“Your uncle didn’t think it would look right? Look right to who?” Kayla asked, cocking an eyebrow.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. To people.”
The group began to break up and head into the campus, to my relief. The college was actually multiple buildings spread out over a huge swath of land. One wing of buildings was devoted to liberal arts, another to the applied trades; the south wing was the library and media center. The science buildings were housed on the other side of campus. The building we were standing in front of contained the offices and sat adjacent to the student union. A high-rise in the far corner of the campus that overlooked the soccer fields was the new dorms.
“I’ll tell you what.” Kayla grabbed my arm before I could disappear into the crowd. “Here’s my schedule and my phone number.” She started scribbling her classes down on the cover of my notebook. “Text me when you’re done at registration. That way I can take you around and stuff.”
“Yeah, thanks. I will.”
“Come on, I’ll show you where the admissions office is.” Kayla led me into the large brick building behind us while everyone else scattered.
I took a better look at Kayla as she led me to the registration office. She was rail thin and had long chestnut-brown hair. She looked like she should be in a shampoo commercial instead of a classroom in Western New York. In my brown V-neck sweater and dark leggings, I felt really overdressed compared to the girls on campus, most of whom were locals from Kelly’s Falls or the immediate vicinity. They were wearing sweat pants and baggy sweatshirts. People stared at me as Kayla led me down the hall to the office, tucked in the corner by the main entrance.
“I have to go to my eight forty-five class, but remember to text me and we’ll try to meet.”
“Thanks, Kayla,” I called after her. The lady behind the desk looked up. She had her black hair piled high on her head like some huge onyx turban.
“Are you the new girl we got a call about?” she asked in a harsh, raspy two-pack-a-day voice. You could tell she was dying for a smoke.
“I guess so.” I walked up to the desk and set my new notebooks down on it.
“Welcome to the Harris campus, honey. We just got your file this morning. You’re the chief’s little girl?”
“His niece.”
“His niece. Well, that’s wonderful. Some of us ladies here were afraid he’d up and eloped on us, that you were his stepdaughter or something. We are so proud of your uncle around here, I can’t even tell you.” She went on and on while she handed me my papers and forms to fill out. On the far wall, over another desk piled with papers, was a huge reward poster with the three girls’ pictures on it.
It was kind of scary, just then, with those girls staring at me. This was their school. These people were their friends. I was now in their lives. I was touching a part of them that no police file could, no matter what was printed inside it. I took the stack of forms and sat down at a small table in the back corner of the office. The lady behind the main desk started answering phone calls and typing into her keyboard at the same time.
I glanced around the office. There was a huge banner proclaiming that the last day for summer registration was May fourteenth. The spring sporting-events calendar was posted, as well as the sign-up sheet for literacy volunteers. The sheet urged the students to help raise awareness for rural literacy struggles.
Then I noticed another sign-up sheet under the missing-girls poster. I needed to inspect that. I wandered over to it, trying to angle my cell phone on my paperwork to take a picture without the flash. It was for a support meeting for friends of the missing girls. The first name I didn’t recognize. The second name on the list was Kayla Johnson. I scanned the rest of it. Joe Styles’s name was on it, near the bottom. My phone wouldn’t cooperate, so I pulled my little notebook out of my pocket and jotted down a few names.
“Are you finished yet?” the secretary asked, looking up from her computer screen.
I threw my little notebook into my purse. “Almost.”
“Good. That was Mr. Beakman, your admissions adviser, on the phone. He wants to see you when you’re done.”
“Okay.” I nodded, heading back over to the desk and finishing the paperwork as fast as I could. Someone had spilled coffee on the desk and only halfheartedly cleaned it up. I tried to keep my stuff off the stains as best I could while balancing the class catalog on my lap.
“Here you go.” Handing them over to the secretary, I saw her phone message blotter. There were lots of calls from news outlets for the school administrators.
Noticing me noticing the messages, she turned them over. “Vultures. The media calls constantly. But they’re looking for dirt, not the girls.” She flipped through my papers absently, making sure all the questions were answered and all the forms signed. “Fine. Mr. Beakman’s office is through that door and on your right.”
I told her thank you and followed her instructions. Mr. Beakman looked like his name suggested: tall, thin, and birdlike, with a slightly crooked nose. He seemed very pleasant, not like the worn-out, overworked guidance counselor I’d had at North Side High in Buffalo.
“Come in. Sit down.” He was standing by the window, watering about twelve little plants he had scattered on a bookcase. He too had a missing poster up on his bulletin board. Finishing with his plants, he settled down across from me, carefully placing his brass watering can on the floor under the desk.
“You’ve got an interesting file,” he said, flipping through it. “Usually we don’t accept students so late in the semester, but your personal tragedy with your parents made you an exception.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
“So you’re the chief’s niece.” He was still thumbing through my paperwork, missing the sarcasm in my voice.
“Yep.”
He folded his hands in front of him. “I see here you went to North Side High School in North Buffalo.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Isn’t that the school with the serial-killer teacher?”
I nodded. “Yes. Terry Roberts. I had just enrolled there for summer school. It was so scary when we found out who was doing the murders.” That too was the truth.
“Horrible. Just horrible. Now we have these three girls missing.” He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “I don’t know what this world is coming to.”
I sat there with a blank look on my face.
“Well, let’s get down to business, then. I see here from your file that you want to enroll in the criminal justice program here.”
I suppressed a wince. That was Bill’s little joke he had thrown into my file. “I was hoping to get into some kind of law enforcement.”
“That’s fine. We don’t get many girls around here looking into that line of work.”
“I plan to move back to the city.”
He went on and on with his questions about furthering my education and my current schedule.
“I took Intro to Criminal Justice, Psychology 101, and Intro to Corrections during the fall semester. I had a four-point-oh grade-point average.” Thanks to Bill Walters for sending my fake transcripts from Erie Community College West Campus. “I just need some electives and stuff.”