Chapter 15
Jenna’s heart was thundering as she hung up the phone with Mrs. Zarin. Jack’s dad had taken him from the school parking lot! And he was drunk! Then somehow Jack had driven him to Chief Cunningham’s house? She was so confused. And worried. And absolutely hating the distance between them right now.
She needed to see Jack. She needed to hold him and kiss him and make sure that there wasn’t a single scratch on him. He could have been hurt! Killed! What if his dad had insisted on driving and had gotten them into a crash?
Jesus.
Jenna didn’t bother to pack a bag. She had clothes in her closet at Port Townsend.
She changed out of her school uniform, grabbed her purse and her coat, and headed for the door.
Down in the lobby of her dorm room building was a reception desk.
It was manned by a school employee, who acted similarly to a college dorm’s RA.
“Can you call my driver, please?” Jenna asked Amelia.
In an effort to get the academy’s girls to like her, she’d insisted on being called by her first name.
Unfortunately, all that did was make the preppy girls Jenna was forced to attend school with make fun of her more.
Jenna and a select few were the only ones who treated Amelia with any respect, but they were also the students who wouldn’t cause problems in the first place.
Amelia looked up from the book she was reading. “Jenna, hi. Is there a problem?” She reached for the black rotary phone on her desk.
“I need to get back to Port Townsend,” Jenna explained as Amelia dialed. “Something happened today with my boyfriend and I need to be there.”
Amelia paused mid-dial. The expression on her face was one of sympathy. “Um, I’m so sorry, Jenna. I hate having to be the one to tell you this. But your parents very specifically instructed your driver that you can’t be taken out of the city during the week.”
“What?” Jenna questioned. “That’s not true.
I’ve…” Her voice trailed off. She’d called for her driver during the middle of the week before, but it hadn’t been to go home.
Because Seattle wasn’t her home. Wherever Jack was was home for Jenna.
But those few times she’d left campus had been to go to the store for supplies or if she was craving chocolate peanut butter fudge or to go to the bookstore.
In the year since she’d returned to her academy in Seattle, Jenna hadn’t tried to return to Port Townsend midweek.
Fear gripped her. What if she couldn’t get back to see Jack?
“Can you call him anyway? This is an emergency.”
Amelia gave her an awkward nod and then continued dialing. She spoke into the phone for a moment before looking up at Jenna. “I’m sorry, sweetie. He says no, per your parents’ orders.”
Jenna held her hand out for the phone. Amelia placed the phone block on the desk, careful of the cord, and then handed her the receiver.
Jenna took the cold, black plastic and put it to her ear.
“Walter, please,” she begged in lieu of a greeting.
“I need to see Jack. Something happened today and I need to see him. Please.”
“I’m so sorry, Ms. Scanlon. I could lose my job if I do. If you get permission from your parents—”
Jenna’s scoff cut him off. She did like Walter. He was a sweetheart and didn’t mind driving her around. But he was employed by her parents. “No point,” she muttered. “We both know what they would say.”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Scanlon,” he repeated. At least, he sounded sincere, but that wasn’t going to help her get home.
Jenna let out a long sigh. “It’s fine. I’ll figure something out. Thank you, Walter.”
“Have a good night, Ms. Scanlon.”
She hung the phone back up but didn’t hand it back to Amelia. Instead, she dialed her sister’s number at her Seattle apartment. It rang and rang and rang until her answering machine clicked to prompt her to leave a message.
Jenna hung up. She dialed Carolyn’s cellular mobile phone.
Her parents insisted on buying her the impractical device, but Carolyn rarely had it on her.
Unlike their mother, who carried hers around to show it off, Carolyn despised the portable handheld.
Though it only weighed two and a half pounds, the thing was massive and Carolyn hated it.
She said the device was better used as a weapon than a way to contact her.
When Carolyn didn’t pick up her portable phone, Jenna left her a message on her pager. Though that felt more like a Hail Mary than the calling her portable had. Carolyn was constantly losing the thing.
Desperate, Jenna called for a taxi cab.
“Still nothing?” Mr. Zarin asked.
Jack sighed, hanging up the kitchen phone. “Where could she be? It’s almost ten-thirty at night. She should be in her dorm room by now.”
This was the fifth time Jack had tried calling Jenna’s dorm since he and Mr. Zarin had gotten home from Chief Cunningham’s house.
The Chief called once to inform Jack that his dad had survived, though they had to pump his stomach.
So far, there was no mention of the sleeping pills being found in his system and Jack prayed the doctors didn’t have reason to test for anything other than the massive amounts of alcohol.
At least, that’s what it looked like they did on COPS and Matlock.
Jack was really starting to get worried.
Originally, he figured she was hanging out in the lobby or the library.
But now it was late enough where she should have been in her dorm room.
He even called Carolyn at her private number in Port Townsend, but her sister said she hadn’t heard from Jenna that night.
He was hesitant to call her parents. He knew he should, especially if something had happened to her, but was sure her parents wouldn’t even take his call.
“I’m really worried about her,” he confessed to Mr. Zarin. Mrs. Zarin had taken Lilly to bed and then turned in herself hours ago.
“Give her time,” Mr. Zarin encouraged.
“Mrs. Zarin said that she spoke with her while we were still at the Chief’s. She wouldn’t have gone anywhere. She would know that I would call as soon as I could.” Jenna should have been waiting by the phone for him.
He didn’t like this. He didn’t like it at all.
How was he supposed to find her when she was so far away?
Even if he drove all the way down to her school, they wouldn’t let him on property in the middle of the night.
The academy was co-ed but the dorms were segregated by gender.
They wouldn’t let him within spitting distance of the front gates, let alone her dorm room.
“Why don’t you go to bed, Jack?” Mr. Zarin offered. “I’ll stay up a little longer and promise to get you if she calls.”
Jack shook his head. “I won’t be able to sleep until I talk to her.”
After the afternoon he’d just had, he had not anticipated needing to worry about Jenna too. Where was she? Why wasn’t she safe in her dorm room? If his father wasn’t currently handcuffed to a hospital bed, his anxiety would be through the roof.
“Jack, you have school tomorrow,” Mr. Zarin reminded him gently.
Like he’d be able to concentrate on school if he didn’t find a way to talk to Jenna. He was still on the fence about driving down to Seattle. He might not be allowed on her school’s property, but at least he’d be in the same city as her.
He hated this. The fucking distance. How was he supposed to function not knowing where she was and if she was safe?
The phone rang.
Jack jumped onto the receiver before it even had time to pause. “Jenna!” he shouted, though he had no way of knowing that that was who was on the other line.
“Jack?”
“Baby,” Jack’s shoulders sagged in relief. “Where were you? I’ve been trying to call you.”
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t…” Her voice trailed off and in the background Jack heard something that sounded like an intercom call.
His eyebrows drew down, and he amended his original question. “Jenna, where are you?”
In retrospect, the train station at Marine Thrift at nearly eleven at night was a lot scarier than it had been in her head when she’d made the split second decision to catch the last run of the day up north.
The taxi had dropped her off at the station within twenty minutes of the train’s departure.
She’d literally jumped onto the stairs as the train was disembarking.
When Mr. Zarin had heard that Jenna was at the train station, alone and at night, he’d ripped the phone away from Jack and demanded that she find the security office. She was to wait there until he and Jack arrived.
Her heart had sunk when he also informed her that he was going to have to call her parents. The phone had been disconnected, cutting off Jack’s pleas for Mr. Zarin to not make that call, but it sounded like Mr. Zarin was holding firm.
The security office was a small closet-like space that had a single lightbulb over a small desk, a black phone on the wall, and a single chair. The officer, an older, stout man, had offered Jenna the chair and informed her that he was leaving to do his rounds.
She knew it was a good forty-five minutes to the train station from her house, and the Zarins’ house was even further north.
It was close to an hour and ten minutes after she called Jack from the payphone on the platform that the door opened to reveal Jack. He was out of breath, as if he’d run through the station, but didn’t hesitate to sweep her up into his arms.
His bone-crushing hug was such a relief and Jenna sagged into him. He was okay.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” he demanded.
His hug got tighter, but she didn’t mind in the slightest. She needed his touch like she needed air.
“Taking the fucking train at this time of night? Jenna, you could have been mugged! Or hurt! Or killed! Fuck, I’ve never been so terrified in my life and I was virtually kidnapped by my own father today! What the fuck!”