by Una Mannion
The dark had settled around us, on the hill where the grills billowed smoke, around the swing sets; I felt it sinking into me.
“It’s hard to say anything to you,” she said. “I’m always walking on eggshells. We can’t tell Faye what happened to Ellen. We can’t talk about Faye. Or your dad. Especially not your dad. I know you miss him, but it’s like you are blind to the other stuff and how he was toward your mom. You act like he was perfect and everything is Faye’s fault and Faye’s a monster.”
I could feel that dread that she would say something we didn’t say. I needed to hurt her back first.
“You know, your father isn’t so perfect. You should ask him about Mrs. Boucher.”
For a second it hung in the air between us, and I wanted to press rewind, spin it back into me, because it could never be unsaid or undone.
Instead of lashing out at me, she just said, “What are you even talking about? Ask him what about her?”
Shame seeped through me. I felt smaller than I ever had. Sage was still sort of shaking her head, like I had asked her a difficult math equation, and then she started to laugh, seeing something beyond me.
“Oh shit.”
I turned around. Tony was walking over with a big grin on his face, carrying two lawn chairs, a blanket, and a cooler. “Oh my God, he’s treating it like a date. I said I’d watch the fireworks with him.”
Like that, it was as if she had forgotten what I had just said and all that had just passed between us, oblivious to its significance for her. Tony looked like he had dressed for the date. He was wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt tucked into jeans, and he’d parted his hair on the side and combed it back. He looked like Richie from Happy Days, and it made me smile despite the empty feeling in my stomach.
“Sage Adams, may I have the honor of watching the sky spectacle together with you?” He bent forward as if to bow.
Sage looked at me, wondering if leaving me like this would hurt my feelings, blind to how I had just tried to hurt her to the core.
“It’s okay. I’m going to watch with Abbey.”
Tony and Sage set up in the field where all the families were. Abbey and I went over to the merry-go-round. We lay on our backs waiting, slowly circling. I let my hair trail on the ground and looked at the sky. So much had happened. I couldn’t get any thoughts straight in my head. I asked Abbey if she knew where the North Star was. I’d read that you would know where you were if you could find it, like sailors. She didn’t. She didn’t feel like talking. There were millions to choose from. A rocket shot across from the far hill, and white stars exploded above us. Then the whole sky started to crackle. Flames launched across the night, plunged and extinguished above us.
Afterward, when it was all over, I stayed lying on the merry-go-round, looking up, still spinning. I could hear people milling around, folding up lawn chairs, gathering children and bikes. Families leaving together. I suddenly felt cold. Tears burned my eyes. Nothing beautiful lasted.
Abbey said she was heading home, and I said goodbye to her, still lying on the merry-go-round. I wanted to go home.
Ellen. I had forgotten Ellen. I sat up and looked around. I hadn’t seen her in hours. I stood up and started running, first toward the field and then back to the playground. I couldn’t see her. Her bike had been left on its side by the seesaws, but she was nowhere to be seen. I had told her to stay in the Sun Bowl. Crowds of people were moving through the dark and funneling out through the gate. There were packs of teenagers on the road and along the fence, and I pushed past them, looking for her. The gate was too crowded, so I crawled through the fence onto the road to see whether Ellen or Thomas were there. How had I let myself forget?
I was shoulder to shoulder with the crowd when I saw it. About thirty yards from the swim club driveway. It was parked almost at the trail entrance—a black Camaro. I wanted to scream Ellen’s name. I looked around. There were people everywhere, and cars were pulling out, but no Ellen. My heart kicked my ribcage. I walked toward the Camaro. Its windows were dark. I was afraid to get close. I stared at the back of it from the other side of the street. I read the plate—Pennsylvania 3F5-727. Ellen. There was a dent where the fender emblem should be, and an image of Wilson with a hammer flashed before me. It was his car. It was definitely Barbie Man’s.
I looked in the windows as we passed. Was it empty? In the dark, I couldn’t be sure. I had that sensation again of just wanting to kneel on the ground. Where was Ellen? I ran.
23
More and more people filed up the street, carrying kids, Big Wheels, lawn chairs. I shouted for Ellen in the crowd, calling into the woods and over toward the Sun Bowl. I ran up the driveway of the swim club. Cars were backing out and turning, switching on headlights. I saw the Hunters getting into their station wagon.
“Meredith!” I shouted, and ran toward them, breathless. “Where’s Ellen?”
Meredith shrugged. “I haven’t seen her since the fireworks started.”
“Didn’t she watch them with you? Where did you last see her?” I was shaking her shoulders.
“Up here. We were up here, but when the fireworks started, she said she wanted to watch them with you, and she went back down to the Sun Bowl.”
“Oh my God.” She stepped back from me. I knew I looked deranged, but I couldn’t stop myself. “What way, Meredith? Think! What way did she walk?” I was shouting.
“Libby, is everything okay?” Mrs. Hunter had come around from the other side of the car and stood between me and Meredith. “What’s going on?”
“I can’t find Ellen. She’s missing. I really need to find her.”
“I’m sure she’s just somewhere in the crowd.”
“No.” I was shaking my head. “No, Mrs. Hunter, something bad has happened to her. Something terrible.”
I didn’t wait for her to ask what but started running toward the chain-link fence. The fastest way back was down the hill. I couldn’t even find the path; I just fell and crashed through the bramble thicket. I could feel thorns scratching my legs and face, catching my hair and pulling it out. I stumbled, and burrs stuck to my cutoffs and hair and hands. I could hear Mrs. Hunter calling me from the top of the hill. I was shouting Ellen’s name. I had started crying. When I came through the thicket into the Sun Bowl, it was almost empty. Only handfuls of people were left, mostly teenagers. I yelled Ellen’s name over and over. The license plate number echoed in my head, 3F5-727.
Out on the field I could see two lawn chairs—Sage and Tony. I started running. “Sage!” I called her over and over. They both stood up as I came hurtling toward them. “Ellen. I can’t find her. The Barbie Man’s here. His Camaro’s by the trail. I can’t find her. Help me.”
“Libby. Calm down. Maybe she went home.”
“No, the bike’s by the seesaw.”
“She’s probably up at the swim club and is on her way.”
“Meredith said Ellen went to find me at the start of the fireworks. She must have walked past him on the way down from the swim club.”
“Are you sure he’s here? How do you know it’s his car? Did you see him?”
“Sage. It’s his car. Believe me.”
“Come on,” said Sage. “We’ll look together.” The three of us started across the field toward the playground. All the bikes that had been lined up were gone, and just Ellen’s bike was left, lying on its side, the streamers covered in dirt. Sage stopped and looked at it. “Tony, who lives the closest?”
“Bouchers or Millers,” he said. “The Millers are closer to the road.”
“Go to the Millers’ now and get them to call the police.”
“What?”
“I’m not kidding.” Sage had on her take-charge voice. “It’s serious. Tell them a child is missing and that a man who attacked her before is here.”
“Whoa. What the fuck?”
“I’m not kidding,” she said again. “Go. Run.” Tony took off, and Sage started calling for Ellen. She stopped people, saying, “We
need your help—a girl is missing.” She spoke like a concerned adult. “A child is missing. Her name is Ellen. Please help us.” More and more people started calling her.
We came out onto the street, and I yelled for Ellen. I could hear other people talking—“A little girl is missing”—and I knew they thought she was three or something.
“She’s twelve but very small. It’s an emergency,” I said to a woman who was calling Ellen’s name. As we came up the hill, I could see Mrs. Hunter talking to the man with the megaphone from the Mountain Association, who was putting barbecue utensils into the back of his car. I could hear people down in the field calling Ellen’s name. There were shouts for her at the swim club.
Sage was beside me as we got to the peak of the hill, where the Camaro had been parked. It was gone.
“Oh my God. It was there. He’s taken her. Sage.”
“Who? Who’s taken her?” It was the man with the megaphone.
Mrs. Hunter came with him and put her hand on my shoulder. “Libby, try to slow down and tell us what’s happened.”
“There was a man here in a Camaro. He hurt Ellen before. He’s taken her.” I pointed to the space where he had been parked. “It was there just a few minutes ago.”
Thomas suddenly appeared. “Libby, what’s wrong? Why’s everyone calling for Ellen?”
“Thomas. She’s gone. She left her bike, and the man’s taken her.” A crowd of people had started to form around us.
“What man? What are you talking about? Sage, what’s wrong with her?”
“Earlier this summer, a man attacked Ellen and tried to hurt her. Libby saw his car, and we can’t find Ellen.”
“Thomas, it’s the man you saw. The horrible weird man you saw when you were walking with the lawn mower. Him.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Ellen was in his car, and he wouldn’t let her out, and she jumped while it was moving.” Sage’s voice was calm and clear.
“Libby, what’s she talking about?”
I told Thomas what had happened that night on the road, Ellen hitchhiking and the man touching her, how she’d jumped. How we didn’t tell anyone. All these people were listening, and I couldn’t say we were afraid Mom would get in trouble for throwing her out in the dark to begin with.
Thomas turned to the megaphone man. “We need the police. Can someone please get the police? Please. We need help.”
“Get Marie.” As I said it, I knew I was going to be sick. I stumbled over to the side of the road and threw up in the decorative shrubbery the swim club had planted at the entrance. I could hear Sage talking to Thomas, who was saying it was his fault if anything happened to Ellen; he was supposed to be the one in charge. Their voices seemed both amplified and very far away. In the distance, neighbors and strangers called Ellen’s name, and I heard sirens. People were talking all around us, murmuring and whispering, and one woman explained to another, “It’s those kids from the other side of the mountain—you know, the Irish ones with no father.”
Two police cars arrived, and the crowd parted a bit. The megaphone man seemed to be giving an overview of what was happening. “The sister’s over here,” someone said. A policeman came over to me, but my body had started to shake so hard I couldn’t talk.
“Does anyone have a blanket?” he asked. “I’m Officer Day. We’re going to find your sister. We need you to be calm, and we need you to cooperate. Can you try to breathe a little slower?”
I breathed in deep through my nose and tried to let it out slow.
“Good,” he said. “Nice and slow. Just a few more of those.” I breathed, and he put his hand at my back and guided me over to Thomas and Sage. “Okay,” he said. “We’re going to find her. First I need a description of your sister and a description of the man you think has taken her.”
Someone had brought a picnic blanket and put it around my shoulders.
“Our sister’s Ellen Gallagher. She’s twelve years old,” said Thomas.
“But very small for her age,” I added. “Not even seventy pounds. She only comes up to here”—I showed them halfway between my elbow and shoulder—“just a few inches past four feet.”
“Okay. And the man you think may have hurt her?”
“Tall. Very, very tall. He has long blond, almost silver-white hair. All the way down to below his belt. And long fingernails on his right hand.”
“Age?”
“Thirty, maybe?” Officer Day was writing it all down in a notebook. “I know more,” I said. “He drives a black Camaro. He lives in Pottstown, and his license plate number is 3F5-727, State of Pennsylvania.”
Thomas was staring at me like I was a freak. “How do you know all this?”
Officer Day turned to one of the others: “Can you run that?” From inside the car I could hear the feed of information: “Suspect . . . black Camaro . . . the plate . . .” The crackling of the transceiver. Officer Day turned back to me. “Do you know this man?”
“I saw him about a week ago when we were in the King of Prussia mall. We saw him in Friendly’s downstairs and then again upstairs in Space Port.”
“And you say the suspect lives in Pottstown. Did he tell your sister this?”
I hesitated. “I don’t think he told her anything like that. I think we heard it. Me and my older sister heard that there was a guy from Pottstown that fit that exact description.”
“So you did report the incident to some people?”
I had told Mrs. Boucher, who was a member of the legal profession. She hadn’t reported it or even told my mother. Grady Adams was a medical doctor. He knew, and he hadn’t told. Wilson was over eighteen. Even Marie was now an adult. I was going to get so many people in so much trouble.
“No. Not like that. We didn’t tell anyone. Just my older sister knew people, and we heard there might be someone like that in Pottstown.”
“Marie knew?” Thomas looked at me like I was Judas Iscariot. “Libby, stop fucking around. This is serious. Tell them everything.” He knew I was holding back, and he was right. I had to say everything.
The radio broke in then: “Affirmative on the Pennsylvania plate 3F5-727. Camaro. Vehicle registered to Julius Korhonen, Ash Drive, Pottstown, over”—crackle—“Units dispatched, over.” The second squad car reversed and started down the hill, the light spinning but the siren silent.
Officer Day turned to me again. “Are your parents home? We’re going to need them to file a statement to say Ellen is missing.” I shook my head. “Can you give us a number of where they are?” I looked at Thomas. Neither of us knew where Mom was staying.
“Our father isn’t alive,” Thomas said. “Our mom took my youngest sister to camp in North Carolina. My eldest sister Marie’s an adult. She’s in charge. She’s in Philadelphia right now.”
“If you don’t know the number for your mother, can we have your sister’s?”
“It’s at the house,” Thomas said. “I don’t know it.”
“Did this man know Ellen’s name or where she lived?” Officer Day asked me.
“Not her name, but she said she lived on Valley Forge Mountain when she first got into the car, before he did anything. And he could have found out her name because she had on our school uniform.”
“What time did you see his car here?”
“Just after the fireworks, like maybe half an hour ago or forty minutes, but then ten minutes or so later it was gone.”
“Why do you think he came looking for her tonight?”
I was about to say that maybe he’d come looking for others when Officer Day stepped aside to let someone push through. It was Grady Adams.
“Sage? What’s happened to Ellen?” He’d been running and was out of breath.
I focused on Officer Day’s question. Barbie Man had come to kill Wilson. But he must have seen Ellen, and . . . maybe he’d taken Ellen to get her to name him. To show him where he lived? But then, what would he do with her?
I started to talk. “Someone helped us w
hen Ellen got hurt. He is the one who found out who the guy was, and he went to Pottstown with some boys from around here and they beat him and messed up his car and cut part of his hair bald. I think he’s looking for them.”
Thomas kicked the ground. “Are you all fucking crazy? What’s wrong with you, Libby?”
“Who was this person who helped you?” Officer Day had the pencil ready in his hand, waiting.
“It was Wilson,” said Thomas. “Right?”
The two policemen exchanged glances. “Wilson McVay?” asked Officer Day.
“Yes,” I said.
“We are going to need to take statements from both of you at the station in Phoenixville. We’ll have to call your older sister to come there.”
Grady Adams stepped forward. “I know these children. I am happy to come with them.”
Officer Day shook his head. “I’m sorry, but it has to be someone who is a legal guardian or related.”
Thomas backed away from me, and Sage came closer, putting her arm around my shoulder. Tony was there, trying to be helpful.
“People,” said Officer Day to the crowd still standing around, “unless you have information relating to this incident, can I ask that you find your vehicles and leave.”
The crowd backed off a little. I saw Abbey watching with the others, even though she’d left ages ago. She’d probably heard the sirens.
Officer Day turned to me. “Can you show me where the Camaro was parked?” It was just a few yards away, and everyone moved as I showed the policeman the exact place where I’d seen it. Officer Day turned to the other cop and asked for the light. It was the kind of floodlight they’d used the night we pool-hopped. It lit the ground, and Officer Day and his partner walked around. I stood back while they combed the area.
Someone tugged on my blanket. It was Abbey. “Your brother took off,” she whispered. “He’s gone down the trail.”
I looked at Sage. She’d heard it too. I felt weak then, and just sat down on the ground. Where would he go? To see if Ellen was at home? No. He knew she wouldn’t have left the bike.
Sage sat down next to me. And I loved her all over again, infinitely, because she just understood it all without me having to say anything, and she loved me. Grady came over too. He sat on his haunches and took my wrist and felt my pulse. He squeezed my arm.