“What are you doing? Come down here right now.”
“Daniil had to pee,” said Vanya.
“You can’t walk away like that. Get down here and get in line with the others.”
With a hand on my heart, I tried to calm down. We were about to step on the train when a teacher ordered us to stop.
We were missing a child.
Someone set off the alarm and the loudspeakers began to blare an insistent tone to alert us to the emergency. The children were running every which way and couldn’t hear what I was screaming to them. I caught a few of them and held them firmly against a wall. With my arms extended, I created a barrier to protect my ten children. I tried to follow what was happening, but there was such chaos in the station that I didn’t know where the danger was coming from. They had stopped the subway, and every train and platform was being searched at a frantic pace by a teacher and TTC security staff. Twenty minutes passed before the police and fire department were alerted to what the media would quickly label “the disappearance of little Faye.”
Dozens of help staff flew past, shouting contradictory orders: some told us to stay put, while others shoved us around, telling us to move. Cornered by a staircase, I couldn’t see the other groups from the school.
The adults’ worry quickly took hold of the children, who were getting harder and harder to control. Some sobbed, while others became hyperactive or catatonic. I got my group to sit against the wall. One of the children was about to faint. In no way concerned like the others, the twins stayed calm and watched the comings and goings like it was a circus.
“We have to evacuate,” declared an agent after more than two hours of searching. “Start taking down everyone’s contact information before they leave. And round up the whole school group and bring them to the station.”
Seeing the police vans, the children began jostling each other excitedly for a place in the back seat. They arrived gleefully at the station, as though they were getting off a merry-go-round.
During the individual interviews, the police determined that at the time of her disappearance, seven-year-old Faye was wearing a grey fleece, a flowered T-shirt, white canvas pants, and sneakers. Her school photo appeared everywhere: a little blond girl with a proud, gap-toothed smile. In September, the twins had had a photo taken in front of the same fake library backdrop.
She had most likely last been seen at the entrance to the Museum subway station. The teacher assured the investigators that was where she had last counted the children, but she had no specific memory of having seen Faye. This information would be repeated in the media during the two weeks the Amber Alert lasted.
They asked for help from the public to find the girl, and I immediately volunteered to participate in the search. School started back up after a day of debriefing, and I needed to be involved. I felt responsible, even if I hadn’t been the one looking after the child.
The search units met at Queen’s Park, close to the site of Faye’s disappearance. As soon as I’d dropped the boys off at school, I walked to the meeting place. It was October, but it was warm out. I had put on sneakers and a light scarf with a Marc Jacobs tweed coat.
I fought back a burst of joy when I spotted Oliver among the crowd of volunteers. It had been a long time since I’d seen him. We waved from afar as we listened to the police instructions. They told us to scour the area, establishing a large perimetre around the subway station. Police officers interrogated the neighbouring merchants and a few residents, but the area around Queen’s Park mainly consisted of stores, hospitals, and University of Toronto buildings.
The volunteers followed a very strict procedure. In groups of seven, we were to inspect the ground in a precise location, paying attention to any detail that looked like it could be linked to the disappearance—scraps of cloth, objects, debris, traces of blood. Arm in arm, we walked in step, examining the ground. The possibility of finding something horrified me, but I also wanted to do a good job. Oliver hurried over to join my group. When I hooked my arm in his, a shiver went down my spine. His elbow was warm and I could smell the laundry detergent from his clothes. From the corner of my eye I watched him move his feet carefully over the ground. I was suddenly overcome by the fluttering of my heart.
“Are you okay, Emma?” he asked, furrowing his brow.
I couldn’t answer. I let go of his elbow and slipped away from the group. I was here to find a little girl who might be dead, and I was flirting.
I pretended to check my phone before announcing that I had to go. Jerkily, almost running, I fled the investigation site.
As I turned onto Harbord Street, I leaned against a tree some distance from the sidewalk to catch my breath. With my face in my hands, I tried to control my tears. My back slid down the tree trunk and I found myself sitting in the dirty gravel. I let my fingers drag through the rocks, trying to catch my breath. I picked a sharp one. The stone was not sharp
