Dr. Mendoza was careful to use the right words, the right abbreviations. The pike, not the freeway. And Mass General, not Massachusetts General Hospital.
The girl cried: “But is he-oh my God, you said he’s okay-he’s okay, right? He’s not hurt? Or is he?”
The hall was deserted and dark. Once the door to Founders Hall had closed behind them, they were alone, with no one around to see. Their footsteps echoed.
“Is he hurt?” the girl asked again, louder. “Oh my God, please tell me!”
“Your father needs you,” Dr. Mendoza simply said.
87
Danny pulled his car up to the curb directly in front of the school, which was marked NO STOPPING/NO STANDING. Let ’em tow, he thought.
He slammed the door and jogged into the main entrance of the school.
Leon Chisholm was sitting on a chair inside the foyer. “Danny boy, I thought you weren’t coming-”
Danny shrugged. No time to explain. “You see my daughter, Leon?”
“No, ’fraid not, but all the girls and the parents are in Founders Hall. If she’s anywhere, she’s there.”
“Thanks,” Danny said, hurrying away.
“If I see her, I’ll tell her-” Leon called out.
But Danny was already out of earshot.
Founders Hall was the large, grandly appointed assembly room where the big school meetings took place. Back-to-School Night, when parents met with their daughters’ teachers, began with the parents assembled here. On College Night, juniors and their parents gathered as a group to listen to a few selected admissions officers, usually from one of the Ivy League schools or exclusive small colleges, tell them what colleges were looking for.
When he reached the set of doors that led to Founders Hall, he stopped. Through the round glass portal windows in the double doors, he could see that everyone was seated in chairs listening to a red-haired, freckle-faced young woman holding forth.
“… could fill the freshman class with students with 4.0 GPAs and 2400 SATs,” the woman was saying. “Several times over, in fact. But we’re looking for that certain special ‘plus,’ that something extra that makes the application pop.”
From this vantage point, he could see only the backs of people’s heads. He couldn’t make out Abby or Jenna. So he walked down the hallway to the next set of doors, and from there he could see faces. At this angle, he could see roughly half of the audience. He combed the crowd, row by row, looking for Abby or Jenna, not seeing either one.
Then, as he raced along the corridor to the other side of Founders Hall, where he’d be able to see the rest of the audience, his iPhone gave a text alert.
He stopped, glanced at the phone’s screen, and was surprised to see a text from Jenna.
Did u find her?
He texted back: No, is she w. u?
I’m here in Founders, don’t see her anywhere. Thought she was with you.
Please come out & talk w. me, he texted back.
A pause. Then her text came through: OK.
He resumed jogging down the corridor toward the far side of the room. He heard a thunder burst of applause and then a rising cacophony. The presentation was over. By the time he got to the entry doors, people were getting up from their seats, talking loudly to one another. The Yale admissions rep was standing at the front, engulfed by a huge jostling crowd, a honeybee queen surrounded by worker bees. A knot of parents stood near the door, obstructing Danny’s view.
He pushed the door open and entered, now searching only for Jenna. He had to push through a throng gathered around the tired, pillaged display of red grapes and Jarlsberg cheese cubes.
The chatter all around him seemed to break into unconnected fragments of speech like confetti scattered into the air. A woman was saying, “But if she gets in early decision, she has to go, and then what happens if she gets into Williams, regular decision? I mean, it’s a nightmare, right?”
A man was saying, “They don’t even do on-campus interviews anymore, just alumni interviews, and everyone knows those’re a joke.”
He saw a small, pudgy dark-haired girl who looked sort of like Jenna, wearing a Lyman Lacrosse sweatshirt. But it wasn’t Jenna. “Excuse me, have you seen Jenna Galvin?” Danny asked her.
The girl motioned with a jerk of her head. “I saw her back there.”
He was jostled by a woman who was saying, “Sure, but it’s not even in the top ten on the U.S. News ranking.”
A man was muttering to another one, “You do know that the school for war orphans their daughter allegedly founded in Rwanda was actually underwritten by her father, right?”
Suddenly, Danny glimpsed Jenna and exhaled with relief. He pushed his way toward her. When he got closer, she saw him and said, “I don’t know where she is. Is my dad here?”
“No. Did anyone see Abby at all tonight?”
“Well, yeah, a bunch of people saw her come in. Then Jordan and Emily saw her walking out with this guy.”
“What guy?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, like someone’s dad?”
“Walking out of the building?”
She shrugged. “I guess. I thought maybe she’d gotten in trouble or something.”
“You haven’t heard from her-message, call, nothing?”
“No-”
“She’s definitely not in here?”
“Definitely not. I texted her-”
“Well, you guys both need to get out of there. Get back home. And if you do hear from her-”
“I know, I’ll tell you.”
She’d walked out with a man who looked like someone’s dad.
He felt a rising panic. Abby had walked out of the building with someone, a man Jenna didn’t recognize.
But she wouldn’t go anywhere with someone she didn’t know. She wouldn’t do that. Even here, in the safe environs of the Lyman Academy, she knew not to trust strangers. That was drilled into kids these days.
He jostled a couple, trying to squeeze past.
“Well, her older sister got Z-listed at Harvard. They definitely played the Eliot card.”
“Aren’t they Eliots, like that Eliot? Like President Eliot of Harvard, those Eliots?”
“Hey, Danny,” he heard someone say. He felt a tap on his shoulder. A fellow Lyman dad he saw at school events and liked. “Man, you look as nervous as me! I mean, is this Tension City or what?”
Danny turned to look at him, a million miles away. “Yeah,” he said thickly. He gave an unconvincing smile. Sidling away, he took out his iPhone and hit speed dial for Abby once again.
It rang once, twice… and-that was different: It didn’t go directly to voice mail.
It rang a third time, and then someone said, “Hello, Daniel.”
A male voice.
“Who’s this?” he said, his heart suddenly racing.
“I’m sorry. Abby cannot come to the phone right now.”
“Who is this?”
“I am your life raft,” the voice said. “And you are a drowning man.”
88
“Who the hell is this?”
Danny became aware that the background noise on the other end of the line was identical to the background noise in the hall, and he felt a shudder.
The man on the phone was here, somewhere, in this room.
“You have something I want, and I have something you want,” the voice said.
“How the hell did you get my daughter’s phone, you bastard?” he burst out. It was all he could think to say.
His eyes desperately searched the room, scanning back and forth, looking for someone speaking on a phone. Someone who wasn’t a Lyman parent, someone who didn’t belong.
“Neither one of us has time to waste, Mr. Goodman. Your daughter is in the care of an associate of mine who has instructions to take good care of her.”