The False Friend (16 page)

“I was looking for the reference desk,” Celia said.

The librarian laughed louder than seemed professionally appropriate. “Then I guess you haven’t been here in a while,” she said. “It’s over there now.” She gestured Celia to a different corner. Where Celia remembered racks of newspapers was the familiar thick-legged fundament of solid, dark wood—a desk fierce enough to hush raucous children.

“It took two burly guys and a heavy-duty furniture dolly to move it,” the librarian explained. “Where it used to be, there are leg impressions all the way through the carpet and into the floor. I could have gotten a new desk, but this one always seemed so ideally referential. Plus, it let me blow my furniture budget on a really cool chair.” She walked behind the desk and settled into something self-consciously ergonomic. “Now, how can I help you?”

“I was hoping to find information on a local street.”

“If it’s technical, you might need Public Works over at City
Hall,” the librarian advised, “but we’ve got maps here, plus I’m a native Jensenvillian.”

Her smile, both eager and apologetic, was what passed for civic pride.

“When I was a kid,” Celia began, “my bus drove along a small wooded road to get to school. I’m pretty sure it was called Ripley.”

“I thought so!” The librarian beamed. “I can always tell the ones who come back.”

Celia flinched.

“You’re probably just home to see your folks,” she added. “Where do you live now?”

“Chicago,” Celia said, tempted to produce her driver’s license as proof.

The librarian nodded. “Such a shame about that road.” She sighed. “No more forest primeval. Ripley got expanded back when CompuDisc came to town, and they couldn’t exactly put it back the way it was after the Internet bubble burst.” She studied Celia’s face. “When were you at Jensenville Elementary?”

“Until ’86.”

The face before her brightened. “Did you know a girl named Betsy Jorgenson? She would have been a grade or two above you. She’s my little sister, though she’s Betsy Harris now. She did like I’m assuming you did and went away for college. That’s the only way to guarantee your escape.”

“A girl named Betsy?” Celia echoed.

“Long blond braids? Queen of the recess four-square set?”

“I don’t think so,” Celia said.

“I suppose it was a long time ago.”

The fluorescents buzzed softly above.

“Um, about Ripley Road,” Celia tried. “When they took down all the trees?”

“Wouldn’t it have been great if they’d found the wizard’s house? Or was it supposed to have been a witch?” Speech caused the librarian’s earrings to collide with the side of her neck. “I tell you, I don’t know what little kids do now when they want to scare the pants off of each other. I suppose there’s still the abandoned inebriate asylum off Route 17, but that’s a bit out of their league, don’t you think?”

Celia stared.

“I’m not always this gabby,” the librarian said. “It’s just so nice to talk to someone who isn’t constructing a conspiracy theory or watching videos of home accidents on YouTube. Was there something specific you were wondering about?”

“I just happened to be driving down Ripley, and I started thinking about that girl who disappeared back when we were kids—”

“Oh my god!” The librarian’s earrings spasmed. “I absolutely remember that! Wait a minute, it’ll come to me … Her name was J-something: Jessie, Julie, Jenna—”

“Djuna,” Celia said.

“That’s right! Djuna! Djuna P—” The librarian paused, then snapped her fingers. “Djuna Parson!”

“Pearson.”

“She was abducted from there, wasn’t she? Now that’s something I haven’t thought of in eons. I think my father helped with one of the search parties. For a while, I actually kept a milk carton with her face on it, until my mother found
it and threw it away.” She paused. “You know, I bet we knew each other. I bet if we traded photos from back then, we would recognize who we used to be.”

Beside the librarian’s desk was a small reference shelf holding a dictionary, a thesaurus, a world atlas, and the local white and yellow pages. “Excuse me,” Celia said, and made for the door leading to the basement.

“You’ll need the key if you want to use the ladies,” the librarian called.

The sight of the phone directories had spurred a memory in Celia that was confirmed by the reverberation of the stairwell door closing behind her. She and Djuna had made a contest of seeing who could jump from the higher stair to the basement landing, their shoes exploding against the floor with a sound that shamed the thud of the door. The librarian—the childhood model—had never tried to investigate the noise. Whether she hadn’t heard or simply considered the bookless territory of the stairwell to be beyond her jurisdiction was unclear. Her negligence, deliberate or not, had created an inside version of the untended grass beside the electrical box on Djuna’s block. The railing felt low to Celia now, and the stairs were more worn, but when Celia jumped to the landing, the sound was the same. The forgotten pleasure of making noise in a quiet place was followed by the same, unadulterated feeling of triumph when no librarian came.

The steps had been prologue to their assault on the pay phone, which Djuna fed with change repurposed from a pewter mug Mr. Pearson kept on his desk. Library bathroom traffic was sparse, and the slam of the stairwell door gave ample
warning of someone’s approach. Because Celia refused to talk, she was in charge of choosing phone numbers, her fingers walking the slopes of the library’s white pages in search of promising last names.

“Hello?” Djuna would begin. “My name is Nadine,” or Scarlet, or Francesca, “and I’m in ninth grade.” Ninth was the oldest Djuna thought she could manage; she pitched her voice low and overenunciated everything. “I was wondering if I could ask you some questions for a report I’m doing on trends in our community?”

Strangers seemed to enjoy helping a student with a school assignment. Djuna would angle the top part of the handset away from her ear, so that Celia could listen in. Sometimes a child would answer. Sometimes they could tell by the voice that it was someone very old. Most of the time, Djuna would ask a few questions—
How many children do you have? How many pets? How many televisions? What breakfast cereal do you eat?—
before hanging up, but sometimes she would squeeze Celia’s arm. “What color is your underwear?” she would ask, her nails digging into Celia’s skin. Djuna would laugh as a dial tone replaced the person at the end of the line, but once a voice had answered back.

“Blue,” it had said. “I’ve got blue boxers on, and you have the sweetest, sexiest little voice that I have ever heard.” Djuna had hung up, grinning, and Celia had told her never to do that again. In lieu of an answer, Djuna had fished out her house key from inside her shirt and scratched her initial into the side of the phone; and that was the last time Celia had gone to the library with Djuna.

Celia couldn’t remember when she’d last seen a pay phone, an era having lapsed beneath her notice. Despite having entered the stairwell for no other purpose, she was still surprised to find the library’s model still clinging to the same wall between rest-room doors. It too was lower than Celia remembered. She had to bend sideways to see it, but the “D” was still there.

T
he police were headquartered where downtown became the east side, an area shunned by Jensenville’s occasional fleeting attempts at renewal, due to the lack of anything there worth renewing. Celia drove past a Laundromat and a pawnshop, a fried chicken franchise and a bowling alley. The train tracks lay to the north, now used only for freight. Talk of Amtrak resuming passenger service came in cycles usually linked to local elections or increases in property taxes, a one-sided conversation that never mentioned the steady decline of Jensenville’s population in the thirty years since the train line’s demise.

The police station squatted at one end of a pocked parking lot, a brick bunker stacked regular as Legos. No one passed in
or out in the five minutes Celia sat staring through her windshield. She tried to persuade herself that the station might be closed for lunch, which gave her the fortitude to exit her car. What had seemed like a natural next step at the library had degenerated, on the drive over, into something more questionable. She and Huck had discussed when to talk to the police, and this was not it: she was to first consult a lawyer. But all Celia wanted was information. She wouldn’t even have to tell them her name.

The front door opened with an ease that ridiculed the notion a police station ever closed. Celia wondered at the statistical probability that someone, at that very moment, was slipping a drugstore lipstick into her purse or running a red light. She wondered how many Jensenville crimes, large and small, went undetected, how many people passed through this door with something to hide.

Stepping inside, Celia was ambushed by homesickness. The station resembled the city agencies that filled the Bilandic, their interiors having dispensed with the need to impress, their customers guaranteed. For the first time since flying east she was reminded of her empty desk at the Auditor General’s office, the one to which she would be returning in a matter of days. It was a pleasant shock to realize that her life in Chicago had not been redacted by her mother’s smiley-faced good morning notes or her father’s trisyllabic
hel-loo-oo
, that by having partaken of Noreen’s Chicken à la Queen she was not condemned to remain. By day’s end, Huck’s disembodied voice would be embodied again. On Sunday evening, the two of them would trade Jensenville for a Chicago-bound plane. Celia’s relief at
this briefly eclipsed the fact that she’d be taking Djuna with her, that this process she’d begun had an indeterminate end.

When the police officer manning the front desk saw her, his face flashed surprise.

“Can I help you?” he said.

“Good morning,” she began. The universe of her Chicago life contracted to a pinprick of distant light. “I was wondering if I could ask you a question about a local road.” She felt wobbly. She was certain her face looked funny, that her voice sounded off. When she lowered herself into a metal folding chair against a nearby wall, its front legs hesitated before accepting her weight.

“Be careful on that thing,” the policeman said. “You’re skinny, so it’ll probably be all right, but it’s been known to give out on people.” He gestured toward his desk, his navy blue uniform the only office fixture that wasn’t gray or brown. “There’s a better one over here. You want some water?” Small eyes beneath a low hairline created the impression of an overfriendly badger.

“I’m okay,” Celia said and moved closer. Her new chair was identical to the first. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m just back visiting my parents and I was driving on Ripley Road—”

The officer shook his head. “If you want to protest a speeding ticket, you’ve got to wait for your day in court. If it was me, I’d just pay. I know that road, there’s signs all over the place.”

“It’s nothing like that,” Celia said. “I was hoping someone could tell me about when they made the road wider.”

The policeman’s brow furrowed. “Oh man, you mean
back when CompuDisc came in?” He eyed Celia as if he were running her license plate. “That’s kind of a while back, don’t you think?”

“Were you here then?” she asked. “When they cut down all those trees?”

Taped to a nearby wall, a green-and-purple girl rendered in Magic Marker hovered above the words
Proud to Be Drug Free
, penned in uneven rainbow letters.

The officer smiled. “You’re Celia Durst, aren’t you?”

All the saliva in Celia’s mouth instantly vanished.

The policeman slapped his desk. “You
are
Celia! I was pretty sure it was you when you walked in, but I didn’t want to say anything until I was a hundred percent positive.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice a whisper, “but how do you—”

The officer linked his thumbs and flapped his fingers. “Fly high and away with the Jensenville Jays!” he crowed, his hands rising into the air. “Junior year, we both had third-period history with Mrs. Babbitt, the Great Unshaven. I sat in the back row and never said anything. Unlike you. You were always saying such smart things.” He shook his head. “Celia Durst. You know, my brother had the biggest crush on you.”

“Really?” She tried to smile.

He nodded. “He totally wanted to ask you out. Spent a week working on a note to put in your locker and at the last minute chickened out. I think he still regrets it.” He offered his hand. “Mitchell Gryzbowski, at your service.”

“Officer Gryzbowski—”

“Call me Mitch.”

“Um, okay.” Celia opened her mouth and closed it before trying again. “Um, I was wondering if there was anything on record about Ripley Road from the time it got widened.” She no longer had any clue why she had thought this was a good idea.

Gryzbowski was twirling a pencil between the fingers of his right hand—pointer to middle to ring to pinkie and back again—a seamless interlocking series of figure eights. “You’re thinking of the Pearson case, aren’t you? Hey, don’t look so shocked. That’s major history around here. That was in what, ’85? ’86? I remember the signs posted all over town when I was a kid. Later, when I joined the force, I heard the inside dope from Frank. It was funny, joining up and then hearing your name. You remember him? Frank DiNado? He was the one who interviewed you and the other three. My guess is that he would have had you calling him Officer Frank. He was captain around here when I was a rookie.”

Celia shook her head.

“Face like a hound dog? Big ears? Brown, droopy eyes?”

Celia shrugged. “I was pretty young.”

Gryzbowski nodded. “I guess you blocked it out, huh? Well, he sure didn’t. His biggest professional regret was never finding the son of a bitch who took her. There was no NCMEC back then, no AMBER Alert system. Just Frank putting out the word about a guy in a brown sedan. Hey, it doesn’t bother you, me talking about this, does it?”

Celia closed her eyes.

“Because you’re looking pale again. You want a piece of gum?”