Read Online Now You See Me... by Rochelle Krich - Free Book Online Page A

phone when he got there. I
tried
to talk her out of going,” she said again.
    “So how long have Dassie and this guy known each other, Sara?”
    “A couple of months. I’m the only one Dassie told,” Sara added with a touch of self-importance, forgetting for the moment that being the sole recipient of that confidence incurred responsibility, and guilt.
    “Did Dassie tell you how old he is?”
    “Twenty. She said he’s really mature.”
    He could be twenty. He could be fifty. “Do you know what school he goes to, or what kind of work he does?”
    “No. I
told
you, I don’t know much about him. But no one believes me.” The girl was on the verge of tears.
    “I believe you, Sara.” I patted her knee. “Tell me about the chat room.”
    “J Spot. J for Jewish? Dassie heard about it at school. You can meet people you wouldn’t meet otherwise. And this one is safe, because everyone’s
frum,
so you have a lot in common and a lot you can talk about, and—” Sara stopped. When she continued, she sounded flustered. “Anyway, that’s what Dassie told me.”
    Sara had spoken with the authority of first-hand knowledge. I filed that away. “And then she got hooked. Why do you think that was?”
    The girl hesitated. “It’s tough when your dad is principal of your school. Dassie couldn’t hang out with a lot of the kids, because her parents didn’t approve of them. The school is Modern Orthodox, but some of the kids eat non-kosher food outside of school, and a few of them do other stuff.”
    “By ‘stuff,’ you mean sex and drugs?”
    Sara nodded. “Dassie said some of the kids fooled around with marijuana. She
never
did,” Sara added quickly.
    I was saddened, but not shocked. The Orthodox community tries to shelter its children from the dangers of the secular world, but no community, I have learned, is invulnerable.
    “What about her friends from Bais Rifka?”
    “They kind of drifted apart. Different schedules . . .” Sara shrugged. “Dassie’s still friends with some of them, but it’s not the same when you don’t see someone every day. And she doesn’t like having to defend her school to them.”
    I could understand that. “Let’s get back to Sunday night, Sara.”
    The girl picked up a needlepoint pillow. “Dassie said she’d be out till eleven. When she wasn’t back by midnight, I was nervous, because my parents said they’d be home by one. So I tried her cell. Again and again and again.” Sara’s voice had taken on a breathless quality, as if she were reliving her anxiety. “Finally she answered. She said she’d be out late and would sleep at home and figure out something to tell her parents.”
    “How did she sound?”
    “Excited. She was giggling half the time and—”
    “And?” I prompted.
    “She sounded drunk. I didn’t tell her parents.” Sara picked at a thread on the pillow. “Monday she phoned me after school. She said she was sorry she got me involved, and told me she was with him. I couldn’t
believe
it. She said she was fine, everything would turn out okay. And she hung up. She didn’t
sound
fine.”
    Almost the same thing Hadassah had told her sister. And like Aliza, Sara was looking at me for reassurance.
    “Dassie’s mom said she didn’t blame me, but I know she did.” The heightened color had returned to the teenager’s face. “She wanted me to tell her everything I knew about this guy. But I don’t
know
anything. She asked if Dassie was planning to run away with him. I said no way. Dassie would have told me, for sure.”
    My best friend, Aggie, I had learned years after she was killed, hadn’t told me everything. If she had, she might be alive. Then again, maybe not . . . I brushed away the thought and the accompanying pain, wondered again if I would ever be free of it.
    “Did Dassie tell you why she was attracted to him?”
    “She said he was amazing. He was smart and kind. He made her laugh. He e-mailed her a photo, but she wouldn’t show it to