“Somehow I believe you will,” I tell Beau. If anyone can find Marie, it’s him. “You’re too damned stubborn to allow anything else to happen.”
He laughs and brings my hand to his lips to kiss the back of it. “If only I could’ve stubborned my way out of prison.”
“If anyone could have, it would’ve been you.”
“Thanks.” He stares down at our joined hands, his mood turning serious again. “I need to ask you more questions about your life before and during the time you met Javier.”
I expected this. In an odd way, I want it. I saw a counselor briefly, just after I first escaped. Talking about it helped, but I couldn’t give too many specifics. Even though I was living under a different name at the time, it was still too great a risk. Javier has some very powerful allies.
That’s why when I ran I had to run far and fast, and change everything about me from my looks to my name to my habits.
“What do you want to know?” I ask Beau.
“Everything you can think of. Where you went to school, who you lived with, who your friends were, who your social worker was, that sort of thing.”
“My social worker was Ramón Diaz. Before him I had Cindy Zimmerman. I don’t remember who was before her. I got kicked out of high school for ditching, so I went to a continuation school. I lived in a group home that sucked, but it was better than the one I was in before. I moved around so much I didn’t have any friends except for this guy named Jordan. We got moved to the group home at the same time. He was the first guy I ever kissed. We got caught and they moved him to another home. I had to go to pregnancy-prevention classes because I was suddenly ‘at risk.’
“My mother was a whore, so they were worried I was going to turn out like her. They were right. I turned out just like her.”
“It wasn’t your choice.”
“No. But what’s the difference? The result’s the same. Do you feel less like an ex-con because you didn’t actually commit the crime you went to prison for?”
“No.”
“See? There’s no difference.”
“Wait a minute. You said something about pregnancy-prevention classes.”
“Yeah.”
He grips his mouse and clicks around until he finds what he’s looking for. “Barbara Moore took classes like that.” He points to the screen. “She called them a joke, since she was still a virgin. And here…” He does some more clicking, bringing up a blog. “Kaley Riccio’s boyfriend got caught with his hand up her shirt and she had to go to classes. The same with Rosalyn Bauer and Kiersten Paulie. All of you took pregnancy-prevention classes for at-risk girls. Where did you take your classes?”
“A room in the Family and Youth Center downtown. They even had a van that picked us up and took us there.”
His hands are wizard hands on the computer keys. Screens pop up and down like jackrabbits. I can’t keep up with what he’s doing, so I sit back and watch. Myriad microexpressions flicker across his face. He’s probably not even aware he’s doing it, he’s concentrating so hard.
“Do you remember the names of any of the girls you took the classes with?” he asks, not taking his eyes off the screen.
“A few.”
He pushes a pad of paper toward me, still focused on the computer. “Write down their names for me.”
I flip through pages of notes he’s made on my sister’s case, mesmerized. He’s taken tiny, nothing bits of information and turned them into real leads and threads to follow. How he found those other girls…amazing. And the map on the wall. He’s finding patterns, connecting dots. I only hope we get to Marie in time.
I think back to those stupid pregnancy-prevention classes they made me take. If they only knew how pointless they’d end up being for me, they might not have wasted their time. I wonder if they kept any of the other girls from getting pregnant. There were eight of us in the class I went to, but I got friendly with only two of them—Carrie Bennett and Sasha Dixon. The others kept to themselves, mostly. Especially the twins. They didn’t socialize with any of us. Tracy and Stacy Casey. I remember them because of their stupid names. Who makes their kids’ names rhyme?
I write down the four names and concentrate hard on coming up with more, but I can’t remember. It was a long time ago. So much has happened since then. I thought my life sucked when I was taking those classes. I had no idea how much worse it could get.
“What was the name of the organization that put on the classes?” Beau asks.
“Christian Youth Ministries or something like that.”
“Was it Youth Encounter Christian Ministry?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. Why?”