She was so numb that she felt nothing at all when Sue MacMasters came into her cla.s.sroom just minutes later. Sue had the same incredulous look she'd had when speaking to Vera about students with emotional difficulties who took medication.

"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 s.p.a.ce-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 cla.s.s conduct or anything else that might suggest why the girl is missing?"

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 partic.i.p.ate more in cla.s.s 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-elysees.

"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 a.s.suming 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 a.s.sume 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 cla.s.smates? 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 a.s.sembly 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 paper 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 cla.s.s started. It was the first thing she did when she arrived in her cla.s.sroom; she didn't even remove her coat or turn on the cla.s.sroom 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 s.e.x offenders."

"Oh my G.o.d, that's so creepy," Kelsey Smith said. "Are we having another a.s.sembly 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 a.s.sembly 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 a.s.signed 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 cla.s.s 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 antic.i.p.ated.

"It's so singsongy," Loo objected when Vera had finished the reading the poem out loud.

"I think it's beautiful." Jamie, the cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s to review some of the literary terms she wanted the students to be aware of for the next test. When cla.s.s was over, an announcement came on the intercom-Dean Finister's voice-summoning them all to the auditorium for another a.s.sembly at 10:00 A.M.

The mood in the auditorium was different from the mood during the a.s.sembly 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 soph.o.m.ore 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 b.u.t.tonholed 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 a.s.sembly. 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 cla.s.ses 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.

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 cla.s.ses."

"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 a.s.sembly?" 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, s.e.x, 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.

What was it about seeing a stark photo of a missing person that inspired such terror? Was it the not knowing-the possibility that the person had slipped away into someplace more terrifying than life, more terrifying than death?

Vera remembered being a very young child and having her first exposure to the idea that children could go missing-that unimaginable things could happen to them: things even worse than being adopted into a cult, worse than being sold on the black market to the underground s.e.x trade. As a precocious eight-year-old, she had been leafing through one of her mother's Reader's Digests and read a story about Dee Scofield, the ponytailed girl with the slightly overlapping teeth who had gone missing from a Florida shopping center in 1976. Dee had never been found. Vera had looked her up on this very same website once and had seen the age-advanced, computer-generated photo of what Dee might look like if she were alive today: The image of the smiling, bespectacled woman could well have been a friendly children's librarian or a church organist. But in all likelihood, this version of Dee Scofield had never existed-had been denied the chance to exist.

Was it quick, Dee? Did you call for your mother right in those very last moments? I hope it was quick.

But it was foolish to think that way, to even make this comparison. Jensen was surely not in harm's way. Surely this disappearance was of her own design.

In Jensen's school photo, her wary eyes looked a little more sunken than they looked in real life. She looked as though she could be any number of ages-anywhere along the spectrum of late childhood to the middle years of womanhood. Below Jensen's photo were a few brief lines of text.

Circ.u.mstances: Jensen was last seen on March 30 of this year. She was wearing olive-green pants, a black T-shirt, a long black trench coat, and black combat boots. She was carrying an army knapsack. Jensen has one small chicken pox scar above her left eyebrow and a small brown mole on her upper right arm. She has never had any dental work.

Vera let that last thought sit for a while. She guessed "has never had any dental work" meant that Jensen had never been to a dentist, which was not so unusual among Mainers; that meant no dental records, if she should ever be recovered. Recovered-the word specifically used when a dead body was brought home. She shivered. Found, she corrected herself; use the word found.

Closing out the window, Vera typed the words Jensen Willard into a Google keyword search. The search term turned up the article in the Journal, and something else. On a homespun website called BRING JENSEN HOME, Vera saw the older, more familiar picture of her student; above it, a curving green font seemed to swim across the screen.

Are you a whiz at computers? Handy at making flyers? Able to give some of your time to answer phones and help our busy police? Are you caring, dependable, and pa.s.sionate?

BRING JENSEN HOME is a volunteer group working with Our Missing Kids, a nonprofit group out of Concord, New Hampshire, that a.s.sists law enforcement in finding missing loved ones. We are accepting applications for our search and rescue committee, which is spearheaded by Jensen's parents, Les and Linda Cudahy, and the supervising Dorset Police Department.

Below that was an email contact for those who wanted to request an application. There was a boldfaced note near the bottom of the home page inviting anyone who had information about the case and wished to remain anonymous to click on the link below. Vera's cursor hovered over it for a few seconds. Then she moved it away.

Elsewhere on the home page was a basic overview of the case and, in that same swimming font, a section t.i.tled "A Word from Jensen Willard's Mother."

If you have come to this website, thank you, first of all, for your interest in our missing daughter and her safe return.

On the evening of March 30th, our daughter and the light of our life, Jensen Alice Willard, packed up her army knapsack and headed for a sleepover at her friend Phoebe's house. The last time we saw her was when we dropped her off at the address she gave. Since then, we have learned that no girl named Phoebe is enrolled at Jensen's school. The address where she was dropped off was not the house she said it was.

Jensen is fifteen years old. She stands five foot two inches tall and weighs about one hundred pounds. She has dark-brown hair cut a little below chin length, often worn in a short ponytail. She has light-brown eyes and light skin with a few freckles. When she chooses to share it, she has a beautiful smile.

Being a teenager has not always been easy for Jensen, but she is a strong girl. I always say that she might seem meek, but if you back her into a corner, boy, will she come out fighting! Because of that, I believe that wherever she is, she must be okay. But there is a huge feeling of emptiness in these last few days since our daughter has been gone. If somebody knows her whereabouts, please let us know. If you have her, please return her-no questions asked.

There has been too much loss in Dorset lately, and too much within the course of our own lives. We cannot have Jensen be another tragedy.

The site had enabled a feature for public comments, which Vera presumed were screened before they were made visible to the public. There were words of encouragement and sympathy, of support and condolences. There were stories from other people whose loved ones were also missing-parents' accounts of children who'd been found living and dead, as well as the continued, wistful hopes of those whose children had never been found. This outpouring of pain made Vera feel voyeuristic, as though she didn't have the right to be privy to this particular brand of sadness. Still, she wanted to read every post. She wanted to see what people on both ends of the equation had to say-those with losses and those with reclamations. But that, she thought, was best saved for another time.

She did, however, take the time to save Jensen's picture in her doc.u.ments and print it up. She taped it on the wall above her laptop, taking care so that the edges of the paper aligned with the faces of Heidi Duplessis, Angela Galvez, and Sufia Ahmed. The row of missing and dead was growing, occupying a greater stretch above her laptop. She wondered when and where it would stop.

Chapter Nine.

Wednesday morning on her way to school, Vera stopped at the bodega and pumped herself a cup of coffee out of the self-serve coffee urn. But then a strange thing happened. Staring at the arrangement of creamers, sugar, artificial sweetener packets, and stirrers, her mind went blank. She could no longer remember what she liked in her coffee or even how to prepare it. She stood motionless at the counter, willing the memory to come back, the ease of this morning ritual, until she slowly lifted the spoon for the nondairy creamer and tore open several sweeteners. The next several minutes were spent looking for the lids to the cups, which were stacked right in front of her.

She didn't see how she could be expected to make it through her cla.s.ses in this fugue state, even though she would be only administering a test-an easy day for her. She started to make her way over to the counter with her coffee, the cup sloshing over a little-she hadn't affixed the lid tightly enough-as she dragged her b.u.mping, rattling suitcase behind her. Next to the counter, the latest Dorset Journal headline caught her eye.

Missing Girl Possible Runaway She seized the top newspaper from the stack and tossed it onto the counter as though it were smoldering.