it pitying? Contemptuous?
Vera studied the card with the detective’s name on it. She felt as though she’d been taken to task; worse than that, she felt hurt. Nine times out of ten, these missing teenagers turn out to be runaways, Ferreira had said. On the surface it seemed more believable than any other explanation Vera could think of—but the more she thought about it, the less it made sense. Where would the girl have run to in the middle of the night? What else could have kept her from making it six houses down to her own front door, then, if not for running away? Don’t be surprised if I come back to speak to you again, the detective had said, and as Vera tapped the detective’s business card against the palm of her opposite hand, she heard his voice in her head, thick with insinuation.
She wondered if she would have been better off owning up to seeing Jensen on Friday night—better off admitting she’d met her in a hotel and walked her home afterward. It seemed as if she was in enough trouble just for not having reported the journals to a higher authority in the school. If he read the journals, Vera thought, he already at least knows about the hotel. Then she remembered that the last two pages Jensen had submitted were handwritten—the pages stating her intentions for that Friday night. The version the officer had in his possession was likely incomplete, stopping where the typescript ended. She looked at the card in her hand again. She should call him, she thought—for this was something he probably needed to know. The suicide threat—all of it.
She was so numb that she felt nothing at all when Sue MacMasters came into her classroom just minutes later. Sue had the same incredulous look she’d had when speaking to Vera about students with emotional difficulties who took medi
cation.
“Oh, Vera, what a mess,” she said, and for a second Vera thought she was referring to her role in it specifically—the mess she had made. “What an awful time for a student to go missing, right after we’ve lost Sufia. I’m sure this girl is a runaway, but what are the students going to think? I’d like to have Jensen Willard’s teachers meet with me in my office today at lunch. We need to discuss this problem amongst ourselves, I think. I’ll send out for sandwiches and things so that no one has to go hungry.”
The idea of going hungry was the last thing on Vera’s mind. “I’ll be there,” she said.
“I must say I’ve never had a conversation with the girl personally. But when that detective showed me her picture, I did recognize her. Small, mousy girl. Always wearing dark-colored clothing. Easy not to notice in the halls. Now, of course, I wish I’d paid more attention.”
Vera hadn’t been in Sue’s office since her final interview before being hired. Today, at the lunch hour, her boss’s rather nondescript space—Georgia O’Keeffe print on the wall, tear-off calendar propped on the desk next to pictures of her grown children—had been converted into what looked like the most joyless party imaginable, with a tray of cut-up submarine sandwiches on the center of Sue’s cleared-off desk alongside bottled water and lemonade and a plate of cookies. There were four other teachers in the room when Vera got there, all buzzing around the food and loading up paper plates before squeezing into their chairs; she had seen them around, seen them eyeing her archly whenever she hogged the photocopier, though the blond and bearded teacher—Tim Zabriskie, one of the few men who taught at Wallace—was the only one she could name.
“Thank you all so much for coming in here on short notice,” Sue MacMasters said. “I know we don’t have a lot of time, but since you all share Jensen Willard as a student, I thought perhaps we could benefit from talking about what’s happened.”
You all share Jensen Willard as a student struck Vera as a funny way to put it. She looked around at the other teachers—Tim Zabriskie, and then the weary-looking woman with the frizzy salt-and-pepper hair and the tapestry skirt, and two younger teachers with immaculately pressed clothing and what looked like expensive shoes. “Before we get started, I should quickly introduce Vera Lundy, who, as I’m sure you all know by now, is our long-term sub for Melanie,” she said. Vera gave a stiff, robotic nod. “Do any of you have any questions about what went on this morning? And since you all know Jensen Willard better than I do, is there anything in her behavior or class conduct or anything else that might suggest why the girl is missing?”
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