It was the Monday morning break.
Sandy desperately needed to talk to someone.
In the previous week, suspiciously on the day right after Sandy's interview with the cops, Connie had disappeared. There had been no sign of her at all in school. There had been rumors about the reason. Some say that she had transfered. A few claimed that she had been suspended.
Sandy hoped it had not been because of what she had told the cops. She did not want to be blamed for whatever had happened to Connie. That was why she wished she could talk to someone that morning. She wanted to reassure herself, perhaps find some false hope, that Connie's absence had been a coincidence and not because of something horrible, with Sandy as its cause.
She did not want to talk to Ariel, who was busy going through the handout of the last lesson. Darla was occupied with her own friends. And the boys were poor listeners.
At that moment, Esper and Selina returned to class with the latest edition of the Fernham Post. Perfect! People to talk to and maybe a story on what had happened to Connie.
The girls met at Ariel's desk and quickly scanned the paper.
"There's nothing about Connie in here," Sandy said after they had flipped the last page.
"It can't be," Ariel said, "That Keith had been pestering everyone about Connie last week. He would've written something."
"Could it be some form of censorship?" Esper suggested.
Ariel looked up at her curly-haired friend. "And who would do such a thing?"
Esper shrugged.
Sigh. It appeared that Sandy would not get any information out of the school paper. She would not be able to find out more about what had happened to Connie or whether it had been related to the photos of Annie.
The only obvious source of information left was Annie. And Annie was not someone Sandy would want to speak to. Not after the incident when the little girl had not paid her. Not after Sandy had helped circulate copies of a certain photo.
Thankfully, Annie had ignored her whenever they had bumped into each other in the school corridors. But Sandy had not dared to start a conversation with the little girl for fear of how ugly it could end up.
Sandy would just have to live with that mystery of life.
***
It was after school and Sandy rushing to the bicycle shed for her ride home.
A second later, she was out again, without the bicycle, and with panic mode on. Sandy glanced aimlessly about the school. When she spotted Ariel stepping out of the school block, she hurried over.
"Ariel, my bicycle's missing!" Sandy wailed to the blond.
The other girl simply regarded her classmate through narrowed bespectacled eyes. "You haven't been riding a bicycle to school for two weeks now."
"Oh yeah," Sandy realized. She had been going to school with the cops each day.
The police had been taking steps to keep her safe. To the detectives investigating the case, despite the trustee's claim that Sandy was not a benefactor, it was clear that someone out there believed that she was. Until the police found and arrested whomever was after Sandy, she was still in danger.
"It's just like you to have forgotten," Ariel commented frostily as she continued her walk towards the school gate.
No comments:
Post a Comment