"Thank you. There really is a bad storm coming, and she might get caught in it. Please, if you find her, tell her I had nothing to do with what Gisselle did tonight. Please, tell her."
"I'm sure she doesn't think that anyway," Miss Stevens said, with a smile of kindness. We saw Mrs. Ironwood watching us from the side as we followed the crowd out of the ballroom.
A streak of lightning cut a white gash in the dark and foreboding sky. Some of the girls squealed with excitement. Some of the Rosewood boys stole quick goodbye kisses before mounting their buses. Jonathan Peck had a crowd of at least half a dozen doting Greenwood girls around him, waiting and hoping for him to press his precious lips to theirs, or at least to their cheeks.
Another crack of thunder caused more shouting and scurrying about. I saw Miss Stevens hurry away to get to her jeep and I looked hopefully down the driveway for a sign of Abby before I turned to walk quickly back to our dorm. Perhaps she had circled around and gone back herself, I anticipated; but when I arrived, I found our room empty. I went back to the main lobby to wait for Miss Stevens. All the other girls arrived, bubbling over with excitement about the dance and the boys they had met. I ignored them, and for the most part, they ignored me.
The storm came over the campus rapidly, blowing in from the river. Soon the wind was turning and twisting the branches of the great oak trees. The world outside grew darker and darker and the rain began to fall in sheets, thumping on the windows and bouncing off the walkways. The railings around the galerie were dripping in a continuous stream, and the lightning continued to flash in the dark, illuminating the school and the grounds for a split second of white light and then leaving it in darkness again. What if Miss Stevens hadn't found Abby? I imagined her terrified under a tree somewhere on the road that led up to Greenwood. Perhaps she had made it to one of those nice houses that were on that road, and the people had been kind enough to take her in until the storm ended.
Nearly an hour had gone by before I looked through the lobby windows and saw the headlights of a car. Miss Stevens's jeep pulled up in front of our dorm and Miss Stevens emerged, her raincoat pulled up and over her head as she ran toward the dorm. I greeted her at the front door.
"Has she returned?" she asked me, and my heart sank.
"No."
"No?" She shook the water from her hair. "I drove up and down the road. I went miles more than she could have gone even if she had run the whole way, but I didn't see any sign of her. I was hoping she had turned back on her own."
"What could have happened to her?"
"Maybe someone stopped for her."
"But where would she go, Miss Stevens? She doesn't know anyone in Baton Rouge."
She shook her head, her face revealing worry as both of us thought of the same sort of terrible possibilities that might befall a beautiful young girl, wandering alone at night in a storm on a quiet highway.
"Maybe she just found shelter somewhere and is waiting for the storm to end," she offered.
Mrs. Penny came up beside us, her hands twisting, her face full of concern.
"I just had a call from Mrs. Ironwood, who wanted to know if Abby had returned. Where did she go, Ruby?"
"I don't know, Mrs. Penny."
"She left the grounds, and at night! . . . In a storm!"
"It wasn't something she wanted to do, Mrs. Penny."
"Oh dear," she moaned. "Oh dear. We've never had these sorts of problems at Greenwood before. It has always been such a delightful job for me, such a delightful experience."
"I'm sure everything will be all right," Miss Stevens told her. "Just leave the front door unlocked for her."
"But I always lock the door after curfew. I have all these others girls to think about too. What am I to do?"
"Don't worry about the door, Mrs. Penny. I'm going to sit right here and wait for Abby to return," I said, planting myself on the sofa in the lobby.
"Oh dear," she said. "And social evenings were always such a wonderful time."
"If you need me, call me," Miss Stevens said in a low voice. "Call me if she returns anyway. I'd like to know she's all right."
"Thank you, Miss Stevens," I said after she gave me her phone number. I followed her to the door to see her off. She squeezed my hands between hers.
"Everything will work out. You'll see," she promised, to boost my morale. I struggled to form a smile and watched her put her coat over her head again as she prepared to run the gamut between the dorm and her jeep. The rain was still coming down that strong. I waited at the door until she drove away. A few moments later, Mrs. Penny came up behind me and locked the doors.
"I've got to call Mrs. Ironwood," she told me. "She's going to be very angry. Let me know if she returns soon, will you, dear?"
I nodded, then returned to the sofa and sat staring at the door and listening to pounding raindrops that seem to fall just as hard on my heart as they did on the walls and roof of the dorm. I fell asleep on and off, waking abruptly a few times when I thought I heard someone at the door, but it proved to be only the wind. Exhausted from worry and fatigue, I finally got up and went to our room. I didn't even get out of my clothing. I collapsed on my bed, sobbing for Abby for a while, and then fell into a deep sleep, not waking up again until I-heard the girls moving through the lounge preparing to go to breakfast. I turned quickly to look at Abby's bed, and my heart sank at the sight of it, untouched.
Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I sat up and thought a moment. Then I went to the bathroom and dabbed ice-cold water on my face. I heard Gisselle's ripple of laughter and pulled open the door to confront her as she was being wheeled by.
"Good morning, Sister, dear," she said, looking up at me and smiling. She appeared fresh and happy and full of gloating satisfaction. "You look like you stayed up too late. Is your . . . friend back?"
"No, Gisselle. She never came back."
"Oh no! What will we do with the trophy?" she wondered aloud, and looked at Jacki, Katie, and Samantha, who flashed smiles back at her, but then those smiles evaporated quickly when they gazed at me. At least they showed some remorse, Samantha looking the saddest.
"It's not funny anymore, Gisselle. Something terrible might have happened to her last night. Where would she go? What would she do?"
"Maybe she found refuge in a sharecropper's shack. Who knows?" she said, smiling. "It might even be one of her long-lost relatives." She laughed hysterically. "Let's go," she commanded Samantha. "I'm ravishingly hungry this morning.”
Embarrassed and disgusted over the fact that this was my sister, I lowered my head and returned to my room. I had little appetite and wasn't looking forward to sitting down at breakfast with the girls, who would only be waiting to hear and see what I would do and say. Nevertheless, I changed my clothes. Just as I was about to go to the dining room Mrs. Penny arrived. One look at her face told me she knew about Abby. The fingers of her hands were locked around each other as if she were holding onto herself for dear life.
"Good morning, dear," she said.
"What's happened, Mrs. Penny? Where's Abby?"
"Mrs. Ironwood just called to tell me that her parents will be stopping by later today to pick up her things," she said in one gasp and sighed.
"Then she's all right? They've found her?"
"Apparently she went into the city last night and called them. Now she'll be leaving the school. She would have been expelled for going off the school grounds in the middle of the night anyway," she added.
"Oh, she would have been expelled, Mrs. Penny, but not for running off," I said, shaking my head, and fixing my angry gaze on our housemother. "That wouldn't have been Mrs. Ironwood's true reason?'
Mrs. Penny lowered her eyes and shook her head sadly. "We never had such problems," she muttered. "It's so troubling?' She looked up and quickly gazed around the room. "Anyway, I know how you girls are always bunching your things together. I wanted you to separate whatever is yours from whatever is hers so that they can come and go quickly as possible. This won't be pleasant for anyone, especially for me" she added.