Never Missing, Never Found (8 page)

“Oh,” I say. Because what else is there to say? “Okay. I should get back to Melody now.”

Katharina sighs. “You’re so lucky to have a sister,” she says wistfully. “I always wanted a sister growing up. I had a friend—well, I don’t know if I’d call her a friend so much as a neighbor—who was almost like a sister, but it wasn’t quite the same.”

“Oh?” I step back toward the light, back toward where Monica’s brother or boyfriend is talking about what a vibrant force of life she is. How her house would never be the same without her, so please do give her back, thanks.

“Yeah, she had sisters,” Katharina says. Her eyes narrow, or maybe it’s just my imagination. “She always used to say, ‘A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost.’ ”

Pixie was a slow learner. Even though she didn’t have anywhere to go back to, she tried to run almost every day. She always got beaten. I started to worry that Stepmother would kill her and that I would be alone again. She wouldn’t dare to bring in someone else after taking such a big risk with Pixie, after doing me such a great kindness. So I tried not to indulge Pixie in her fantasies of escape, and whenever I could, I blocked her way out as if I didn’t know what she was trying to do. I didn’t want to lose her.

I didn’t want to be alone again.

Sometimes the only way to keep her from trying to run was to distract her with talk of the outside. If I talked too much about what was happening around us, about which girl had the best hair or how Stepmother seemed to be in a particularly good mood because she’d had us scrub the bathrooms only once, she’d withdraw and get quiet.

“What do you miss most about out there?” she said once as we were stripping the sheets off the girls’ beds. “I actually miss homework. I could do a whole pile of homework right now.”

“You must be going crazy,” I cracked. She didn’t laugh.

“Scarlett, what about you? What’s the first thing you would do if you got out?”

I didn’t want to answer her, but I knew that if I didn’t, she’d get quiet and her mind would turn back to escape, and then I’d spend another night sopping blood off her back. So I said, “I would buy as many baby rabbits as all the pet stores in town have, and then I would give them to you. There would be so many baby rabbits I wouldn’t even be able to see you, just a big, furry pile.”

She let out a weak laugh. “That’s funny.” Her eyes closed. “Do you think we’d even see each other?”

“Of course!” I said immediately, though I didn’t know whether I was telling the truth. I’d never really thought about it. “We’re basically sisters.”

She let out another sound, a laugh so dry I could hear it scrape against the inside of her throat. “This isn’t childhood, though. I don’t know if we’d want to hold on to this.”

“What are you talking about?”

“My foster mom had a lot of sisters,” Pixie said. “She always said, ‘A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost.’ ”

Everything is fuzzy. The world is coated in gray velvet. “What did you say?” My tongue feels like stone.

“You heard me,” Katharina says, though distantly, as if through a wind tunnel.

And then Melody is there, floating in the corner of my vision, her arms crossed and her chin jutting out. “What did you do to her?” And she’s in front of me, waving her hand through my field of vision. “Scarlett? Scarlett? Katharina, what happened?”

I slump forward. Melody catches me and cradles me in her arms. My head hits her shoulder and bounces and then comes to a rest. “You’re like a piece of childhood,” I say, and then my knees are crumpling, and everything is black.

I hope they don’t hold a vigil for me.

I wake up under the watchful eyes of a circle of people: Connor, Cady, Cynthia, and Rob. No Melody or Katharina, I note. The quartet stands above me, peering down; I feel like I’m a specimen they’re preparing to study, or a meal they’re about to eat.

The ground is cold under me, and I can feel the sharp metal of a soda can pushing into my back through my jacket. I wince. “Where’s my sister?” I ask. She caught me. She didn’t let me fall to the ground.

“She ran to call an ambulance,” Cady says. I go to get up, but she kneels beside me and gently pushes me down. “Don’t move, you could hurt yourself. Katharina says they’re on their way.”

Why did Melody have to run anywhere to call an ambulance? She has a cell phone. She could’ve called them right here, with one hand, while her other hand kept my head off the dirt. “Katharina…” An electric jolt surges through my body; Cady must be made of rubber, because it doesn’t rock her at all. “Katharina,” I say again. My voice is high and thready. “What do you know about her? How long have you known her?”

Cady’s brow creases in concern. “Are you okay? Do you know what day it is?”

“I know what day it is,” I say, and I realize I’m shaking, and not just because of the chill. “What do you know about her? When did she start at Adventure World?”

Cady recoils a tiny bit, just enough for me to notice. “I don’t really know,” she says. “This year, I think. Her family moved here a few months ago. I don’t know.”

“Where is she?” I push myself up again, and this time Cady doesn’t stop me. “Where did she go? Did she run?”

Cady glances over her shoulder. “I think she hit her head,” she says. “When’s the ambulance getting here?”

“Soon,” Connor says. He’s hovering overhead, just behind Cady, like he wants to kneel beside me, too, but doesn’t want to intrude. He catches my eye and he cocks his head, asking through body language if I’m okay.

I sit all the way up and answer him with words. “I’m not crazy and I didn’t hit my head,” I say. “I just need to talk to…to Katharina. Where did she go?”

“Maybe Katharina gave Scarlett drugs,” Cady says. “Katharina seems like someone who might do drugs, doesn’t she?”

“I can hear you—I’m right here,” I say hotly. “I didn’t do drugs. Let me go.” I stand, and the world wobbles around me for only a second. “I’m not going anywhere in an ambulance.”

“You should really get checked out,” Cady says. Her eyes are heavy with sympathy. I don’t want sympathy from her, of all people.

“I’m not getting checked out,” I say, and lurch forward, away from the hovering group. “Call 911 again and cancel the ambulance, if that’s even what you do. I need to find Katharina.”

I lurch forward again, and again, until I’m doing something resembling walking. Murmurs rustle behind me. “Should I go after her?” “Someone should go after her.” “She might have a concussion.” “I got it. I’ll go. No, you stay here.”

There’s a gentle touch on my shoulder, and someone else’s footsteps echo my own. “Scarlett?” It’s Connor. “What happened under there?”

“I didn’t hit my head.” Well, I might have hit my head when I went down, but that’s not important. What’s important is that I find Katharina and shake her until her eyes pop out, and make her tell me what she’s trying to do to me. If anyone’s guilty of hurting my head, it’s not me, it’s her. “And I’m not doing drugs.”

“I didn’t think that,” Connor says. His voice is quiet, cautious. “But you can understand why everyone is worried. You’re acting kind of strange.”

Tears burn the corners of my eyes. “How do you even know what strange for me is? We haven’t even known each other that long.”

“You’re a Skywoman fan,” he says. “And that’s all I need to know.”

I snort and roll my eyes, more to disguise the oncoming rush of tears than anything else. “You don’t know me.”

“Fine. We’ll go with that,” he says. “But what I do know is that you seemed fine today, then fine in the bleachers, and then you step away for a few minutes with Katharina and you’re a shaking, white-faced mess.”

I want to talk to him. I can’t talk to him. “It’s really nothing,” I say. “I swear, I’m okay.”

He doesn’t look convinced. “Let me take you home, at least.”

“Then what would I do with my car?” I say. “Anyway, Melody can drive me if it gets too bad. But really. Look, I’m fine, I swear.” I hold my palm out to demonstrate. It barely trembles. “I swear.”

“But do you swear?” A smile shines through a crack in his face.

I return a tiny smile of my own, the most I can muster. “I swear on your grave.”

“I’m not dead.”

“You will be if you keep asking if I’m okay.”

“Ouch.” But he’s no longer creased with concern. “Give me a hug.”

He’s on me before I can react, a pure force of warmth enveloping me whole. I close my eyes and breathe him in: deodorant, smoke, a faint sweetness that might come from dried baled hay. I pull my arms tight against his back, feeling the rangy muscles under his pilled flannel. I’ve never considered backs a particularly attractive body part, but he might change my mind. He surrounds me and his smell is inside me and now I’m not shaking anymore.

I pull back. I can’t touch him, knowing Cady is standing there—probably within sight, though I can’t bear to look—and knowing that he’s hers. That she gets to touch him anytime she wants to. That I can’t. “Thanks,” I say thickly.

“Of course.” His smile flickers. “If you ever need anyone to talk to, you can always come to me, okay?”

I want to say,
Apparently, you have a girlfriend.
I want to say,
That’s weird, because what about Cady?
But there’s no official rule that you can’t talk to someone with a girlfriend. There’s no official rule that says we can’t be friends. Close friends. Just as long as we don’t get close enough where he probes too deep. Or maybe that would be okay. Maybe he
wouldn’t
go running. “Okay,” I say.

“Are you absolutely sure you don’t want me to drive you home? I don’t know where Melody went.”

Melody couldn’t even wait around long enough for me to wake up, which hits me like a punch in the gut. I square my shoulders, trying to muster an appearance of strength, and hold up my hand. “Stop. Stop it. I’ll find Melody. Go back to your friends.”

He sucks on his bottom lip, like he wants to object, but he only nods. “You guys drive safe.”

“We will.” I watch as he lopes back to his friends and Cady’s waiting arms. I bet she has noodle-arms. She looks like she has noodle-arms. I bet her hugs are limp.

Melody is still gone. I pull out my phone to call her, but my phone is already blinking with a text message. Nobody ever texts me, so I know before I open it that it’s from Melody.
Going to stay and get a ride home with Kat. Feel better


Kat. Katharina. Melody is getting a ride home with Katharina? When did they get all buddy-buddy? How long was I out?
Kat?

Whatever. I don’t bother texting her back.

As I walk to my car, my feet start dragging. I look everywhere for Katharina and Melody, maybe braiding each other’s hair or painting each other’s nails, but they’re nowhere. They’re gone.

As I pull out, I pass the ambulance on its way in, sirens shrieking, lights flashing, looking for someone headed in an entirely different direction.

My dad is nowhere to be seen when I get home; he goes to sleep at a ridiculously early hour, sometimes before the sun even sets, so he can wake up at a ridiculously early hour and enjoy the sunrise. Matthew is everywhere to be seen, though; I see him in the pajama shirt tossed on the hallway floor and the chocolate cookie crumbs on the kitchen table and then, finally, in the milky-smelling body of the little boy draped across the couch, head lolling against the armrest. The TV plays, but quietly—Matthew isn’t a stupid kid.

I shake him gently by the shoulder. “Morning, sleepyhead.”

He blinks up at me and winces at the overhead light. “It’s morning?”

“No,” I say. “It’s nighttime. You should be in bed.” I glance over at the TV. I’m expecting a cartoon or the Disney Channel, but it’s some angry news show. An old fat guy is yelling at three young, pretty blond women who might well be triplets. “Why are you watching this?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

I sigh. “Get up. Brush your teeth and go back to bed.”

He smiles angelically at me. “I just wanted to wait for you and Melly to get home.” I might have bought it if it weren’t for the chocolate smeared across his front teeth.

“Yeah, okay.”

“Are you okay?”

I’m about to ask him why he would ask when I notice something wet sliding down my cheek. “I’m crying,” I say, surprised.

“Yeah,” Matthew says. “Did someone hurt you? Are you hurt?”

Matthew is seven. I can’t tell him what happened. “I just like this boy,” I say. “But he has a girlfriend. Kind of.”

“Oh,” Matthew says. He’s staring at me, nodding, seeming entirely interested. I buy it for a second before I realize he’ll do anything to avoid going back to bed. “Is she prettier than you?”

“She’s a hideous beast,” I say. My eyes hurt. These tears aren’t even for Cady, and she’s still ruining everything. “She has a hunchback and buckteeth and a clubfoot like the Jersey Devil. And an annoying voice. And she’s stupid.”

Matthew’s eyes are huge and round. He’s actually interested now. “Really? Can I see her?”

I sigh. What kind of lesson am I teaching my baby brother? “I was kidding,” I say. “She’s perfectly normal and probably a lovely person.”

Matthew gives me the stink eye. He doesn’t believe me. Or else he doesn’t want to believe me. Given the choice between a hideous beast and a lovely girl, he’d take the hideous beast anytime.

When he starts going for the lovely girl, or the lovely boy, that’s how I’ll know he’s growing up.

“Where’s Melly?” he asks.

Good question. “She’s out with one of her friends,” I say. “She’ll be in later.” Hopefully. “No, you cannot wait up for her.”

He hops up. “I’m just going to stay awake in my room anyway.”

Okay, Mr. I-Fell-Asleep-on-the-Couch.
“As long as you’re in your bed, under your covers, that’s fine. Now come on.”

I make him brush his teeth, then tuck him into bed and kiss him on the forehead. “Sweet dreams,” he says drowsily.

Sweet dreams. Ha.

I actually wait up for Melody. I sit on the couch facing the hallway, my legs crossed, one foot jiggling. The news show is still playing in the background. I kind of find it soothing to see people upset about things that don’t involve me.

I wait. And wait. And wait. Old Fat Guy’s bluster starts to wear on me, so I switch him off. It has to be nearly midnight, and still no Melody. I might fall asleep on the couch myself.

Turns out, I do. My dad shakes me awake in the morning, the rich aroma of coffee drifting from the mug in his hand. “Scarlett, you okay?”

I touch my cheek. My hand comes away smeared with mascara, and I know without looking that my eyes dried red and swollen. “Fine,” I say. “Just…the vigil, you know.”

“Right. I understand.” He moves away to give me privacy, or so I figure.

I fell asleep in a way that, naturally, cricked my neck, so I roll it back and forth, trying to make the pain stop. In all my rolling, my eyes land on the small, unassuming picture hanging almost behind the TV, peeking out as if it’s apologizing for its existence.

I nearly forgot it was there. I get up and move closer.

There’s my dad, hair slicked back, baring his teeth in an artificial smile. There’s Melody, her smile so wide you can barely see her face. There’s me, my hair in sleek black braids, cheeks so rosy you’d think I’m wearing blush. I look so innocent. I find it hard to believe I ever looked so innocent.

And there’s my mom, standing in the middle, the sun around which our universe revolved. She stands proud and tall, her shoulders thrown back. She’s the only one who doesn’t smile, like she’s spurning the traditional conventions of picture-taking and getting ready to show the world what’s what.

I wonder what happened to her.

She didn’t die, at least not that we know of. Soon after I returned, she just disappeared. At first I wondered if she’d joined the club—mother-daughter solidarity, right? But then the police told us she’d withdrawn a suspicious amount of cash in the weeks before she went missing, and she was spotted in a city far away with a different hair color, and my dad was forced to admit she’d left a note. “She was sorry,” he said. “She said she loved you all.”