The Night She Disappeared (10 page)

He just says hello back. No “Call me Steve.”

“We’re going upstairs to my room,” Gabie says. Now there’s not even a mention of homework.

He looks like he wants to say something, but he doesn’t. Instead he just nods. I follow Gabie up the stairs, past a series of what I guess must be family photos. The first one shows Gabie and her parents standing outside this house. At least I think it’s Gabie. She looks about six, and they’re dressed like they’re getting ready to go to church. The one above that is just of her parents, I think, but looking a lot younger. The farther they are up the stairs, the older the photos look. They start out in color and then go to black-and-white. Toward the end, I think they might be daguerreotypes, or whatever they called photos 150 years ago. Each one is more stiff and formal than the last. The final portrait shows a family staring at the camera. The men all wear weird white high collars with a sort of bow tie. The women wear long gathered dresses. One of them holds a portrait of a little boy on her lap.

“That’s my great-great-grandmother,” Gabie says when she sees me looking. “The painting’s of her son. He died two years before, but she wanted him to be remembered.”

I follow her down the hall.

Gabie’s room is the only room in the house that looks lived in. The twin bed isn’t made. On the floor next to it is a paperback, open to the page she was on when she put it down. On one wall is a huge canvas covered with headlines and images cut from magazines. At first glance I see “Fever,” “Underground Girl,” “It’s Pure Adrenaline,” and “Your Head Would Probably Explode.” There are girls in crazy clothes, pictures of Wonder Woman cut from a comic book, a photo from a newspaper of a man holding a knife, and dozens of eyes, just eyes with no faces. The whole effect is kind of disturbing.

I like it.

On another wall is a poster from the band Flea Market Parade, which surprises me. I love their music, but it’s dark. Songs about longing and suicide and memories that you can’t change. I tap on the lead singer’s face. He’s wearing suspenders, and the circles under his eyes are so dark they almost look like makeup. “I like their music, but not that many people have heard of them,” I say.

“I’m pretty sure neither one of us is ‘many people,’” she says.

I turn the chair at her desk around and sit down. Gabie closes the door. She pulls up the covers before she sits on the bed.

“So now are we going to study?” I say, and raise one eyebrow. Somehow I feel more relaxed because we’re in Gabie’s room. The rest of the house is like a shell, or armor. This room feels softer. Maybe it’s the part the armor is protecting.

“I just wanted to talk some more about Kayla. My parents don’t like me to talk about her. It’s been nearly a week. They’re sure she’s gone. That she’s”—Gabie hesitates—“dead.”

“But you said you can feel her. That you know she’s alive.” I shouldn’t be doing this. Shouldn’t be talking Gabie into something that I know can’t be true.

“Maybe her spirit is watching us now, and that’s what I feel.” Her mouth twists. “Like her ghost.”

“Maybe. But you seemed so sure.”

“But Kayla being dead is what makes the most sense.” Gabie’s voice gets very quiet. “What do you think it would feel like to drown? Or to be strangled to death? Do you think it would be agony until the very end? Or would you pass out and stop feeling it? Is it just blackness?” Her voice shakes. “Is it like sleeping? Or is it this torture that goes on and on?”

Now the shaking has reached her shoulders. I get up, kneel in front of her, and put my arms around her. It’s different than the few other times I’ve touched her, which were mostly just in passing. Then I was aware of Gabie as a girl. Now I feel like her brother. Someone stronger. Even though I’m not. I mean, she’s the one who saved me in the river.

But with her trembling in my arms, it really feels like I’m her brother.

Until she kisses me.

The Sixth Day

Gabie

WHEN I KISS
Drew, I feel like I’m drowning, or drugged, or I’ve gone someplace where things are beyond my control. Like I could fall inside Drew and never come out.

Instead I jerk my head back, push my hands down on his shoulders, and stand up. I walk over to my window. Drew is still kneeling on the floor. He turns his head to look up at me. I don’t know what he’s thinking. His mouth is soft. He’s not grinning, not gloating, not even as lost as I was.

“You should probably go,” I say. I don’t want to talk about what just happened. I don’t want to
think
about what just happened. It feels like whatever was between us has shifted. Before, I was giving Drew what he needed—more days on the schedule, the keys to my car, even fishing him out of the river. Now I realize how much I need him myself.

Except I don’t need anyone. I learned that a long time ago. I don’t need my parents. I don’t need brothers and sisters. And after Maya’s family moved away last year, I learned I don’t even really need a best friend.

In some ways, Pete’s is the closest thing I have to friends and family.

Drew gets to his feet. I turn to look out the window at the deep blue sky and the dark green oak leaves silhouetted against it. I’ve always liked those colors, the contrast. When I was a kid, I used to lie on the front lawn and stare at them. I could lie there and not think.

Now I think way too much. So much that I don’t know what’s true and what isn’t. What’s stupid and what’s smart.

I know what my parents would say. They would say Drew is a mistake. I’m going to Stanford next fall. Drew isn’t going anyplace.

I wait to hear his footsteps walking away, muffled on the soft carpet. Instead, I feel his warmth as he comes to stand behind me. He doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t need to.

“Cerulean,” he says, looking past me.
Suh-roo-lee-uhn.

I turn to look at him. “What?”

“That’s what color blue the sky is.”

“I know what it means. I’m just surprised that you know the word.”

Drew’s face closes up like a fist. He pivots on his heel, and in two steps he has picked up his backpack and skateboard. In another two steps he is at the door to my room.

“Wait, I didn’t mean it like that,” I say. “Drew!” I run after him, but he’s already halfway down the stairs. My dad stands up, like he wants to challenge him. Like he thinks something is wrong. It is, but not the way he thinks. I can’t go bleating after Drew now. So I head back to my room before he can ask what’s going on. Drew closes the front door at the same time as I close my bedroom door.

I just never thought of Drew as a reader. But
cerulean
is a reading word. Nobody says it. “Reading words” is how I think of all the words I read that no one ever says out loud. No one uses
scamper
in real conversation. Or
hearth.
It wasn’t until last year that I learned it didn’t rhyme with
mirth.
That it really rhymed with
Darth,
as in Vader.

I don’t want to leave my room. It’s rare for my parents both to be home. And even rarer for me to bring a boy home. Scratch that—I’ve never done it before. They’re going to want to talk about it, ask me questions. I probably can’t avoid that, because they insist we eat dinner together anytime the three of us are all home. Which is about twice a month.

But until dinnertime, I want to stay away from them and their questions and the looks they’ll give each other.

I could read or do homework (although there’s less and less homework as we get closer to graduation). Instead, I turn on my computer.

I need to keep away from the Internet. But after I push Drew away, push away the one person who might be my friend, I Google a certain term. There are more than three million results. These are parts of the headlines I find under the News tab for “body found”:

• in suitcase
  
• ablaze in bin
  
• in farm field
  
• on roof of apartment building
  
• by side of road
  
• burned, beheaded
  
• in car that had been towed
  
• in wooded area
  
• floating in pond
  
• behind Dumpster
  
• in burned car
  
• wrapped in carpet
  
• wrapped in plastic
  
• in vacant lot
  
• in some bushes
  
• in lake
  
• buried in snow
  
• at entrance to golf course
  

And this is what I read when I click on “in suitcase”:

Body of Teen Found in Landfill Stuffed in Suitcase

It all started when police found the body of 16-year-old Marissa Johns stuffed in a brand-new suitcase in the Houston city landfill. Inside the suitcase, investigators found a bar code, and they were able to trace it to a specific Walmart store in the area. Cops pulled surveillance video from the night Marissa disappeared, and, sure enough, they spotted a man buying the suitcase that held Marissa’s body. Police identified the man as Alberto Rodriguez III, a neighbor of Marissa’s, and arrested him.

The Seventh Day

Kayla

“YOU’RE MY MASTER,”
I told him after he knocked me to the floor.

And at that moment, I split apart. There’s one girl who has to do what he says. The girl who doesn’t even have a name. The one who’s like a dog that’s been beaten so many times it no longer bothers to lift its head or bare its teeth. And then there’s the real Kayla. The one who screams and rages and swears. She’s inside the other girl, like one of those Russian nesting dolls. Hidden away.

“Good, slave girl,” he said, and the nausea rose in me again.

I barely made it to the toilet in the corner of the room. It’s just out in the open, so there’s no privacy. No place to hide. It’s not a portable toilet, it flushes, but the smell of it still made me retch again and again. He grunted in disgust, and I—the real Kayla—made a mental note even as I tried to hold my hair out of the way. Blood and vomit. He doesn’t like either one.

“I’ll be back,” he said, like the Terminator, only with no accent. And it wasn’t funny.

After he left, I curled up on the bed. I wasn’t thinking anymore. I just breathed in and out. I must have slept for a while.

This time when I wake up, there’s a plate of food on the floor. The sight of the sandwich and apple fills my mouth with so much water it runs down my chin. I haven’t had anything to eat since I gobbled the box of granola bars. I stuff the sandwich in my mouth so fast I almost choke. It’s just brown bread with mustard and bright yellow processed cheese, but I moan at the taste. I eat the whole thing in about three bites and then suck my fingers. My stomach is a hard little knot, like it doesn’t know what to do with food after such a long absence.

Only then do I wonder if he mixed something in the mustard. The sharp tang would hide a lot. I think about making myself throw up, but I don’t.

Instead I sink my teeth into the small red and yellow apple. It’s crisp and juicy. I eat it down to the core, spitting the seeds out onto the heavy white ceramic plate.

Then I drink two bottles of water from the bottom shelf of the bookcase. I want to drink more, but make myself stop. What if he doesn’t bring me any more? He hasn’t replaced the ones I drank earlier. I put all the empty bottles next to the white plate that rests on a black rubber tray. The tray looks like the ones they use at the school cafeteria. Already, the idea of school seems unreal. The only reality is this tiny room with its white walls and navy blue futon bed. I don’t exist outside this room. I’m not too sure I exist inside it.

There’s no clock in here, so I don’t know what time it is. And it’s not like the sandwich is a big clue. It could be lunchtime, dinnertime, or no time at all. For all I know, it’s two in the morning. I don’t even know what day it is. But it feels like I’ve been here for a long time. Like I’ve been here forever.

I wish there was a chair I could wedge under the door handle, at least when I’m asleep. I can’t keep him out of here or I won’t get any more food. But I don’t like waking up to him standing over me. That’s the worst.

And I don’t like waking up and figuring out he’s been here without my knowing. Maybe I could drag the bookcase over. I’ll have to try later. Right now I don’t feel strong enough to lift the TV down and empty out the shelves.

The TV! If I can find a news broadcast, I might be able to hear about how they’re looking for me, figure out what they know. I want to hear my name. I want to hear they’re closing in.

I press the On button. But there’s no cable leading from the back, just the power cord. I click through the channels one by one. All I see and hear is static. In between the buzz and pops, I think I can almost hear words. Almost.

Maybe.

I think.

But I never hear words that sound like Kayla Cutler.

Evidentiary Search Warrant

The place to be searched is the residence of the suspected party, Cody Renfrew, located at 3707 NW Hazelfern, Portland. The residence is a single-family home, white with blue trim, and is the last house on the left on Hazelfern, the front door of which faces north. The vehicle to be searched also belongs to the suspected party. The vehicle is a brown (previously white) Toyota pickup, registered in the state of Oregon with license plate NWE 530.

To ascertain if there is at said suspected premises and vehicle items constituting evidence of an offense, to wit:

Evidence concerning an investigation of the crime of murder, including, but not limited to, the human remains of Kayla Cutler, blood, physiological fluids and secretions, hair, fibers, fingerprints, palm prints, footprints, shoe prints, shoes, clothing and other garments, weapons, cutting instruments and tools, rope or other restraining devices, blunt force instruments, or items containing traces of any of the preceding articles.

The Seventh Day