An Arizona boy who’d been spending January break at the school, living in one of the residence halls that remained open during the holidays, he went for an afternoon stroll and never returned. The article I read about him in the Valley News called him “studious” and “reliable”; it claimed he was an avid lacrosse player who was tall and lanky and had a palm tree tattooed on his left shoulder. After he vanished one student came forward and said he’d been drinking. The possibility of his leaving town was quickly ruled out; the bus that stopped in Middlebury en route to Albany did not pick up anybody matching his description. Townspeople and shopkeepers along Route 7 were queried about whether or not they’d noticed anybody hitchhiking, and nothing out of the ordinary was reported. January temperatures are the most frigid of the year in Vermont, and the night Marek was gone the thermometer dipped down well below freezing. As the next few days passed in an arctic aura, the sleepy New England college town held prayer vigils in churches, in huddled gatherings around bonfires, beseeching the wintry fates to return him unharmed.
