daughter to the school.
Speaking of... “Why didn’t you ride along with your mom and Sabra instead of taking the bus?”
“Sabra said she didn’t know how long it would take her to get ready.” Her tone told him she’d felt betrayed. “And Mom said it was bad enough if one of us was late.”
That Sabra hadn’t wanted Emily with them would seem to confirm the advance planning she’d put into her great escape.
“Before you went out the door, did Sabra say anything about the day?” he asked. “Maybe ‘I’ll see you in biology’?”
Emily’s nose wrinkled.
He smiled. “Or at lunch?”
“Biology is one of the classes we have together. Sabra especially hates it. The teacher is a douche. But Mom was practically pushing me out the door and ordering Sabra to get ready, so I didn’t even say goodbye. It wasn’t fair I couldn’t wait and go with them. Riding the bus sucks.”
She was right—it did. A reminiscent instant was forced on him. The diesel smell, the sway, the jerky stops had made him carsick. Then there were the weird kids, the assholes, the grumpy drivers.
It was reasonable enough that Ms. Harper had wanted Emily on that bus, but he couldn’t rid his mind of an alternate motive for her eagerness to get her own daughter out of the house, leaving her alone with the troublesome, pregnant teenager whose welcome might have worn thin.
He sat back, regarding her somberly. “Emily, I have to ask this. You may be the only person who Sabra has confided in. It’s really important that you tell me who fathered her baby.”
“But I don’t know.” She swiped angrily at sudden tears. “She said he was going to marry her, but he had to take care of stuff first and she’d promised not to tell anybody, even her absolute best friend in the world. She swore she wouldn’t do it without me, ’cuz I had to be her maid of honor. Which would be cool except...” Her worry suggested she was basically a good kid. “How can she have a boyfriend old enough to marry her? Do you think he might be trying to talk his parents into letting them move in with them?”
The thought had crossed Jack’s mind, but he was bothered by the absolute secrecy Sabra had maintained, tough for a girl her age.
“Word has gotten around she’s disappeared, hasn’t it?” he asked.
“Everyone knows now, because you’re here. Before, nobody would believe me.” Emily caught his drift. “You think if, well, he doesn’t know where she is, he’d be scared enough to say he’s the father.”
“That seems logical. If the secret is big enough to keep, I doubt the issue is as simple as a set of parents who disapprove.”
He could tell she understood and even agreed. She was probably still holding back, but how much? He kept her talking for a while, trying to get a better idea of her mother’s relationship with Sabra. The fight that had been loud enough to have a neighbor calling 9-1-1 was a red flag, but one he’d take more seriously if her yelling hadn’t come on the heels of the girls having sneaked out to a party where drugs and booze were available. Once cops broke up the party, he guessed parents all over town had been yelling. He hadn’t been surprised that Meg Harper turned beet red when he asked her about it. To her credit, she’d been openly embarrassed, not defensive.
He asked now about boys Sabra had hung out with once school started. Had she gone out with any? Disappeared for a while when the two friends were at a party? Emily kept shaking her head, although when pressed she named boys in their crowd.
“But I don’t think she was into any of them like that. You know?”
“What about after school or evenings? You must have gone separate ways some of the time.”
She ducked her head. “Well, after school.” Her mumble went with her sudden refusal to meet his eyes. “Evenings Mom is really strict. Mostly she makes us be home and do schoolwork. Once in a while we study at the library or something.”
Or sneak out to parties. Like her mother, her cheeks reddened, suggesting she’d had the same thought. Or was she thinking about other wild parties her mother didn’t know about?
She shot a resentful look his way. “It’s not like it was my business where she was all the time.”
Yep, definitely evasive, Jack decided.
With a sniff, she continued, “We have some different friends. Plus, I work on school plays and I started newspaper this year, so I don’t go right home after school a lot of days.”
“What about Sabra?” he asked. “She involved in any extracurricular activities?”
“Um...not really. Probably because of being pregnant. You know.”
Yeah, he didn’t suppose whatever teacher cast plays would want to put an obviously pregnant girl onstage. And nothing he’d learned about Sabra Lee encouraged him to picture her doing Science Olympiad or yearbook.
“Does she catch the bus and go straight home most days?” he asked.
Emily was back to studying her hands on her lap. “I think she hangs out with friends.”
“Can you give me names?”
Clearly feeling pressured, she offered a few she hadn’t included before.
Jack let her go back to class at last. He worked his way down a list of other students, learning nothing new. None of the friends whose names Emily had offered admitted to hanging out with Sabra after school.
In fact, one looked surprised and said, “I think she practically always catches the bus. I never see her after school.”
In other words, Sabra Lee had been practicing her vanishing act for a while. Possibly with some help from her best friend.
He and the principal huddled over a flyer to be sent home with students. It asked the students or parents to contact Jack if they had seen Sabra on school grounds on the relevant morning, or had any information pertaining to her disappearance.
He could only talk to teachers during their individual planning periods, which required him to put together a jigsaw puzzle. If he sat down with the geometry teacher fifth period, he’d have to leave World History until tomorrow. He’d long since missed the Spanish teacher’s planning period. Computer Science, too, he saw; that had been fourth period. And so on. He thought it was pretty unlikely any of them would be able to contribute, but he wasn’t ruling anything out.
And face it—the kid hadn’t been gone long at all. The police wouldn’t have gotten involved yet if not for Sabra’s irregular home placement, or if anyone had seen Meg Harper, her van or Sabra at the school Friday morning. Girls her age did impulsive things. It was still likeliest she was hiding out somewhere because of some mini-catastrophe that had her distraught. She and her guy could have headed for Seattle to hang out and pretend they were UW students for a few days. See a concert at the Showbox. Maybe they were on their way to Vegas in some beater of a car, convinced they could get married there, no questions asked. Who knew?
He chose to start with Carl Howard, biology, following a school secretary’s directions to the classroom. A bell rang just as he arrived,
