A Scare

There are two former students of mine from my high school who are now taking my college night class as a part of the Middle College program, which allows a selected few students to earn college and high school credits simultaneously.

After the first break, I noticed that one of the girls did not come back and had left all of her books and stuff on and about her desk. Five minutes, ten, 15, then about twenty minutes and she hadn't come back yet. I got kind of worried because it's a college campus and I haven't had a semester yet where there hasn't been an incident of some creep coming on campus and attempting to assault some female student. That, and the campus gets very dark at night and there are lots of nooks and crannies for someone to lurk undetected. And she's a teenager and still pretty naive. And I guess I have a slight father instinct.

So I begin to worry and wonder what to do. Normally, is a student left, I'd figure it's everyone for themselves. But, like I said, she left her stuff.

There's no phone in my room, so I give the class an assignment and take a quick sweep outside to see if she might be chatting on her cell phone or something. Then I walk to the English Department office and tell the receptionist my concern and ask she that she report this to the campus cops, just in case one of them sees her.

I go back to my class and try to act like nothing is wrong, but am completely distracted during the ensuing discussion about some essay we'd read.

Her friend asks me if I wan her to call this girl's cell phone and see where she is. She does so, but no answer.

So, it's been almost an hour at this point, and I'm really worried.

Just then, she walks in. She was fine, but her car had somehow gone flat in the parking lot and she had called her family and her father had come to fix the tire and that's where she had been.

Kids.