Mr. Hendersen needs to go to the post office. He leaves his office and walks outside to his car . . . but it is not there. He thinks for a moment and remembers the . . . imprudent . . . loaning of the car two years earlier.
He assumes the girls have merely moved it to another part of the parking lot, so he looks around, but fails to see it. He then pulls out his car keys and pushes the “Find your car in a huge crowded parking lot” button he had specially ordered. The car receives the message and obediently flashes its headlights and beeps its horn. Mr. Hendersen hears the horn and starts to walk in that direction. Again he pushes the key chain button, and again he hears the horn beep, and he feels that he is “getting warmer.” One final push on the key chain and he spots it . . . over on the island . . . and he just stands there and . . . looks . . . for some minutes.
Cars are not able to smile, of course, but this car, at this moment . . . what with its grille work, its bumper, and its headlights . . . certainly seems to be smiling. That is Mr. Hendersen’s impression anyway.
A little later there is an announcement over the school speaker system.
“Excuse me girls, but I was wondering if, at some point today, someone could give me a ride to the post office. I seem to have misplaced my car.
That’s all.”
During lunch that day, when Mr. Hendersen enters the cafeteria . . . carrying his tray of food . . . the students all start talking. As he walks along it gets a little louder. Every student in the cafeteria seems to be talking at the same time, and yes, he is certain that it started when he entered the dining room. He looks for . . . and spots . . . Rachel, who is sitting about forty feet away. She looks at him, smiles, and then raises her hands . . . palms facing upward . . . into the air and shrugs her shoulders. Mr. Hendersen continues on, but his head is now bowed forward . . . and he doesn’t know why. He finds a vacancy at a table, gestures the “Is it all right if I sit here?” question . . . gets a few affirmative gestures in response . . . and he sits down to eat his lunch.
After lunch, Mr. Hendersen calls the local newspaper and tells them the whole “car abduction” story. He suggests that they send a reporter out to the school to photograph the car and use the event as a “curiosity news item.”
And the paper does indeed send a photographer, who has to stop himself from laughing before he can take a proper photo . . . a photo that appears in “The Courier” two days later . . . to the delight of Barclay students past and present.
As some time passes, Mr. Hendersen ponders the situation, and he decides to just leave the car on the island. What else can he do? Every now and then, he rows out to the island, starts the engine . . . lets it run for a while . . . and then rows back. And the car becomes something of a local tourist attraction, with people from town . . . people who would not normally visit the school . . . driving to the campus to see “The Island Car” . . . with some folks even taking pictures of it.
Maybe it was pity that “occasioned” the girls to undo what they had done . . . or perhaps it was the challenge of the thing . . . but, whatever the reason, one morning Mr. Hendersen walks outside . . . and finds his car . . . right back in its old familiar parking place.