The Night She Disappeared (14 page)

“Mom! You said you weren’t going to bring anything else back here.”

“I’m just sorting it,” she says with her lower lip pushed out, like I’ve hurt her feelings. “That’s all.”

She’ll probably be up for the next two days “organizing” her stuff. And it’s not hers, anyway.

My mom has become a thief.

The reason they call them tweakers is because meth makes you obsess on something. At first when Mom was high, she had to be on the computer twenty-four hours a day. She was always fiddling with programs to make it run faster. Only, half the time the computer ended up not working at all.

Then she started ordering freebies from the Internet. We were getting junk in the mail every day—a Book of Mormon, a Wisconsin cheese poster, a meditation DVD. But by the time stuff actually came, she didn’t care. It just lay around in piles on the dining room table, and then when that got filled up, in piles on the floor.

Then it was like free Internet stuff wasn’t important anymore, and she started looking in the trash bins behind stores. Dumpster diving for pens behind Office Depot. Perfectly good lamps with the sale sticker still attached and the plug cut off, but she said Gary was handy and could fix them.

And somewhere along the line, she turned into a thief. It took me a while to figure that out. She told me she was going to yard sales, but I think she was really breaking into people’s houses. Once I found a garbage bag filled with IDs: driver’s licenses, credit cards, even library cards. I don’t think she did anything with them. If she found money, she gave it to Gary, but the rest she just kept.

She started keeping everything in plastic tubs. The living room got full, and so did the dining room and her bedroom. She even put some in my room. I told her she had to find someplace else. So she rented a storage locker with some of the money she “found.”

Only she came back from the storage locker with even more useless crap. It turned out the storage spaces have open tops. Mom’s never been afraid of heights. When I was a kid, she would climb trees higher than I could. And she weighs less than a hundred pounds now. So I guess she just piles her storage boxes to make steps and scrambles like a spider from unit to unit. To her juiced mind, the fact that all this stuff is in storage means it doesn’t belong to anyone.

The thing is, she never uses any of it. All she does is organize it. That’s her word. She just shifts things around from one box to another. Sometimes she even takes back things to the storage spaces that she doesn’t “need.”

Like she needs any of it.

To get to my room, I have to step over pile after pile, sometimes teetering on tiptoe. Mom doesn’t even glance up, sorting and muttering to herself, scratching and scratching at her skin because she says it feels like there are bugs under there.

This can’t be what Mom wanted. But it’s where she ended up.

Can you really change your destiny?

The Eighth Day

Kayla

HOW LONG
can he keep me here?

Will I ever see the sun again? Will I die here?

Is there going to come a point when I want to die?

Will they find my body, years from now, and wonder who I am? That thought is the worst, that I might become some nameless dead girl, a stranger’s pile of bones. I finger the label on an empty water bottle. I could write on the back, and leave it in my pocket so people will know who I am. Only I don’t have anything to write with.

What does he want from me? He hasn’t touched me, if you don’t count the time he hit me and threw me on the bed.

But I think it’s only the cut on my head that’s stopped him from doing anything more. That and me throwing up. If he has some crazy fantasy about master and slave, it probably doesn’t involve a vomiting slave girl with an open cut on her head. One who smells like old sweat and pee.

I don’t like to sleep, don’t like to be vulnerable. Since there’s nothing else to do, I’ve been watching the DVDs he left lined up next to the TV.
Sex and the City
is out because I don’t want to give him any ideas.
The Office
isn’t appealing because I can’t ever imagine laughing in this room. So far I’ve watched the first season of
24
. It’s one of the few ways I have of telling time. Every hour of
24
really lasts forty-one minutes, which is kind of crazy but makes as much sense as anything else does here.

Forty-one minutes times twenty-four episodes means I have to have been in here more than a day. I think it’s been a lot more. I don’t know how long I was asleep or unconscious before I woke up.

I’ve tried to figure out whether it’s day or night. If I could just have that. Whenever he opens the door, there’s only darkness on the other side. Maybe a stretch of cement floor where the light washes out, and maybe the shadow of a wall before he closes the door, but there’s no clue where we are, no clue what time it is. And when he leaves, the door seals so tight I can’t even hear his footsteps moving away.

What if—and this really makes my skin crawl—he has a tiny camera watching me? Watching me sleep. Watching me talk to myself. Just in case, I turn off the light before I use the toilet.

There’s no obvious camera like at a bank where you might look up in a corner and see a black box with a lens. But I’ve heard about miniature cameras a pervy guy could hide behind a tiny hole. I inspect every inch of the smooth white walls, even climb on top of the bed and look at the ceiling. I do it with the light off, too, in case anything glows and gives it away.

I find nothing.

And the meals he brings could be any meal. Last time it was a roll and an orange and two more slices of that orange processed cheese. Thinking of food makes me wonder if I could ask him for something you’d have to eat with a knife. Like a steak. And then I could sink the steak knife into his chest.

The horrible thing is that I can imagine exactly how it would feel. The “pop” as the skin stopped resisting and parted. How hard I’d have to push to get to his heart. But I would do it.

I would.

I try to remember what they taught us in the Women’s Strength class my mom dragged me and Maya to four years ago. I’m sorry now that I giggled through it. It wasn’t that it was funny; we were nervous. We were thirteen years old, and they wanted us to yell at this female instructor who was older than our moms, scream at her to back off, with our faces all contorted and fierce. Later she made us lie down on the floor. Then she straddled us and held our shoulders down and we were supposed to buck her off.

I failed at that, too.

I don’t know if this guy is trying to give me ideas, but I wish I had a gun like every character on
24
. Or at least knew karate. If Jack Bauer were down here, he would figure out how to knock this guy unconscious with a couple of well-placed kicks and a head butt, escape from this room, hotwire a car in twenty seconds, and somehow save the world in the process.

But me? Well, I’m no Jack Bauer.

Still, I try to make a plan. The door and the toilet are in opposite corners, but the space is so small they’re really not that far apart. Maybe I could stand on the toilet and hold the TV, and next time he comes in, I could heave it at his head. But the TV is pretty heavy, at least for the shape I’m in, and I have no idea when he’ll show up next. Maybe I could unscrew the light tubes and wait in the darkness for him and swing one like a bat. Only I have a feeling that would just leave him pissed off.

If this were
24,
the bed would rest on springs and I would be able to uncoil one and turn it into a weapon. But this is a futon bed that rests on wooden slats so it can be turned into a couch in the daytime. I’ve pulled it up to its couch position, and now I leave it there, even when I sleep. I don’t want him to get any ideas.

Only I’m sure he already has them.

Note in the Pocket of Kayla Cutler’s
Jeans [Written in Blood on the Back of
a Water Bottle Label]

The Eighth Day

Gabie

WHY DOES ANYONE
ever get drunk? It’s so not worth it.

I’m in the bathroom, throwing up for what feels like the tenth time, when I hear my parents drive up. The soft light from the bathroom window hurts my eyes. I rinse out my mouth and stagger back to bed.

“Gabie?” My mom knocks on the door and then opens it before I answer. I pull the pillow over my head. “Why are you still here? You’ll be late to school.”

“I’m not going,” I mumble. “I’ve got the flu.”

“Steve, come in here,” she calls. “Gabie’s sick.” She slips a cool hand under the pillow and onto my forehead.

“Are you running a fever?”

“No. Just mostly sick to my stomach.” I don’t move the pillow. She had better not get close enough to smell the Kahlua. Oh, crap. Is the bottle still sitting on the coffee table downstairs? There’s no way I can sneak down and move it now.

“It could be food poisoning. Did you eat anything at Pete’s that had been left out on the counter too long?’

“No.” My stomach twists at the thought of food. My mouth tastes like swamp water. My teeth are wearing little mittens.

Within three minutes, my parents have taken my temperature, consulted with each other on my symptoms, and decided that once I’ve gone four hours without vomiting, I can try the BRAT diet—bananas, rice, applesauce, and unbuttered toast.

The sound of their voices makes my head ache, and the idea of eating
anything
makes me want to throw up again. I keep my eyes and my mouth shut tight until they finally leave me to rest.

I sleep most of the morning, dreaming of Kayla over and over.

In my dream, she’s walking in front of me down a crowded city street. Even though she is wearing a gray sweatshirt and pants, I would recognize her anywhere, that straight black hair, those long, fast strides. But she won’t turn around, even when I call out her name. I try to follow her, but no matter how quickly I push my way through the crowds, she is always just turning the corner.

I dream that we are hiding in a dark place, and she is trying to tell me something vitally important, but I can’t understand the words she urgently whispers.

In one dream, she’s sitting on the edge of a bed in a bare white room. Her head is hanging down, and she’s crying. I call to her, but she doesn’t look up. I run to her, but it’s like there’s a plate of glass between us. No matter how far I reach my arms, I can’t touch her. She doesn’t even know I’m there.

Finally, I make myself get up. I go downstairs for some dry toast. It looks like my parents caught catnaps and then went back to work. The house is empty. I find the Kahlua bottle in the cabinet and flush to think of one of them putting it away. Thank God there was only one glass. Will they confront me about it?

I curse myself when I remember how I pressed up against Drew, how I licked his ear, and then told him I wanted him.

I did, too. But partly I was scared of what was happening. That’s why I kept drinking so much. And why I kept trying to make things go farther. Because it seemed like the only way through was to keep pushing past the fear. To just jump.

I guess Drew didn’t want to jump.

At least not with me.

It’s one thing to skip school. But I can’t miss work. Not only are they shorthanded, but Drew needs my car to make deliveries. Only what does he think of me? That I’m some drunk slut? That I’m his destiny? That I’m pathetically lonely?

Later, at work, he’s completely normal. Normal for Drew before Kayla disappeared. He works hard, he doesn’t say much, he doesn’t look me in the eye. Is he embarrassed? Does he care? Does he wish I would just go away?

The Eighth Day

Drew

GABIE’S MINI COOPER
is not in the school parking lot. Will she blow off work, too? But when I walk into the break room, she’s there, looking pale, sliding her purse into a cubby.

“Hey, Gabie.” My hands feel weird and empty hanging by my sides. “How’re you feeling?” A few hours ago, I knew exactly what I was doing. Now it’s like I don’t know anything. Should I kiss her cheek? Sweep her into my arms? Pat her shoulder? Hug her?

“Not that great.” She grabs a clean black apron from the stack.

I try to make a joke of it. “I should have told you it’s probably not a good idea to drink that much Kahlua. Caffeine, sugar, alcohol, and a few additives can do a number on your system.” I pull my own apron over my head.

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry it made me such a sloppy drunk.” She won’t meet my eyes.

I reach out and touch her shoulder. “I didn’t mind.”

She presses her lips together and then says, “I would never have acted that way otherwise.”

It feels like she’s punched me in the gut. My hand falls away. So what’s she saying? That we wouldn’t have kissed like that, so long that my lips are still sore, if she hadn’t been drunk?