The following Saturday afternoon at three o’clock, a dozen boys clambered onto the minibus I would be driving to the mixer at Saint Margaret’s. Despite the three-hour drive, the boys were eager for a chance to escape school and even more so for the promise of girls. Clothing had been chosen for its cleanliness and bold colors, and as such the resulting outfits ranged somewhere between sharp and ludicrous. Aftershave stung the air, sharp as lemon juice. When every student on my roster had boarded the bus, I started her up, swung the door shut with a pneumatic thump, and slowly drove down the Hill.
The drive was long but comfortable, a series of short stretches on two-lane roads before we got on the interstate and headed over the mountains toward Charlottesville and then Richmond. The sky burned blue above us, and the dogwoods and sumac were starting to blush red.
I spent the time behind the wheel doing a good deal of thinking. Surprisingly, perhaps, I didn’t think much about Fritz. I had been thinking about him over the past two days and replaying the conversation with Pelham Greer in my head. I’d spent enough time on it to fall behind on my class planning, so between Blackburne and Richmond, I thought mostly about the upcoming Beowulf unit and how I would teach it. Next week I would try to find Deputy Briggs, the one who had questioned me the night of Fritz’s disappearance, and see if he could—or would—tell me anything. For now, I was content to think about the Anglo-Saxons and Beowulf and its rude, majestic violence. My students would love the whole bit about Beowulf ripping off the monster Grendel’s arm.
Aside from a brief food stop, we drove into the early evening, and by seven o’clock our bus rolled into Tappahannock. The boys shook their heads like young dogs newly awakened and were talking in loud, nervous bursts as I steered the bus onto Saint Margaret’s campus. A series of long, low white buildings spread out on the banks of the Rappahannock River, which hung in the air in scents of mud, marsh, and grass that drifted through the open bus windows. A group of girls in dresses walked across the lawn, talking to one another, their hair long and swinging gently at their backs. One of the girls glanced at our bus and said something to her companions, who all turned to look as we drove past. Then Rusty Scarwood stuck his head out a window and shouted, “Evening, ladies!” which caused a few of them to laugh.
The dance was held in the gym, the walls and ceiling of which were swathed in white sheets contrived to look like a giant tent while softly glowing lights were strategically placed around its edges. Music—a heavy-thumping Gwen Stefani song—played too loudly through hidden speakers, although the small stage up front, apparently for the DJ, was empty save for a stack of stereo equipment and an unmanned mike on a stand. Several Saint Margaret’s girls and boys from other boarding schools had already gathered, mostly clumped together by gender, although a few couples were scattered here and there. I checked in with a white-haired matron by the entrance and made sure the boys heard that the dance was over at ten thirty and that we would be heading out immediately afterward. They nodded dutifully and then gazed over the dance floor, some nervous, others like captains scanning a field of battle.
Terence Jarrar was standing near the wall, chewing a thumbnail and looking morosely at a group of girls nearby. I grinned at him, and then indicated the girls with a nod. “Ask one of them to dance,” I said.
He frowned. “What?” he said, raising his voice over the music.
“Ask one of them to dance,” I said loudly just as two of the girls glanced in our direction. Terence blanched and ducked his head. One of the girls raised her eyebrows at me in an expression somewhere between amusement and horror. I waved at her and turned to Terence, intending to tell him to give it the old college try, but he was examining the tops of his shoes, clearly embarrassed. “Hey,” I said. “Sorry about that.”
He shrugged, still looking at his shoes. “It’s okay.”
“Terence,” I said, and he looked up at me. “Really. I’m sorry. Girls are . . .” I paused. Who was I to give anyone advice about girls? The last relationship I’d been in had been a mutual exercise in self-involvement, and after six months it had spiraled into public displays of heartbreak, rage, and reconcilement. I vividly recalled a very public argument in a restaurant, two or three bottles of wine into dinner, with Michele demanding to know when my next book would be finished and me telling her that writing a novel wasn’t like smiling into a camera.
“Mr. Glass?” Terence was looking at me.
“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head clear of the memory. “I just—well, girls are hard enough without your teacher making you feel like a jackass, is all I’m saying.”
He smiled at that. “Okay,” he said. “Thanks, Mr. Glass.” He shook his head. “Girls are . . . well, yeah.”
I laughed and was about to reply when I saw, across the room, two women talking to each other. One of them was short and round, with glasses and a cheerful face framed by straight red hair. The other was Abby Davenport.
AT HER HOUSE THAT January of my senior year, I had asked Abby to the Spring Formal and she’d said yes. Then we realized that my track meets and her concert schedule meant that we would not have a free weekend to see each other until the dance, which wasn’t until the beginning of April. We moaned about such an unfair and empty stretch of time. Maybe spring break? But my parents had planned a trip to Atlanta to visit family over the break, and though I snarled and pleaded and basically acted like an ass, my parents were implacable. Truth to tell, I had been pretty close with my Atlanta cousins when we were younger, and we usually had fun together, but on that trip, I played the romantic martyr to the hilt, sighing and staring outside at the rain that I thought mirrored my soul. My mother said wryly that all I needed was a blindfold and a cigarette to complete the image of a man facing a firing squad.
And then Fritz had disappeared, two weeks before the Spring Formal.
I didn’t see Abby in the terrible days that followed, didn’t call her. I couldn’t. Her brother was missing, and what could I offer her? Faint hope that he was okay? Part of my failure to call was because I was terrified of her father. But I was also numb, disengaging from everyone else as a kind of self-preservation tactic. It’s not a good excuse for how I treated Abby, but it has the relative merit of being honest.
Three days before the dance, Miles Camak knocked on my door after study hall and told me I had a phone call. When he saw the hopeful look on my face—Fritz?—he shook his head sadly. I picked up the phone and heard Abby’s voice on the other end. We spoke awkwardly, perfunctorily. I realized she was calling to say she would not be coming to the Spring Formal. I told her I understood, that I didn’t want to go to the dance anyway. I meant, I would go with her, of course, but— “Yes, yes, of course,” she said. “It just isn’t the right—”