The Sixes

tremble as she realized something she hadn’t considered before. “What if someone from Fortuna is here—at the school? I never knew who all of the members were.”

“That seems unlikely. But even so, why be so afraid of them? They bullied you, but that’s really it, right?”

“No,” she said, her eyes welling with tears. “It was worse than that. Worse than I ever told you.”

***

AFTER HER CLOTHES were shredded, she finally confided in a teacher, who brought her to the headmistress. The woman had listened, nodded, expressed concern and said that the school would not only investigate but also reimburse her for some of the clothing. But at the same time the headmistress, with her too-pert nose in the air, had seemed unsympathetic, as if she’d been forced to discuss something that she found trivial, the problem of a student too wimpy to fight her own battles and take care of herself.

Later she thought about the choice of the word investigate. That word never suggested that the culprits in Fortuna—because surely it was them—would be brought to justice. And from what she knew, no one ever was.

But at least after that things were quiet. Spring came. She met a boy from a coed prep school nearby, and they had coffee twice in town. To her relief, life seemed normal again. Maybe, she thought, Fortuna had moved on to someone else.

On Easter weekend she stayed on campus to work—she had so much to do leading up to finals. The fact that the campus was nearly deserted was actually a relief to her. And then on Saturday night, as she was walking back to the dorm, the boys had grabbed her.

She never saw their faces. They came up behind her and threw a hood over her head. From the sound of them muttering to each other, she knew that there were three of them, and they weren’t that old. They led her to a car and threw her in the back seat.

She thought she would be raped, and she was out of her mind with fear. But after a ten-minute drive they yanked her out of the car and forced her into some kind of crawl space. And then they sealed it shut.

She could barely breathe. It was cold and damp, and she thought she heard rats, scampering somewhere near her. Although she knew they must have driven away, she called out, again and again, to no avail. She tried to push, too, at what she thought was the opening, but she was too wedged in to create any force.

For the next thirty-six hours, she just lay there in the total dark, weeping sometimes, wetting herself. She pretended her mother was next to her, telling her to hold on, to be strong. She knew people would start to look for her, but how would they ever guess she was in this place? She was certain that she was going to die.

28

DUNCAN SLIPPED HIS arm around Phoebe, careful of her bad arm, and led her to the couch, easing her onto one of the cushions.

“Tell me what happened,” he said, sitting next to her.

She spilled out the whole story then—about the letters and the shredded clothes and then finally about being abducted and forced into the crawl space in the warehouse. She started to cry once but brushed the tears away.

“How did they finally find you?” Duncan asked. His expression was grim.

“It was partly because of Glenda,” Phoebe said. “She came back from Brooklyn Sunday night, and when she couldn’t find me, she reported it to the dorm mother. The school alerted the police. On Monday morning, someone —one of the boys, they later thought—called from a phone booth with an anonymous tip about me in the warehouse and the police dug me out. I was in the hospital for a couple days. I thought of going back to school after that, but my mother wouldn’t have it, and frankly, I was just too afraid. Needless to say, the school bent over backward to keep me from making a stink.”

“I can’t believe you went through that nightmare. And you’re sure it was Fortuna who was behind your abduction?”

“Almost positive. I’d been falsely signed out of the dorm for the weekend, which is why the dorm mother initially had no reason to be alarmed—and it must have been Fortuna members who forged my signature. The boys, I’ve always assumed, were from the nearby coed prep school that we socialized with. I suspect the Fortuna members talked them into grabbing me, though my guess is that they never meant for it to get so out of hand.”

“But why would they go to such an extreme to begin with?”

“I think because of a boy I’d started seeing,” Phoebe said. “He went to that other prep school, and we’d had coffee a few times. I heard later that one of the Fortuna girls was after him. She wanted to scare me off, apparently.”

“And they never caught the boys who did it to you?”

“No. Nor the girls. The school made a show of trying to find out who the ringleaders were, but the daddies of the Fortuna girls were the ones who gave the big donations, so I doubt they tried very hard.”

“Gosh, Phoebe,” Duncan said. “I can only imagine how this Sixes nonsense has stirred up all the crap from the past.”

On the one hand, Phoebe was glad she’d told him the story. She’d never even shared the full details with Alec. But now she felt even more churned up, knowing it was out in the open.

“Do you see what I mean now?” she implored. “I just keep wondering if someone from Fortuna is here, working with the Sixes.”

“Tell me how I can help,” he said.

She shook her head in despair. “I don’t know. Maybe just food, for starters. I never ate today, and it’s not helping.”

He suggested ordering a pizza. After making the call, he asked if she’d mind if he took a shower. He’d been at the lab much of the afternoon, he told her, and needed to wash up. After Duncan headed upstairs, she opened a bottle of wine and poured a large glass. It’s been twenty-five years, she thought, since Fortuna terrorized me, but I’m right back in that old place now, feeling undone again. She thought of Lily and Alexis and the other victims of the Sixes. She had to put a stop to what was happening here in Lyle.

A few minutes later, just as she heard the water start running in the shower, her cell phone rang. It was Glenda, finally calling back.

“Sorry to make you leave all those messages,” Glenda said. “I ended up going to the local library with Brandon, and I had to turn off my phone.”

“Have you ever mentioned Fortuna to anyone here at the college?” Phoebe demanded.