“Do you need help?” Phoebe called out.
“No—thank you,” the girl replied. “I was just wondering if I should wait out the rain. But I’ve got a class.”
“I’m headed to Arthur,” Phoebe said. “If you’re going anywhere near there, you’re welcome to share my umbrella.”
“Oh, wow, thank you,” the girl replied. “I’m headed to Arthur, too.”
The girl ducked under the umbrella, and after Phoebe shouted, “One, two, three,” they began a dash along walkways already flooded with puddles.
Before they’d run very far, the girl glanced over at Phoebe and called over the sound of the rain, “I really like your books.”
So that’s it, Phoebe thought: she was waiting for me. The phrase “No good deed goes unpunished” flashed in her mind.
“Thanks,” Phoebe said. She hoped the blunt reply would discourage further conversation.
“Are you going to be teaching next term, too?” the girl asked.
“I’m not sure yet,” Phoebe said. “That’s still up in the air.”
“I really wanted to take your writing class, but both sections were already closed by the time I heard you were subbing for Dr. Mason.”
“Sorry. The department head decided to keep the classes small.” Phoebe knew she should be nicer to the girl. “Are you thinking about writing professionally one day?” she added.
“Yes, I think so. Nonfiction like you. I like to explore things.”
“Why don’t you send me an e-mail,” Phoebe said. “When I know if I’m staying or not, I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks. I’d really appreciate that.”
Phoebe refocused on the walk and dodged a puddle. Despite the umbrella, she could feel that the back of her jacket was nearly soaked. At least Arthur Hall was now in sight. Students and faculty were scampering up the steps, eager to escape the downpour.
“Can I ask you one question?” the girl asked hurriedly.
Phoebe had no doubt about what was coming next. It was bound to be a variation on, “What’s Angelina really like?”
“Sure,” Phoebe replied without enthusiasm. All she wanted was to get settled in her classroom before twenty sopping wet students came tramping through the door.
“Is it really possible to start over? After you . . . you know . . . you’ve made a mess of things?”
Phoebe’s body stiffened instinctively. She couldn’t believe the girl was shooting this kind of question at her.
“You’ll have to ask me in a year,” Phoebe said bluntly. “I won’t know until then, will I?”
They mounted the steps to Arthur, and Phoebe collapsed her umbrella, shaking the water out.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean you,” the girl said, flustered. Phoebe could see that her cheeks had quickly colored. “It’s me. I—I’ve made kind of a mess of things.”
“Oh, I see,” Phoebe said, softening her voice. She felt a pinch of guilt for misunderstanding and being so curt.
“In your book Second Acts, you talk about people reinventing themselves,” the girl said. “And I wondered, can they really do that?”
“I was writing specifically about celebrities, of course,” Phoebe said. “And yes, some of them definitely do.”
“I mean anyone. Regular people. After something bad has happened, after you’ve . . . you know . . . you’ve screwed up. Can you really escape?”
Phoebe took a small breath, gathering her thoughts. She didn’t want to blow the girl off, but she also needed to get moving.
“Yes, I do think you can start over. But you have to do the work, as they say. That means figuring out what steps you must take to fix things. You’ve also got to be willing to look back at the mess and understand how it happened so you don’t repeat the same mistakes.”
The girl glanced away briefly, and when she looked back, Phoebe saw that her face was pinched.
“Thank you,” the girl said. “I appreciate your advice.”
“You’re welcome,” Phoebe said. She wondered if she should probe, but by now the stream of people headed into Arthur had been reduced to a trickle, a sign that classes were about to start. “Well, good luck.”
The girl smiled wanly and started to move away. Then she stopped and turned back.
“Don’t tell anyone what I said, okay?” she said quietly. “It’s a secret.”
“Of course not,” Phoebe said. “And please send me that e-mail?”
The girl said she would and hurried into the building ahead of Phoebe.
Now Phoebe’s stomach knotted as she passed tree after tree stapled with the flyer. Near the western edge of campus she saw that someone had scrawled something on one of the flyers. She approached to take a closer look. The letter G—or what looked like the letter G—had been written crudely in heavy black marker right across Lily’s face. Phoebe pulled the flyer down and stuffed it in her purse.
When she arrived at her house, three blocks west of campus on Hunter Street, she made a cup of tea and replayed the brief conversation with Lily in her head once again, making sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. What was the mess Lily had made? she wondered. Was it linked to her disappearance? Should Phoebe have done more to help the girl that day?
And why had someone scrawled across Lily’s photo with a marker? Was there someone on campus who hated her?
Phoebe picked up her phone and called Glenda. A babysitter answered and said that Dr. Johns and her husband were attending a campus event. Phoebe left a message, asking that Glenda call her when she returned.
With mug in hand, she circled through the contiguous rooms of her tiny house—a rectangular living room that ran across the front of the house and, in the back, side by side, a kitchen and a small dining room, which Phoebe used for her office, turning the table into a makeshift desk. When she’d first looked for a place to stay in Lyle, she’d had something far more charming in mind—perhaps a house in the country—but this was one of the only decent rentals available, and in the end she’d been grateful for its location just a few blocks from campus. Being isolated in some rural area would have made her exile harder to adjust to.
At one point in her circling, Phoebe stopped in her office and surveyed the table. Toward the front was a stack of papers, articles, and blogs her students had written—that she was in the process of grading.
At the back of the table was a thick folder of magazine clippings and articles, all about celebrities, which she was periodically going through, hoping one of them would spark an idea for her next book. On top of the folder she had laid an antique porcelain pen. It had been a gift from her mother when she first became a writer, constantly writing poems as a teenager. Phoebe had always thought of it as a talisman, something that made the words flow—but it had proved absolutely futile lately.
At 11:30 she gave up waiting for Glenda. She dressed for bed and flicked off the lights in her bedroom, except for the night-light by the door. As she slid in between the soft cotton sheets she’d lugged with her from New York City, she could hear the muted chirping of crickets outside, the last of the year, and from far off, the mournful whistle of a train. Where was it headed? she wondered sadly. She felt so far from anything that had mattered to her, and at the same time she knew she couldn’t go back to Manhattan yet. She needed to save her money. And she needed to figure out why things had gone so wrong for her.