Lost Souls. Lisa Jackson

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      Kristi held on to her patience with an effort. That hadn’t been what she’d meant, but Lucretia had always had a way of twisting things around. Maybe it was because her divorced parents had hardly had time for her; they’d been so wrapped up in their own problems. Or, maybe it was something else entirely. Whatever it was, it was annoying and always had been.

      “You’re right,” Kristi managed. “He’s great, but he’d be the first to tell you he was just doing his job.”

      “How cool is that?” Trudie asked.

      Time to end this. “So, anything to drink?” Kristi asked. “Coffee?”

      Thankfully, Lucretia and her group picked up their menus and rattled off their choices.

      “Two sweet teas, a Diet Coke, and a coffee. Got it,” Kristi said, thankful to hurry back to the kitchen. Who would have thought that Lucretia would have kept up with her, or her father? Kristi and Lucretia hadn’t kept in touch over the years; in fact, while living together, they hardly spoke. They’d had nothing in common before. Kristi doubted that had changed over the years.

      “Old friends?” Ezma, a waitress with mocha-colored skin and impossibly white teeth, asked as she filled plastic glasses with shaved ice from a rumbling ice machine positioned near the soda dispenser. Ezma, barely five feet and a hundred pounds, was a part-time student and full-time waitress, a wife, and a mother of a precocious two-year-old.

      “I guess.” Kristi took three of the glasses and filled two from the pitcher of sweetened iced tea, then pushed a button on the soda machine and filled the final glass with diet cola, holding the dispenser button a second too long. The soda fizzled over the top. Sweeping a towel from a nearby hook, she swabbed at the spilled cola and topped off the glass. “One of the women”—she hitched her chin toward the table where Lucretia seemed to be holding court—“was my roommate when I first enrolled at All Saints, back before the turn of the millennium.”

      “Let me guess—Lucretia Stevens,” Ezma said, sliding a glance toward the table.

      “How did you know?”

      “I guess I’m just omniscient.”

      “Yeah, right.” Kristi smiled faintly.

      “And”—she lifted a slim shoulder—“I eavesdrop.”

      “That’s more like it.”

      Ezma laughed as she grabbed the dispenser handle for the water hose and filled the remaining glasses. “Actually, I had her for one of my classes, writing two twelve, I think it was.”

      “She’s a professor?”

      “Assistant.”

      Kristi was stunned. She’d always known Lucretia was a perpetual student, but she’d never imagined she would actually stick around All Saints to teach.

      “And I think she’s involved with someone at the university. Another professor.”

      “Really?”

      So much for Lucretia’s college boyfriend, whom she’d pined about for the year Kristi had known her.

      “Well, I have to admit, if I weren’t a happily married woman, I might be interested. Some of the professors are hot!”

      Kristi remembered some of her teachers from the past. Weird Dr. Northrup, edgy Dr. Sutter, and crusty, superior Dr. Zaroster. All of them were musty, slightly crotchety academics who suffered from superiority complexes. Definitely not “hot.” Not even lukewarm. At least not in Kristi’s vocabulary. “You’re kidding me, right?”

      “Uh-uh. I’m tellin’ you, the staff at All Saints is something. At least the English Department. It’s as if whoever was recruiting was looking at Hollywood head shots.”

      “Now I know you’re full of it.”

      “Well, you’ll see soon enough.” Ezma added a slice of lemon to each glass. “Classes start next week. I bet you’ll agree.”

      Kristi filled her tray. “And so you think Lucretia is dating one of these hotties?”

      “Rumor has it. But I don’t know which one. Whenever I get too close, she clams up, like she’s hiding it or something.”

      “Why?”

      Ezma shook her head. “Don’t know. Maybe he’s married or engaged or there’s some rule about the staff fraternizing. Or maybe it’s Dr. Preston.” Her lips tightened at the corners. “He teaches writing and he’s bad news.”

      “I think I have him for a class.”

      “Oh, yeah? My friend Dionne took his writing class and was all about him, but he comes in here and he’s just plain rude. Then Dionne went missing.”

      “Your friend is one of the missing girls?” Kristi asked. “And you think Preston might be involved?”

      Ezma was about to say no. But she changed her mind. Kristi could see it in the way her chin slid to the side. “I don’t think so, but I wouldn’t put anything past that guy. The trouble is, no one really believes anything bad happened to Dionne. They think she just disappeared, probably took off with her boyfriend.” Ezma shook her head.

      “Then why hasn’t anyone heard from her?”

      “Exactly! The common theory is that she’s with Tyshawn and they’ve taken on new identities. Tyshawn Jones is also bad news. Into drugs, did time for robbery when he was still a minor. Personally, I never knew what she saw in him. Before Tyshawn, she dated a really great guy, Elijah Richards. Was going to school at a junior college, planning on being an accountant, but Dionne started seeing Tyshawn and that was the end of her relationship with Elijah. A shame.”

      “What about Tyshawn? Is he missing, too?”

      “No one ever mentions that, do they?”

      Kristi swept around one of the line cooks as he tossed a handful of sliced potatoes into the fryer and the hot oil sizzled and bubbled. She pushed the swinging doors open with her back, then carried the drink tray to the women’s table and heard Lucretia’s voice over the piped in music.

      “…I’m telling you, he’s amazing. Absolutely and undeniably amazing. I’ve never…not ever met anyone like him.”

      Kristi had to fight from rolling her eyes. Even as a freshman Lucretia had been a hopeless romantic. It seemed as if things hadn’t changed. Lucretia was on the verge of adding something else, but quit gushing when she spied Kristi. She sent the other women a silent glance, which they understood, and everyone at the table went quiet.

      Kristi got the message—Lucretia did not want her old roommate to know anything about her love life. As if Kristi cared.

      As Kristi distributed the cold drinks and poured coffee, Lucretia eyed her old roommate. “So you’re enrolled at A. S.?”

      “Uh-huh.” No reason to lie about it. Kristi poured coffee into a cup.

      “Didn’t you graduate?”

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