In the Dead of Summer by Gillian Roberts

explanation for where she was seen and why. And I’m sure she didn’t work at a massage parlor.”
    “But I hear her parents didn’t know where she worked.”
    “Nonsense. I know. It’s in Chinatown at some café.”
    “The kids said the name she’d given them—Star’s Café—doesn’t exist.”
    “Her brother drove her there every day.”
    “Dropped her off at a street corner. Tenth and Race. Near the massage parlor he and his gang members run, the place she was last seen.” He looked thoughtful. “Mystifying, makes me wonder if there might be something we know that could be helpful to the police. Through her writing, or class discussions, or the tutoring you did.”
    “You’re assuming a logical reason for all this,” I reminded him. “A plot to be untangled, deciphered.”
    “And you aren’t? You think this has no logic? That it’s irrational, unfathomable? I don’t accept that idea. Everything has its own logic.”
    “What logical reason could there be to force a struggling wisp of a girl off the street and into a van?” I said. “Everything may have a rationale, but that isn’t the same thing as logic. Or sanity.”

Nine
    WHEN I RETURNED FROM MY LUNCHTIME WALK, HOT and weary, I cut across the green and leafy square, which was filled with other shade seekers, including half our students.
    And Aldis Fellows, who was abruptly striding beside me. I had no idea where she’d been before she appeared. We greeted each other, then walked in awkward silence.
    “I’m not comfortable with that, are you?” she said with no preface.
    “I’m sorry, I must have missed—what aren’t you comfortable with?”
    “Them. I thought you were looking at them, too. When we just passed them.”
    I turned as discreetly as I could and saw an assortment of students.
    “Interracial dating,” Aldis said. “Or are you one of those pro-diversities?”
    She must have been watching a black boy who had his arm around a blonde girl. Both were laughing. “They’re talking,” I said. “Horsing around.”
    “I don’t think so. In any case, each step leads to more. And to more trouble.”
    “Well, since you asked, I don’t really have any problem with…” But she zoomed on, almost speed-walking her way back to school. I took the opportunity to deliberately lag. The woman didn’t belong on a summer’s day.
    Normally, I wouldn’t have approached Woody, given his contemptuous use of the word gook the day before, but as I wandered toward school I saw him, looking miserable and sitting by himself on the end bench, smoking. You can hang out with Five, but you can’t smoke in his room. School rules. So Woody was outside in the post-drizzle midday steam, moodily staring into space, his jaw clenched except when he dragged on his cigarette. There was something intensely alone and alien about him, as if he were outlined in black, superimposed on his environment. Maybe he was the kind who needed a crowd around him in order to have any identity at all.
    He was on that same bench—the one where he denied he’d been with April. He looked like a sleepwalker, not able to withstand a sudden shock. “Woody,” I said softly.
    He blinked, then nodded. “Yo, Miss Pepper,” he said in a dull voice. Then he looked at his cigarette as if watching it consume itself into ash were fascinating and all new.
    Only minutes until we had to get back. Uninvited, I sat down beside him. “Okay?” I said when he looked mildly wild-eyed and alarmed. “Your friends going to make a civil case out of a teacher sitting on the same bench as you?”
    He controlled the search for peers his eyes had been doing, shrugged and managed a small, off-center grin. “My reputation is shot now.”
    “So how are you doing with this?” I was willing to bet I didn’t have to explain myself any further.
    “Look, Miss Pepper, like I told you, I…we…there’s no reason I should be having any problem with it. Except we were in the same class and all like