Jessica made a few notes about this, although she was not at all sure why. “Did she ever confide in you about her personal life? About someone who might have been bothering her?”

“No,” Claire said. “But not all that much has changed since your high school days in that regard. Nor mine, for that matter. We are adults, and the students see us that way. They really are no more likely to confide in us than they are in their parents.”

Jessica wanted to ask Claire about Brian Parkhurst, but it was only a hunch she had. She decided not to. “Can you think of anything else that might help?”

Claire gave it a few moments. “Nothing comes to mind,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s quite all right,” Jessica said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

“It’s just hard to believe that...that’s she’s gone,” Claire said. “She was so young.”

Jessica had been thinking the same thing all day. She had no response now. None that would comfort or suffice. She gathered her belongings, glanced at her watch. She had to get back to North Philly.

“Late for something?” Claire asked. Wry and dry. Jessica recalled the tone quite well.

Jessica smiled. Claire Stendhal did remember her.Young Jessica had always been tardy. “Looks like I’m going to miss lunch.”

“Why not grab a sandwich in the cafeteria?”

Jessica thought about it. Perhaps it was a good idea. When she was in high school she was one of those weird kids who actually liked cafeteria food. She hiked her courage and asked: “Qu’ est-ce que vous . . . proposez?”

If she wasn’t mistaken—and she desperately hoped she wasn’t—she had asked: What do you suggest?

The look on her former French teacher’s face told her she got it right. Or close enough for high school French.

“Not bad, Mademoiselle Giovanni,” Claire said with a generous smile.

“Merci.”

“Avec plaisir,” Claire replied. “And the sloppy joes are still pretty good.”

Tessa’s locker was only six units away from Jessica’s old one. For a brief moment, Jessica was tempted to see if her old combination still worked.

When she had attended Nazarene, Tessa’s locker belonged to Janet Stefani, the editor of the school’s alternative newspaper and resident pothead. Jessica half expected to see a red plastic bong and a stash of Ho Hos when she opened the locker door. Instead she saw a reflection of Tessa Wells’s last day of school, her life as she left it.

There was a Nazarene hooded sweatshirt on a hanger, along with what looked like a home-knit scarf. A plastic rain bonnet hung from the hook. On the top shelf, Tessa’s gym clothes were clean and neatly folded. Beneath them was a short stack of sheet music. Inside the door, where most girls kept a collage of pictures, Tessa had a cat calendar. The previous months had been torn out. The days had been crossed off, right through the previous Thursday.

Jessica checked the books in the locker against Tessa’s class list, which she had gotten from the front office. Two books were missing. Biology and algebra II.

Where were they? Jessica wondered.

Jessica riffled the pages of Tessa’s remaining textbooks. Her communications media textbook offered a class syllabus on hot pink paper. Inside her theology text—Understanding Catholic Christianity—there was a pair of dry-cleaning coupons. The rest of the books were empty. No personal notes, no letters, no photographs.

At the bottom of the locker were a pair of calf-high rubber boots. Jessica was just about to close the locker when she decided to pick up the boots and turn them over. The left boot was empty. When she turned over the right boot, an item tumbled out and onto the highly polished hardwood floor.

A small, calfskin diary with gold leaf trim.

...

In the parking lot Jessica ate her sloppy joe and read from Tessa’s diary.

The entries were sparse, with days between notations, sometimes weeks. Apparently, Tessa wasn’t someone who felt compelled to commit every thought, every feeling, every emotion and interaction to her journal.

On the whole, she seemed a sad girl, seeing the poignant side of life as a rule. There were entries about a documentary she had seen on three young men whom, she believed, as did the filmmakers, were falsely convicted of murder in West Memphis, Tennessee. There was a long entry about the plight of hungry children in Appalachia. Tessa had donated twenty dollars to the Second Harvest program. There were a handful of entries about Sean Brennan.

What did I do wrong? Why won’t you call?

There was one long, rather touching story about a homeless woman Tessa had met. A woman named Carla who lived in a car on Thirteenth Street. Tessa did not say how she’d met the woman, only how beautiful Carla was, how she might have been a model if life had not taken so many bad turns for her. The woman told Tessa that one of the worst parts of living out of a car was that there was no privacy, that she lived in constant fear that someone was watching her, someone intent on doing her harm. Over the following few weeks, Tessa thought long and hard about the problem, then realized there was something she could do to help.

Tessa paid a visit to her aunt Georgia. She borrowed her aunt’s Singer sewing machine and, at her own expense, made curtains for the homeless woman, drapes that could be cleverly hooked into the fabric of the car’s interior ceiling.

This was a special young lady, Jessica thought.

The last entry of note read:

Dad is very sick. He is getting worse, I think. He tries to be strong, but I know it is just an act for me. I look at his frail hands and I think about the times, when I was small, when he would push me on the swings. I felt as if my feet could touch the clouds! His hands are cut and scarred from all the sharp slate and coal. His fingernails are blunt from the iron chutes. He always said that he left his soul in Carbon County, but his heart is with me.And with Mom. I hear his terrible breathing every night. Even though I know how much it hurts, each breath comforts me, tells me he is still here. Still Dad.

Near the center of the diary, there were two pages torn out, then the very last entry, dated nearly five months earlier, read, simply:

I’m back. Just call me Sylvia.

Who is Sylvia? Jessica wondered.

Jessica went through her notes. Tessa’s mother’s name was Anne. She had no sisters. There was certainly no “Sister Sylvia” at Nazarene.

She flipped back through the diary. A few pages before the section that was removed was a quote from a poem that she didn’t recognize.

Jessica turned once again to the final entry. It was dated right around Thanksgiving of the previous year.

I’m back. Just call me Sylvia. Back from where, Tessa? And who is Sylvia?

9

MONDAY, 1:00 PM

Jimmy Purify had been nearly six feet tall in the seventh grade, and no one had ever called him skinny.