“Do you know something about what’s happened to her?”
In answer, Crystal sneaked a glance through the glass panel in the door and slouched lower in her chair, as if to hide herself from the students outside. “This is confidential, right? You can’t tell anybody...?”
Jenna nodded and was just trying to formulate the limits of confidentiality when Crystal leaned forward. “I think she was going to meet someone. I mean, not that I’m saying it was him! He’d never do anything like that. But I think she might have thought there was more going on with him than there was. She was—like—obsessed with him.”
“And he didn’t feel that way about her?”
“It was just a fling to him, you know. That’s the way him and his friends are. She’s pretty, and she’s sexy, and what guy wouldn’t go for her? But he could have any girl he wanted, and he wasn’t going to drop his whole life for her, you know what I mean?”
Jenna knew only too well. How many men had drooled over her own size D breasts and promised the moon just for a chance to get their hands on them? But women were just objects to them, one well-shaped body as good as the next. She’d told them all to go to hell.
“So what do you think happened?” she asked the girl.
“I don’t know what happened. I phoned her cell a bunch of times the day she disappeared, because I wanted to tell her not to push it. But she never answered. Never returned my calls either.” Crystal looked up, squinting through her eyeliner. “Do you think I should tell the police that?”
Jenna weighed the information the girl had provided. Beyond her speculation, she had very few facts. “Do you know the boy’s name?”
Crystal stiffened. “It wasn’t him. He had nothing to do with it.”
“But then...”
“That’s what I’m trying to say. If she didn’t get her way with him, she’d have freaked out. She thought she could get any guy she wanted—she usually did—but this one was different. That’s the point I’m not sure of. I don’t know what she’d do if she got upset.”
Jenna tried to make sense of her. “Then you’re worried she’s done something bad? What?”
“I don’t know!” Crystal burst out. “You’re the social worker. Run away? Killed herself?”
“Wait a minute. You think Lea might have killed herself?”
“Well, tried, you know? Taken a bunch of pills just to get his attention.” Crystal squinted at her again. “It happens, right? I mean, my mother once—”
“Has Lea ever talked about killing herself?”
“No, but then she thought this guy was over the moon for her. Romeo and Juliet, she said they were. And those two killed themselves, right? I saw the movie.”
Jenna sat forward in her chair, preparing to rise. “Crystal, I think you probably should talk to the police about this.”
“But I don’t really know anything.”
“Maybe not, but if it helps find Lea...”
“They’ll want to know the boyfriend’s name, right? He’s got a great future ahead of him. He doesn’t need his name dragged in just because she’s a drama queen.” She shoved her chair back and groped for the doorknob. “I feel better. I don’t think she’d kill herself. She’s too full of herself for that. Even if she swallowed a bunch of pills, she’d be sure to end up on his front doorstep so he’d know what he’d done to her.”
She yanked open the door. “Wait!” Jenna dived to intercept her and laid a restraining hand on her arm.
“She’s going to turn up all innocent surprise once she gives him a good scare. You wait and see,” Crystal said.
With that, she tore herself loose and flounced out the door.
* * *
Jenna spent the rest of the morning calming the fears of Lea’s friends and classmates, but she found her mind wandering back to what Crystal had said. Not about Lea’s tendency to play drama queen nor her possible histrionic suicide attempt, but about the boy she’d been involved with. A boy who had a great future ahead of him, who could have any girl he wanted, and who might view Lea’s demands as a mere inconvenience. Perhaps even more, as an obstacle to his pursuit of utter sexual abandon. The more she thought about it, the more she worried.
At noon, she headed down to the staff room to join the clusters of teachers opening their Tupperware lunches. Lea’s disappearance and the heavy-footed presence of the police were the talk of the room. She joined a table of three, including the scary Mrs. Lucas. No one paid her any attention, as a young man, clearly shaken, was voicing his outrage.
“The cops interviewed me three times. Three times! Once yesterday and twice today, the last time calling me out of the room in front of my entire class! That’s how rumours start, I tell you. I just teach the girl. I hardly know a thing about her, but because I’m a man—”
“And cute,” interjected a very pregnant, thirty-something woman. “Let’s face it, Nigel, half the girls are in love with you.”
“That’s hardly my fault,” Nigel exclaimed. “But apparently Lea told some of her friends she had a crush on me, and they told the cops. I’m telling you, I don’t even dare smile at a girl.”
Jenna rolled her eyes but kept her impatience to herself. Men always thought they had it so tough. Instead, she steered the conversation to her own concerns. “Does anyone know if she has a boyfriend?”
“Lea’s had lots of boyfriends,” Mrs. Lucas said. “She’s a pretty girl, but it hasn’t gone to her head. She still takes the time to be nice to everyone.”
“That’s refreshing,” the younger teacher said. “So many girls won’t give each other the time of day once they figure out the pecking order.”
Jenna tried to picture pretty, outgoing Lea in the middle of a group. Would people look up to her or ridicule her for talking to so-called losers? The distant pain of her own high school tinged her thoughts. Along with another memory of a boy even more inept than she was, who had followed her around like a lovesick puppy because she had been nice to him. He had turned up at the end of her laneway, outside her window in the dead of night, and finally on the shortcut through the woods from school to her house.
Her pulse quickened. “Sometimes it’s the quiet ones who adore from a distance that are the most dangerous.”
Heads swivelled towards her around the table. Eyes narrowed. “You’re talking as if something bad has happened to her,” Nigel said.
“Well, aren’t we all?” Mrs. Lucas countered. “I know Lea. I’ve taught her English for two years. She’d never leave her mother without a word. They were extremely close. She wrote me a journal piece once about how they escaped from Bosnia together on foot through the mountains after her father was killed by the Serbs. Lea felt a huge obligation to her mother, for all that she’d lost and given up so that Lea could be safe. She’d never cut off ties of her own free will. I agree with Jenna, she’s been abducted...or worse.”
That silenced the threesome for a moment. As the unspoken words “by whom?” hung in the air, Jenna’s thoughts returned to the boyfriend Crystal had described. The police should be looking for this boy. They should be dragging him down to the station— preferably over hot coals, she thought, indulging a private fantasy about all the sleazeballs she’d known—and they should be forcing him to confess to the part he’d played in her disappearance.
“Does anyone know who she’s going out with right now?” she asked.
Mrs. Lucas