schematic of the London Underground. Picking it up, I realize that the map is actually the jacket of a thin hardcover book. A journal. And written on the first page in a flowing female hand are two paragraphs:
I flip quickly through the pages, conscious that Annie could walk in at any moment. Some are covered with tight blocks of script, others with hastily scrawled paragraphs. Doodles and caricatures adorn many pages, illuminating the journal as the work of a talented artist. I can hardly suppress my excitement. The last year of Kate Townsend’s life is right here, page after page of it, and I’d like nothing more than to read the journal from cover to cover right now. But that will have to wait until Annie is in bed.
Still, I can’t resist a quick look.
Suspending the diary by its front cover, I let it fall open to its natural breaking point. It opens to a two-page spread lined with four columns. The columns on the left-hand page are headed “Hook-ups” and “Real Hook-ups.” The columns on the right-hand page are headed “Rejected” and “Rejected by.” These two pages, I realize, are where Kate Townsend believed she saw herself most clearly, not through the lens of the effusive praise she must have heard every day, but measured by her physical acceptance or rejection by the people around her. Like most of us, sadly, this beautiful and brilliant girl defined herself more by who desired her rather than by any internal sense of self. But that weakness may be Drew’s good fortune. I eagerly scan the columns, searching for information that might somehow help to free him.
HOOK-UPS
REJECTED
REJECTED BY
Several names jump out at me as I scan the list, most of them high school boys who attend St. Stephen’s. With some entries I recognize surnames only; they probably belong to boys from the other local high schools. But some of the names truly shock me, as they seem to belong to adults. Under the “Rejected” column is Coach Anders, the athletic director of St. Stephen’s. Wade Anders is thirty years old and divorced, with two kids of his own at St. Stephen’s. Kate’s parenthetical notation seems to indicate some uncertainty about whether Anders made a pass at her or not, and I can only hope it was her imagination. Mr. Dawson-the “perv”-is also a teacher at St. Stephen’s. He’s taught religion for one year, and now it’s likely to be his last. I have no idea who “Dr. Davenport” is. Ditto for “Mr. Marbury.” But they apparently had close contact with Kate, perhaps during her time in England. And Sarah Evans, a recent graduate of St. Stephen’s, is listed under both the “Real Hook-ups” and “Rejected” columns. There’s
