The Bargaining (6 page)

I instinctively think of poor Amanda Zeigler, Str8 Up Slut.

On the wall beside the mirror, a flyer just starting to yellow with age clings to the wall for dear life, the masking tape holding it to the slick tiles nearly giving up.

Bold letters in all caps across the top read
HAVE YOU SEEN ME?

Beneath an overly photocopied picture of a face so grainy no one could possibly answer that question, a girl's shoulders slope under the loose straps of a light sundress. The starkest of descriptions reads:

Brianna Jade Sandoval

Age 12

4'6'' 89 lbs.

Help us find Brianna, last seen on July 13 at Her Lady of Grace Home for Children. Call tips in to Pierce County Sheriff's Dept: 555-273-TIPS.

I shake my head, wondering who looks for a girl nobody wanted in the first place. I bury the voice that asks me why I didn't go looking for Rae that night.

Now that I'm standing in here, I realize I actually do have to go. Two stalls stand behind me, one tiny and one larger for disabled users. The bigger one doesn't have a door, so I reluctantly turn to the tiny stall. Not that I think anyone's going to come in, but the thought of some guy charging through the door after five hours in a car with nothing but the company of a Big Gulp and catching me with my pants around my ankles mortifies me enough to close myself into the only remaining stall.

“Don't look,” I tell myself. “Leave your body.” But as I ­prepare to hover over the seat and get this over with immediately, a snapping from overhead breaks my already failing meditation.

When I look up, I see that the sound didn't come from
overhead, but traveled through the ventilation hole where a vine is hugging the edge. Another snapping, this time closer, and I can tell it's the sound of a twig breaking. Footsteps from outside. Someone is walking around the rest stop.

“April?”

Nothing.

“Guess I was smart to close the door,” I mumble.

I finish quickly and try to wash my hands, but my suspicions about the sink were right. Bone-dry because there probably hasn't been running water in this place for a year. I say a silent thank-you to myself for remembering to slip hand sanitizer in my bag and sail out of the bathroom and into the thick wooded air, pulling in a deep breath to try to erase the memory of the stench from inside the men's room.

But when I emerge, I'm surprised to still see only April's jeep in the gravel parking lot. No car to go with the footsteps I heard a second ago.

I peer over my shoulder, then scold myself immediately for being so jumpy. Too many slasher movies. It was just a squirrel for all I know. All that cement just amplified the sound.

But just as I turn back toward the car, I hear a girl's voice.

“Don't leave.”

The voice isn't close, but it's clear enough. Almost as if
the sound traveled along the branches, pinging off the leaves and needles.

My heart is thrumming enough to make my chest ache.

Probably just some hiker yelling to someone on a path up the way.

After another minute of examining the sea of green and brown in front of me, I've pretty much convinced myself that's true when I hear her again.

“Don't leave me here!”

I whip around, because this time the voice sounds much closer.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

I strain my eyes to detect any movement underneath the shadow of the dense tree canopy overhead. But I can't even see leaves moving. I can't hear birds. The air is stiff with silence.

“Is someone out there?”

Still nothing.

“Look, this isn't funny. Do you need help or not?”

I might have sounded pretty tough saying that last bit if my voice hadn't cracked under the strain of my breathing, which seems to have gotten more shallow in the last few seconds.

The wall of vegetation gnarled around itself is blocking visibility into the woods. There might actually be a hiking
path behind there, and someone really is in trouble. Maybe she fell and twisted her ankle or something. But a quick scan of the grounds surrounding the bathroom reveals no path. Still, that doesn't always keep people from stumbling around in the woods looking for a nature fix. Or a nice secluded place to get high.

Then, almost too faint to hear, “Please.”

I look back toward the jeep. Still no sign of April.

I take a few steps toward the wall of foliage.

“This is so stupid.”

I pull in a deep breath and fill my lungs, which slows my breathing sufficiently to do what I do next. Mom always said I got Dad's sense of social responsibility, which never seemed to make her as proud as I think it should have.

And maybe just to spite the memory of her in this moment, I take a few more steps.

I'm officially in the woods. I look back toward the jeep and, after dodging a few low-hanging branches, I can hardly see the parking area at all. I pull my phone from my pocket. One bar.

“Awesome. So basically if I find this chick, I'm going to be no help to her.”

I will April to come back around the corner to keep me from what I'm about to do.

“Five minutes,” I say. “Spend five minutes looking. If you
don't find her, get back to the jeep and wait for April.”

I look around and examine the tree trunks, all the same shade of deep brown, like mirror images of one original tree. I look up at their leaves, identical in their clustered greens. These woods are unlike any I've seen in Seattle. Under the right circumstances—and with maybe even a sliver of natural light—it could make a beautiful photo. Maybe April was right about that.

I fish around in my pocket and pull out my tube of That's So Cherry lipstick. With a heavy sigh as I grieve for its loss, I draw a jagged red
X
across the bark of the tree closest to me, marking the edge of the wooded area nearest to the parking lot.

It seemed like the voice came from somewhere off to the left, so I pick my way through the squishy ground, where, thankfully, a bed of pine needles has blanketed most of it, keeping my boots from sinking.

“Hey, are you out there?” I yell. “Call out if you can hear me, okay?”

Nothing. I'm more convinced with every step that it was just someone's idea of a joke.

Still, I've already sacrificed a brand new tube of lipstick, so I mark another
X
on the tree beside me and delve a little deeper into the woods. I check my phone again. No bars this time.

I've traveled a little farther before I notice that I can see my breath between the cracks of gray light that have managed to slip through the canopy. But that's about all I can see. I pull my flannel closer around my body and mark another cherry
X
on the tree beside me.

I scan the ground for safe footing, but I can barely see my boots. I'd turn back the way I came, but now I can't seem to figure out which way that was. There's a tree trunk close to my right side, and one immediately behind me, and another to my left.

But didn't I just come from the left?

The dank trunks feel like they're encroaching, and I pick my way faster through the forest until I finally spot a beam of light ahead, clouded from the sky and dim with dusk, but enough to see that a small clearing lies ahead.

I emerge into a bare spot of land maybe ten feet across, the only empty space before the trees crowd the ground once again. I turn around immediately and peer through the dark tunnel I just came from, feeling oddly paranoid that something might have followed me out. But when I turn, I see nothing but darkness. And even though I know it's useless, I check my phone anyway. Still no signal.

And now I'm way farther from the parking lot than I ever meant to be.

“Hey, are you there or not?” I yell, more pissed than frightened by this point. Not only am I going to have to make my way back through Ye Olde Freaky Woods once this is over, April's probably going to get back to the car before me, and when she can't find me, the inevitable panic will ensue, quickly followed by a lecture from her I'm already resenting.

“Great, thanks for wasting my time!” I holler.

“You're it.”

I whirl around. The voice is close, but I can't tell where it's coming from. And this time it sounds younger, almost childlike.

A twig snaps somewhere behind me. I spin to find the source of the noise, but all I see is dense darkness under heavy foliage in every direction.

My hands are trembling, and I want desperately to believe it's from the cold. But when my phone slips from my clammy palm to the forest floor, I can't fool myself anymore.

“Shit.” Of course it would land in the one place that pine needles aren't covering the ground. I crouch to rescue it from the mud and begin to wipe the face. But as I stand up, I see the faintest flicker of movement deep in the thatched trees to my left.

“Hello?”

All at once, my lungs start to ache. Like something thick is filing them up, caking the walls of my chest.

I try to take a deep breath, but panic flutters through me when I can only manage a shallow inhale.

I push my palm to my sternum and try to rub some life back into my lungs. Because that's exactly it—it feels like something in my chest is . . . dying.

Arms outstretched to stave off stray branches, I launch back into the dense trees from the direction I'm pretty sure I came. I stumble twice, and the second time lands me on my hands and knees, sharp needles piercing my palms.

As I start to rise, I feel the closeness of the tree trunks once again pressing on me. A low-hanging branch drags its way across my shoulder and catches my flannel, yanking me back with enough force to make me bite my tongue. The forest in front of me is darker than ever, and I'm starting to get dizzy from lack of oxygen.

Full panic is at the corner of my brain when just ahead and to the right, I catch sight of a bright red
X
slashed across the wet bark of a nearby tree, capturing maybe the only snatch of light the woods have to offer.

I lunge forward and hold on to the tree for stability, the dizziness claiming my eyesight momentarily. But as I cling
to the bark, its coldness welcomes the ache back into my bones, and the thickness in my chest begins to spread to my limbs.

Then I feel the unmistakable sensation of four fingers and a thumb lace through my own hand on the tree trunk.

I try to scream, but the erosion in my lungs stifles the sound. I push away from the tree so hard I fall backward into another trunk. I peer into the darkness, but I can no longer see anything, the meager light that illuminated my red
X
only seconds before now completely extinguished.

“Who's there?” I try to shout, but my chest is about to collapse.

Sit here and find out or get the fuck back to the car!

I push myself from the tree to a stumbling run. I'm practically on top of the next tree before I see it, dismiss it, and move to the next, going mostly by touch now while I search for another red
X
. I try three more trees before I find the one I'm looking for. A few more steps, and I find the last one.

I take off the rest of the way like I'm on fire, breaking through the thick foliage with so much force, I'm halfway to the cement enclosure by the bathroom wall before I notice that I'm sobbing.

I stop, pull in a lungful of air, my throat burning, and cough out a rasping exhale. Only then do I dare to look
behind me, backing all the way toward the jeep, my shaking hands searching out the door handle. I breathe again, and each time I do, it gets a little easier, the pressure on my chest mercifully lifting.

The orange light illuminating the restroom hums at the effort, flickers a few times, threatens to go out, buzzes back to its half-life. I find the door handle and hear it clack against something plastic and look down to find my phone practically cemented to my hand. I must have gripped the life out of it while I was running. I don't even remember holding it.

All I remember is . . . a hand holding mine.
Grabbing
mine.

I yank the jeep's door open and lock it behind me as soon as I'm inside.

“It was a joke. Someone playing a joke. They were messing with me. That's all.”

I say it maybe a thousand times more. I believe it a little more each time. But I can't keep my hands from shaking, and finally I have to start the car with the keys April left in the ignition and hold my fingers against the vents, hoping the heat will melt the chill, and maybe exhaustion will take care of the rest of the trembling before she gets back.

I hear footsteps on the gravel outside and my breath catches.

April's face is pressed against the window, one finger pointing to the side of the door.

“I heard the car start and came back,” she says.

Of course she did. She probably thought I'd try to make a break for it while she was gone. She should know that I don't exactly have anywhere else to go.

“I got cold,” I say, which is about five percent truth.

“Got the Realtor. No luck with your dad,” she says, holding her phone up. I say nothing.

“You look pale,” she says, eyeing me. “Are you sweating?”

“Carsick,” I say.

She stares at me for another minute, and I discretely move my hand to cover the smudge of dirt marring the knee of my jeans.

Believe me. Just believe me and get us the hell out of here.

“Do you need to take a second?”

“No!”

Her eyes travel toward the woods, and I follow her gaze reluctantly.

“I mean, I just want to get there. I'm tired of being on the road,” I say, fumbling to find a frequency for my voice that she'll hear.

“Amen to that,” April says, shifting gears and checking her side mirror as she backs out and turns us around, roll
ing us too slowly out of the parking lot while I keep my eyes locked to my own side mirror. The deep green of the woods is all I see, and I close my eyes hard against whatever just happened, convincing myself it was just a joke, it was just my imagination, it was just my mutinous brain trying its hardest to crack under the pressure. Soon, all I hear is the dueling sounds of highway traffic and April's voice as she resumes her monologue of big plans for the house.