“I’m a chocolate guy myself,” he admitted, glancing at the clock. It was going on four o’clock. He had exactly one hour until he had to be pulling out the chair at his mother’s dining room table and sitting his butt down. Maria Wolfenstein did not suffer late arrivals at her dinners, especially her own children. “Sorry to run you off girls, but I’m up against it here.” He lifted his pencil and tapped the pages.
The girls giggled again.
“Maybe we’ll see you around,” Tara said, giving him a huge smile so white it almost glowed.
The girls disappeared back into the hall and Max focused on Betty Rogers’ answers, though he could still hear the voices and the distant pronouncement, “He’s so hot,” by who he guessed was Tara.
The visiting girls were not a rarity for Max Wolfenstein, known to the kids as Mr. Wolf, since his first day at Winterberry Middle School two years before. In part, the kids loved Max because he was young and fresh-faced. He looked more like their older brothers than their fathers.
He also drove a motorcycle, had the laid-back attitude of a surfer dude rather than an uppity English teacher, and struck a decent resemblance to Rob Lowe, who had starred in The Outsiders, which had released earlier in the year and had all the boys and girls talking. Rob Lowe, known as Sodapop in the movie, was a tough street kid.
Max shared little else in common with Sodapop. He taught English after all, and if his students could have seen him a decade before when he was walking in their shoes, they would have caught sight of a scrawny kid with a bad bowl cut who often resembled a turtle struggling down the hallway with an over-sized shell on its back. By high school he’d had a spurt, shot up to nearly six feet by his senior year, and joined the basketball team. He ended his high school years as Wolf instead of Wolfy, his boyhood nickname, and had more than a handful of admirers who, a few years earlier, had pointed and laughed when he’d walked down the hallway.
Despite time’s helpful encouragements, Max related more to the loners and oddballs in his classes than he ever would the blond cheerleaders like Tara or the square-shaped jocks who, at thirteen, already had arms the size of small gorillas.
“Speaking of,” he muttered, pulling out Sid Putnam’s paper.
Sid was a pudgy little fellow with giant glasses forever sliding down his small pointed nose. His front teeth were too big for his face, but stayed mostly hidden behind large fleshy lips. He laughed in a spasmodic hyena pitch, and though he tried to contain the sound by never laughing at all, he was rarely successful. Mostly because he sat next to Ashley Shepherd, his seeming best friend with a sharp sense of humor and a tendency to talk during class.
Ashley was whip smart with a dry, rather adult humor that often surprised Max. She was also pretty. Someday she’d be a knockout Max thought. She had long thick black hair and tanned skin, not from the sun, but a heritage he guessed came from Spain or Mexico. There was no father in Ashley’s life as far as Max knew. Her mother, when she could make it, attended conferences alone and had the distracted, frazzled look of a woman who worked too much and slept too little. Ashley was a latchkey kid who Max imagined spent most of her afternoons eating cereal and running wild in the woods.
He’d seen her several times walking alone down by the railroad tracks that ran through downtown or riding her bicycle on the country roads. Sometimes Sid was with her, but Sid’s parents kept a much closer eye on their youngest child.
Sid had answered all the questions correctly, but when Max’s eyes trailed over the last question, Sid’s answer gave him pause. What are you afraid of? the question asked. Sid had written in his tiny chicken scratch: The boy in the woods.
Max shuddered, his red pen leaving a squiggle next to Sid’s answer.
“Well, that’s creepy, isn’t it?” he asked the room, which had grown oddly quiet.
Through the windows, he saw most of the students had ambled away from the sidewalk. No cars or buses occupied the circular driveway. The American flag hung limply in the still sky.
“An imaginary boy?” Max jotted next to Sid’s answer with a smiley face that didn’t feel all that jovial.
He graded the last of the papers, pausing a final time to read Ashley’s answer to the final question.
Her response was not unexpected, ‘nothing,’ she’d written, and Max almost believed her.
MAX STEPPED into the hallway at the sound of raised voices.
A woman’s hysterical cry rang out. “No one saw him? How could that be, Principal Hagerty? Someone must have seen him. They must have.” The woman’s voice grew shrill, and the man beside her wrapped a protective arm around her back.
Max saw the principal’s face drained of color, and his eyes big and bulging as he tried to reassure the couple before him.
“He’s a young man. He’s of the age-”
“No!” It was the man who spoke now, or bellowed might better describe it. “Simon did not wander off to sew his wild oats or whatever you’re trying to imply, Principal Hagerty. I want an announcement. I want permission to post fliers. We’ve called the police.”
Something touched Max’s elbow, and he jumped, sending his papers fluttering into the air like a dozen white butterflies. They floated down and settled on the shining floor.
“Mr. Wolfenstein, I apologize,” Brenda Cutler told him, blushing.
Miss Cutler taught Home Economics. She was a short, round woman with a mop of frizzy black hair. She was forever donning an apron splashed with cocoa powder or flour. The aroma of cookies followed her, and when she walked, she bounced as if skipping across balloons.
Max grinned and blew out a breath.
“It’s okay, Miss Cutler. You caught me eavesdropping.”
“Worrisome to be sure,” Miss Cutler said, inclining her head toward the couple.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Simon Frank,” she whispered, her eyes going wide. “He’s been missing since last week. Both his parents work. They don’t even know when he went missing. He never came out for breakfast Friday morning, but they figured he got an early start.
Sometimes he arrived to school early to play boardgames in the cafeteria with a few other boys. Both his parents worked late Friday, and his bedroom door was closed when they got home. It wasn’t until about noon on Saturday, his mother looked in on him. Bed was made, not a sign of him.”
“Simon Frank,” Max murmured. He’d had him for sixth grade English the year before. Simon was a nice kid, skinny and freckled with a loud laugh that carried from room to room. Max had heard Simon’s laugh more than once as it echoed from the art room across the hall from Max’s own English class.
“He lives by the old train depot,” Brenda added.
“No chance he’s just playing hooky? Took off with some friends?”
“Not likely,” Brenda answered. “Simon’s chummy with Jon Hastings and Benjamin Rite. Both were in school yesterday and today. In fact, both boys asked Mr. Ludgin, the social studies teacher, where Simon was. The three had plans to play dodgeball after school today. Not long after, Simon’s parents called and sounded the alarm.”
Max frowned. “They seem really upset.”
“Sure, sure. Though I’d say that’s at least partially on account of little Vern Ripley. He’s been missing for six months now. Not a trace of him found.”
“I’m sorry, who?”
“Vern Ripley,” Brenda repeated,” looking at him with surprise. “Oh my, I forget you don’t make the rounds with all the kids like some of us do. Vern was an eighth grader this year. A few days after the new year, he walked off with a sled and never came home.”