What Has Become of You (17 page)

“I’ll always remember Sufia’s lunches,” Jamie said. “They always smelled good, and if you asked her what she was eating, she was always willing to share some of it. It was because of her that I first tried
sambuusas
.”

Vera thought of sambuca, the liqueur. But then Cecily-Anne said, “Ohhhh, are those like samosas?”

“Yes, but
better
. The spices are different.”

Aggie Hamada raised her hand. “I think it would be nice if we all shared a memory of Sufia. I have one I’d like to share.”

The twitch had begun to settle into Vera’s lips and into the muscles of her cheeks. She listened as Jamie told a story of how Sufia had been a valuable member of the debate team. “Mrs. Fortunato—the debate coach—used to call her our secret weapon,” she said, “because she stuck by her beliefs and always let her argument unfold in a . . . patient way.”

The other girls began to add to the stories. Soon, almost everyone had something they remembered: the extra pens Sufia always carried, in many colored inks, which she willingly lent to girls who’d lost or forgotten their own; Sufia’s laugh, which was rare but delightful, making her whole body shake from head to toe.

“These are such lovely memories,” Vera said when the stories began to dwindle. She was sure at this point that her students could see her tremors, and she thought that a couple of them were even looking at her with a mixture of revulsion and concern. Jensen Willard in particular was looking at her with what Vera thought might be sympathy, in her pale, gray, watchful way. Vera realized that Jensen was the only girl who had not shared a story about Sufia. “Anyone else?” she said, fixing her gaze on the girl. “Anyone else who has a memory to speak of?”

Just as she could have predicted, Jensen Willard pressed her lips together and shook her head.

Vera looked at the clock. There were still forty-five minutes left of class time. She had planned to allocate some of the day’s class time to a discussion of
The Catcher in the Rye
, but Vera knew that talking about Holden Caulfield’s slow disintegration and denial of the same were not the right topics to take on just now. “Let’s do something a little different today,” she said, her lips still twitching. “Poetry. I don’t think you’ll mind taking a little break from
Catcher
for a day or two, will you? Take out your literature anthologies and turn to page 646. Richard Wilbur, ‘The Beautiful Changes.’”

Not budging from her perch on the table, Vera let students monopolize the discussion of the poem, interjecting very little herself; she even let Martha True read it aloud, in her girlish, quavery voice. In the remaining class time, she asked students to start drafting poems of their own. “You can write about loss if you’d like,” Vera said, “or about sorrow. Or, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to write about those things.”

As was often the case, she was rather amazed when they obeyed her. She still had not gotten used to the fact that she could say something like “Everyone start writing a poem,” and everyone would actually do so. But her girls were essentially still children, and children were obedient creatures. As the girls frowned and scribbled and frowned some more, Vera thought they even
looked
childlike; the tip of Kelsey Smith’s tongue protruded from her lips, making her look like an earnest toddler crafting a painting, while Jensen Willard’s tousled cap of hair fell in her face as she started working out her first lines. Vera took this opportunity to sit quietly and feel the panic ebb out of her. When the last of the tremors had ebbed away, she felt weakened all over, as though she’d been run over by a truck.

Once the exercise was finished, Harmony Phelps said, “Are we going to get our journals back today?”

“Oh,” Vera said, jumping up off the table, “I do have them. Thank you for reminding me.”

She reserved a minute at the end of class to hand back students’ journals, fully expecting that the girls would head for the door as soon as they received them. Instead, each girl sat with her journal just as Jensen had a few days prior, taking time to read Vera’s handwritten feedback. For a moment she felt simultaneously flustered, pleased, and self-conscious, adding to the mental confusion she already felt; then she realized they were probably just subdued, rather than entranced by her comments.

The girls finally started to leave. Aggie Hamada said “Have a nice day” as she passed. Katherine “Kitty” Arsenault, one of Vera’s most reticent students, called out “See you tomorrow!” on her way out. It proved to Vera what she had seen play out time and again in other classes she’d taught: You could stand before a class all day long and exchange ideas till you were blue in the face, but there was no greater bond to be formed than when grief and vulnerability were shared. That’s where she liked to think their sudden kindness came from, anyway; she didn’t like to think that they just felt sorry for her.

Her strength regained, Vera stood up and called out, “Jensen? Could I speak to you for a second?” just as the girl was lifting herself arthritically out of her seat.

Jensen did as she was asked, and Vera could see that the whites around her amber eyes had a yellowish look that she’d never noticed before. It occurred to her that the girl might not be getting enough sleep. And no wonder, given all that was going on lately. “Are you doing okay?” she asked.

“I’m doing all right. Why?”

“I know from your journal entry that you’re going through a little bit of a rough time, that’s all. And then, well . . . there’s Sufia.”

The girl shrugged. “Are
you
okay?” she asked Vera.

Vera took this as a jab at her visible nervousness in the classroom. Even if the question was well-meaning, coming from a place of genuine concern, she had no intention of answering it. “I’m fine. Listen, while I’ve got you up here, there’s something else I want to ask of you. Could you please make an effort to be on time from now on? Class begins promptly at eight o’clock. Everyone else is on time, so it’s only fair that you are, too. I know maybe this is a funny time to bring that up, but I’ve been meaning to mention it for a while.”

“Okay. I can make an effort.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“I’m sorry I’m a little late sometimes. I have to motivate a little bit before I get from class to class. But did you know this is my favorite class?”

“Is it? Thank you.” Vera hadn’t been expecting that. She felt herself blushing at the compliment and feeling ludicrous for doing so.

“You’re welcome. It’s nice of you to put up with me and read all my writing.”

“I worry a bit, that’s all. It’s not a question of
putting up
with you.”

Then Jensen said something that nearly floored Vera. “It must have been awful for whoever found Sufia in the park like that.”

“Yes,” Vera said. “I’m sure it was.”

“I wonder what she looked like. I mean, being dead and all.”

Her chest tightening again, Vera said, “I don’t feel quite comfortable with this line of discussion.”

“You know what else? I heard that her boyfriend did it.”

“Where did you hear that from? Chelsea Cutler, maybe?”

“Just around.” Jensen’s lips moved in something as close to a smile as Vera had ever seen from her. “I have to go to French now,” the girl said. “Bye.” She turned on her heels, dragging her knapsack behind her in a clatter of buckles.

Uneasily, Vera watched her go, until the clattering grew fainter and fainter down the corridor outside her classroom door.

 • • • 

The rest of Vera’s classes were better. Though she now felt foolish for moving into a poetry unit, she repeated the morning’s discussion with her last two sections, not wanting one group to get ahead of the other in their
Catcher
readings. When classes were over, Sue MacMasters stopped her outside the door of the faculty lounge with another invitation to meet up with the English teachers for tomorrow’s lunch. The underlying purpose of this, Vera knew, was for the group to commiserate about Sufia Ahmed. Vera was tempted to say she was so bogged down in paperwork she couldn’t possibly join them, but she knew the solemnity of recent events required her presence. Besides, these faculty lunches, though still strained, were getting a little easier for her. She had now met informally with the English faculty three times, and each lunch period had been a little less painful than the one before. They weren’t a bad group of women on the whole, Vera had to remind herself during those seemingly protracted forty-five-minute lunches. They were well-meaning, and they seemed as though they accepted her, or were at least getting used to her quiet, standoffish ways.

Once Sue was gone, Vera went inside the lounge to check her mailbox. She sorted through a few memos, threw out a postcard one shamelessly self-promoting faculty member had distributed to advertise her pottery exhibit, and retrieved one short, typed document that looked like a student essay, though it had no name or title at the top. She looked at it, flinched, and looked at it again, first checking around the room to make sure no one else was with her.

I’m still thinking about Sufia. I can’t help it. And I can’t help wondering about you. It seems this is really getting to you.

One has to wonder about someone who just goes waltzing through the park at two or three in the morning and why she would be there to begin with. What did this person think when she first saw Sufia? I’ve read accounts from other people who’ve stumbled across dead bodies and how they thought they were seeing a department store mannequin or a doll. Is that what this person thought?

I’ve been reading all the articles about Sufia I can find—mostly the same one, reprinted over and over in different papers. It feels like Angela Galvez all over again, doesn’t it?

If I’m being completely honest, I’m jealous of both of them—both these dead girls. Not because of the attention, but because they got away. I wish it was that easy for me to escape. Sometimes I like to think of death as an adventure, a retreat. It would be the nicest vacation I’d ever have, and the best part would be that it wouldn’t have to end.

Think of it: No more worrying about being disappointed. No more worrying about disappointing other people. No more trying to impress people who I can’t even impress. And I suppose this is the very definition of egotistical, but I can’t help wondering what people would say about me once I was gone—would anyone miss me? Would Bret? Or would I just continue to be that whispered-about weird girl doing another weird thing, the weird thing to end all weird things?

How nice it would be to just die for a little while and come back when the coast is clear. But I don’t think it happens that way. Even if I believed in life after death, which I’m not sure I do, there would be no guarantee that we could come back when we felt ready; we would have to come back at somebody else’s whim. I wonder if Angela and Sufia are going to come back. Maybe they already have. Maybe they’re already here—right here beside you, in the room you’re standing in now, just waiting for you to notice them.

Vera, having read the last line, whirled around as though expecting someone to have crept up behind her. There was no one there. Her hands had begun to tremble again, causing the typed pages to rattle, and she sought out the cubicle in which the school secretary, Eileen, worked.

“Eileen?” she said. “Did a student drop off a paper for you to put in my box? A short, dark-haired girl?”

“No,” said Eileen, a salty young woman who seemed years older than her actual age—a woman who always looked at Vera with a hint of mockery, as though thinking she could take her in a bar fight. Which she probably could.

“I have a paper in my box from a student,” Vera said. “I’m just wondering how it got in there since students don’t have access to the lounge.”

“Beats me,” Eileen said.

School had ended only fifteen minutes before. Many students were still in the halls. Vera took off from the lounge and sped through the corridors, garnering looks from the students she passed; panting, she ran up and down the rows of lockers on all three flights of the school, searching for Jensen Willard. She was nowhere to be found.

On Friday, Jensen Willard was absent from Vera’s class. She was absent again on the following Monday, and by the time Wednesday rolled around, she was still a no-show. This was cause for concern. Per the Wallace School’s policy, any student who missed four consecutive school days was the recipient of a check-in from the attendance office—a phone call asking when she planned to return. Vera had been contemplating an informal check-in of her own, but she could not bring herself to email the girl. Her drafts folder was already full of unfinished queries she could not and would not send—drafts that ranged from accusatory (“Why did you put that journal in my mailbox? What do you know about me?”) to appropriately concerned (“Your comments worry me. Do you need someone to talk to?”).

She knew it was fear that prohibited her from sending them. Not fear of Jensen Willard specifically—she didn’t like to think she was becoming
afraid
of the girl—but fear of the girl’s mental state, which she saw as something quite separate.

Her quandary was solved when Sue MacMasters came by on Wednesday afternoon and said, “I need you to send me the last few days’ homework assignments for one of your students.” She paused to look at the name written down on her clipboard. “Jensen Willard. Her mother called the school office and requested that all her teachers send the work.”

“Is Jensen all right?”

“Sick,” Sue said briskly. “Though her mother did say she’s on the mend. Specifically, she’s started sitting up again and drinking tea.”

“Sounds like a bad flu, maybe?” Vera kept her tone mild. She did not want Sue to see that the mere mention of Jensen Willard rattled her. Vera took out her notebook and started writing down the past few days’ readings and written assignments. “I’ll make a list of the missing assignments and see that Jensen gets them. If you do happen to speak to her mother again, send my wishes for a speedy recovery.”

“Oh,
I
don’t take phone calls like that. Are you kidding? That’s Eileen’s job.”

Vera’s classes, minus Jensen, resumed their discussions of
The Catcher in the Rye
, which was finally winding down to its last chapters. The girls seemed confused by Holden’s low spirits and compromised physical health, unsure of what to make of the novel’s penultimate chapter when Holden is nearly in tears while watching his little sister, Phoebe, go round and round on the Central Park carousel.

“I don’t see why he’d get all worked up about that,” Kelsey Smith said. “Little kids ride on carousels all the time.”

“They do,” Vera said. “That’s just it. Haven’t you ever had a moment where something ordinary strikes you as extraordinary? Where something ordinary seems wonderfully beautiful or wonderfully sad?”

When Kelsey shook her head, Vera had to stop and process that for a moment. How was it possible to not be struck by such things? “Maybe in time you will” was all she could say to the girl, moving past her seat.

“It says in the last chapter that he ended up getting sick,” Jamie Friedman said. “But he’s talking to a psychoanalyst . . . Is he in like a mental hospital or a regular hospital?”

“It isn’t made explicitly clear. Most readers assume he is in a psychiatric facility, but one might argue that he could be in a sanitarium of some kind for his physical health. Whatever the case, he is receiving psychiatric treatment.”

“But he was happy right before the last chapter,” Aggie Hamada said worriedly, as though happiness and sadness could not coexist or follow each other in close succession.

“Maybe it’s because he’d just promised Phoebe he wouldn’t leave,” Jamie said. “He was going to leave, and then he changed his mind and decided to go home. Maybe that made him happy in a way, to have finally
decided
on something.”

“Speaking of deciding,” Vera said, “this coming weekend will be time for you to decide on your big essay topics for
The Catcher in the Rye
. Remind me to set aside a few minutes at the end of class to discuss what might make a good topic versus what might make a weak topic.”

On Friday afternoon, Vera’s mother called to ask if she’d heard about the woman who’d been strangled in the park (“So close to where you live!” she’d lamented). Vera had known it was only a matter of time before her mother got wind of the news story and took it as further proof that Vera was in grave danger living all by herself.

Exasperated, she said, “Mom, this happened the week before
last
. What did you do, read a week-old paper that was kicking around at the doctor’s office or something?”

“Yes. And I can’t believe you didn’t call me, when somebody got killed practically in your own backyard, where you walk all the time!”

“It wasn’t practically in my yard, Mom, and I don’t walk through the park at night. I’m alert to my surroundings. I lived in New York City, remember?”

“You sound stressed. I’d feel better if I could see you. Why don’t you come down? You could call in sick on Monday, and you could have a nice, long, quiet weekend. I think you’d find it good to get out of there.”

Vera was almost persuaded. Perhaps a relaxing weekend
would
be just the thing right now. But reason won out. “I have a lot of work to do this weekend, Mom,” she said, not without regret. “And this would be a really bad time to call in sick. My girls need me.” As soon as she said it out loud, she sensed the inherent foolishness of this comment. She doubted that they
needed
her for anything.

The following Monday, Jensen Willard returned to class. She was not late this time—in fact, she arrived before several of the other girls did—but she did not make eye contact with Vera as she came in and settled into her seat. She bent over her notebook, underlining the page’s blue rulings with a black pen.

“Feeling better?” Vera said.

“A little.” Jensen still didn’t look up. She had a spot of high color on each usually pale cheek, like a child who had been playing hard outside in the snow.
Maybe she really
does
have the flu,
Vera thought.

“Do you want my make-up homework now? I still haven’t done my final essay for
Catcher
.”

“Those aren’t due till next week. Let’s talk
after
class is over.” Vera noticed that some of the other girls were beginning to shift in their seats. What was it about a simple utterance from Jensen Willard that seemed to make the other girls physically uncomfortable? Vera recalled the accounts people had given of interacting with known psychopaths, Ivan Schlosser among them:
There was just something about him that made the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
But was Jensen really a psychopath? And why hadn’t she noticed before that the girls reacted this way to her?
Perhaps,
Vera thought,
I am simply projecting.

When class was over, Jensen remained at her seat until the last girl had gone. Then she got up and spoke, her gaze now redirected to the top of Vera’s table. “Sorry I missed so many classes. I wanted to talk to you about some topic ideas I had for my
Catcher
final.”

“There’s something else I’d like to discuss first.” Vera reached into her first-period folder and took out the two typed sheets she had found in her faculty mailbox days before. “I’ve been wanting to ask you for several days how you got this journal entry into the faculty lounge.”

“What journal entry?”

Vera rustled the two sheets together. “This one right here.”

“That isn’t a journal. It’s a freewrite that I assigned to myself.”

“Your freewrite, then, if that’s what you want to call it. I call it very strange. Why did you put it in my box anonymously, as it were? Why not just give it to me in class?”

“I don’t know,” Jensen said.

“You don’t
know
?”

“Seriously. I wrote it, but I didn’t mean to pass it in. I don’t know how it got in your box. I’m sorry if it bothered you.”

This was a stalemate. Jensen looked Vera in the eye, a rarity, but Vera found her affect so flat that she could not tell if the girl was lying or not. The red spots in her cheeks seemed to darken, and Vera could not tell if this was an angry flush, or a defensive one, or one of pure embarrassment.

“I really I hope you aren’t toying with me, Jensen. I don’t find it cute or funny. You know that I . . . you know I think highly of you. But please don’t toy with me.”

“I’m not. I don’t know why you would think that. I did turn a new journal entry in today, though, when everyone else passed their stuff in. It’s really short. I’m sorry about that, too—it being so short, I mean.”

Vera put the two typed pages back into her folder, looking up at Jensen. “Well,” she said almost gruffly, “you’ve been so prolific with your other entries. I don’t think a shorter one is something you need to be sorry for. It’s not
length
I’m worried about. It’s more a question of the content. Some of the things you write . . .”

“Can we talk about my essay ideas now? I have Advanced French coming up in ten minutes.”

There were many things she wanted to say to the girl. She wanted to ask her to explain her comments about Sufia Ahmed and how she envied her for being dead. She knew, as an educator, she should try some outreach to the girl if she was having such thoughts—but there was something about the girl, her funny dignity and privacy, the need for personal space that was bigger than most people’s, that made her unable to ask.

And then, of course, there was that fear. That inexplicable
fear
that seemed to be getting worse and worse.

They reviewed Vera’s expectations for the final essay on
The Catcher in the Rye
. When they were finished, Jensen had made it as far as the door before she turned around slowly, teetering a little from the weight of her knapsack. “Miss Lundy?”

She had never called her that before. She had never addressed her in any way at all, Vera realized.

“Miss Lundy? When do you think you’ll be able to read the new journal entry I turned in today?”

It struck Vera as a loaded question. “When? I can’t tell you exactly. I may not get to it right away because I’m still catching up on so much other work. But by this weekend, I’m sure I’ll be able to look at yours and everyone else’s. Why?”

Someone was coming into the classroom—Kaitlyn Fiore again, with her forehead puckered and her mouth already open, as though she were about to launch into a tale of woe. She didn’t hang back seeing that Vera was talking to someone but instead sidled up to her and waited expectantly. Jensen turned around again and was just out the door when Vera called after her, “Jensen? Was there anything else?”

The girl’s mumbled reply was almost inaudible, but Vera thought she could make it out well enough. “No,” she said. “Nothing else.”

 • • • 

Her school day finished, Vera found an envelope containing a two-hundred-dollar check for her in her mailbox at home, wrapped in a note: “Spend this on something nice for yourself. Don’t give it to those nasty student loan people. Love, Mom.”

She wasted no time cashing it, purchasing a sixty-minute phone card on her way home and calling her mother from a coffee shop to thank her, resulting in forty-five minutes used on her card. With the remainder of the money she would buy a new bottle of not-bottom-shelf conditioner for her hair and bank whatever was left.
Lean times indeed,
she thought,
when drugstore conditioner is a splurge.
After picking up the conditioner, she stopped in at the library to return her books and pick out a few more. The same humorless librarian she always saw, the one in the turtleneck-and-jumper set, gave her the evil eye as she brought three new crime books to the circulation desk.

 • • • 

The rest of the school week passed without event. The empty chair where Sufia Ahmed had sat still seemed to occupy its own large space in the classroom, but every day it became a little easier to look the other way. The news articles about Sufia still appeared in the
Dorset Journal
on a daily basis, but the front-page story eventually found its way deeper and deeper into the pages of each issue until it ended up occupying a quiet space in the Lifestyles section one Sunday morning, under the heading
A MOTHER’S GRIEF
.

Another Friday came and went, and Jensen Willard had made no further ripples in class. In fact, she kept her head down through Vera’s class discussions, drawing more and more lines in her notebook until they were so heavily inked that Vera, nearsighted as she was, could see the black ink slashes from several tables away. The vehemence of these suggested, to Vera, a chaotic state of mind. But for once she did not feel tempted to try to draw the girl in. She was content, for now, to leave her alone in her solitary bubble, where she could pose no threat to her or the other girls whom she’d begun, to her own surprise, to feel protective toward.

 • • • 

Later that Friday evening at home, trying to talk herself out of going to Pearl’s—she had not been since
that night
and instead had made do with drinking at home—Vera drummed up the motivation to start looking through her students’ journals. Though she at first thought of leaving Jensen Willard’s self-professed “short” journal entry for Sunday, she made herself look at it first. Perhaps it would give her some insight into the girl’s reason for sending that worrisome previous journal—or the
freewrite
, as she’d called it.

It didn’t take long for Vera to locate Jensen’s entry within the pile. It was handwritten, for one thing, in neat, rounded letters. All the other girls typed their entries, and Vera wondered what had kept Jensen from doing so this time. Also, unlike her previous journal entries—but much like the writing she had put in Vera’s faculty mailbox—there was no title at the top, not even a name. But its authorship was clear enough, Vera saw as soon as she started reading.

It’s a funny thing about knowing you have a limited time to live and that you can literally take your own life in your hands, as the saying goes. My life is a small life. I guess it would fit in my hands all right. But the thing I’d always thought—always counted on—was that I would know to the day and hour when I was going. I would have those last few days to know I was saying good-bye, and though no one else would know it, and I’d have some closure for myself before I left. Now it isn’t going to be like that, exactly.