The Sixes

2

LOWERING HER EYES, Phoebe tried to summon the few minutes she’d spent with the girl. It had been about two weeks ago, just before eight one morning. Phoebe had stopped by the cafeteria, something she rarely did in the morning—the sweet, cloying aroma of pancakes and French toast was too reminiscent of boarding school—but she’d run out of coffee at home and was desperate for caffeine.

After leaving the student union building, she saw that it had started to pour. Luckily she had an umbrella in her bag, and she stopped under the overhang to pop it open.

As she peered through the streams of rain, trying to estimate how much damage her Tod’s loafers were going to endure, she noticed a girl standing a few feet away from her, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and a cotton sweater. Though she was strikingly pretty, Phoebe saw something tentative, sad even, in her eyes and wondered if she was a high school student touring the school, unsure of what to do. It seemed mean to ignore her.

“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.

For a dangerous moment she felt the tug of something from long ago, something dark and threatening. I’m just thinking too much about the missing girl, she told herself. She squeezed her eyes closed and forced herself to think of her classes on Monday.

At eight the next morning, just as Phoebe was making coffee, Glenda phoned.

“You up, Fee?” Glenda asked. There were voices and clanging kitchen sounds in the background.

“Yeah. I was just going to try you again.”

“Sorry I didn’t call last night. I was on the phone half the night—dealing with this whole situation. You heard about the missing girl?”

“Yes, that’s why I called you. When I saw the flyers last night, I realized I’d had a conversation with her about two weeks ago.”

“You’re kidding. What did she say?”

“Nothing super revealing, but it might be relevant. She seemed to be looking for answers.”

There was a rattling sound on the other end of the phone, as if someone had hurried by Glenda with a tray full of glasses.

“Look, I’m hosting a breakfast for a local group and they’re just about to walk in the door. Can you come over in an hour? There’s something I want to talk to you about anyway.”

“Okay, will do.”

For the next hour Phoebe thumbed through a stack of mail she’d been ignoring that week. At exactly nine, she walked the several blocks to the college president’s residence, directly across the street from the campus. Though a bit run-down in places, it was still a grand, impressive house, apparently built for some captain of industry before the college was even founded. There wasn’t a ton of rooms inside, but they were all spacious, decorated with a mix of antiques owned by the college and random pieces left behind by former presidents who had come and gone, a few with their tails between their legs.

For Glenda it was like living a fantasy. She had grown up in the projects in Brooklyn, and though she and her husband Mark had lived in a series of nice apartments and homes as she moved up through academia, this one topped them all. As Glenda had once told Phoebe, “It’s even better than my black Barbie Dream House.”

The housekeeper answered the door. Over her shoulder, Phoebe could see that there were a few stragglers from the breakfast still in the living room.

“Dr. Johns is expecting you,” the woman said. “She asked that you wait in the conservatory for a few moments.” She led Phoebe down there.

It was Phoebe’s favorite room in the house. The windows were floor to ceiling, and the space was filled with lush ferns and miniature orange trees. She settled in one of the slightly worn black wicker armchairs. A coffee service had been set up on a table nearby, and Phoebe poured a cup for herself. Outside leaves from the maple and oak trees in the yard slipped from the branches and drifted silently to the ground.

Ten minutes later Glenda rushed in, dressed in a peach-colored wool pants suit that flattered her soft brown skin. Phoebe flashed a smile at her. They had met in boarding school, two scholarship students—both daughters of single mothers—thrust together as roommates. They had forged a friendship from day one. Though Phoebe had watched the gradual evolution of Glenda’s kick-ass work skills and career, she still found herself in awe of the woman her friend had become.

“Sorry, Fee,” Glenda said, flopping her five-eleven frame into another armchair. “It was like herding cats to get them out. You want anything to eat?”

“I’m fine with coffee, thanks. Any news about Lily?”

“Unfortunately, no—though we’ve pieced together some details about her whereabouts Thursday night. How much do you know about her disappearance?”

“Nothing, really.”

Glenda let out a long sigh. “She was last seen on campus at about eight Thursday night,” she said. “She told her roommate she was going to the library, and people recall seeing her there. But at some point she headed off campus. The cops discovered that she ended up at one of those bars I despise at the bottom of Bridge Street—Cat Tails. The bartender says she had two beers and paid the tab at around ten. Two people reported seeing her leave the bar and turn up Bridge Street—but she never made it back to the dorm.”

“Why did the roommate wait so damn long to report it?”

“Lily has a friend named Blair Usher with an off-campus apartment over on Ash Street. When Lily left for the library, she told her roommate she might be staying there that night—she sometimes did that, apparently. The roommate was out of the dorm most of Friday, and when she returned to the room, there was no sign Lily had ever come back home. That’s when the roommate started to get concerned. At dinner that night in the cafeteria, she went looking for Blair and found out that Lily hadn’t stayed with her Thursday night after all.”

“A girl last seen leaving a bar alone,” Phoebe said soberly. “That’s a story that doesn’t usually end well.”

“I know. And her cell phone has not been used since that night, so it’s not looking great.” Glenda let out a breath. “So, tell me about your conversation with her.”

Phoebe related what Lily had said about making a mess of things and wanting to start over—or escape. When Phoebe finished, Glenda leaned back in her chair, folding her arms against her chest. Her eyes danced around as she mulled over what she’d heard.

“You think I’m a creep, don’t you?” Phoebe asked after a moment.

“What do you mean?”

“For not trying to figure out what was eating away at her.”

“Not at all,” Glenda said. “And you know I’m always straight with you. The girl caught you off guard five minutes before class, and you did what you could at the time.”

“I know. But I feel guilty now. And I just want to know she’s okay.”

“This information is helpful. I’ll pass it along to the cops this morning.”

Phoebe remembered another detail. “Val Porter told me Lily’s boyfriend disappeared this spring. Do you think her disappearance could be connected to his?”

“His name was Trevor Harris, and yes, I wondered the same thing,” Glenda said. “People weren’t as worried, by the way, when he seemed to vanish. It was this past March. He’d apparently talked about just bagging it and heading out west. He wasn’t much of a student, and he didn’t get along super well with his family.”

“Maybe Lily heard from him and went to meet up with him someplace.”

“Possibly. Though she is close to her family, and they said she’d never just take off without telling them.” Glenda shrugged. “Yet based on what she said to you, it sounds like she was toying with the idea of a fresh start someplace.”

“Or a different kind of escape,” Phoebe said. “Like taking her life.”

“Also possible.” Glenda looked stricken.

“What exactly are the cops doing?”

“They’re interviewing everyone who knew her, as well as people who were downtown that night. And if she doesn’t turn up in a few days, they may use cadaver dogs to see if they can pick up any scent along the river.”

“Honestly, I’m surprised you haven’t lost more students in the Winamac. It’s right by those bars.”

“There was one drowning about a year and a half ago—the spring before last. The guy had been doing a pub crawl that night, and they think he got disoriented, walked in the wrong direction, and accidentally fell in. Kind of hard to swim when you’re drunk as a skunk and dressed in work boots and corduroy pants. But we’re constantly warning kids about drinking and the river from the moment they arrive.”

Glenda bit her lip and gazed out the window.

“There’s something else on your mind, G,” Phoebe said. “I can tell just by looking at you.”

“Yeah,” Glenda said quietly. “There is something else. That’s the main reason I wanted you to come by. Last spring we learned that there might be a secret society on campus. A secret society of girls.”

Phoebe could feel a breath catch in her chest.

“How big—and what’s their agenda?” she asked after a couple of seconds.

“We have no idea on either count. In fact, we’ve got little proof they actually exist. In May a student of ours showed up at a local hospital having a panic attack. She was completely hysterical. After they calmed her down, she told one of the doctors that she had once been a member of a society of girls on campus, and that they were out to get her now.”

“Does this so-called group have a name?” Phoebe asked.

“She called them the Sixes. Tom Stockton—the dean of students—went to see her, but she clammed up on him. She dropped out of school the next day.”

Phoebe shifted in her chair uncomfortably. “Are you sure this girl wasn’t just having some kind of psychotic break?”

“The doctor didn’t think so. Plus, there’s something else. Over the past year, maintenance has found the number six painted discreetly in various places—like on the foundation of Arthur Hall—but we never could figure out what it meant.”

“Wait,” Phoebe said. “Are you thinking Lily’s disappearance is tied into the Sixes somehow?”

“I don’t know. But Tom Stockton has reason to believe that Lily may be involved with the group.”

Maybe that was the mess Lily had referred to, Phoebe thought. Had she been a member for a while but then decided she wanted out?

“What are you going to do about it?” Phoebe asked.

“I’ve got a plan, but I’m afraid you may not like it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I want you to go on an information-gathering mission for me on campus,” Glenda announced. “I want you to see if this society really exists and if so, what they’re up to.”

Phoebe couldn’t hide her surprise. “What?”

“Hear me out. Even if there’s no connection between the Sixes and Lily’s disappearance, I need to shut them down. You know as well as I do how groups like this can get out of hand.”

“But isn’t that something the administration should be doing?” Phoebe said.

“Yes, that’s our responsibility, and we’ve got procedures for these things. You start with the person being harassed and move outward from there. But Tom has been unable to turn up any real proof. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about college kids, it’s that they’re very reluctant to throw any of their peers under the bus. In sensitive cases we sometimes use a person outside the administration.”

“But why would girls talk to me? That’s—”

“Oh, please, Fee. You’re not only a bloodhound when it comes to digging up info, you’re also brilliant at getting people to spill—whether it’s about their secret lives or their sordid pasts or the affairs they’ve had with their half brothers.”

“Still, I can’t just start randomly pumping people, can I?” Phoebe said, running her hand through her hair. But she knew she couldn’t say no. Besides the fact that she’d never be able to turn down Glenda—she owed her—Phoebe now felt an obligation to help the girl she’d had so little time for.

“I’ve thought of a way to handle that,” Glenda said. “You can say that I’ve tapped you to assist with the internal investigation about Lily’s disappearance. That gives you the perfect opportunity to ask questions and see where that leads you.”

“Will I be stepping on anyone’s toes—like Tom Stockton’s?”

“I don’t think so. Tom doesn’t take it personally that we hit the wall with our own investigation about the Sixes. Kids just don’t like talking to ‘the man’—and in this case it’s the administration. But you should arrange for Tom to brief you. He’s expecting your call.”

For a brief moment, Phoebe felt as if she was sinking in water or sand, but she forced herself to get a grip.

“Okay,” Phoebe said, “I’m in. I’ll need the roommate’s name and info, and contact info for this Blair Usher, too.”

There was no time to catch up on personal stuff today. Glenda said she needed to touch base with both the campus and local police before meeting with Lily’s parents. They had arrived late last night by car, and she was seeing them in an hour.

As Glenda walked Phoebe to the front hall, they found Glenda’s husband Mark buckling a bike helmet on their nine-year-old son, Brandon. Mark was striking looking, half white, half African American, with olive green eyes and skin so light that people often assumed he was white. Glenda had met him during her final year at boarding school and dated him on and off until they’d decided to marry ten years ago. He presently worked as a freelance management consultant, though Phoebe suspected he wasn’t too busy in the general Lyle area.

“Hi, guys,” Phoebe said. Brandon wrapped his arms around Phoebe in greeting. Mark offered only a nod and smile. She and Mark had never been close, but from the moment she’d arrived on campus, Phoebe had sensed a new coolness from him. She wasn’t sure why. The obvious conclusion: he thought Glenda’s professional rescue of Phoebe was potentially damaging to his wife’s stature.

“Where’s your helmet?” Glenda asked Mark.

“I’m not going with him today. He’s done these streets alone before. It’s good for him to get out there on his own.”

“But it’s Saturday morning. One of us should—”

“In a perfect world one of us would go, but we both have work to do this morning, don’t we?” He had a sarcastic tone Phoebe had never heard him use with Glenda before.

“I’d better go,” Phoebe said, feeling awkward. “I’ll start today, Glenda—and I’ll let you know tonight if I find anything.”

Brandon tugged on the strap of his helmet as if it was choking him. Phoebe gave him another hug and said good-bye to Mark. Glenda walked Phoebe to the oversize front door and swung it open.

“It means a lot to me to have you do this,” Glenda said quietly. “But if for any reason you’d rather not, just say so, okay?” She gave Phoebe a long look.

“No, I’m good,” Phoebe said quickly, pulling her anorak closed.

As she hurried down the sidewalk from Glenda’s house a few moments later, Phoebe could feel a mix of things churning inside her. There was concern—for Glenda and whatever headaches this situation might cause her, but mostly for Lily. Had the girl just taken off, trying, in her words, to escape a mess? Or had something terrible happened to her after she left the bar?

And there was also unease. The need to know had taken hold in her, as it so often did in her work, but this time, in investigating the Sixes, she would be traipsing over ground she’d sworn she’d never go near again.

She thrust her hands in her pockets, protecting them from the wind that had suddenly picked up. One hand brushed against a piece of paper, and Phoebe realized that it was the flyer about Lily that she had torn from the tree. She pulled it from her pocket and uncrumpled it.

Staring at it, she realized suddenly that it wasn’t a G that had been scrawled on Lily’s face. It was the number 6.