Chapter Text
Rollins walked over to the outside gate at Jesse’s elementary school, her eyes scanning the crowd of tiny kindergarteners filing out of the main doors and onto the playground. She watched intently as every excited, shrieking five-year-old raced towards the two jungle gyms and for the tricycles in the far corner.
Not one of them was Jesse.
Rollins frowned and waved over to Jesse’s teacher, Mrs. Burgess, as she and the last child- a freckled redhead- descended the steps, and the teacher closed the main door behind them.
Mrs. Burgess- a matronly-yet-no-nonsense middle aged Black woman, dressed in a long, dark purple skirt and black overcoat- speed-walked her way to Rollins, darting around the running children, a confused expression on her face the entire time.
“Amanda?” She asked, quizzically, once she reached the gate.
“Where’s Jesse?” Rollins asked.
“I don’t understand. She was picked up by her father at lunch, just like you said.”
Rollins felt her stomach drop.
No. No, this can’t be happening.
“Well there must be some mistake,” Rollins reasoned out loud, willing her voice to sound steady. “Is she maybe in the office or in the bathroom-”
“No, her father picked her up.”
“Her father? No…no, Jesse doesn’t…her father isn’t…no, there’s been a mistake!” Rollins's voice was shrill and she felt her entire body tremble with the sudden onslaught of anxiety. “This is all a big mistake, she has to be here. I never released her-I-”
Rollins’s panic seemed to rub off on Mrs. Burgess as the two women reached the same conclusion- that something had gone very terribly wrong.
“Amanda, I spoke to you this morning. I don’t understand-”
“I never called the school!” Rollins cried out, clutching at her hair and spinning around in a circle, as though Jesse would materialize on the spot.
Mrs. Burgess unlocked the gate, ushering Rollins inside.
“Let’s go to the principal’s office. We’ll call the police.”