The Girl Missing from the Records

I saw the truth land on Mom’s face. She had believed keeping quiet would keep us safe, but that bargain had never been real. The man she’d let remain at Oakridge had turned his attention toward her own daughter.

Mom faced the desk again. For several seconds she just looked at the black folder resting there, as if she were deciding whether she could still pretend it didn’t exist.

Then she picked it up and headed for the door.

“Put your coat on,” she said.

Her voice had changed. It was clipped and steady, with none of the fear I’d heard a minute ago.

“Where are we going?” I asked, reaching for my jacket by the front hall.

“I’m going to make this right.”

Crestwood was about forty-five minutes away. Mom drove without speaking, both hands fixed on the wheel. Her phone kept buzzing with district messages in the cup holder, but she never looked down at it.

We arrived at a small, tidy ranch house just as evening light stretched long shadows over the grass.

Mom stayed behind the wheel after parking. She stared at the entrance, her jaw tightening and loosening. She was about to stand in front of the friend she had left alone.

At last she shut off the car and got out. I followed her along the walk and up the steps.

She pressed the doorbell.

The woman who answered wore a worn gray sweater. Eleanor Vance Miller looked older than she did in Mom’s pictures online, as if exhaustion had drawn lines into her face and left them there.

Eleanor’s eyes moved from Mom to me.

“Sarah,” she said. There was no welcome in her voice. “It takes nerve to show up here.”

“I know.” Mom’s voice broke. “I’m sorry, Eleanor. I’m truly sorry. I need help. Sterling is targeting my younger daughter now.”

Eleanor’s expression shifted. The anger didn’t disappear, but something grim and familiar showed beneath it. She moved aside. “Come in.”

The living room felt warm and still, with a scent like cinnamon and old furniture. As we came down the hall, I noticed a girl curled up on the sofa, watching a movie on a laptop through headphones.

Chloe.

She didn’t look exactly like the picture from the yearbook. Her braces were gone, and her hair was shorter. But I knew her. The district had spent thousands of dollars trying to make her vanish, and she was right there in front of me.

She slid the headphones down. Her eyes flicked toward Mom, then settled on me.

“Ava?” she said, barely above a whisper.

“Hi, Chloe.” Seeing her breathing and real made relief sweep through me so suddenly I almost forgot what we’d come to ask.

Eleanor folded her arms and positioned herself between Mom and Chloe. “We signed a nondisclosure agreement, Sarah. If we talk about Mark Sterling, the district could sue us until we lose everything. We had to leave and begin again. I won’t put Chloe’s peace at risk just so you can feel better.”

“I’m not asking you to violate the agreement.” Mom opened the folder and placed a printed email on the coffee table. “This shows I witnessed what happened. Tomorrow I’m going to the police, and I’ll tell them what I saw. Harrison can do whatever he wants to me. But I need to understand how Sterling works with the students, so I can show that the bullying is part of a larger cover-up.”

Chloe eased her feet off the sofa. She glanced at her mother, who gave the smallest nod.

“It wasn’t only me,” Chloe said. Her voice shook a little. “Mr. Sterling knows how to make you think you matter to him. He asks you to help with papers or arrange Student Ambassador meetings. He says you’re more grown-up than the other kids.”

I nodded. I remembered how he perched on his desk and how badly the students seemed to want his attention.

“When things started feeling wrong,” Chloe went on, holding her arms around herself, “I tried to get away from him. I said I didn’t want to be in the club anymore. That was when he sent Lexi after me.”

“Why does Lexi do whatever he says?” I asked. “She’s popular and rich. She doesn’t need a teacher to make her powerful.”

Chloe dropped her gaze to her hands. “You think Lexi is the one running things, Ava. She isn’t. She’s his shield.”

“What does that mean?” My heart was beating faster now.

“Before me, I was the one he favored,” Chloe murmured. “Last year, just before Christmas, I went into his classroom at lunch to bring him a permission slip. He was shouting at Lexi. Not the way a teacher raises his voice at a student. It was frightening. He had her phone and was showing her something on it. Lexi was crying so hard she could barely catch her breath.”

Everything in the room seemed to stop. Mom and Eleanor looked at each other, both of them understanding something horrible at the same time.

Whatever Sterling had shown Lexi, he had used it to make her obey. He hadn’t just sent her after people. He had something on her—and he was controlling her with it.