“He told me he was here, with you,” I said. “And now I don’t know where he is.”
There was a knock on the open door, and in stepped Mr. Hodges. His white hair lay on his head and over his ears, looking for all the world like some sort of medieval skullcap. “Gentlemen,” he said. “Mr. Glass, I don’t recall your having permission to study off dorm tonight. You’ve got about six minutes until the bell.”
Trip and I looked at each other. Mr. Hodges tilted his head slightly, arms folded across his chest as he leaned against the doorway. “What’s wrong, Matthias?” he asked.
Trip continued to look at me. I opened my mouth and then closed it. My earlier fear, that Fritz might have gone to talk to Mr. Hodges about me, receded; if he had, Mr. Hodges would already be hauling me into his office. But that didn’t solve the problem of where Fritz was. My choices were all bad. I could say nothing was wrong, which might fool Mr. Hodges but definitely wouldn’t fool Trip. Or I could tell Mr. Hodges that Fritz had been absent from our room during study hall and get my roommate in serious trouble, which was the last thing I wanted to do right now.
In one stroke, Trip cut through my knot of anxiety. “He’s looking for Fritz, sir,” Trip said, his eyes still on me. For a moment, anger flared up in me. Then it passed almost immediately. Trip had forced me into the position of having to tell an administrator about Fritz being AWOL, but this shielded me from being a rat. Also, Trip hadn’t told Mr. Hodges that Fritz had lied to me. I could even make up a story to cover Fritz if I wanted, knowing Trip wouldn’t say anything. Absently I wondered if Trip had thought all this out in the few short seconds since Mr. Hodges had arrived.
Mr. Hodges considered me with polite interest. He continued looking at me with the same interested expression as I explained that I hadn’t seen Fritz since track practice, and that I had thought he had been studying with Trip but was obviously wrong. Mr. Hodges asked us a few questions—when was the last time either of us had seen him, whom else might he be studying with—and kept us past the bell for the second study period. Then he told me we were going to head back to my room. If Fritz wasn’t there, I was to stay in my room and wait. Trip raised a hand in farewell as we left, and Mr. Hodges and I walked through the library doors outside.
The night had grown darker, broken only by the soft glow of the footlights along the brick walkway and the brighter porch lights of the academic buildings and dormitories. It was cold, and I put my hands in my pockets. Mr. Hodges walked purposefully yet without haste. Following a step behind him, I knew that Mr. Hodges would find out where Fritz was. What I didn’t know was what else he might discover. The idea that this man, whom I had long admired for his intellect and his kind way with the boys at our school, could potentially discover that I had cheated was so wrenching that I half wanted to step off the lit path into the night and disappear.
My room was empty—Fritz wasn’t there, and it didn’t appear that he had come back in my absence. Mr. Hodges reminded me to stay put. “He may be out moping by the golf course,” he said. “Or studying calculus in someone else’s room.”
I just nodded. Somehow I knew Fritz wasn’t in either place. He had lied to me about last night; that much was certain. So where had he been? I recalled the last time I had seen him, running through the darkening wood before he disappeared around a bend in the road.
Mr. Hodges tilted his head to the side like an inquisitive bird and peered at me. “Is there any reason you’re worried, Matthias?” he asked gently. “About Fritz?”
I shrugged, not trusting my own voice. My throat threatened to squeeze shut. Suddenly my eyes were burning. “He’s stressed about college,” I managed. Then I put my hands over my face and sat down in our beat-up green recliner and wept. Shame, guilt, and disgust flooded over me. Soon I became aware of Mr. Hodges’s hand on my shoulder, and I pulled myself together, shaking my head almost angrily as I took his proffered handkerchief. I blew my nose and then hesitated, not knowing what to do with the handkerchief. “Keep it,” Mr. Hodges said with a little smile. “It’s yours now.”
Despite myself I laughed weakly. “Sorry about that, Mr. Hodges,” I said. “I just . . . I wasn’t nice to him this afternoon. He was freaking out about college again. I mean, he’s going to get in. If not UVA, then plenty of other places. I just . . . I just got tired of him complaining about it, and told him that, and he just . . . He ran away.” A few more tears fell from my eyes, but I was done crying, as if my grief had cast me on some rocky shore, spent but clearheaded. Never before had I appreciated the subtlety, the hairsplitting involved in lying. I had cried because of what I had said to Fritz, true, but that wasn’t the only reason I had broken down in front of Mr. Hodges. I had violated the most important rule at Blackburne, and I’d betrayed Fritz, and there was no way I could tell anyone about any of it without being expelled. Then I masked my guilt by revealing another uncomfortable truth. Dimly I wondered how much self-deception one had to practice in order to live with a lie.
Mr. Hodges squeezed my shoulder once, firmly, and then withdrew. “I’m sure he knows you didn’t mean to insult him,” he said. “Even if his feelings were hurt. You’ll be all right?” I nodded, and he headed for the door. “Just stay right here, Matthias,” he said. “It’ll all be fine.”
IT WASN’T ALL FINE.
Study period ended at ten. Immediately, stereos powered on. The Red Hot Chili Peppers competed with Eminem, the music threatening to make the windows vibrate. Ten o’clock became ten thirty and still no sign of Fritz. This was getting ridiculous, I thought. Avoiding me because he was angry was one thing, but eventually he had to come back to our room, if only to keep from getting suspended. Where the hell was he? I went to the bathroom and found Jay “Beef” Organ staring at himself in the mirror, picking a zit on his nose. He asked why Mr. Hodges had been in the dorm earlier. I made some noncommittal remark, brushed my teeth, and went back to our room. Ten forty-one. Lights-out was at eleven. For the fifth or sixth time I looked in and around my desk to see if Fritz had left a note but found nothing. I finally gave up and decided to try reading. I leafed through Light in August but couldn’t handle any more Faulkner; I picked up The Catcher in the Rye, a favorite book, but after reading the opening paragraph twice, I put the book back on the shelf and threw myself onto my bed. Someone upstairs, probably Max Goren, was playing the Beastie Boys’ “Brass Monkey,” a song I had always hated. I reached underneath my pillow to pull it over my head and shut out the noise, and my hand touched something small and metallic lying on the mattress beneath the pillow. I pulled it out to look at it. It was a thin silver chain, and attached to the chain was a round medal about the size of a nickel. It was Fritz’s Saint Christopher medal. I sat up and stared at it. Fritz had been wearing it when I had last seen him that afternoon. And it had been placed under my pillow.
The Beastie Boys’ song cut off in mid-rap, silence falling like a curtain interrupting a bad play. There was a knock on my door. Instinctively, I shoved the medal back under my pillow, just as the door opened. I jumped out of bed and saw Mr. Hodges. Behind him was a sheriff’s deputy in a brown uniform shirt and khakis, the star on his chest shining faintly in the glare of the overhead lights.
“Matthias,” Mr. Hodges said. “I’m sorry to startle you.”
I was still staring at the deputy. “Is everything . . . ,” I began, and then paused. Suddenly I was seized with terror. “What’s going on?” They found his body, I thought. Fritz had killed himself. And he had left his Saint Christopher medal on my bed. I couldn’t look away from the deputy, an impassive-looking man with gray hair who seemed to be looking at something just above my eyes.
“We cannot find Fritz,” Mr. Hodges was saying. “He’s not anywhere on campus. No one has reported seeing him since dinner. Dr. Simmons has contacted his parents. They are not aware of any reason why he shouldn’t be here. His father is driving over from Fairfax.” He turned to the deputy, who looked me in the eye for the first time. “This is Deputy Briggs
from the county sheriff’s office. He wants to ask you a few questions. Is that all right?”
I nodded, trying not to stare at the pistol holstered on Deputy Briggs’s right hip. My heart had been tripping away in my chest ever since seeing the deputy, as if he were there to arrest me. I recalled seeing him before, directing traffic and parking on campus for big football games. “Yes, sir, that’s fine,” I said. Then something that Mr. Hodges had said hit me. “Since dinner?” I asked. “Did someone see Fritz around dinnertime? I—I haven’t seen him since track practice.”
“Mr. Greer saw Fritz walk out of this dorm around six forty-five this evening,” Mr. Hodges said.
I must have stared. “Mr. Greer?” Our wheelchair-bound maintenance man was not the first person I would have expected to have news about Fritz. Pelham Greer was friendly in a gruff way, but aside from joking occasionally with students in the Brickhouse, the school snack bar, or passing us on the walkways, he lived in his own peculiar orbit that did not regularly include students. As Diamond had once put it, he was one weird motherfucker.
Mr. Hodges was nodding. “He’s quite certain. Fritz had a backpack over one shoulder.”
“A backpack?”
Mr. Hodges nodded. “He must have stopped back here while you were at dinner,” he said. He turned to Deputy Briggs with a slightly embarrassed air, as if he were trespassing on the deputy’s business.
Deputy Briggs gave a little nod and stepped forward, immediately in charge of the situation. “Just a few questions, Matthias,” he said.
As Deputy Briggs pulled out a worn, black clasp notebook from his hip pocket, I noticed that Mr. Hodges wasn’t going anywhere, but any relief I may have felt at that was engulfed by what was happening. Fritz is gone, I thought. He’s missing, vanished. Lost.
SUICIDE WAS THE PREVAILING theory by lunch the next day. No one said this directly to me—I found that I was surrounded by an invisible bubble that caused people to keep their distance and lower their voices when they saw me. I didn’t need to hear what they were saying. I was thinking the same thing.
After Deputy Briggs had questioned me, it had been pretty clear he didn’t think I knew anything about where Fritz might be. I just told him about that afternoon by the lions, downplaying my argument with Fritz, and then recounted what I’d done that evening. Briggs wrote down everything I said and then departed, leaving Mr. Hodges behind. Mr. Hodges sat with me awhile, not saying much of anything, just sitting at Fritz’s desk and jiggling his foot. He said I could stay with him and his wife in their house if I wanted. I thanked him and said I’d be fine where I was. We didn’t say much after that. The dorm began to settle down—some last-minute toothbrushing and toilet flushing, some muffled footsteps from upstairs, and then quiet. A moth batted itself against the window screen. Water gurgled in the pipes. Mr. Hodges looked up at that. “These old dorms,” he said, gazing at the ceiling. “Full of quirks, plumbing older than Versailles. But they’ll never fall down.” At that he stood. “He’ll be all right, Matthias,” he said. “Fritz is a smart boy. He isn’t reckless.”
I nodded, not wanting to risk another crying fit like earlier. I stood up, too. “Thanks, Mr. Hodges,” I said.
He shrugged. “Haven’t done much of anything,” he said. “But if you like, I’d be happy to call your parents for you, let them know what’s going on.”
I hesitated and then shook my head. “No, thank you,” I said. “I don’t want them to worry.” But the thought of my parents made me feel safer—I could talk to them later if I needed to. I thought of Mr. Davenport, Fritz’s dad, driving through the dark right then, knowing that his son was missing, and I shivered.
Mr. Hodges shook my hand on the way out, clapped me on the shoulder, and told me to get some rest. I spent the night staring at the bottom of Fritz’s bunk, holding his Saint Christopher medal in my hand as I tried to fall asleep. I must have dozed off sometime before dawn, because suddenly I was aware that the light outside the windows had gone a milky blue and that there was a dog nearby, giving a single sharp yelp. It was a search-and-rescue dog.
I skipped breakfast and went to first-period class, AP English. Mr. Conkle seemed surprised to see me, as did the rest of my classmates, but everyone politely ignored me as Mr. Conkle had us analyze, or “unpack,” as he called it, Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night.” Usually this was the kind of thing I excelled at, even enjoyed, taking a poem apart and examining it line by line. This included looking at the words the poet had chosen, the meter, the figurative language, the clever turns and descriptions and insights. But I was in no mood for schoolwork, and all I could think about was how the father in the poem was dying and how Fritz might be dying or dead somewhere. After English, I headed to my room and lay on my bed. No one came to tell me to go to class, so I stayed and dozed until lunch, when hunger drove me to the dining hall and I learned of my newfound powers of attracting the attention of everyone within a fifty-yard radius like some twisted sort of magnet.
When I walked back into my room, I stopped so abruptly, I nearly stumbled into my recliner. Fritz’s father was sitting on my bed.
His tie was loosened and his shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbows, though his hands dangled between his knees, as if he had been prepared to dive into some difficult task only to find that he was incapable of doing anything. His eyes, round with sleeplessness and disbelief, seemed to bore a hole straight through me.
“Mr. Davenport,” I stammered. I placed a hand on the nearest chair, needing to grip something solid.
He nodded absently and then wet his lips with his tongue. I realized, for the first time, that Fritz looked very little like his father, but he had the same habit of wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue. That realization seemed absurdly tragic, and I stood mute before it.
When Mr. Davenport spoke, his voice was hoarse. “Matthias,” he said, and then dryly swallowed. “Do you know where he is?”
“Sir,” I began. “I—I am so sorry that Fritz . . .” I stopped, confused as to how to end that sentence.
Mr. Davenport supplied the ending for me. “He’s missing, Matthias. My son is missing. His mother is at home right now, crying. I had to call my brother to come over.” He paused, shook his head as if he didn’t approve, and started again. “They tell me you may be the last person who spoke to him. I need to know what he said.”
I couldn’t seem to concentrate—his eyes were absorbing everything. “Sir?”
“What did my son say, Matthias? You saw him, down by the school entrance, yesterday afternoon. What did he say to you?” Another pause. “What did you say to him?”
I willed myself not to stare at my pillow, under which lay Fritz’s medal. Mr. Davenport was sitting right next to it. I wasn’t sure that I could pretend surprise if he found it. And then he would wonder why I hadn’t told him or anyone else about the medal, why I had kept it secret. I wasn’t even sure myself, except that Fritz had placed it under my pillow for a reason—why, I didn’t know, but to give it to someone else, even Fritz’s father, when Fritz had given it specifically to me, seemed wrong, another kind of betrayal.
“Matthias?” Mr. Davenport’s tone was sharper now, impatient.
“I . . .” I hesitated, trying to think of how much to say, and that did it. He was off the bed and up in my face. His speed and ferocity so completely unnerved me that I was left gaping.
“Where is he?” he shouted. His anger was volcanic. I had never seen an adult so furious. His face filled my vision. I could count the pores in his nose, see the silver hairs in the black, uneven stubble around his jaw. His eyes were enormous and blazed with rage. “Where is my son?”
“He started talking about college,” I blurted out, my words stumbling over one another. “About not—not getting in. He w-worried about it—worries about it, all the time.” Realizing that I had spoken about Fritz in the past tense made me start to cry again. “I told him . . . I told him to shut up about it, Mr. Davenport. I’m so sorry.
I told him you would get him into school, you and his uncle. I said you’d get him in. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” And I cried, standing there in my room, in front of Fritz’s father. I turned away, my face hot and slick, and I covered my face with my hands.
When I heard a rustle of movement, I didn’t know if he was stepping back, or reaching out a hand to touch my shoulder, or just picking up his suit jacket. All I know is that, after a moment, Mr. Davenport walked out of the room without a word, leaving the door open behind him.
THESE STORIES USUALLY HAVE a dramatic, definitive end. A member of the search party, taking a quick leak behind a tree, sees a hand protruding from a nearby bush, blood on the frozen fingers. Or someone in a diner in Pennsylvania realizes the boy sipping coffee in the next booth over looks an awful lot like the picture of the runaway on the news. Or the missing person shows up safe and sound, a miscommunication having led people to jump to conclusions.
This story did not end in any of those ways. Fritz Davenport ran into those woods and it was as if he never came back out. There was no body found, no evidence of foul play. No ransom note was ever delivered to Fritz’s parents or the school. A thousand tips were called in, people claiming to have seen Fritz in West Virginia, Idaho, Texas, Maine. None of them panned out. The state police posited that Fritz may have run away, pointing to his having withdrawn several hundred dollars from an ATM at a mall in Charlottesville the previous weekend, when a van had taken Blackburne kids in for dinner and a movie. Seeing as students weren’t allowed to have cars at Blackburne, they figured someone may have helped Fritz to get away. This led to several uncomfortable interviews with school employees, particularly the maintenance and kitchen staff. Fritz’s disappearance spared no one.
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