The line went silent for a few moments leading Amanda to wonder if she really had lost the deputy.
“Deputy?” she said again, with her short patience getting the better of her.
“No, Amanda. I want you to come back as you will be more use to us here. I just don’t have the staff to send enough people to town. One of the problems is that there are quite a few individuals here at the school who just can’t go out there, not without causing a stir anyway. If you come back, we can keep the school running without too much disturbance and have at least a few people searching for the boy. There is also another reason I want you to come back: I know from what you told me about your interview with the boy that you were able to make a connection with him, you got much more out of him than I could. It might be good for him to see a friendly face, not an austere old man like myself, when he next meets someone from our community. It’ll make it all the easier to convince him to come back.”
Amanda stood up with the intention of going to her car and made her way past the still crying boy, whose mother was still trying to remove soil from his eyes with a wet wipe.
“Why did he leave?” said Amanda, continuing her conversation with the deputy as she reached the exit.
“This is something that has yet to be fully established.”
“If you find out anything, please get back to me. If I find him, it might make a big difference with any attempt to convince him to come back. If something has happened at the school…”
“Again, Amanda, this is a good reason for you to join the effort to locate the boy. If it is indeed someone at the school who has driven the boy to leave, this would be a very significant thing for us to know.”
Amanda stopped for a moment, pausing between two parked cars that had seen better days, and considered what the deputy had said. If she did indeed become privy to certain information about the goings on at the school, something which could lead to serious ramifications for a student or teacher, would she be willing to pass it on to the deputy if the potentially guilty party was trying to do the best for the boy? What’s more, if it was the case that something had happened - something which she did not even wish to imagine and could prevent the boy’s return - what would she do? She would not be able to let him go home as this would only endanger Brenden’s family and friends, or just some unknown unfortunate who might be in the vicinity of the boy when his hunger struck, nor would she be able to take him back. Indeed, she would probably not even be in the position to inform the deputy or anyone else that she had found him. This could all mean that she would be left in the difficult situation that she might have to try and look after the boy herself, keeping him somewhere in her tiny flat while also pretending to everyone she knew that she had no idea where he was.
Suddenly, an ill-formed idea developed at the back of Amanda’s mind. She could not quite grasp what it meant, nor bring it further forward, but she noted to herself that there was something to consider.
“Amanda?” said the deputy, a little annoyed as he had clearly continued talking after Amanda’s concentration had moved on. “Are you there?”
Whatever her thought was, it would have to wait.
“Yes, I’m here.”
“So you’re coming back?”
Just after hanging up the phone, Amanda found herself standing in front of her car. She knew that she had to get on, but for a few moments she just wanted to pause and mull over a memory from her own time at the school that had been dredged up by Brenden’s running away. She recalled how she had felt more than out of place in the rickety old building and more than a little afraid of the other students, the teachers and what she herself had become. The short-statured and rather ancient looking Mr Falmouth, her form tutor, obviously recognised what Amanda was feeling and came to talk with her. He suggested to Amanda that there would be no place back in the living world for many of his students, but that she would most likely have no trouble fitting back in as she had been ‘so well preserved’. She was not quite sure how to take this comment at the time, and it still did not sit well with her even after she had left the school behind. It was clear that Falmouth had been trying to allay her fears about what she was, a vampire, and to help her come to terms with this fact, something that she had had a very difficult time doing. However, the teacher’s comment only intensified her feelings of alienation at the school and her desire to leave.
Only, she did not leave in the end until her set period of time at the school came to a close. She only ever got as far as making her way a few hundred feet down the road just outside the school’s grounds. She had once found a spot where the seven-foot-high brick
