A Line in the Dark

by Malinda Lo

  The relationship between Krause and Dupree was documented in a series of letters, including one or more which the police received from an anonymous source. The letters reportedly reveal that Dupree’s teacher encouraged her attachment to him and promised to take her on weekend trips away.

  “We are shocked by the news that Jonathan Krause was engaged in this relationship with Ryan Dupree, and he has been terminated from his position at Pearson Brooke immediately, without severance,” said Cheryl Donovan, Pearson Brooke Academy’s Head of School, in a statement. “Our thoughts and prayers remain with Ryan’s family, and we continue to cooperate in any way we can with the police.”

  Students described Krause as a charismatic and engaging teacher with boyish good looks and an open, friendly nature. “He was always really nice,” said one Pearson Brooke student who had enrolled in his Modern English Poets class. “He was really sympathetic and seemed to care about everyone. This whole thing is really sad.”

  Other students characterized Dupree as the possible aggressor. “Ryan wasn’t exactly a nice girl,” said one classmate. “I can see how she might have manipulated him into being with her.”

  But Pearson Brooke faculty and administrators emphasized that the responsibility fell on Krause, not on Dupree, who was a minor. “She was only sixteen,” said one faculty member. “[Krause] took advantage of her, and his behavior is shameful.”

  Police declined to draw a clear connection between the illicit relationship and Dupree’s death, but a source close to the investigation confirmed that Krause was visiting family in Ohio the night that Dupree disappeared, and did not return until Jan. 2, thus providing him with a solid alibi. However, the investigation has also uncovered significant tension between Dupree and an unidentified fellow student regarding her relationship with Krause, which may have played a role in Dupree’s death.

  Krause, who left his apartment in East Bedford on Jan. 10, has not returned to the area since then. He did not respond to several requests for comment.

  JESSICA’S FATHER PULLS INTO A PARKING SPACE FACING the commuter rail station in West Bedford. “Your brother will meet you at North Station,” he says.

  Jess unbuckles her seat belt and reaches for the door. “I know, Dad.”

  “You go only with your brother to the event, and then you come back. You know the train schedule for tonight?”

  She opens the door, letting in a draft of cold air. “Yes, I know. You gave me the schedule.” She climbs out of the car and into the chilly afternoon.

  “Jessica!”

  She turns back to look at her dad before she closes the door. “What?”

  He shakes his head at his daughter, then waves his hand in resignation. “Call us if you need anything.”

  “Bye, Dad.” She pushes the door closed and starts to walk toward the platform, but she doesn’t hear the car pull away. She glances back; her father is sitting in the car watching her, and makes no move to leave. Down the platform a girl in a puffy blue coat straightens away from the wall where she was leaning, glancing in her direction. Jess turns away from her and stands facing the empty tracks, pulling her phone out to send a text. He’s still here, prob waiting for train. Don’t come over.

  The frigid air freezes the insides of Jess’s nostrils. By the time the train comes five minutes later, she’s bouncing on her toes to keep warm. She looks over her shoulder at her dad and waves at him as the conductor steps out onto the platform. Inside the train, the heat is on full blast and she pushes back her hood as she moves down the aisle toward the next car, looking for the girl in the puffy blue coat. Finally Jess sees Angie enter the car from the opposite end. She waves at Jess as the train starts to move.

  They meet midway, and Angie flashes a grin at Jess. “He didn’t see me, did he?”

  “I don’t think so,” Jess says, and they slide into two empty seats together. Angie’s cheeks are rosy from the cold, and when she pulls off her wool hat, static electricity makes some of her hair stand straight up. “Your hair,” Jess says, laughing, and Angie makes a face and tries to flatten it down.

  “You sure your brother isn’t going to tell?” Angie asks.

  “He’s not gonna tell,” Jess assures her. Outside the windows, bare trees whip past as the train speeds toward Boston.

  “Do you think—” Angie cuts herself off as her phone dings. Frowning, she pulls it out of her pocket and checks the message. Her forehead furrows as she starts texting back.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Margot,” Angie says, still texting.

  Jess eyes Angie’s phone. “Something wrong?”

  Angie shakes her head briefly. “She’s just worried. She doesn’t like that I’m going with you to this thing.”

  “Why not?”

  Angie sends her message and looks out the window. “Why do you think?”

  The heart that Jess drew on Angie’s left hand has faded. Angie’s nails are bitten short, the skin around her fingertips red and rough. She doesn’t normally bite her nails.

  The phone dings again, and Angie looks at it immediately, her mouth drawn into a tight line. “I’m sorry,” she mutters. “I’m turning off my phone after this.” She responds to Margot’s latest text and then depresses the power button, putting her phone away. She turns to Jess with a forced smile. “This is going to be so fun,” she says. “I’m so excited to get away from everything for a little while.”

  Jess asks, “Are you sure you’re okay? Is Margot upsetting you?”

  Angie’s false smile vanishes. She shakes her head and looks down at her hands. “Let’s just have fun, okay?”

  —

  Justin is sitting on one of the wooden benches near the Dunkin’ Donuts inside North Station, staring at his phone. He doesn’t see Jess until she’s standing right in front of him. “Justin,” she says.

  He starts in surprise, looking up at Jess and then at Angie beside her. “Hey,” he says. “Angie, hey. What’re you doing here?”

  Angie smiles at him. “I’m coming too!”

  “You can’t tell Mom and Dad,” Jess warns him.

  Justin looks a little puzzled. “I can’t—why?”

  “Just don’t tell them Angie’s here. Please.”

  He shrugs. “Okay, whatever.” He stands up. “You ready?”

  “So ready,” Jess says.

  He shoots her a puzzled look, but nods. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  “You don’t have to go to the event if you don’t want,” Jess says as they walk through the station toward the exit.

  “Are you saying you don’t want me to go?” Justin asks.

  “No, if you want to go, that’s cool. I just know that Mom and Dad are making you babysit me and it’s not really necessary. Angie and I can go on our own if you just show us where it is.”

  He considers the two girls and says, “I told them I’d call when we get there.”

  “Oh my God, really? That’s so stupid! I’m not twelve!”

  He shakes his head. “No, but someone just got murdered in the neighborhood, Jess. Be real. They’re a little freaked-out.”

  “They’re just trying to prevent me from having a life,” Jess grumbles.

  “I think they’re just realizing you actually had one,” he says.

  At the exit, Justin holds open one of the doors. “Thanks,” Angie says, walking through.

  Justin grabs Jess’s arm for a second, and she looks at him. “What?”

  “You okay?” he asks.

  Jess frowns. “Yeah, why?”

  “You know you can tell me if something’s going on, right?” He lowers his voice. “With your friend?” His eyes flicker toward Angie, who has stopped and stands waiting a few feet away, trying to look like she’s not listening.

  Jess doesn’t meet her brother’s gaze. “Nothing’s going on,” she says gruffly. �
�Let’s go.”

  —

  The building where the event takes place is a six-story glass box with a curving roof near the Charles River. Inside, a multistory atrium is crisscrossed by stairs painted in bright primary colors, and as Justin takes Jess and Angie to the glass elevators, they walk past a steel mesh sculpture hanging in midair like a space-age snakeskin. Jess stands at the rear of the elevator, gazing down at the rapidly receding ground floor. “What do they do in here?” she asks, her breath misting the glass wall.

  “They build totally insane stuff,” Justin says. “Robots and prosthetics and all sorts of cool things.”

  On the sixth floor, signs for the event direct them into a circular auditorium that looks like the interior of a flying saucer. Several rows of seats arc to face the front of the room, while a curved wall of windows at the rear overlooks a terrace with views of the Boston skyline. The city lights have begun to come on in the fading daylight.

  Two of Justin’s friends have saved seats in the second row on the left side. The audience is mostly college students, and about half of them are Asian, like the two speakers. Chen Ning, the author of the Yellow Empress comics, is small boned and petite, dressed in an asymmetrical lime-green dress and knee-high, chunky brown boots. Her long black hair is loose over her shoulders, and she wears a wide, hammered silver necklace that looks like a collar. Erin Mei Tan, the illustrator, is taller and huskier. Her black hair is shaved on one side and dyed blue on the other, partly spiked up and partly trailing over one shoulder. She wears jeans and sneakers and a black-and-white plaid shirt, along with a fluorescent-pink tie.

  “Queer,” Angie whispers in Jess’s ear.

  “Which one?” Jess whispers back.

  “Obviously blue hair is queer, but I don’t know about the other one.”

  “Since when have you become such an expert?”

  Angie grins but doesn’t reply because Chen Ning, who introduces herself as Nina, has begun speaking. The two women have a slide show to accompany their presentation, in which they talk about their collaboration on Yellow Empress. Images are projected onto a giant screen behind them, beginning with black-and-white storyboards that they worked on together. In a series of slides they show the development of the main character in the initial concept stage—cycling through various historically inspired costumes—and how the art development supported and inspired the character development.

  “We never thought Yellow Empress would get this big,” Erin Mei Tan says, laughing a little. “We thought it was just this weird little webcomic that had its little Asian internet niche, you know?”

  “And now we’re on a tour!” Nina says. She has a slight Chinese accent. “My parents never expected this. I think they are a little shocked, actually. They wanted me to be a doctor. I was even premed in college.”

  Erin says, “That’s because Nina came to the US as a kid. Her parents are Taiwanese immigrants. Mine are Chinese Filipinos from Daly City. I think they gave up on the Asian American dream for me when I got my first tattoo at fifteen.”

  Laughter ripples through the audience, and someone calls out, “What do they think of Yellow Empress?”

  Erin smiles. “You know, I think they’re very proud. They probably thought I’d end up working at my uncle’s restaurant, so I’ve actually become an overachiever.” She spreads her hands out as if to say who, me? “And look at me now—here I am at MIT. Someone take a picture so I can show my parents!”

  —

  “Can I borrow ten bucks to get the collectors’ edition?” Jess asks her brother.

  “Don’t you already have it?” he says.

  “No, I got them from the library. Plus this has character concept sketches, and I want it signed. I’ll pay you back.”

  He hands over a twenty. “Bring me the change.”

  “Thank you!”

  Jess and Angie head over to the sales and signing line, which snakes around the edge of the auditorium. As they approach the front, though, Jess starts to hang back, checking the time on her phone.

  “I don’t know if there’s enough time,” Jess says. “We have to catch the train back.”

  “We are not going until you get that signed,” Angie says. “We’re almost there, anyway.”

  “If we miss the train—”

  “We’re not going to miss it.” Angie puts her arm around Jess’s shoulders, steering her forward. “You’re not getting out of this.”

  Chen Ning is first at the signing table. She smiles at Jess and Angie as they approach, and Jess hands over the comic book with a yellow Post-it on which she wrote her name.

  “Jess?” Nina asks.

  Jess nods mutely. Nina signs across the cover with a flourish, then passes the book over to Erin, who clicks her Sharpie open and adds her signature in metallic silver ink.

  “Jess is an artist too,” Angie says.

  “That’s great,” Erin says. The edge of a tattoo peeks out from the collar of Erin’s shirt. She asks Jess, “What do you draw?”

  “Um . . .” Jess flushes self-consciously.

  “She draws comics,” Angie says. “She’s super talented. Did your parents really think you’d end up working at your uncle’s restaurant?”

  Erin grins. “Yeah, they really did.”

  “Did you ever take any art classes or did you teach yourself?” Angie asks.

  Jess tries to edge away from the table, but Angie shoots her hand out and grabs Jess, not letting her go. Erin’s eyes flicker to their hands, then to Jess’s pink face.

  “I did take some art classes,” Erin says. “I took a few years off after high school and then went back to art school. What are you thinking about doing?”

  “Um, I don’t know,” Jess mumbles. “I haven’t thought about it.”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out,” Erin says. “Everyone does. You have plenty of time.”

  Nina leans toward them and adds, “I’ll give you my advice, okay? Don’t be premed if you don’t want to be a doctor.”

  Erin laughs. “Wise words.”

  ANGIE AND JESS BOLT OUT OF THE T STATION, TAKING THE stairs two at a time. “You said we weren’t going to miss the train!” Jess says.

  “We’re not going to miss it,” Angie insists.

  She grabs Jess’s hand as they run toward the station across the slippery street. Snow whips into Jess’s eyes and stings her face. A car honks at them long and loud as they dodge traffic. They skid into the train station a minute before the scheduled departure time, but as they round the corner to the vaulted waiting room, they’re confronted by a throng of people clustered beneath the giant departure board overhead. Jess looks up at the board, and all of the scheduled trains now have the same word listed in the status column: CANCELED. A voice repeats over the PA system: “Due to weather-related incidents and the oncoming winter storm, all remaining trains for the evening are canceled. The MBTA regrets the inconvenience. Due to weather-related incidents . . .”

  Breathless from their sprint, surrounded by other angry travelers, Angie and Jess gape at the board above.

  “What are we going to do?” Angie asks.

  Jess realizes that she and Angie are still holding hands.

  —

  Justin meets them at the Kendall T station, his hands in his pockets and his wool hat pulled low over his forehead. The snow falls in heavy, wet flakes that quickly pile up against the curb. “Thanks for letting us stay with you,” Jess says.

  “Well, one of you is going to have to sleep on the floor, so don’t thank me yet,” he answers.

  It’s a ten-minute walk to Justin’s dorm through the snowstorm. Inside, they stamp their feet on the already damp entry mat, and Angie shakes crystals of snow out of her hair. Justin leads them up an echoing set of stairs to the third floor, then down the hall to his suite. He and his two roommates share a triple that incl
udes a common area with a kitchenette and a bathroom. Justin’s room is the smallest, but it’s a single; his roommates share a bigger room on the other side of the common area. In Justin’s room there’s only enough space for one twin-size bed, a desk, and a dresser. The floor next to the bed is covered by an old rag rug he brought from home.

  He takes a spare blanket from the closet and tosses it to Jess. “That’s all I have but I’ll see if Derek has clean sheets. I can give you a towel for a pillow.”

  “Really?” Jess says. “Jeez, thanks.”

  “I told you. Be grateful, because I have to sleep on the couch.” Justin gestures to the lumpy gray-and-tan plaid sofa in the common room, which looks like it was dragged up from the street.

  A tall, skinny Asian guy pokes his head out from the other bedroom. “Justin, what’s up?”

  “This is my little sister Jess,” Justin says. “And her friend Angie. They’re staying overnight because the trains were canceled. Jess, Angie, this is Derek.”

  “Hi,” Jess and Angie say in unison.

  “Hey,” Derek says.

  “Derek, you have extra sheets?” Justin asks.

  “Maybe,” Derek says.

  Justin goes into Derek’s room while Angie glances around the tiny space. “Why did I think MIT would have fancier dorms?” she asks.

  “I think Justin got a bad lottery number,” Jess says. Her phone vibrates. It’s her parents. “Hi, Mom,” she answers.

  “Are you at Justin’s?” her mother asks.

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “Let me talk to him.”

  Jess goes out into the common area. “Justin, Mom wants to talk to you!”