“Well, I don’t really think I should,” she said. “I just came over to see if Amanda was here. She wasn’t home when I got in, and it occurred to me that she might have wandered over.”

“She’s not here,” said Eleanor. “But we can ask Heather. She might know where she was going after school.” She called upstairs and was finally greeted by an answering shout and the appearance of her daughter. “When did you last see Amanda, dear?” asked Kate. “And did she say anything about where she was going?”

Guilt compounded with alarm spread itself over Heather’s face. “I haven’t seen her,” she said. “I waited with Leslie for the longest time, and then one of the other girls said that Amanda had gone already, and so Jennifer and Leslie walked me home. They said it was all right.” Heather’s eyes swam with tears as she felt the weight of the awful responsibility they felt for one another on these trips back and forth. “Maybe she’s still at school waiting for someone to walk home with; Miss Johnson said she’d suspend anyone who walked home alone or didn’t make arrangements.”

Kate gave her a reassuring hug and said that it was perfectly all right, that Amanda had probably arranged to do something else, and that she, Kate, had forgotten all about it. That had happened before. But after Heather, relieved, had run off again, she turned a very alarmed face to Eleanor. “Do you suppose she is still at school?” asked Kate. “Perhaps I’d better go over and see.”

“No,” said Eleanor. “We’ll call the school, and if I can’t get anyone there, I’ll drive over. You want to stay at home so you’ll be there to scream at her when she walks in. Who’s that girl that lives around the corner—the one who walked Heather home?”

“Leslie—Leslie Smith. She lives on MacNiece. They’ll be in the phone book. We just have to find a Smith on MacNiece.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Eleanor. “There’s an easier way. Heather! Get me your yearbook! Her number will be in there. It’s a lot easier than plowing through four pages of Smiths.” Heather appeared, book in hand. But Leslie Smith, although easily located, had no more help to offer.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Abbott,” she said. “But all I know is that someone—I think it was Kim—said that Amanda had left early and so we shouldn’t wait. I figured she had a doctor’s appointment or something like that.”

“Why don’t we go over to your place,” suggested Eleanor, “and take the yearbook with us, and see if we can track her down?”

Jane Scott, who had been listening quietly to all of this, nodded in agreement. “You go back, and Mrs. Flaherty and I will come over with a bite for you to eat.”

But half an hour later, at 5:45, they were no further ahead. No one had answered at the school office, so Eleanor had driven over. But Amanda was not among those dressing after late soccer practice, or on the stage polishing up their routines for the music show, and none of these girls had seen her. Jennifer knew no more than Leslie, and Kim vigorously denied having said anything about her whereabouts. Baffled and frightened, they looked at each other over a plate of sandwiches, untouched, and a bottle of sherry, sitting on the coffee table between them.

Eleanor checked her watch and decided it was time to take more decisive action. “Are you really worried?”

“I’m terrified. Not only am I fond of Amanda, but I keep imagining my brother’s face if something has happened to her. But it’s only been a couple of hours since she got out of school. If I call the police they’ll laugh at me.” She pushed per long hair back into its fastenings and composed her face. “You see, she’s never done anything like this before, and she and her friends are very careful about letting you know where they are these days, even if it does irritate them to have to do it.”

“Right,” said Eleanor firmly. “I’m calling John. He’ll know whether we should worry or not, and he certainly won’t laugh.”

“John?” said Kate. “What can he do?”

Eleanor shrugged impatiently. “My only problem is that I’ve never called him before—at work, that is.” She turned pink with embarrassment. “I always have visions of getting eight police cars and an ambulance if I call the department, so I’ve never tried.”

That elicited a slight smile. “Well,” said Kate, “let’s try now. Just look up ‘police’ in the phone and avoid any number that says ‘emergency.’”

“I’ll try his apartment first.” Eleanor took out her little book. But the phone rang uselessly in his empty bedroom. “Well, then, here goes.” She took a deep breath and dialed. It only took five minutes to get someone on the line who grudgingly admitted that he might know where John was and reluctantly agreed to fetch him. “Thank God,” she breathed into the receiver at the sound of his voice. “It’s me, Eleanor. I’m at Kate’s, and we need your help.” Her explanation tumbled out in an almost incoherent jumble of words.

“When did you say she was last seen?” he said at last. “Three-thirty? Wait there. I’ll be right over.”

It took him less than twenty minutes to pull up in Kate’s driveway. Eleanor dragged him in the door, spluttering apologies as she went. He raised his hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it. Just tell me exactly what you know so far.” He sat very still and watched them carefully as he listened. “Now,” he said calmly after the story had trickled to a halt, “first let’s find out what happened at school. Why did her friends think she had left early?”

“I don’t know,” said Eleanor, “except that some girl—unidentified—said so, and everyone accepted it, of course. But I suppose that we could call Roz Johnson and see if she knows anything.”

Amanda was dreaming in garish colour that she was flying through a brightly painted department store filled with overstuffed furniture upholstered in various shades of bilious green and yellow. Suddenly, something went wrong with her flying mechanism, and she crashed, unable to save herself, into a particularly hideous couch that trapped her in its feathery depths. Her first thought at this point was that she was going to be sick. She gagged and retched and tried unsuccessfully to move. Her apparent paralysis panicked her completely, and she thrashed unavailingly until she was conscious enough to realize that her hands and feet were tied, and her mouth closed with a tight bandage. Voices floated in and out of her awareness.

“Undo that gag—come on, she’s going to be sick. Move it!”

“What for? Who cares? It’s not your goddamn car.”

“What for? You fucking idiot, she could choke to death, and then where’d we be?”

“Who the fuck are you calling an idiot? You said she’d be out for hours. Give her some more of that stuff.” Hands grabbed her, yanked the gag off her mouth, and pulled her upright. She opened her eyes, saw grass and the edge of a car seat wavering in front of her, and was very sick. Hands held her up as she retched and retched until her agonized stomach muscles could produce nothing more, and she sagged down with her head sitting against the greasy edge of the car door.

Then the hands grabbed her hair and yanked her head back. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a flash of white, then a double blur of white: then, blinking and concentrating, she saw the handkerchief. She took a desperate last gasp of untainted air before it hit her face, and in the only defense measure her blurred brain could think of, she slumped inertly at once. The voices faded and echoed, far, far away, and once again she floated, lurching helplessly through a void that was at once black and harshly brilliant.

Eleanor sat aimlessly at the typist’s desk in the general office at Kingsmede, watching Roz Johnson and John trying to track down Amanda. They had abandoned a distracted Kate with Jane Scott, leaving instructions to call if anything happened.

“If she left early,” said Roz, “she should have signed out. They’re not allowed just to leave, even if they have a good reason. Although of course some of them do.” She was running her finger up the list of names in the sign-out book as she spoke. “But Amanda has never been one of those—so far, anyway. No, she’s not here.” She paused for a moment. “Well, we have to find out when she left. If she was in class last period then we’ll have some idea of the time.” She looked wildly about her. “Where in hell do they keep the student timetables these days? Sorry to appear so dim, but I’m used to screaming at someone else for information like this.” She sorted quickly through sets of files and notebooks. “Ah, there they are.” And she picked up a huge blue three-ring binder filled with computerized timetables. “Let’s see, today is Wednesday,” she muttered, “so she had Latin last period. Good. We call Isabel Cowper and see if she was in Latin. That’s simple—we’ll get there soon.” Roz disappeared into her own office and returned flourishing a typed list of names and addresses. “This shouldn’t take long,” she said. John moved over and sat on the desk next to Eleanor.