Exposure by Therese Fowler

both—more passion than passivity, whereas with Amelia it was the other way around, and maybe that was what made them fit so well. He’d been eager to talk about the book. Now, though, he sat with his phone in hand, waiting—and waiting, and waiting—for Amelia to text her explanation for going missing. When he wasn’t glancing at his phone, he was watching the door.
    At the bell, he bolted from his seat. Mr. Edmunds snagged his arm as he passed. “Hold on.”
    “What’s up?” Anthony asked, moving aside as his classmates streamed past, some of them wearing the same expression of curiosity that Mr. Edmunds showed.
    “My question exactly. You were pretty tuned out today.” The teacher’s thick eyebrows were raised behind his black-framed glasses, but the unsaid question—was Amelia’s absence part of this?—was not one that Anthony would answer. Maybe Edmunds knew, or thought he knew, about their relationship, but either way, Anthony wasn’t going to confirm it with a careless display of concern.
    “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. Distracted.” He edged toward the door.
    “Can I help?”
    Anthony shook his head, already on the move. “Thanks.”
    Outside the classroom, he dialed Amelia as he walked, and ducked into the bathroom, where he’d be able to talk unseen by faculty. Again, he got her voice mail.
    Next period and sixth, too, were a repeat of fourth, only with teachers who seemed unaware that he had little to contribute today. Nothing improved even after final bell; it wasn’t as if he could go running to Amelia’s house, looking for her.
    He found his mother in the classroom where she taught sixth-period French. She was cleaning the whiteboard and singing along to an Édith Piaf CD that was playing on the portable stereo she toted with her from classroom to classroom.
    “Non! Je ne regrette rien.…”
    Anthony said, “Ça va, Maman?” and she turned to him and waved. He closed the door and leaned against it. “Was Amelia in class just now?”
    “No—I figured on asking you why she wasn’t here. Thought you had the inside track—or maybe something to do with it?”
    “Non, je ne sais pas où elle est,” he said, trying to shake off his anxiety by indulging in this practice they had, of his working to become fluent. In his pre-Amelia days, he and his mother had made plans to spend his graduation summer in France. Lately, he’d been trying to talk her into including Amelia, whose French was far better than his. “Did I get that right?”
    “You don’t know where she is,” his mother said, nodding.
    “I haven’t heard from her since she went home to get her computer.”
    “Maybe she had an appointment and forgot to tell you.”
    “Peut-être,” he said, though he knew better.
    “Do you work tonight?”
    “Yeah—but not till five.”
    “I have yoga, so I guess I’ll see you later. Oh—there’s leftover tuna salad, if you want to take it with you for dinner.”
    “Maybe,” he said again, this time in English. “So, okay, see you.” At the doorway, he turned and added, “If you hear anything—you know, about Amelia—let me know.”
    “I’m sure there’s a simple explanation, and you’ll laugh about it later. I can’t tell you how many times that’s been true for me worrying about you.”
    He nodded, recalling some of those times—most of them when he’d been out riding dirt bikes or bridge-jumping into Falls Lake with friends a couple years older than himself, friends whose mothers were, then, at the stage his mother was now. Acceptance, or maybe resignation. Bad things rarely happened, and Anthony and his friends were old enough to manage them when they did.
    “Yeah, I’m sure you’re right.” He waved. “See you.”
    “Je t’aime.”
    “Love you, too.”
    As he approached his old Mini sitting in the emptied student lot, he dialed Cameron, hoping she’d have heard something. She hadn’t, and was worried, too. He dialed three more friends, and none