Maggie
“She’s not here,” Maggie said dumbly, then caught a glance between the policeman and the security guard that stopped short of an eye roll.
“Yes,” Carla said slowly, carefully. “That’s why we—”
“No,” Maggie said and shook her head. “I mean this,” she said, sweeping her hand above the bed, “is her roommate’s side of the room. Fiona. Emma was on the right side. Those might be Emma’s sheets, but all her pillows—” Her heart seized, thinking of the NILY pillow she’d knitted. “I mean, all her stuff is gone.”
Carla nodded, raised her eyebrows. “Maybe they switched sides? Maybe the roommate is gone, too?”
“Can I look in the closet?”
The policeman put on a pair of gloves and opened the door. “You can look, but don’t touch anything.”
Maggie frowned. Dresses. High heels. Someone else’s clothes. Shoved to the back, jeans that might be Emma’s. But the rest?
“Could they be sharing a closet?” she said.
“And what, a bed, too?” the policeman said.
“Let’s not jump to any conclusions,” Carla said.
“Well, this is college,” the RA said and sighed.
Maggie should have been offended, but she wasn’t really listening. Nothing in this room made sense. It didn’t look anything like the cheerful room she’d helped set up. No photos mounted on foam core, no class schedule tacked to a bulletin board; just bits of tape and yellow crepe paper and crumbling holes where those things used to be. As if someone had ripped it all out in a hurry, so no one else could see.
Maggie rubbed her eyes. “Could she have moved rooms and I didn’t know?”
“Well,” the RA said, “they’re not supposed to, not without telling me and filling out request forms. And they have to have a good reason, not just, ‘Oh, she was mean to me.’”
“Was she?” Maggie asked. “Mean to her?”
“No idea.”
She scanned his face for a piece of information, but he looked away and put his hands in his pockets the way boys did, as if he didn’t know what to do with his own appendages.
“She’s not staying here,” Maggie declared. “There’s no makeup, no caddy of shower supplies.” She gestured around the room. “No robe, no towels, no books.”
“Maybe she uses e-books.”
“No computer, no backpack, no—”
“Okay, okay,” the policeman said. “Thanks for the inventory. We get your point.”
“No,” she said, “I don’t think you do. Emma is not living in this dorm room. It would be impossible for a girl to live without all those things.”
“Well, it’s certainly being used,” the policeman said, nodding toward the bed.
“You don’t know that,” Maggie said. “It…could be a prank.”
Carla’s eyes reflected empathy. That Maggie could be that clueless, that deluded.
“When you texted her in the car and I told you to act normally, what did you say?” Carla asked.
“I said, ‘Hey, honey, just checking in.’”
“Anything else?”
“Just a bee emoji. For, um…honey?”
Maggie’s knees started to shake a bit. She could not believe she was standing where she was standing, justifying her texting techniques, explaining habits that should be plain as day to an investigator. How could they only see what was here, not what was missing?
“Is there anything you could text that might feel important but not panic her?”
Maggie nodded. She took out her phone, chose a moon emoji, then added NILY. She took a deep breath and hit send.
When they heard the pinging text alert in the room, Maggie’s heart nearly stopped.
Now everyone knew what Maggie knew. Because what teenaged girl goes anywhere, even down the hall to the bathroom, without her phone? Before anyone could speak or locate the phone, another chime came from the doorway.
“Located the boyfriend,” the cop said.
“She doesn’t have a boyfriend,” Maggie said.