Chapter 2 - THE GIRL WHO DISAPPEARED
Principal Halpern did not ask Maisie another question.
That bothered Mr. Ortiz immediately.
Instead, the principal lowered the phone and said, “We need to handle this carefully.”
Ms. Kendrick crossed her arms.
“Finally, someone with sense.”
Mr. Ortiz stared at Halpern.
“What happened to Sophie?”
“Nothing happened to Sophie.”
Maisie spoke from behind him.
“She cried in the bathroom for three days.”
Halpern looked at her.
“Maisie, your mother is on the way. Let’s wait for her before we discuss anything else.”
That sounded reasonable.
The way he said it did not.
Mr. Ortiz had spent enough years around administrators to recognize delay when he heard it.
Ms. Kendrick pointed at his phone again.
“That recording cannot leave this building. There are student privacy rules.”
Mr. Ortiz slipped the phone into his pocket.
“Then the district can tell me that.”
Halpern rubbed his forehead.
“Carlos, please.”
The use of his first name made Mr. Ortiz more suspicious, not less.
“You’ve known me eleven years,” he said. “Don’t ask me to pretend I didn’t see this.”
“I’m asking you not to make a bad situation worse.”
Maisie whispered, “It was already worse.”
Nobody answered her.
Twenty minutes later, Maisie’s mother arrived.
Rachel Bennett came through the front office so fast she nearly ran into the secretary’s desk.
When she saw her daughter’s hair, she stopped cold.
“Oh my God.”
Maisie ran to her.
Rachel dropped to her knees and wrapped both arms around the girl.
“What happened?”
Ms. Kendrick began speaking.
Mr. Ortiz interrupted.
“Watch this first.”
Halpern stiffened.
“Carlos—”
“No.”
He handed Rachel the phone.
She watched the video.
At the seventeen-second mark, her hand covered her mouth.
At the end, she looked at Ms. Kendrick.
“You told my daughter to cut her own hair?”
“She had already damaged it.”
Maisie shook her head violently.
“She cut the first piece.”
Rachel turned.
“What?”
Maisie pointed at the hair on the floor.
“She said it was in my face during reading. She said if I loved it more than learning, maybe I should lose some of it.”
Ms. Kendrick stepped forward.
“That is not what happened.”
Rachel rose.
“Stay away from my child.”
Halpern moved between them.
“Everyone needs to calm down.”
Rachel looked at him.
“Did you know about Sophie?”
The principal’s face emptied.
Mr. Ortiz noticed.
Rachel noticed too.
Before Halpern could answer, the front-office secretary appeared in the doorway.
“Dr. Halpern?”
“What?”
“There’s a woman here asking for you.”
“Who?”
The secretary swallowed.
“She says she’s Sophie Ramirez’s mother.”
A woman stepped into the hallway holding a large brown envelope.
She looked at Ms. Kendrick.
Then at the ruined hair around Maisie’s shoulders.
Her eyes filled with tears.
“Oh, no.”
Rachel moved toward her.
“You know what happened?”
The woman opened the envelope.
Inside was a photograph of another little girl.
A jagged section of hair had been cut almost to the scalp.
Sophie’s mother looked directly at Principal Halpern.
May you like
“I told you eight months ago.”
