Page 87 of After Anna

Noah assumed it was a joke. “Any advice?”

“Whatever you do, don’t get angry.”

“Okay,” Noah said, but he was angry already.

Chapter Forty

Maggie, Before

Maggie and Kathy sat on the floor of Anna’s room, eyeing the notes between Anna and Jamie, which were laid out in front of them. There were nine, mostly from the algebra textbook, about teachers, calories, schoolwork, and hair products. The only note that concerned Jamie’s running away was the one they had found already.

“Oh boy.” Maggie couldn’t deny the evidence, staring her in the face. “So it looks like Anna probably knows where Jamie ran away to.”

“Right.” Kathy met Maggie’s eye, gravely. “They might even be in touch, too.”

“I guess Anna lied to me.” Maggie sighed, and Kathy smiled sympathetically.

“That’s how you know you’re a parent of a teenager. You got lied to.”

“I got the impression from Anna that Jamie had left recently, definitely in this semester.”

“But we don’t know the exact date.”

“No.” Maggie scanned the notes.

“The note about Jamie’s leaving was the most recent, because it was farthest back in the book. I flipped through the book back to front.”

“Okay.” Maggie turned to the laptop. They had Googled JamieCovington and Congreve, hoping to find an article about her running away in the local newspaper, but there had been nothing. Maggie assumed that it hadn’t been newsworthy enough or that Congreve or Jamie’s family had kept it out of the press.

“I can’t believe we can’t figure out who PG is, or Connie.” Kathy picked up a copy ofThe Zephyr, which had been among Anna’s notebooks on her shelf, and turned to the front page. It had a masthead and a black-and-white photo of the staff, captioned Nora Brady, Simona D’Artiel, Sofia Belovic, Jamie Covington, Larissa Cabot, Rachel Dinatello, and Leah Rosenstein.

“Jamie’s so cute, it’s a shame she was so troubled. She had everything going for her.” Kathy pointed a manicured fingernail at Jamie, who stood out with her Goth looks.

“And the picture’s black-and-white, so we can’t tell what hair color she has. They’re trying too hard. Tryhards.” Maggie finally understood the term.

“But none of these girls is PG or has the initials PG, and there’s no Connie.”

“So PG is either a nickname of a staffer, or they aren’t staffers. I think PG is a nickname. It sounds like one.”

“Or they could be girls in their dorm or somebody in some other class or activity.”

“But I get the impression that the circle of friends is small and tight. There’s nobody else even mentioned in the notes except for PG and Connie.”

“Is it possible that PG is a guy?”

“It’s a girls’ school, so that seems unlikely.” Maggie double-checked the note that mentioned PG to see if it used the pronoun he or she, but it didn’t use either. “Anna was lonely, and I’m getting the impression that anybody she’d be close friends with, like Jamie, wasn’t seeing anybody either.”

Kathy hesitated. “Do you think they’re gay? Anna or Jamie?”

“No, I don’t get that impression from Anna. I don’t know about Jamie. Okay, I’m going to assume that PG is a girl. And none of the other notes mention a boyfriend or a guy.”

“So let’s stay with our original assumption, that they’re lonely girls and they’re friends.”

Maggie realized something. “I wonder if Jamie’s running away was another reason Anna reached out for me.”

“Right.”

“Anna’s been going through more of a rough patch than I thought.”