The Sixes

Later, at the door, as he was leaving, Duncan let his brown eyes roam over Phoebe’s face, discombobulating her slightly; she wondered if he was going to kiss her.

“Thank you for dinner,” he said instead. “You’ll have to let me return the favor at some point.”

Now in bed, Phoebe thought about what it would have been like if Duncan had kissed her. She imagined that soft, full mouth on hers, his hand on the back of her neck. This is crazy, she thought. During the past seven nightmarish months, her libido had left the building, and she couldn’t believe it was finally showing its face here in little old Lyle, Pennsylvania. And yet she couldn’t deny her attraction to Duncan. She’d liked his inquisitiveness, his easy laugh, the slight air of mystery. And she liked that face and body.

She tried to shake Duncan from her mind in time for her eight o’clock class the next day. It didn’t help that her students seemed so glum. She was sure it had to do with Lily’s death. Last week she had sent the twenty students jpegs of several articles from magazines like Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, and today they were to discuss what made each story compelling. But Phoebe ended up doing most of the talking.

She then had an hour before her eleven o’clock class, the one with Jen Imbibio, and she decided to use the time to stop by Blair’s apartment again.

The house on Ash Street seemed even more dejected than the day before. The dark, junk-strewn foyer was absolutely silent, and this time no one answered the door to the upstairs apartment. It was going to take forever to connect with Blair if Phoebe resorted to just popping in now and then. She scrolled through her e-mail for the information Glenda had sent about the girl. A cell phone number had been included. Phoebe would have preferred her first conversation with Blair be face-to-face, but she needed to speed the process along. While walking back down Ash Street, she punched in Blair’s number on her phone.

“Hi Blair, this is Phoebe Hall,” she said, after being greeted by an automated message. “I stopped by yesterday to see you. Would you give me a call? I’d like to arrange a time to talk.”

Her eleven o’clock class turned out to be like the first. Students were listless and morose. As Phoebe offered her own comments on the articles she’d sent the class, she studied Jen closely for the first time. She was tiny, barely five feet tall, with long, slightly curly brunette hair and blue eyes in a heart-shaped face. She looked like someone out of a fairy tale, Phoebe thought, the kind of girl you’d expect to find riding a deer in the Romanian forest. Yet she also had a very modern air of entitlement about her. Interestingly, Jen had less to say than anyone else today.

At the end of class, Phoebe announced that she’d be passing graded papers back on Wednesday. Students filed out of the room quietly, with no one stopping at Phoebe’s desk to ask a question as they normally did. Before Jen could reach the door, Phoebe called out her name.

“Me?” the girl said, surprised.

“Yes. Do you have a minute?”

“Um, okay,” she said, looking slightly put out.

“Why don’t we go to my office? It’ll be easier to talk there.”

They made their way to the second floor of the building. One of the hall lights was out and the corridor was gloomy, like everything else that day. After slipping into her office, with Jen following without enthusiasm behind her, Phoebe switched on two lamps and scooped the papers off the guest chair facing her desk.

“Here, have a seat,” she told Jen. Phoebe wondered if she should close the door but decided against it; Jen already looked ready to jump out of her skin.

“Okay,” Jen said, sitting down with her backpack still on. “Just so you know, though, I’m supposed to meet someone in a few minutes.”

“This will only take a sec,” Phoebe said, smiling. “I wanted to talk about the assignment I’m handing back on Wednesday.”

Jen twitched in her seat. Her expression morphed into mild alarm.

“There’s nothing to be concerned about,” Phoebe said quickly. “I just wanted to tell you that I liked your blog. It’s really terrific.”

“Oh, wow,” the girl said, breaking into a smile. “I—wow.”

“You’re doing something much stronger in your blog than in your regular magazine pieces, and I think we should figure out how to bring that quality to your other stuff. I see your next magazine assignment is going to be on childhood obesity. But how about picking a topic that allows you to use the same sassy voice that you used in your blog writing?”

“But isn’t the next assignment a reporting piece?” Jen asked.

“Yes. But you can still add attitude if the topic allows for it.”

“Um, wow, okay,” the girl said. “So it would probably have to be something I have a strong opinion about?”

“That’s right. Take a day to rethink your topic. . . . Of course, I know this is a hard time to focus right now.”

Jen knitted her tiny brows, not sure at first what Phoebe meant. Then she got it. “Right,” she said quietly.

“Were you friends with Lily?” Phoebe asked.

The girl took a breath before answering.

“Sort of,” she said. “I mean, we used to be friendly last year. Lately, though, we didn’t see very much of each other.”

“From what I know, they’re still not sure what caused her death,” Phoebe said. “Do you think she may have been depressed?”

“I wouldn’t have any idea,” Jen said. “Even if I’d seen her, she wouldn’t have confided in me. We were never that close.”

“I happened to speak to Lily myself—a week or so ago.”

“Really?” the girl said.

“Yes, just briefly. I got the sense she was struggling with some things.”

Jen said nothing this time. She just bit her lip, and shifted in the chair.

So, Phoebe thought, the easy-does-it strategy was going nowhere; time for a bolder approach.

“I feel so bad that I wasn’t able to help Lily,” Phoebe said. “I’ve thought a lot since then about what might have been troubling her. I wondered if she might have gotten caught up in something she regretted . . . like the Sixes.”

Jen’s whole body froze, except her blue eyes, which danced around anxiously. “I—um, I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

“The Sixes,” Phoebe said, glancing surreptitiously toward the door to make sure no one was outside. “The secret society on campus.”

“I don’t know about any societies,” Jen said hoarsely. “I’m really focused on my own stuff. Gymnastics. And dance.”

“And you’ve never heard about a group that might be bullying or threatening other students?”

Jen shook her head back and forth slowly.

“No,” she said. “I can’t imagine the girls here doing something like that.”

“Maybe it’s just one of those urban legends then,” Phoebe said, smiling, trying to break the tension. “When I was in college this crazy rumor went around, claiming that a psychic had predicted a guy was going to kill six coeds at a school that began with the letter W. Guess what school I went to? Wisconsin. As you can imagine, all the girls were hysterical.”

There was no response. Phoebe could see that bold hadn’t worked either, and if she kept at it, she was going to make the girl’s tiny heart stop in her chest. She needed to drop the subject and establish some trust, which she could possibly tap into later.

“I should let you get to your appointment,” Phoebe said. “But there’s a book I’d love to loan you.”

The girl’s face relaxed just a hair. Just then, a noise from the hall caught Phoebe’s attention. It sounded like the soft scuff of a shoe. Phoebe waited for the person to pass by the door, but no one did. She had the sense that someone was standing on the other side of the doorway, listening. But Jen, distracted, had clearly not heard anything.

Phoebe rose quickly but quietly from her desk and stepped over to the other side of the office. She leaned her