Thankfully when I got down to the conference, most of the other attendees looked like they’d had a pretty rough night. Kyle’s face was pale, and when he turned the projector on to do another PowerPoint, he winced as the light hit his face. While Kyle talked about creating the right voice for a blog, I wrote down everything I knew about Jessie Morgan in my notebook, hoping that something would give me a clue about why she left and what I should do. Boyfriend: Fish Best friend: Myra Class president—tube top? Smoker Slutty dresser Fake green contact lenses Got into trouble with Robbie all the time. What kind of trouble? Went to the bathroom, never came back. Alligators in the sewer? I made myself laugh out loud. Kyle looked in my direction. I covered my mouth and pretended to cough. When he looked away, I drew a big, toothy alligator on the page, and then a sewer pipe, and then the entire plumbing system of a high school and the route the alligator would take to grab Jessie Morgan and bring her down to his underground sewer-pipe lair, like a crocodilian Phantom of the Opera.
