My daughter, Amy goes to a great school in Carlsbad, CA. It’s one of those ‘new schools’ that started in the ‘60s to teach progressive (kind of hippy) learning methods. Amy is seven and she seems to love her teachers and classmates.
They recently started a new project, called Kids Connecting Kids, which is a pen pal program. The program is basically this: second graders at Amy’s school get matched with the second graders at a school in New Mexico (another ‘progressive’ type of school) and the kids write letters back and forth for a few months. They’ve been running the program for forty-something years now and it seems to be a hit with the kids, who love receiving letters in the mail. Amy couldn’t wait for it to start. She told me repeatedly how she’s “always, ALWAYS wanted a pen pal.” It was really sweet and I was excited for her.
My daughter sent her first letter on Monday afternoon to a little girl named Jessica-Ray.
On Friday afternoon, when I came to pick up Amy from school at the start of our weekend together, she was waving a light pink piece of stationery above her head and squealing “Daddy, daddy my letter came!”
It was Jessica-Ray’s reply to the letter Amy sent on Monday. Amy was beaming, as she told me all about the letter she had sent to Jessica-Ray. “I told her that my favourite singer is Ariana Grande and my favourite TV show is Spongebob and my favourite food is spaghetti.”
“Have you read Jessica-Ray’s letter?” I asked, trying not to seem too eager myself. Amy’s excitement was infectious. I was hoping Jessica-Ray was a nice girl, who Amy could be friends with.
“Yeah!” Amy held up the letter. I could see it more clearly now: it was light pink on top and golden yellow at the bottom, meant to show a sunset effect. The border of the page was trimmed with Egyptian motifs. At the bottom was a black cat dressed as an ancient Egyptian queen. At the very bottom of the page were the words “Cleocatra.” The letter was written in what looked like purple ink in handwriting not unlike Amy’s.
“What did she say?”
“She says that she’s happy that I’m her pen pal! She rides horses sometimes and has a dog named Paulie who’s a cocker spaniel.”
That weekend was a busy one: Amy had a birthday party on Saturday afternoon and we went to see the local theatre’s production of Annie on Sunday. By the time we drove up to my ex’s house on Sunday night to drop Amy off for the week, Jessica-Ray had faded into the background.
My ex, Sam, opened the door and gave Amy a big hug, along with a nod of greeting to me. She looked bone tired, with bags under her eyes.
“Work busy?” I asked.
Sam rolled her eyes. “You have no idea! I had to drive upstate for a trade show and the traffic was obscene. I don’t know why anyone drives between cities in this state, it’s a complete nightmare.”
Sam owns a business making health and beauty products, which she sells at trade shows, farmer’s markets and in a few retail locations. Since I work a regular 9 to 5, we pretty much run on opposite schedules. It was hell on our marriage, but pretty good in terms of splitting custody of Amy.
“Sounds awful.” Then I remembered Jessica-Ray. “How about Amy’s new pen pal? She’s been on cloud 9 ever since she sent her first letter.”
Sam smiled, but not before the corner of her mouth twitched. It wouldn’t be noticeable to most people, but we had been married ten years, together fifteen. I had learned long ago that the corner of Sam’s mouth twitches when she’s uncomfortable.
Amy could already be heard bouncing off the walls upstairs, turning up Ariana Grande on her iPad. Sam started to gather up Amy’s things from the front door. I took that as my cue to leave.
The next week passed slowly as usual, as it always does when I’m waiting to see Amy again. Finally Friday came around and I parked in front of Amy’s school to wait for the bell to ring. Amy waved as soon as she saw me and ran over, pink backpack flinging back and forth on her shoulders.
“Hi Lovebug!” I exclaimed as she climbed in to my car. “How was school?”
“Good.” Amy replied.
“Did you send Jessica-Ray another letter?”
“Yeah!”
“Did she send you a letter back?”
“Uh huh. It’s on that pretty paper again.” Amy pulled out another Cleocatra page out of her backpack. “Can I read it to you?”
“Sure!” I smiled back at her. Amy struggled with reading a lot in first grade. I was glad to see her confidence in her reading improving.
“Dear Amy,” Amy paused and smiled at me for dramatic effect. “I loved your letter. It was nice to hear about your dance class and the birthday party you went to at the bowling alley. I love bowling too. Paulie is very jumpy right now. I think he wants to meet you!
Your friend, Jessica-Ray.”
“That’s great, honey.” I nodded. “Good job reading too.”
“Thanks Daddy.” She replied. “Do you think I should send her a picture of myself next time?”
“I guess we’ll have to ask your teacher.”
The weekend flew by and once again, Amy and I were standing on Sam’s doorstep. When Sam opened the door, Amy showed her Jessica-Ray’s letter, talking a mile-a-minute the whole time. I shot Sam a “cute, huh?” glance while Amy talked.
But she didn’t smile back. In fact, her face was twisted into a pained expression she seemed to be trying to hard to hide. I felt a twinge of panic. Had something happened over the weekend?
Amy finished reading the letter and bounded upstairs to put her backpack away. I hesitated for a moment before deciding to pry. We haven’t been divorced for that long - it’s hard to know where all of the new boundaries have been drawn.
“Hey Sam, is everything okay?”
She was trying to look busy hanging up Amy’s coat. “It’s fine.”
Which is Sam for “it’s definitely not fine.”
“Okay…well I guess I’ll head out…” I paused for a moment at the door.
Sam sighed deeply. “Okay, it’s not completely fine.”
“What’s up?”
She hesitated, searching for the right words. Sam was always one to speak carefully and deliberately. “There’s just something that’s bothering me about Jessica-Ray.”
That took me by surprise. What could be off about a seven year old who talks about her dog and how she loves bowling? I stayed quiet, waiting for Sam to continue.
“It’s just…did you notice the stationery she sent her letters on?”
“Cleocatra. It’s cute…” I shrugged.
“It’s Lisa Frank.” Sam exclaimed, clearly intending me to understand the significance.
She watched my blank expression. “Lisa Frank was this brand for girls in the ‘90s. Super colourful. Doesn’t ring a bell?”
“Well…no…” I grew up with three brothers. Lisa Frank never made an appearance in my childhood home. Even so, Sam’s point was sailing way over my head.
Sam tucked her hair behind her ear. Another nervous habit. “Lisa Frank isn’t something little girls nowadays are into. I haven’t seen it around in years.”
“So…maybe her Mom gave her some of her old stationery?”
“And it was written with a gel pen.”
“They still have gel pens around, Sam.” I knew that for a fact as Amy and I included a pack of miniature gel pens in the birthday gift Amy took to her friend’s party last weekend.
“Yeah, sure, but did you read her first letter?”
“Yeah…”
“She said that Fern Gully is her favourite movie…”
“Fern Gully is a great movie. Amy likes it.”
“And that New Kids on the Block is her favourite band.”
“Okay she likes oldies…what does that…”
“None of that strikes you as odd?”
“Should it?” I was completely confused. I’ve always known Sam to be a level-headed person. Prone to anxiety, sure but who isn’t these days? I couldn’t grasp what she was trying to tell me.
“Look Mark, this is going to sound crazy. Can you just non judge me until I’ve finished speaking?”
“Sure…”
Sam led me into the living room. We could hear the sounds of Taylor Swift drifting down from Amy’s room. I took a seat on the green sofa, which used to be in the living room Sam and I shared. Sam sat down on an armchair opposite me.
“You know, when I was a kid we did this project in school too.” The fact that Amy was attending Sam’s elementary alma mater was something I tended to forget. It’s not unusual since we live in sort of a small community, which also happens to be Sam’s hometown. “The pen pal project,” Sam continued. “They started it, like, a decade before I was even there. It was the same deal: they match you with a kid at Elmwood Elementary and you write letters for a month.”
Elmwood, now I could remember the name of the school in New Mexico. They had written the name down on the permission slip I signed at the beginning of the school year, allowing Amy to take part in the project.
“Well…” Sam wrung her hands. Whatever this was, it had really gotten to her. “My pen pal for the project was a little girl. Her name was Jessica-Ray too.”
I have to admit, the coincidence did make me a little uncomfortable, though I could never have explained why. “Well…I mean…isn’t possible that Jessica-Ray is a popular name in New Mexico?”
“Mark…please?” Sam exclaimed. “You know it’s not. I’ve never met anyone else with the name in my life.”
“Maybe your Jessica-Ray has a daughter named Jessica-Ray? How big can Farmington be…”
Sam sighed.
“Sam, talk to me.” I said. “Are you…what do you think is going on?”
“It’s not that I think something is going on per se….I’m just…” She looked up at me. The look in her eye told me she wasn’t messing around. She was spooked. “It’s just…I had a bad pen pal experience, Mark. At first, Jessica-Ray was very sweet. I thought we would be good friends because we seemed to have everything in common. She liked the books I liked, she watched the TV shows I watched, she even did ballet on the weekends, like I did. But the letters started to change after a while. They became…odd.”
“Odd.” I repeated, still not sure what to think.
“Odd.” Sam replied. “She began to ask me things. What my phone number was, where I lived, who my parents were. I was seven and I thought she wanted to come and visit me or something. I sent her my photo and some of my puppy trading cards…”
“Your puppy trading cards?” Was that a thing?
“It was a big deal in 1994 Mark. But then, in one letter, she asked me to come and stay with her. She sent me her address and told me exactly how to get to her house in New Mexico. I still remember her instructions. They were way too complex and detailed for a child to have written them, I see that now. Like, they said things like… “Tell your mom you are going to the park. Ride to this bus stop. Catch this bus. Get off at the downtown bus station.”
“She was telling you how to run away from home?”
“Not just telling me how…there was money and a bus ticket in the envelope. A one-way bus ticket to Farmington, New Mexico. It freaked me out, so I showed my mom who lost her shit. It was a whole thing. I had to go to meetings with the principal and a couple of police officers, the school board was involved. They actually shut the program down for a couple of years before re-launching it in 1996. When it was my sister’s turn to participate, my mom refused to sign the permission slip.”
I felt a sick wave rising in my stomach. How was it that in fifteen years together, she’d never told me this story? How had she let me sign the goddamn permission slip without telling me this story?
Sam sat slightly curled in her chair. She looked as if the colour had drained from her cheeks. “They contacted Elmwood Elementary to look into what was going on with Jessica-Ray. You know what they found out?”
I almost didn’t want to know. “What?”
“I wasn’t partnered with a kid named Jessica-Ray. They paired me up with some little asshole named Steve who didn’t want to be pen pals with a girl and hadn’t sent me any letters.”
“What?….How…how did you know about Jessica-Ray then?”
“She sent me the first letter. They trade every year which school sends the first letter for some stupid reason. But there was no Jessica-Ray in the class. Those letters - the ones asking for my personal information, the place I sent my picture to - were from someone else.”
I wanted to throw up at the thought of Amy sending letters to some predator in a basement who wrote about puppies and bowling on girly stationery from the 90s. “Did they find out who was sending you letters?”
“No. No one ever owned up to it. The postal service tried to trace them, but all they knew was that they were posted from the mailbox nearest to the school in Farmington, which was where all the other kids sent there letters from too. Apparently it caused a big upheaval at Elmwood too. My mom told me that they completely changed how they carried out the pen pal project to make sure that sort of thing couldn’t happen again.” Sam was staring at the carpet now, her expression was one I didn’t recognize.
I felt like I’d been hit by a truck. “Sam…why didn’t you tell me this before? I mean…should we take Amy out of the project?” I hadn’t meant it to sound accusatory, but my words came out tinged with unspoken blame.
Sam stood up of the chair in fury. “Jesus Mark, I just wanted to forget that it ever happened. I didn’t even know they still did the fucking project until we learned about it at the parents’ orientation meeting in September! And I told myself it would be alright - I mean, Amy was excited, supposedly they have more safeguards. It’s not like it was when we were kids, right? It’s harder for people to be anonymous nowadays.”
I felt a knot of shame in my gut. Sam was right - if she’d told me about her experience before, I probably would have told her it would be fine. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.” I tried to push the knot in my stomach down a bit further. “What should we do about this?”
Sam sat back down on the armchair. “I guess we just wait and see. But we make sure Amy doesn’t give out ANY personal information - no photos, no addresses, no emails, nothing. I’ll have a word with her teacher on Monday just to make sure that’s clear. I mean, the teachers basically censor the letters anyway. They read the outgoing ones as well as the incoming ones.”
I tried to crack a small smile. “That’s very 1984 of them.”
Amy smiled a little too. “Well, what happened to me in ’94 - I mean, that was like the height of ‘stranger danger’ and stories on the news about kids getting abducted and murdered. People were scared.”
“People are still scared.” I said. I was scared. Even though the likelihood of Amy’s Jessica-Ray being anything other than a seven year old who likes horses and bowling was extremely low, the possibility of Amy being harmed was enough to fill me with apprehension.
The next week passed slowly. Because I’m inclined to torture myself, I did some digging into the Sam’s pen pal incident. I found an article in the local paper saying the pen pal program had been suspended due to safety concerns, but little else. There were no internet forums back then, no comment sections, no neighbourhood Facebook pages. Some things really did fade into obscurity.
Friday finally arrived. It was drizzling out when I pulled into the parking lot of Amy’s school. I was about ten minutes early, so I pulled out my phone to play a game until the bell rang for dismissal. After a few minutes, I was engrossed in Yahtzee with Buddies (don’t judge me, it’s a fun game). So much so, that I didn’t notice the figure approaching my driver’s side window, until they tapped lightly on the glass.
It was Mrs. Bellamy, Amy’s teacher. She wasn’t wearing a jacket or holding an umbrella, and the rain was beginning to dampen her curly grey hair.
I rolled the window down. “Hi there, sorry I didn’t see you coming.”
“Hello Mark, I was wondering if you could step inside. I’d like to speak with you for a few minutes if you have the time.”
My heart dropped the way it used to when my teachers would call me to their desks.
Mrs. Bellamy was a tough, brisk lady who walked quickly enough that I had to jog to keep up with her. I had barely gotten the car door shut and locked before she was charging back through the school doors.
I was expecting to be lead back to Amy’s classroom, but that’s not where we went. We went into the school office, to a small conference room tucked inside. Two other adults sat around a table - one of whom I recognized as the principal, Mr. Douglas. The other, a blonde woman around my age, I had never seen before.
“Hi Mark, thanks for stopping by on short notice.” Mr. Douglas said, standing to shake my hand. He motioned to the woman beside him, who had also stood to greet me. “This is Mrs. Lorenzo, she’s the second grade teacher at Elmwood Elementary.”
I felt the knot in my stomach form again. This was about Jessica-Ray. Suddenly a flash of panic hit me. “…um…where is Amy?”
“She’s with the teacher’s aide, helping to feed the class’s hamster.” Mrs. Bellamy replied, shutting the door behind her. “Please take a seat, Mark.”
I sat down in the remaining seat at the table. I couldn’t read anyone’s faces. What on earth was this about?
Mr. Douglas cleared his throat. “Well Mark, I’m afraid there’s a difficult matter we have to discuss with regards to the pen pal project. I’m sure you’re aware that Amy is paired with Jessica-Ray Miller.”
So she is a real person, at least. I was stupidly relieved to hear that. “Yes.”
Mr. Douglas paused, searching for the proper words. “I’ve been informed that there has been a terrible accident.”
“An…accident?”
“Yes, it seems Amy was meant to be paired up with another student…what was the student’s name, Claire?”
The blonde woman - Mrs. Lorenzo - replied, “Jamie Mulligan.”
“Jamie Mulligan. We’re not sure what happened, exactly, but there must have been some mix-up.”
It had happened again. Jessica-Ray had shown up in our lives, just as she had in Sam’s way back in second grade.
“So, who is Jessica-Ray?” I said altogether too quickly. I meant to say “who is Jessica-Ray partnered with?” But the words had come out as if on their own.
Mrs. Lorenzo and Mr. Douglas shared a glance. There was a pause, then Mrs. Lorenzo spoke, “we’re not really sure to be honest. There isn’t a Jessica-Ray in my class. We aren’t sure where her letters came from.”
“How could you possibly not know?” I was nearly shouting.
Mrs. Bellamy took over. “Now Mark, please let us explain. We take every possible precaution to make sure the students are safe during this project. The children were paired up last month. All letters are sent to each school’s address, we intercept each and every letter before it goes to the child. I read the letters Amy received, but I didn’t realize the names were different. They’re similar…Jamie…Jessica-Ray. It was only when Mrs. Lorenzo called me I realized there was a problem.”
“I read the letter Amy sent this week - it was addressed to Jessica-Ray and I didn’t know who that was. And then poor Jamie hadn’t received any letters back yet, so I double-checked the names and saw they didn’t match.” Mrs. Lorenzo was trying to keep her voice steady, but I could tell she was worried.
At the same time, it occurred to me that Mrs. Lorenzo was here - in person - from New Mexico, on a school day no less. There probably wasn’t even a direct flight. She had dropped everything and spent the better part of a day in transit to have this conversation.
“So, what you’re telling me is that my kid is receiving letters from a complete stranger, who can somehow use your mailing system AND apparently can also hide the letters Jamie is sending, so Amy doesn’t get them. Is that pretty much the gist of it?” I clenched my jaw tightly. I would almost definitely need some ibuprofen after this meeting, if not an IV full of valium.
No one spoke for a moment. They were clearly turning words like “liability” and “lawsuit” over in their minds.
So I jumped back in. “Amy’s mother had this problem too. She sent letters to a predator who used the name Jessica-Ray who just seemed to disappear off the face of the earth. So you need to tell me right now, what the hell is going on” My voice nearly broke. I wondered if I might need to grab the plastic waste basket near the door and retch.
Both teachers looked shocked. Mrs. Lorenzo let out a gasp that chilled me to the bone. Clearly, the story of Sam’s penpal had fallen out of school lore, even among the teachers.
Mr. Douglas, a man who must be approaching seventy, shut his eyes slowly. “Mark, why don’t you come to my office. Mrs. Bellamy needs to return to her class. We can continue our conversation in there.”
He didn’t invite Mrs. Lorenzo to follow us, but she did anyways. Something about her gave me the impression that she wasn’t going to let this go easily. She was as frightened as I was.
Mr. Douglas’ office was a libarary of school history. Old yearbooks, grainy class photos. Seven “Teacher of the Year” plaques from the late ‘70s and early ‘80s on the wall. It smelled like instant coffee and shoe polish.
He sat behind a neatly organized desk, while Mrs. Lorenzo and I took the two chairs in front. They were undersized, clearly meant for misbehaving children, rather than beanpole-shaped grown men. It made the whole thing feel just a bit more uncomfortable as I tried to wedge my hips in and fold my legs out of the way.
Mr. Douglas stared hard at his desk. When he began, he spoke slowly. Choosing his words.
“I was a teacher here, back when Samantha was a student.” He said. “She wasn’t in my class, but my colleague’s. Unfortunately, that person passed away some years back. All the same, it was no secret among staff what had happened. We had several meetings with the school board, the police. There was a great deal of discussion about what had happened…”
He rubbed his forehead with a wrinkled hand.
“What you may not have known, was that at the time this happened, we’d had some recent staff turnover. A gym teacher had been let go, under…well…rather acrimonious terms. In fact, when he was escorted off the premises, he did so with threats of violence. The police monitored his whereabouts, we ramped up security on campus, that sort of thing. He never seemed to have done anything untoward as far as we could tell, but when this incident occurred. His name came up as a possible suspect.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I said, in a voice more shrill than anything I’d heard from my own body before.
Mr. Douglas narrowed his eyes. “However, after a thorough investigation, it was found there was no evidence that individual had any involvement. He was the only possible suspect identified, and ultimately, the police had no cause to arrest him on any charge.”
I was about to spring out of my chair when Douglas added, “at any rate, that individual passed away ten years ago. Heart attack, apparently. Went to his grave stating he had nothing to do with the incident.”
This was a long story about nothing, I thought ruefully. Amy doesn’t have time for nothing. Not when she was at risk from some psychopath with cat stationery.
“Someone needs to fill me in on what happened…to your wife?” Mrs. Lorenzo said. I’d nearly forgotten she was there, sitting in stony silence beside me.
“Certainly.” Mr. Douglas replied. “It was a similar incident - strangely so, I don’t mind saying. The student in question received some letters from a Jessica-Ray. All was well until a letter containing money and instructions to leave home were received.”
“Money and a bus ticket.” I snapped. “Very detailed, not at all child-like instructions on how to get to Farmington, plus money and a damn bus ticket.”
Mrs. Lorenzo sat for a moment, looking as pale as the office walls. “We’ve never..I mean, I don’t think any of us knew…We all get orientations about the project and how to make sure it’s safe, but no one ever mentioned that the project was once used to lure a child out of state.”
“Details were released…carefully.” Mr. Douglas shrugged. No wonder the guy was principal. He was a naturally evasive administrative-type and listening to him made me want to punch the guy.
Mrs. Lorenzo bit her lip. I could feel the weight of unsaid words hanging in the air as she started to speak, then abruptly stopped a few times. Finally, she said in a thin, quiet voice: “It’s not clear to me what this person was trying to achieve. I mean, I was a kid in the ‘90s. Sure it was more lax in some ways - certainly we didn’t have cell phones to track our locations and connections and all that. But a seven year old trying to board an out-of-state bus alone would have raised eyebrows immediately, even in 1994. There’s just no way this “plan” would have worked.”
I turned to face her. “What are you saying?”
She pursed her lips nervously. “Was this person trying to lay a trap in order to snatch a child off the street…or…were they trying to get rid of the child?”
“Get rid of…Sam?” My thoughts were beginning to race, much too quickly for any of them to make real sense.
“It looks like someone was setting this child up to run away.”
“Then what the hell do they want with Amy?”
“I can’t imagine.” Mrs. Lorenzo shook her heard. “It’s completely nonsensical.”
I couldn’t stand it anymore. Without preamble, I left the principal’s office and marched down to Amy’s classroom. All I wanted was to take her home, to a place where I could make sure every entrance and window were locked tight.
“Amy?” I called, opening the door. “Amy!”
Twenty-two little faces turned to look at me in surprise. One kid dropped his pencil, which clattered on the tile floor.
“…Dad?” Amy’s voice came from the far corner of the classroom. I saw her face peer out from behind another kid, and a wave of relief washed over me.
“Sorry…I…” I gave an awkard smile to Mrs. Bellamy, who stood near a whiteboard looking unsurprised. “Amy - we need to go.”
As I was speaking, the dismissal bell rang. A flurry of activity followed, with sounds of older kid chaos echoing out from the classroom next door. Amy rushed over to grab her backpack from her cubby. I held her hand tightly as we walked outside.
“Dad, is something wrong?” Amy asked. She looked worried and gripped my hand tightly in return.
It broke my heart, and filled me with rage in equal turns.
“Everything’s alright, hunny.” I said. “How about we go to Uncle Mack’s house for pizza?”
“Yay, Uncle Mack!” Amy cheered.
We got into the car, and were quickly pulling out of the school parking lot. I contemplated calling Sam right away, but it wouldn’t be a good idea with Amy right there. Plus, I knew she was at a trade show first thing tomorrow morning, which meant she’d be on the highway now.
That’s okay.
I didn’t need Sam for now. Now, I needed Mack.