Nightmare
hadn't slept in days. Maybe weeks.
    "Derek?" I asked, a little uncertain that this was really the
young man I knew as Jordin's fiance. His standard college wear of
golf shirt and plaid shorts hadn't been ironed, there were traces
of dark circles under those keen eyes of his, and he had a day's
worth of light-colored stubble coloring his rosy face. I couldn't
remember ever seeing him so disheveled.
    Derek Hobbes was an undergrad student in Columbia's Religion Department, preparing to eventually seek his master
of divinity degree. He was kind natured and soft spoken, possessing an utterly brilliant mind. Just like his father, he was expected
to someday become one of the most influential and respected
ministers in America. Everybody said so.

    He wasn't my type in the slightest, but he was one of the
nicest guys I'd ever met.
    "She's not here," Derek said with a kind of desolate panic as
he took in my small solo room. "She's not anywhere."
    My mind screeched to a halt. Any processing of Derek's words
seemed to be happening in slow motion.
    "Jordin's missing?" I asked, feeling like a complete dullard.
I turned slowly in place, reeling, and ran a hand through my
black hair.
    I had turned to keep Derek from seeing my reaction to this
news, but he interpreted it as an invitation to step inside, so
he quietly entered and closed the door. "When did you last see
her?" he asked.
    Jordin's missing, I thought, my mind and heart both racing.
    jordin's dead.
    "Maia?" Derek tried snapping me back to the present. "Have
you seen Jordin?"
    My hand was now covering my mouth because I feared I
might vomit, so my reply was a little muffled. "Not since last
semester..." I said, planting myself on the edge of my bed because
my knees felt weak. "How do you know she's ... ?"
    His words came out in a practiced rush, making it easy to
imagine that he'd told this story several times already. "Every
summer before classes start, Jordin takes this group of friends
on a back-to-school vacation thing. About six weeks ago, she left with the usual group of about ten or twelve girls, and she took
them all up to Martha's Vineyard. A couple weeks after they got
there, she stopped calling me and answering my emails. I figured
she was just having fun, relaxing and losing track of time-she
does that sometimes-but it got to be longer and longer.... And
before she left, we had this big conversation where we planned
this really romantic meet-up at a restaurant near campus the first
day we were both back in town for school. But she never showed,
and now it's been almost a month since anyone's seen her."

    I looked down at the floor, absorbing Derek's story. Jordin
had gone missing around four weeks ago. And no one had seen
or heard from her since.
    Not true. I saw her last night.
    My thoughts rocketed back to the here and now as I realized Derek's deeply worried eyes had locked onto mine and were
anxiously awaiting a response.
    "I don't know what she told you," I said quietly, "but the last
trip she and I took, it didn't-"
    "Didn't end well," he said, finishing the phrase. "That's the
same thing she said. But she didn't say why."
    A question was implied, and it was the one question I feared
more than any other. I deflated a bit as he looked at me, something akin to accusation in his eyes.
    "It was ... intensely personal. For both of us." I grappled to
find the words. How could I explain to jordin's fiance-the person
she was close to more than any other-that I couldn't possibly tell
him what I knew, when it was somethingJordin had not chosen
to tell him herself.
    Derek was about to mount an argument, but I spoke first, changing the subject. "Has she been reported missing to the
authorities?"

    "Some of the girls she went to the Vineyard with tried to
report it, but they said they didn't get very far."
    "Why not?"
    "Does it matter?" asked Derek, growing more agitated by the
second. "She's vanished without a trace, and God only
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