Sophie Last Seen

by Marlene Adelstein

  Ruby had moved to Canaan after Sophie had been missing for a couple years, so she’d never heard stuff about Bird Girl, and she was curious, asking Star questions like “What do you think really happened?” and “Who could have taken her?” Mostly, Star kept all that to herself.

  Ruby was the editor of the school paper and wanted to be a writer. Star knew what was going to happen. Ruby would get into a good school, go away to college, then move away forever and become a famous blogger. With Star’s crappy grades and no extracurricular shit, she would end up at a community college then have to work at the Book Barn, like Jesse, until she was eighty, when no one would even remember what a hardback book was.

  Ruby said goodbye, gave Star a hug, then opened her bag to show Star a stash of squashed mini-quiches she’d taken from the food table at the party.

  “Jeez, Ruby.”

  She laughed and put her finger to her lips. “Not for me. For Jase. He’ll eat anything. See you at school.”

  Star watched as Ruby headed for the square, getting swallowed up by the loud, animated crowd.

  Star pulled her camera out of her pocket. She liked using old-school technology and took it with her everywhere to document her life. It made her feel different in a good way. She shot some of the festivities. People with their faces painted like ghouls. Rows of lit-up jack-o’-lanterns. Close-ups from a bin of scooped-out pumpkin innards and seeds that reminded her of how she’d been feeling lately—all mushy, stringy, and gross.

  How the town didn’t burn down each year during this craziness was a mystery, but luckily, the fire department was out in full force. Her parents would be the last to leave Earl’s. They always stayed to the bitter end and helped clean up like the good Canaan citizens they were. And the party was far from over.

  Even though this festival was full-on lame, it made Star feel lonely. She and Sophie used to come with their families. Back then, they were kids, so it wasn’t stupid to them. Only Sophie would have appreciated the lameness of the event. She wished she were there to make fun of it and their parents together. Not Sophie the creepy ghost. Sophie her old friend, the girl she missed. Star called Ophelia, and when she didn’t pick up, Star left a voice message, “Hey, Opheel. What’s going on? Just checking in, girl. Call me.” Then she texted her, too. Where R U?

  Instead of going home, she headed down Main and cut over to Church Street. She used her keys to enter the Book Barn. Being surrounded by all the old books felt cozy. She sat in one of the comfy chairs in the corner next to the nature section, which, of course, had been Sophie’s spot. When Star’s dad first opened the Book Barn, Sophie had loved to hang out and convinced her parents to buy her practically every birding book.

  Without looking, Star pulled a book off a shelf. The weird thing was that of all the books it could have been—ones about trees, gardening, mammals or stars—it turned out to be Birds of America, one of Sophie’s favorites. She flipped through it and recognized some of the birds Sophie had tried to teach her about. Grackle. Blue jay. The amazing Great Blue Heron they’d seen on the Cape that looked prehistoric when it took off in flight.

  After a few minutes, she went to her dad’s office in the back. She kept the lights turned low so no one would notice. Everyone was preoccupied with the festival, so it wouldn’t be a problem. She turned on the computer and went to her Instagram page. Ruby had already posted a photo of her and Jason hamming it up in the corn maze. Star typed in a comment: Eat some dairy, keep up your strength.

  She went over to Hope4themissing.org, pulled up Sophie’s page, and read, once again, the description of what happened six years ago.

  September 8, 2012. Sophie Albright, 10, was last seen with her mother at a Zone clothing store in the Countryside Mall in Holyoke, Massachusetts at approximately 2:25 p.m. She was shopping with her mother when she vanished from the store. Albright, who has long brown hair and green eyes, is 3’6”and weighs 60 lbs., was wearing faded denim jeans, a blue-and-green “Life’s A Beach” T-shirt, orange socks, and black clogs. She also wore a pair of black binoculars around her neck. One lens cap was marked with a blue letter S, and the other lens cap has the letter A, both made from gaffer’s tape. Albright has never been seen or heard from. Authorities have investigated all possible leads and do not have any suspects.

  In a column on the right side, a different photo of a missing person flashed every few seconds. Eventually, Sophie’s came up. A sidebar on the left showed statistics. A child goes missing every 40 seconds in the US; over 2,100 per day. If that wasn’t completely terrifying, she didn’t know what was.

  She thought back to when she had shown up at Sophie's house that morning, thinking they were going to play, maybe go down to the creek to watch birds and collect rocks.

  Sophie was lying on her bed, on her stomach, writing in her birding log book.

  “Hey, Sophers,” Star had said and flopped next to her on the bed.

  “Hi, Rats.”

  “Who’d you see today?”

  “Two cardinals. One male, one female. Three black-capped chickadees. A blue jay. Two tufted titmouse. The usual. But look what a crow left me this morning.” She opened the palm of her hand to reveal a small rectangular piece of broken china from a plate or bowl. It was white with little red flowers.

  Star reached for it, but Sophie quickly closed her fist. “Don’t touch.”

  “God, Sophie. I’m not going to break it.”

  “Sorry. It’s just that it’s so special. I guess you can touch it.” Crows had been leaving Sophie little items, mostly in the bird bath, for some time. Buttons. Pieces of glass or beads. Rusty screws. After years of closely observing Sophie’s behavior and patterns when she fed them, they’d gotten to know her. Apparently, as Sophie told Star, crows were incredibly smart, and she’d learned there were other people around the world who were just as lucky to be left presents, too. But it was special enough that the Canaan Gazette had written an article on Sophie, in which she explained to the reporter that the little gifts, usually shiny objects that were small enough to fit in a crow’s mouth, were the most cherished things she owned.

  Sophie opened her palm again, and Star rubbed the china piece gently with her index finger. “Nice.” She wasn’t about to pick it up and risk upsetting Sophie. “Want to go down to the creek and play?”

  “We’re going to the mall to buy me sneakers. Remember? I told you yesterday. We’ll get ice cream after.”

  Star had forgotten she’d promised Sophie she would go with her. But she didn't want to go that day. Not for the long, boring car ride just to traipse around the crowded mall. She wasn't in the mood. Sometimes, Sophie could be exhausting. Star remembered her dad telling her about “sappers,” people who sap up all the energy in a room. He was referring to his Uncle Eddie, who would blab on and on with endless stories about his heroic days in the Army, but Star thought it could apply to Sophie, as well, when she was in one of her obsessive Sophie moods. Birds, birds, birds. Her way or no way.

  “Uh, my mom needs me to do something. I can't go with today,” Star said.

  “What do you mean? You promised.” Sophie sat up quickly, and the binos flung around her body, to the left and right before settling in the middle of her chest.

  “I can't help it. We've got to go somewhere.”

  “Where?”

  When Star didn't answer right away, Sophie snapped back, “Rats, you're lying. You promised.”

  Star knew Sophie wasn’t good with change. She did best when she stuck to the schedule her mom set for her. “I'm sorry. I forgot. Don't hate me.”

  “What kind of best friend breaks her promise?”

  “Soph, don't make such a big deal about it.” She was inching her way toward the door. When Sophie was in one of her moods, Star wanted to be out of her firing range. Usually, Star didn’t experience Sophie’s tantrums. Mostly, Sophie was able to hold it together and flipped out when she was home alone with her parents. But Star had witnessed a few doozies, and she saw what was coming
. She felt the heat rising in the room. She was at the bedroom door, about to leave, when Sophie grabbed Bixby’s birding book off her nightstand. She drew her arm back and took aim. Stomping her feet, she said, “You are not my BFF anymore. You’re not. You’re not!” Her last words to Star.

  Star ducked out and pulled the door closed behind her just as the book hit it with a loud smack. As Star took off down the steps, she heard her friend whimpering. And when she got to the kitchen, she saw Jesse and Cooper arguing about who knew what. Cooper saw Star first.

  “Leaving already?” he said.

  Jesse glanced at Star, her face sad and drawn.

  “I’ve got to get home.” Star dashed out the back door and didn’t look back.

  STAR LEANED HER ELBOW on her dad’s desk, holding her head up with her hand. Sophie was super smart but could be difficult and was strict and inflexible about what she wanted. Years ago at school, Star had heard one teacher whisper to another, “Asperger’s,” while nodding toward Sophie. At the time, Star hadn’t even known what the word meant. Sophie’s parents had taken her to doctors and shrinks, trying to figure it out. Or maybe she was just gifted and temperamental as Jesse had said she was, the way some famous artists and writers were. Van Gogh. Hemingway. Virginia Woolf. Star really wasn’t sure. Back then, she’d just thought of Sophie as her best friend. Sometimes she was a pain, but Sophie was always fun and different from everyone else.

  Star was so tired, her whole body felt exhausted. A nap would be so nice. She couldn’t keep her eyes open another second. Then suddenly she heard a voice behind her.

  “Think, Rats, think...” It was Sophie’s little girl voice.

  Star swiveled around to find Sophie sitting at Jesse’s desk. She was still wearing what Star had come to think of as Sophie’s “gone missing” outfit.

  “Kidnapping is not limited to the acts of strangers but can be committed by acquaintances, by romantic partners, and by parents who are involved in acrimonious custody disputes.” Sophie seemed to be reading from a website or book on kidnapping. She sounded like a grown-up, all serious. “Rats, acquaintance kidnapping has the largest percentage of female and teenage victims.”

  As usual, Star was alone with Sophie’s ghost. No witnesses. Why is there never anyone around when you need them? It was bad enough when Sophie appeared to her in her bedroom at night, but the little girl ghost was stalking her outside of her house, out in the world.

  “Sophie, what do you want from me? I’ve heard the statistics. What am I supposed to do?” I’m talking to a dead girl, Star thought. Have I totally lost it? “They checked out everyone. The janitors at school. The teachers. The security guards at the Zone. Cashiers. Every freakin’ person in the mall that day.”

  “Hey, Rats?”

  “What?”

  “Want to go to the mall? I hear Zone is having an awesome sale.” And she let out an eerie laugh.

  But when Star looked again, the girl was gone. She glanced behind her, under the desk, and back at the computer screen. Sophie’s missing photo came around again.

  “Shut up,” Star shouted and punched the power button, but the computer had crashed and wouldn’t shut down. She tapped it again and again, but Sophie’s smiling young face was frozen, staring at her. With shaking hands, Star found a cigarette in her bag and lit it. Then she dug around, looking for something sharp. Nothing. She opened her dad’s desk drawer, and all she came up with were dull pencils, an old wooden ruler, and scraps of paper. Nothing useful. She took another drag and stared at the cigarette in her hand. An idea came to her, and she didn’t stop to think it through. She just shoved her sleeve up and stabbed the burning end of the cigarette on her arm, holding it there for a few blistering, flesh-ripping seconds.

  Tears sprang to her eyes, and she shrieked, “Fuck!” Why it hurt so much more than the cutting, she didn’t know. She ran to the bathroom and let cold water run over it for five minutes. When the pain subsided to a heavy throb, she grabbed her stuff and noticed that the computer screen had gone to black. She turned out the lights and hightailed it out of there. She just wanted to get home, crawl into bed, and sleep forever.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jesse looked back at Barnes, and he nodded. She opened the door to Sophie’s room, and what hit her first, as always, was the scent. The air was stuffy, but there was also a piney, woodsy smell. They took a step in, with Saint Anthony following. Every book, article of clothing, and piece of furniture was left as it had been That Day. The sheets of the bed were rumpled and left unmade. The top drawer of the dresser stood ajar, one white sock hanging out. Sophie’s bedroom was a time capsule.

  Barnes took it all in. The walls were painted with a whimsical floor-to-ceiling forest mural in all shades of nature. Different birds were hidden away like a Where’s Waldo picture. A sheltering canopy of green fabric leaves hung over the bed.

  “This is beautiful,” he said. “Like being in a tree house.”

  Jesse reached up and touched one of the soft fabric leaves between her fingers. “When she was five, Sophie asked me to make her room like the woods. So I created this huge tree over her bed. I made the limbs out of wire and papier-mâché. I sewed these leaves out of felt and attached them.” Over a hundred green leaves drooped down.

  Sophie had instructed Jesse as to which birds she wanted in the mural. A large black crow with an iridescent violet patch on its head rested on a branch. With a slightly turned-up corner at the edge of its beak, it seemed to be smiling, as though it knew a secret. A blue jay was concealed behind shrubbery. A portion of a cardinal could be seen in a bird house. Jesse gestured at a large barred owl high up in a tree, its big eyes peering out from behind a cluster of oak leaves. “This guy is Mr. Nobody.” And nodding over to a delicate black-capped chickadee that poked its face out of a tree hole, she said, “That’s Elliot.”

  Barnes smiled. “Sophie named them, I take it.”

  “Yes. These are some of the birds she saw in our yard. They became her friends.”

  Bookshelves held field guides, a collection of nests, CDs of birdsongs, and the white bleached bones of a robin. Turkey feathers were stuffed in a jar like a bouquet. It looked more like the room of a teenage boy than a typical frilly girl’s room.

  Barnes took Jesse’s hand, and they slid onto the carpeted floor, their backs against Sophie’s bed. The dog circled and snuggled up at their feet.

  Jesse said, “It’s pathetic, but I haven’t even gone through her things. I think about doing it all the time, then I just can’t.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  Jesse picked up one of Sophie’s field guides from the nightstand and held it to her chest. “She made up this game. She called it ‘What kind of bird?’ She got me and Cooper and her best friend, Star, to play. We’d have to figure out what kind of bird a person was most like. You know, by how they looked and their behavior.” She smiled, remembering. “She called me a scarlet tanager. An amazingly beautiful red bird that was one of her favorites. But if she was mad at me for nagging her, I was a whippoorwill.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Because they’re big-headed and repeat their song over and over.” She flipped through the field guide then set it down. “I’d come back at her and say she was a grackle. Noisy. A real nuisance. A troublemaker. Some people call it the devil bird.”

  “That sounds like most kids.” Barnes smiled.

  “Mostly I called her my little chickadee. A black-capped chickadee. Small, inquisitive. Like her. They’ll eat out of your hand. They’re colorful with a lovely song.” Then she imitated the bird in a soft, high-pitched voice. “Fee-bee, fee-bee.”

  Jesse gazed off for a minute then said, “Anything bird related. She was on it. But she really loved the crows.”

  “Crows? Really? I thought they were mean.”

  “They have a bad reputation, but they’re actually very smart.” She got up and pulled a clear plastic box down from one of the shelves. She brought it over to Barnes and sat
back down next to him. She placed it gently on her lap, dusting off the lid, caressing it as if it were the most precious thing in the world. She opened the lid. It had many individual compartments, made to separate and hold lots of little things like beads or buttons. This box held numerous small objects, all different. Some were rusty; others were shiny. Metal and plastic. Glass and ceramic. A funny collection of colorful little bits.

  Barnes looked up at her, waiting for an explanation.

  “These are Sophie’s prized possessions. Gifts left for her by her crows.”

  “Gifts?”

  She nodded. There was an orange-colored marble in one compartment with a little white handwritten label: Porch railing. 10:30 a.m. April 16, 2010. A small red plastic button: Bird bath. 3:10 p.m. July 7, 2011. A rusty screw and nut. A green wooden bead. A piece of beach glass the color of a summer sky. A broken metal toy car. Tin foil scrunched up into a tiny ball. A chewing gum wrapper. A bent-open paper clip. And on and on.

  “I know they look like tossed-away items. Junk. Like my finds. But they’re not junk. They are gifts that were left for Sophie. She used to feed the crows. Peanuts mostly. Sometimes granola or pumpkin seeds. Pieces of apple. Cookie crumbs. We had a platform feeder. The crows would gather in the trees in the backyard, waiting and watching. A whole group of them. A murder, they’re called, if you can believe that. Cawing up a storm. They would watch her closely, as closely as she watched them. They got to know her and her routine. Got to trust her, I guess. Sometimes she hand-fed them. And after a couple years, when she put out food for them, maybe the next day or so, maybe a week later or more, she’d find these little presents left for her. Usually in the birdbath, sometimes right on the feeder. Or the ground. At first, we thought they were dropped by accident. But then she started watching very carefully, and we started to photograph the crows in action. Cooper even set up a bird cam so we saw them leaving the gifts.”