"I'd rather not."

"You'd rather not talk? Or you just don't want to talk down here?"

"The last one."

Vera thought for a moment. She had come for a reason, and that was to help; she could be of no a.s.sistance to her student if she backed out now and let her walk away.

"I guess I could come up for just a few minutes," she said.

She followed her into the elevator and sighed as the door slid shut; after the door had closed and the elevator shaft jerked its way upward, Jensen murmured, "So how did you guess 'Phoebe'?"

Vera was relieved that Jensen had broken the silence and that her question was benign enough. "I didn't, exactly. I did call your house and get the name of your sleepover buddy. I take it your parents aren't big readers."

Jensen did not crack a smile as Vera had hoped she might. The girl might be playing it cool, but her nonresponse conveyed that this was still not a time for jokes. What's wrong with you? Vera reprimanded herself. Nerves? You can't botch this. You can't say stupid things. The elevator stopped at the fourth floor, and Jensen led Vera down the length of carpeting, stopping at the last door and opening it with her keycard.

Behind the door was a perfectly usual, perfectly drab hotel room. Two double beds with cheap, scratchy-looking floral comforters faced a TV tucked in a cabinet; the TV was on, but the volume was at its lowest setting, its voices reduced to staticky whispers. On a table near the large double windows, Vera saw a nearly full bottle of vodka and a carton of orange juice, plus an ashtray with a mostly unsmoked cigarette stubbed out in it. Next to the chair were Jensen's combat boots and beside that, her army knapsack, unbuckled and crumpled on the floor.

"I didn't know you smoked," Vera asked, then wondered why she had said that, of all the possible opening gambits she could have used. So much for not saying stupid things.

"I don't. But my parents do. I thought tonight might be a good night to start."

"I see you have two beds here. Why didn't you get a single room?"

"I think they made a mistake." Jensen sat down on the bed closest to the window in a ladylike fashion that was very much at odds with her clothes; she crossed her legs and sat up straight, looking like a conscientious girl preparing to get the most out of a cla.s.s.

"I'm surprised you even came down to meet me," Vera said, gingerly seating herself on the bed across from Jensen's. "I mean, I'm glad you did. Did you want me to be here, Jensen? Is that why you were so specific about your plans in your journal? You wanted to make sure I read the journal before tonight. You wanted to make sure I prevented you from doing anything."

"Not necessarily."

"Then why? Why tell me such things? I have to tell you, I don't know what to make of any of this. It's all so . . . irregular."

Jensen shrugged, stifled a yawn behind her hand, and directed her attention to the TV; Vera had a feeling this was an affectation, for her posture was still ramrod-straight. Vera's eyes followed the girl's and saw that an old Twilight Zone episode was on, featuring a young but already-balding Robert Duvall as a man who was in love with a doll-a beautiful, grown-up lady doll who lived in a museum dollhouse. She remembered the episode. It had been one of her favorites when she was a kid.

"Perhaps we can turn the TV off?" she suggested.

"I like The Twilight Zone. Hey, do you want a drink?" Jensen asked, springing up off the bed. "If you do, you could put it in the extra mouthwash cup."

"I don't think that's a good idea." She wanted to tell the girl that she probably shouldn't be drinking, either, but to do so seemed almost trivial under the circ.u.mstances.

"I don't even like alcohol all that much," the girl said, dumping vodka into her cup and topping it off with a splash of orange juice. "But I thought it might help me tonight. I have a fake ID my friend Scotty made me once, but I never had a chance to use it for anything." Then, without looking at Vera: "What'd my mom say to you on the phone?"

"Very little. But since you mention it, I should tell you that I didn't say much, either. I didn't give anything away. I didn't mention anything about what you'd hinted you would do here tonight-you know, the whole 'checking out' thing. When I called, I had every intention of saying something about it. But I changed my mind."

"Why?"

"That's a complicated question, Jensen."

"Why is not complicated. It's the answer that might be complicated."

"You're right about that," Vera admitted. "I don't know if I can answer that right this second."

"You know what? You look different outside a cla.s.sroom. Younger."

"I was just thinking that you look older, not sitting behind a desk."

It was a white lie of sorts; Jensen, having resumed her position on her bed, looked younger than Vera had ever seen her look. But she could tell the comment pleased her student. Vera remained on the opposite bed and looked from her hands to the moving TV shapes to Jensen, trying to think of what else to say. She realized she was perspiring, pressured as she was to make every word count . . . and also because she was deathly afraid. The girl seemed calm, harmless, and small enough in person, but that didn't mean she wasn't a loose cannon. That didn't mean it wasn't of utmost importance that Vera choose her words very carefully. "I suppose I didn't mention anything to your mother because I thought I could spare you some . . . awkwardness at home. Maybe you'd find it easier to talk to me instead, just like you talk to me in your journals."

Jensen gave her a sidelong look. "I hope you aren't about to tell me this is all 'just a phase.'"

"Rest a.s.sured I'm not going to."

Jensen continued to stare at the nearly muted TV, but Vera could tell she was listening.

"This is awful of me to say because you'll probably recoil from this idea. It's not something a girl your age would want to hear from . . . someone older like me. But when I first started teaching in February, when I first met you, you reminded me of myself when I was your age. Maybe you sense that, too. Maybe that's why you've written the journals for me to see. I don't really know, Jensen; this is all just me guessing. I don't know what you're looking for from me exactly, but I want to provide whatever it is you need."

"How do I remind you of yourself?" Jensen asked. She didn't sound irritated. More bemused than irritated.

"Well, my own teenage years were . . . quite tortured, emotionally. I tried to off myself several times."

"Off myself-that's a nice phrase," Jensen said amiably. She was looking at Vera now with interest. "You know, the British say top myself. It sounds so jovial."

"It does."

"Why did you want to kill yourself?"

"Much of the same reasons you do, I a.s.sume," Vera said. "My emotions were outsized, as was my intellect. It wasn't a good combination. Those four years of high school were like . . ." She hesitated, thinking of how to characterize it without saying too much. "They occurred in slow motion, as though protracted. They still live in me as a raw period of time that I can't completely shake off. I'm still that fifteen-year-old in a lot of ways. I am not sure that this is the norm. I would guess that most people my age would say they feel far removed from the fifteen-year-old they once were."

"I can't even picture you as a fifteen-year-old."

"I don't think I ever was one. I was always a miniature adult when I was young. It was only later in life that my immaturity cemented itself." Vera thought of saying more. She thought of telling Jensen how she had thought in high school that she'd like to be a teacher someday, in hopes of making young men's and women's lives a little different from how hers had been. She thought of telling her that she had been so shy that she had flunked her undergraduate teaching practic.u.m and been kicked out of the secondary education program, which left her with a creative writing degree and a library aide job before she moved on to graduate school and all that came afterward. She wanted to explain that it took her a lot of guts to finally pursue a teaching track-that it still took a lot of guts-and that it was only remembering the frightened girl she had been that enabled her to get up every day and face her students.

Focus on Jensen, she told herself. Don't let her sidetrack you. "Jensen," Vera asked bluntly, "did you have a plan for how you were going to kill yourself tonight? Were you going to use that gun?"

"Only if the police showed up. That wouldn't be my first choice, though."

"You once wrote about jumping off a bridge as a means of killing yourself. Why jumping?"

"Because you can't really go back on that decision once you've made it. You can't stop midjump. I suppose shooting yourself could also be foolproof, but then I'd prefer not to have my head splattered all over these walls. Too messy."

"You know, when you jump from a great height, your organs get ripped up in your own body. As you land, your rib cage essentially shatters and impales all your organs. And the death isn't always instantaneous. It isn't a pretty way to go, Jensen."

"I don't think there is a pretty way."

"There isn't," Vera agreed. "But some are uglier than others."

"I have an older cousin who worked in a hotel in Providence. A woman killed herself there once. She drank bleach. No one heard from her for a few days, and then her room started to smell. They sent my cousin to go unlock her door, and she saw her lying naked on the bed. She was so discolored that at first she couldn't tell if she was a black woman or a white woman."

"This couldn't have been pleasant for your cousin."

"It wasn't. She quit the next day."

"I doubt it was pleasant for the woman, either," Vera said, "drinking bleach."

The TV had distracted Jensen again. Vera looked, too, and saw that Robert Duvall had somehow found his way into the dollhouse and was sitting next to his ladylove on the dollhouse-size sofa. "Oh my G.o.d, how did he get inside?" Jensen asked.

"Jensen," Vera said, trying to keep the wheedling note out of her voice. "Jensen, let me ask you this. You aren't really thinking of killing yourself because of Bret Folger, are you? Because, really. He's just a boy. Not even a particularly special one, by the sounds of it."

Jensen c.o.c.ked her head to the side as though processing this. Then she nodded a slight, acquiescent little nod.

Taking a deeper breath, Vera asked, "Is it because of the girls who died? The ones who got murdered? I know you said you envied them. I hope you aren't trying to follow in their footsteps."

Jensen smiled in a cagey sort of way as though Vera had said something that secretly pleased her. "You know what's funny about Sufia Ahmed? I used to see her walking around my neighborhood all the time. She'd go to the halal market, and sometimes I'd see her in the regular corner market, translating things for her mother. Her mother didn't speak much English. Outside of school Sufia spoke-what language do you call that? African? She was so American in some ways, though, with that phone she was always carrying around. And sometimes I saw her wearing jeans under that drapey stuff she always wore to school."

"I imagine what you were hearing them speak was Somali. Possibly Arabic. But you didn't answer my question."

"Somali, right. What was the question? Am I trying to follow in her footsteps? No. Do you think I'd want all those people coming to my funeral? That was all so disgusting."

"What about Bret? Does he-or your recent conversation with him-have anything to do with you coming here tonight?"

Jensen shrugged.

"I'm just checking," Vera added. "If Bret has something to do with this, I don't think you should find fault with yourself. Believe me, I know what it's like to want to be cared for by someone who doesn't deserve your affections."

Jensen turned toward Vera, holding out her cup. "Ugh, I can't finish this. Do you want it?"

"No," Vera said. Then: "Yes." She was thinking of police interrogation techniques and wondering if she could use what little she knew of them for her own purposes. Detective Vachon had spoken to Schlosser on his own level to get him to relax, making jokes about how women were b.i.t.c.hes and how teenage girls were the worst c.o.c.k-teases of all; it was all a ruse, of course, but Schlosser had bought into it. If she shared a drink with her student, would that foster trust? Vera accepted the cup before she knew she was going to. She took a small sip; it was nearly undrinkable, but not entirely. She took a larger swig and swished it around in her mouth.

"Didn't you say you used to live in New York City?" Jensen asked.

"I did," Vera said, "for almost ten years. Then I came back here. Maine is where I was raised. People always told me that everyone who leaves Maine comes back to it eventually. I swore I wouldn't be one of those people. What makes you bring that up?"

"Sometimes I thought I'd go down to New York to live with Bret. I was thinking that especially when we were reading the book. You know, Catcher. I printed up this map once of all the places Holden visits in New York, thinking I might go there sometime. Maybe I still will. But I guess a lot of those places aren't around anymore. When I went to visit Bret that one time, I only got to see Morningside Heights."

"Some of the places are still there. Most of the hotels aren't operating as hotels anymore. But all the big places . . . Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Radio City ice rink . . . they're right where they've always been, naturally." Vera noted, but did not mention, that the girl had used the future tense-maybe I still will. A slip of the tongue on Jensen's part, or a small victory on Vera's? She finished her drink in one concentrated gulp.

"I really did feel embarra.s.sed writing all that stuff about Bret," Jensen said. "I don't want to be thought of as the kind of girl who goes all crazy over a guy. It's not Bret. It's people who make me crazy."

Vera got up and stood by the window, refilling her empty cup with a small amount of vodka and a large amount of orange juice. She could be fired if the school knew she was drinking with a student-a fifteen-year-old student at that. "Can I borrow one of your cigarettes?"

"Take the whole pack."

Vera lit the cigarette with one of the matches left out on the table, pushing the window out so she could direct her smoke into the night air. She was deep in thought, trying to frame what she wanted to say to Jensen.

"I mentioned I could tell you some stories," she said. "There's one little story about a boy I want to tell you, if you don't mind listening." Her back to the girl, she spoke in the direction of the air, watching her smoke ribbon out and disappear.

"In high school I had a boyfriend named Peter. This was the late 1980s, and in Maine you didn't see as many punk or alternative-type kids as you do today. It wasn't normal to see kids with blue hair or T-shirts with skulls on them. Well, there were those Grateful Dead pothead kids, but that was different. That was dime a dozen. What I'm talking about was something quite unique and off-putting to most, and if someone looked like that, it actually meant something." Vera went on, in her soft but full voice, to give Jensen a brief account of her relationship with Peter-about how he had gone to college halfway across the country. Of how she had found him online years later and begun a correspondence again.

"He had moved back to Maine years before, and he had a successful business. Maybe moving back to Maine wasn't such a terrible idea, I thought. I wanted to redo my painful high school years, make them right and good. That, as it turned out, was an ill-conceived plan. He wasn't the person I remembered. His rebellious streak was gone. He was a straight-arrow businessman, concerned about public image. He wanted someone to be a perfect little wife who could cook and clean and look poised at his little functions. That wasn't me at all."

"You don't seem so rebellious to me," Jensen said. "I mean, you're a teacher."

"You're right," Vera said. "I'm really pretty square. I'm not expressing myself very well. I guess what I'm really trying to say is that things don't turn out the way you might expect. But even when things turn out differently from how we expect, we can still be okay."

She stubbed out her cigarette and turned to face Jensen, who was watching her carefully. "Believe it or not, I didn't come here to talk about me, even though somehow I keep doing so. I came here to talk about you."

"Are you leading up to the 'life is worth living' speech? The 'things will get better' speech? People always promise that."

"Not exactly what I'm getting at. Though that would be the expected song and dance."

"What, then?"

"Jensen, have you ever read Mark Twain's essay 'Two Ways of Seeing a River'?"

"Not a fan of Twain."

"He's not all Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and boys being boys," Vera said. "But anyway, listen, it's a very short essay. You should read it. He talks about how he sees the river as this beautiful thing, this majestic thing, but the more familiar he becomes with the river, the less beautiful it becomes to him. He doesn't see the beauty anymore, only the dangers and the pragmatic aspects of it."

"So you're saying I shouldn't lose sight of beauty."

"I realize it's easier said than done. But perhaps focusing less on the morbid and more on the beautiful would do you good."

On the TV a new episode of The Twilight Zone was beginning. Vera couldn't yet identify which one it was. A distressed-looking gentleman in a bow tie ran chaotically around empty, suburban streets.

"Do you know what I think is beautiful?" Jensen asked.

"What?"

"That part in Catcher when Holden talks about how he likes to light matches and hold them until he can't hold them anymore. Then he lets them drop. That's one of my favorite parts. And do you know what else I like? That part where he says he feels like he's disappearing every time he crosses the street."

"The matches," Vera said, remembering. "And the street. Yes. Those are two beautiful moments. Small ones, but beautiful ones."

"And then there's the ducks in Central Park. How he wants to know where they go in the winter."

The drinks Vera had consumed made her feel as though she were in a small boat, floating farther and farther away from the crisis that had brought her here. "Everyone remembers that part," she said dismissively. She was stuck on the idea of disappearing-in particular, on the last chapter of The Catcher in the Rye, when Holden is walking around Fifth Avenue and starting to worry every time he crosses the street. She thought of him thanking his dead brother every time he made it across the street to safety, still present, still visible, still real.

"I'm still having a hard time coming up with my essay topic," Jensen said.

"Next week," Vera said, "we can talk about it some more if you're still stuck." She drained her second drink and decided against pouring another. The calm person who had handled things earlier had come back, steering her gently where she needed to go.

"You asked me earlier why I didn't tell your mom my concerns about you," she said. "The reason I gave you is true, but beyond that there's another reason why I've kept what you've written to myself. The reason is because I feel for you, Jensen, and I don't want to betray you. I know what it's like to want to look cool and competent and not like an emotional wreck. I do get concerned when you start talking about these girls who've been killed recently and how you want to be like them. But I know some of it is just blowing off steam, to use a phrase from one of your earlier journals."

She thought, but didn't say, that she felt Jensen had been mishandled on previous occasions when she'd tried to show a vulnerable side. Getting fobbed off on a psychiatrist who clearly hadn't done any good-that couldn't have been a picnic for the girl. And being rejected by Bret Folger, on one of the few times she expressed need-the girl needed an ally, someone unequivocally in her corner.

"For my discretion," she went on, "and in exchange for the consideration I'm showing for you-I'd like to ask one thing. I'd like to ask that you please not do anything to harm yourself tonight. Can you a.s.sure me that you won't?"

"I can," Jensen said, "but tomorrow is another day."

"I'd like to ask that you please not do anything tomorrow, either, but at the moment I'm most concerned about getting you through tonight. Do you think we could check you out of this hotel and get you home? We will have to walk. I'm afraid I don't have any cash for a cab ride."