None of the other faculty seemed to want to take Sue’s questions head-on. They had other things they wanted to address first. The woman in the tapestry skirt, who turned out to be Jensen’s social studies teacher, complained that she felt her civil rights and morale were compromised by having a member of the police force invade the “safe haven” of Wallace. Jensen’s math teacher—Tim Zabriskie—said, “When I taught in public school in Lewiston, I had this happen once, where two students went missing. Turns out they went off to see a concert. That’s usually the way it goes with these kids.” The two younger teachers, who seemed to be friends, practically spoke in unison. One said that she had been trying to get Jensen to participate more in class by teaming her up with partners or small groups, but that the girl insisted on working alone and defying the structure of the group activities. The other said that Jensen had scored poorly on a recent French quiz, filling in the blanks with “nonsense words” instead of straightforward answers about shopping along the Champs-Élysées.
“She’s not a math person, I can tell you that much,” Tim Zabriskie said. “I’ve made her come in for extra help after school, and it’s clear she doesn’t understand a word I’m saying. She’s one of those ones who you really can’t teach if it’s something she doesn’t already know. How did she end up on scholarship again?”
“She won a national essay award during her freshman year in public school,” Sue MacMasters said. “Vera, even though you’ve only just joined us, I’m assuming you’ve had an opportunity to see some of her writing for yourself?”
The detectives hadn’t said anything to Sue about Jensen’s journals, then. Why would they not have mentioned it? Vera stammered that yes, she had read the girl’s writing, and added that she thought she wrote well. The insipid, inadequate words filled her with self-loathing as soon as they came out.
The experience of hearing other teachers talk about Jensen Willard left her feeling more displaced than ever. There were times when Vera had considered the possibility—knowing, of course, that it couldn’t be true—that she had conjured the girl into being. At times the girl had almost seemed like a backward projection of her younger self—especially in those first two weeks of teaching, when she had been smitten with the girl’s writing ability and sardonic wit. Now, at last, was proof that she existed outside of Vera’s mind—that others had seen her. They had not really seen her, but they had seen her in the limited way that most people actually see one another.
“Does she have a boyfriend? Maybe a girlfriend?” asked the social studies teacher. “She could have run off with someone. I assume the police will be looking into that.”
“I hope no one thinks it’s a crime,” one of the well-dressed teachers said. “Not another one. Though with all that’s happened here lately, I can see where someone might jump to that conclusion. With that poor little Galvez girl, and then the Somali girl.”
“Sufia,” Vera mumbled.
“Pardon? I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that, Vera,” Sue MacMasters said.
“I just said her name: Sufia. Sufia Ahmed.”
Some of the other teachers were talking over her—some with their mouths full. The second of the young teachers made a great production out of lifting her finger in the air, as though she wanted to have the floor, before chewing and swallowing her food. “Don’t you think we should have some kind of speech prepared for Jensen Willard’s classmates? It doesn’t seem right to have police coming in and out of the school and not have everyone clued in on what’s going on. I’m sure the rumor mill has already started. Especially if they start thinking this might have something to do with those other two murders.”
Sue MacMasters said that this was partly what she wanted to talk to them about. “The full story’s probably going to break in the Journal tomorrow. In view of that, I think an assembly tomorrow afternoon to address any concerns students might have wouldn’t be inappropriate. I would advise not saying anything to your students before that time. If somebody asks beforehand, best to say you have no information. We’ll let Dean Finister handle it.”
“Such a shame this kind of publicity is being attached to our school,” the teacher who had claimed the floor said.
“Regardless of recent events,” Sue said, “the school itself holds no responsibility. Of this we can be certain.”
• • •
Later that night, Vera walked all the way across town to the hotel where she’d met with Jensen on Friday. She went into the parking lot but didn’t go past the hotel doors; counting under her breath, her mouth moving as though feeling around for something, she turned around and slowly retraced her steps back to Pine Street, where Jensen lived. Not wanting to repeat her earlier mistake at the Ahmeds’ house by getting too close, she stood at the corner of Middle Street for a long time, staring down at the approximate spot where she’d last seen Jensen Willard; from there she could just make out the roof of the Cudahys’ house.
Feeling bolder, she crept six houses down the street, careful to situate herself behind a large pine tree across the street as she squinted at the Cudahys’ white Cape Cod with the blue Dodge parked in the driveway. She tried to think where a teenage girl might go if she were trying to disappear between this house and Middle Street. Perhaps she had cut through someone’s lawn as soon as she’d crossed the street and was out of Vera’s sight.
Or what about the bushes and hedges that flanked so many of the neighboring houses—were these places where an attacker might have hidden, waiting until just the right moment when he could grab Jensen unseen? Might he have hidden behind the exact tree Vera stood behind, across the street from the girl’s house, watching both females come closer in the dark? For all she knew, he had watched them for some time. Maybe he’d had it all planned out. That was what Ivan Schlosser had done with his three victims—watched them until he knew just the right time to pluck one off the street, another from her school yard, and the third from the house where she was babysitting an infant boy.
In the early days, before anyone knew what had happened to Schlosser’s victims, those who knew them remarked that it was as if the earth had opened up and swallowed them whole. In the weeks following Heidi Duplessis’s disappearance, Vera had often lain in her bed at night and imagined Heidi Duplessis being swallowed by a crack in the earth, sucked gently into its center until the earth closed over her again. It was more comforting to think of her this way, nestled in the center of the world and curled up in permanent sleep—though the reality of such disappearances, Vera had known even then, was never that gentle or peaceful.
Rilke’s sonnet, the one that had come to mind when she’d found Sufia’s body, returned to her again, as intimate as a hushed voice in the dark:
She made herself a bed in my ear
And slept in me.
Her sleep was everything . . .
Vera rested her forehead against the trunk of the tree. She felt dizzy. Tomorrow, she thought, she would call Detective Ferreira and apologize for not having told them everything sooner.
• • •
The next day was afflicted with a heavy, grayish, pelting rain. Vera went into the bodega on her morning walk to school to pick up some coffee, struggling with closing her umbrella and getting her big, wheeled suitcase through the door. She was waiting in line behind someone buying scratch-off tickets, selecting which ones he wanted with the indecision and anticipation of a kid picking out penny candy, when she saw the newspaper headline.
Pulling the paper off the rack, she saw Jensen Willard’s face looking up at her, one eye half shut against the camera flash and wall-to-wall bookshelves behind her. Vera recognized this as the photo Jensen had written about, the one taken in Dr. Rose’s apartment on Riverside Drive; the girl would be mortified, Vera thought, to know that was the photo the newspaper chose to run.
Feeling that peculiar sense of calm that sometimes overtook her at the least likely times, she added the pape
r to her purchase, being careful to zip it in her suitcase so that it wouldn’t get wet. She had just enough time to read it before her first-period class started. It was the first thing she did when she arrived in her classroom; she didn’t even remove her coat or turn on the classroom lights or stop in the ladies’ room to fix her running mascara.
15-Year-Old Scholarship Girl Missing
Authorities in Dorset have begun a search for a scholarship student enrolled at the Wallace School who disappeared Friday evening and hasn’t been heard from since.
Jensen Willard, 15, was last seen on Friday at about 7 P.M., when she was dropped off at a Wheaton Road address by her stepfather. Willard had told her parents she was attending a sleepover at this address, but the elderly couple who resides there do not know Willard and did not receive a visit from a teenage girl that night. According to Dorset Police Officer Gerard Babineau, none of the neighbors spotted her, either.
“It is uncertain at this time whether she vanished voluntarily,” Babineau said.
Willard is described as a white female with dark-brown hair and brown eyes. She is 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighs approximately 98 pounds. She is believed to be wearing olive-colored pants, a black T-shirt, combat boots, and a long black coat. She was also carrying an army knapsack. Her mother, Linda Willard Cudahy, and her stepfather, Les Cudahy, are hopeful that making her photo public may help her to be found.
Anyone with information regarding the girl’s location is urged to contact the Dorset Police Department.
Vera was reading through the brief article a third time when Chelsea Cutler and Kelsey Smith came in. “Why is it dark in here?” Chelsea asked.
Vera wiped at her mascara-smudged eyes, ran a hand over her dampened hair, and got up to turn on the lights. “Is that today’s paper?” Chelsea asked, looking on Vera’s table. “Did you see that story about Jensen Willard being missing?”
“I did,” Vera said. She took the newspaper and folded it back into her suitcase, as though doing so might curb any further discussion on the issue. She removed the file of handouts she would need for the day.
“My aunt says they’re going to talk to all the registered sex offenders.”
“Oh my God, that’s so creepy,” Kelsey Smith said. “Are we having another assembly today? I heard we were going to.”
Other girls were starting to come in. Some had heard about the morning news, and some had not. Those in the know were happy to fill in those who weren’t.
“As far as I know, yes, there will be an assembly today,” Vera said, raising her voice above the hullabaloo the girls were creating. “I don’t really know what it’s going to entail.”
“It’s really weird to think about missing persons,” Loo Garippa said. “To think somebody can just be there one day, and the next day they’re just gone. And sometimes they’re never found at all. It’s like they never even existed.”
Vera tsked a little. “I am sure Jensen will be found.”
“Yeah,” Loo said. “She might be found like Sufia!”
“Now, listen . . .” Vera began.
“My aunt says it’s suspicious,” Chelsea said. “She says they know a lot of things that they can’t say in the newspaper yet.”
“I heard Jensen had a boyfriend somewhere,” Jamie Friedman said. “But he’s older. He’s, like, in his thirties or something. Maybe he had something to do with it.”
“Please,” Vera said. “Stop it. It’s bad enough that you’re speaking about the girl when she isn’t here. Worse still that you’re referring to her in the past tense. Everyone take out your copies of Literary Horizons. In addition to our regular assigned reading from The Bell Jar, there will be an essay test on the poems of Edgar Allan Poe tomorrow.”
She had never spoken so severely to her class before. Some of them looked as though they’d been stung, while others—Loo Garippa, Harmony Phelps, and the two modelesque girls especially—put on sullen expressions so quickly that Vera suspected they’d been keeping them in reserve.
Vera directed the girls to “Annabel Lee.” She realized, as she began reading it aloud, that this poem that focused on the loss of Poe’s very young ladylove was perhaps going to be more difficult to discuss than she’d anticipated.
“It’s so singsongy,” Loo objected when Vera had finished the reading the poem out loud.
“I think it’s beautiful.” Jamie, the class conscience, seemed to be trying to make amends for her comment about Jensen and a boyfriend. “It sounds like a rhyme a child would say, and maybe that’s because he was in so much pain that he was reduced to childlike state.”
Vera let the class take the discussion with little interference. She feared she would not have been able to say much even if she’d wanted to, for a large lump had lodged itself into her throat and stayed there. She reserved a few minutes at the end of class to review some of the literary terms she wanted the students to be aware of for the next test. When class was over, an announcement came on the intercom—Dean Finister’s voice—summoning them all to the auditorium for another assembly at 10:00 A.M.
• • •
The mood in the auditorium was different from the mood during the assembly memorializing Sufia Ahmed. Instead of appearing wounded and disoriented, the students and faculty presenters seemed tense, as though Jensen Willard’s disappearance were just one other thing that was meant to test their endurance.
“Jensen Willard,” Dean Finister was saying from the stage, “our newest sophomore and already one of our finest students, has now been missing for several days.” Next to Dean Finister, a photo of Jensen Willard filled the old movie screen—that unfortunate photo from Dr. Rose’s apartment again. As Dean Finister talked, all Vera could think about was Jensen’s account of how he’d buttonholed her in the halls to tell her, You look sad today. Would he mention that sadness, Vera wondered? Did he even make the connection between the girl whose blown-up image stood next to him and the girl who’d wept in his office till her makeup bled? If he did, he gave no sign of it. The dean spoke of Jensen’s close relationship with her parents, of her past writing award, and of the “independent nature” that several of her teachers had described her as having. Vera compared this to what she had heard from the girl’s teachers in Sue MacMasters’s office and, with supreme effort, kept a derisive sound from coming out of her closed-up throat. She leaned against the wall, arms wrapped around her stomach, away from the rows of chairs where the students sat.
The students were unusually quiet and attentive during this assembly. They became even quieter when Dean Finister introduced police officer Gerard “Gerry” Babineau. As Babineau got up from his metal seat onstage and approached the podium, Vera found herself shrinking back against the wall, hoping he wouldn’t notice she was there. “We want you to continue your classes as normal,” the officer said, “and go about your daily lives just as normal, too. But at the same time, we ask you to keep your eyes and ears open. One bit of information that may be helpful: Jensen said she was going to visit a friend named Phoebe when she was last seen. Her parents don’t recall the exact last name Jensen gave them. Their best guess is Collins or Crawford. We do know that the address and phone number she gave for Phoebe was false, but we have not been able to identify who Phoebe is, if she is in fact a real person. If any of you know someone with a name like Phoebe Collins or Phoebe Crawford, this could be of great help to the police.”
Vera could have sworn she felt a stirring as some faces in the seats turned toward her. She picked out Martha True’s face, pale and troubled. Officer Babineau was still talking, reviewing statistics of missing persons and missing teenagers in particular, but Vera heard only his closing lines: “Let’s do what we need to do to get Jensen home right away.”
Some of the students started to clap. The smattering of applause grew until it seemed to rise in the air and warm the whole auditorium, creating a dense, bright heat.
&
nbsp; Vera realized that she was having a difficult time balancing the weight of her own body. She stumbled down the aisle of the auditorium, past other standing teachers, and toward the exit, where she saw Sue MacMasters standing there, blocking her way.
“Are you all right?” Sue exclaimed over the applause.
“No,” she said. “I mean—it’s my stomach. I feel very faint.”
“Go home,” Sue said without hesitation. “I can get someone to cover your other two classes.”
“Oh, Sue, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t even worry about it. You look awful. You’ve probably already pushed yourself too hard today.”
Vera mumbled a thank you and fled, stopping only to retrieve her things from the teachers’ lounge. Tim Zabriskie was in there, tucked into one of the small round tables. “Bailing out on the assembly?” he said. “I figured I’d hide in here and get caught up on some work. Don’t tell anyone.” He was correcting a set of math exams, writing X’s next to errors with the zeal of one solving a puzzle.
Vera nodded, avoiding his eyes as she put on her coat and hat and grabbed her suitcase by the handle. How could he not notice something was wrong with her? Why was it that so few people ever noticed anything? And how could he not know just from looking at me, Vera thought, that I would be the last person to ever tell anyone anything?
• • •
Home in her studio apartment, Vera logged into the Center for Missing and Exploited Children website and typed Jensen Willard into the search window. Sure enough, Jensen’s picture—a different one from what the newspaper had printed—appeared on the screen along with a list of basic information: case number, case type, sex, race, date of birth, height, weight, hair color, eye color. The photograph looked like a Wallace School ID picture; it had the same unforgiving, muddy-gray backdrop as Vera’s own faculty ID, which had been snapped in the admissions office.
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