The Fade

by Demitria Lunetta

  I nod. That sounds great, actually.

  “And,” she continues, “we’ll pull up the carpet. Maybe there’s a hardwood floor under there. If not, you can pick out new carpet. But you’ll have to wait a few months, until we’re settled and it’s in the budget. Deal?”

  “Deal,” I say grudgingly. “And I’ll unpack tomorrow,” I promise them.

  Dad nods. “It’s just us tomorrow, guys….Mom starts her first shift.” He looks at her and smiles. My mom reaches up and adjusts his glasses, then plants a kiss on his nose.

  I make a gagging noise. “Um…trying to mope here. Can you guys be all lovey-dovey somewhere else?”

  My dad sweeps my mom into a dramatic dip and then makes loud kissing noises.

  I throw my pillow at them and they leave laughing. Only slightly huffy, I get out of bed to grab my pillow and shut my door. I wish, just a little, that my parents were at least a bit unhappy.

  I turn off the lights and am asleep almost before my head hits the pillow.

  NINE MINUTES DOES not seem like a long time to be dead. Not when she fully recovered, went about her life like nothing had happened.

  But it made her a beacon for those like us. Those who are stuck. Those who could not move on.

  She knows we are here.

  She will be our salvation.

  “TRIXIE! TRIXIE!”

  It takes me a moment to realize where I am. Same bed in a new room, boxes scattered everywhere. I check my phone. It’s 4:36 a.m.

  “Trixie!”

  I push off the covers and head to the window, stumbling over a chair. An old woman is wandering in our backyard, complete with old-lady nightdress and slippers. The moon reflects off the blue of her dress, making her white hair look like it’s glowing.

  There’s a figure approaching her, and I have to blink a couple of times and rub my eyes before I can focus enough to realize it’s my mom, dressed in her teal nurse’s scrubs for her morning shift at the hospital.

  She approaches the old woman, speaking to her gently, then takes her by the shoulders and steers her through the yard. I debate going back to sleep, but I’m already awake, and I’ll gain major Mom points if I go help. Also, I want to know what’s up.

  I slip on my Converse and run down the stairs, through the kitchen, and out the back door. The morning air is chilly, and I wish I’d put on some clothes instead of racing around in my sleep shorts and tank top. I catch a glimpse of Mom disappearing into the house on the right and I follow, stopping at the door.

  “Mom? Is everything okay?”

  She startles at my voice. The wrinkles around her eyes seem to have deepened since the move, and a crease has appeared across her forehead. She was hired on as an RN at the hospital super fast, but at least in Chicago she didn’t have to work the early shift.

  “Yes, Haley.” Her voice is calm and steady. “Mrs. Franz has lost her dog.” She parks the old lady at a table and offers to make her some tea.

  I step inside what I guess is a kitchen. I mean, it has a fridge and a stove, but there are also stacks of newspaper, and garbage bags filled to the brim, spilling over with cans and clothes. One bag even looks like it has hair in it…but it could be doll heads or rugs or something. I scoot by a heap of old fashion magazines and give Mom a look. She shoots me one right back.

  Somehow my mom finds a kettle and some mugs. There are boxes and boxes of tea on the counter, so at least she doesn’t have to hunt for that. She makes us each a cup and places them on the table—well, the few inches of table that aren’t covered with boxes of kitchen appliances. Mrs. Franz has about twelve toasters.

  “I just don’t know what to do. She’s never run off before,” Mrs. Franz is saying.

  “Are you sure she’s not in the house somewhere?” I ask.

  “Of course not,” she snaps, focusing on me. “I’d know if she were here.”

  “Haley is just trying to help, Mrs. Franz,” my mom defends me. “If you want, I can make a poster and put it up at the hospital. Maybe someone has seen her.”

  One of the hazards of being a nurse is caring way too much. I can’t stand how worn my mom looks.

  “I’ll do it,” I offer grudgingly. It’s worth it, though, when I see the gratitude in my mom’s eyes. “I can make flyers this morning and put them up around town. Do you have a picture of Trixie?”

  Mrs. Franz nods and shuffles a few things around on the table, pulling out a Polaroid of a little white fluffy thing. “And what about a phone…?” I don’t know how she would find it under all this crap.

  “Of course I have a phone.” She looks at me blankly.

  “I mean a phone number, to put on the flyer.”

  “Oh, yes.” She whips out a notepad and writes out her number, then tears off the paper and hands it to me. “I’m sorry I snapped at you, dear.”

  “We know you’re upset,” my mom reassures her.

  “You two are very kind. Not like that last family that lived next door.” Mrs. Franz puts her head in her hands. “I just don’t know if I can sleep.” She looks so small and old and broken.

  “I’ll do this first thing,” I promise, feeling really bad for her. Maybe my mom passed some of her empathy down to me. “Then I’ll stop by and see how you’re doing.”

  My mom gives me an approving smile. “At least try to get some rest,” she tells Mrs. Franz. “I’m sure Trixie hasn’t gone far.”

  “We’ll find her,” I assure her.

  My mom and I leave Mrs. Franz with her tea, and I walk Mom to her car in our driveway.

  “Well, that was an unexpected way to start our day,” she says, yawning.

  I nod. “She’s just so sad. And her house is…” I let the words hang in the air.

  “I’ll go back and check on her this week,” my mom tells me, in nurse mode. “I’ll see if she’s willing to have a visitor from social services, or even to come in to the hospital to speak to someone about her hoarding tendencies. Her house doesn’t seem safe.”

  “Not for her or a small dog,” I say softly.

  She smiles and gives me a peck on the head and tells me to go back to bed. I walk up the stairs, startled by a loud sawing noise that sounds familiar. I peek into Shannon’s room, strangely satisfied by the moonlight reflecting off the horrible lime-green carpet. Shannon is snug in her bed, snoring away, unconscious.

  I head back to my room, burrow under my blanket, and wish for that level of oblivion.

  * * *

  “So I met another one of our crazy neighbors,” I tell Shannon later that morning. She’s stretching on the front lawn, and I’m making circles in the driveway with my bike.

  “Don’t let Mom hear you say the c-word,” she tells me. Mom hates how casually the word crazy is thrown around. She says it diminishes people who are actually dealing with mental illness.

  “Fine, but…” I look over to Mrs. Franz’s house, then back to ours and over to the next. I stop pedaling and stare at an elderly man who’s scowling at me and my sister. When he catches me looking, he pulls the curtain shut. “This place is so weird.”

  I felt bad for ignoring all the text messages I got yesterday from my friends, so I sent a group text saying I’m doing well and updates will follow. So I’ve been taking pictures and passive-aggressively bitching. I snap one now of the front of the house and type, Moved in with the Addams family. Lurch says hi.

  Earlier I took one of the upstairs bathroom.

  My new bathroom is actually a time machine. It takes you back to the seventies.

  “A bike ride will do you good,” Shannon tells me, doing a butterfly stretch. “Exercise makes you happy. I didn’t get a run in yesterday, and I can already feel my endorphins dropping.”

  “Really?” I start pedaling again. “Didn’t you move like a thousand boxes?”

  “T
hat’s different. It’s not cardio.” She’s wearing short running shorts and a sports bra.

  “Does Dad know you’re going running dressed like that?” I ask.

  “What? It’s hot outside.” She shrugs.

  I’m wearing jean shorts and a tank top, but all my clothes hang off me, so I look more like I’m going for homeless chic than sporty sexy. I also have my backpack, stuffed to the top with flyers featuring Trixie-the-amazing-missing-pooch, as well as some leftover packing tape.

  Shannon puts in her earbuds and turns up the pop music before she takes off down the block, and I pedal to catch up. She turns to me. “Wanna race downtown?” She’s yelling over the music blasting from her phone.

  “Nah, I’m going to explore more,” I tell her, swerving to split off down a side street. I don’t want the embarrassment of her beating me on foot while I’m on a bike. Besides, it feels nice to be away from the house. I haven’t even begun to make good on my unpacking promise, but I’ve been busy with flyer stuff, so Mom will understand.

  It’s hot, but the breeze makes it bearable. I start putting the flyers in people’s mailboxes, which are all next to the road, so it’s super easy. That is, until some annoying housewife yells at me that it’s illegal to put things in people’s mailboxes. She looks really angry, so after that, I stick to plastering the flyers on telephone poles.

  There are a bunch of old houses like ours, but a lot of them have been updated with new redbrick and white pillars. There’s also a strange spattering of more modern architecture. One house has giant floor-to-ceiling windows, which would be nice if there were actually a view, but as far as I can see, the only thing the windows look out on is the house across the street. Maybe I should mention this to the creepy old man I saw earlier. Large, sprawling windows for your stalking convenience.

  Eventually I make it downtown. There’s a little town hall and a library. There’s also a super-weird set of statues of life-size teen girls cast in bronze, holding hands in a circle. The plaque just says THEY SHALL NEVER FADE FROM OUR MEMORIES.

  I snap a picture for my friends.

  Creepiest town ever.

  “Hey, new girl!” someone shouts, and I turn to find a group of kids hanging out on the library lawn. One of the guys is beckoning me over. They look about my age, so I hop off my bike and walk it over to them. The ground is littered with soda cans and aluminum foil; it looks like they’ve been eating lunch.

  “How do you know I’m new?” I ask the boy, whose bleached-blond hair actually works for him. He looks like he could be a surfer dude, though I doubt he gets much surfing done in Wisconsin.

  He looks me up and down and smiles, showing dimples. I bite my lip. There’s no denying he’s cute.

  “Everyone pretty much knows everyone around here,” he tells me.

  “It can’t be that small a town.”

  “Well, it is. But…I’m one of your neighbors,” he admits. “I saw you moving in yesterday. I would have offered to help, but…”

  “You had other plans?” I ask.

  He barks out a laugh. “I had to take my little brother somewhere.”

  “No worries. I’d pretty much rather do anything other than move. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a choice.”

  He grins. “I’m Coop, by the way. They’re”—he motions over his shoulder—“not important.” Which gets some laughs and some wrappers thrown at him. He ignores it. “Are you going to be a freshman?”

  “Sophomore, actually.”

  “Oh, you’re in our grade. Welcome.”

  Someone giggles, and I mutter, “Thank you. Which house do you live in?”

  “The one that shares a yard with you…the yellow one.”

  “Oh! I think I met your brother, then. Chris?”

  “Yeah, he’s…” He falters. “He’s special.” He looks embarrassed, and I don’t know what to say. Especially since his brother is such a little weirdo. Coop’s the one who breaks the awkward silence. “What have you got there?” he asks, eyeing my handful of flyers. I give him one.

  “My neighbor…our neighbor, Mrs. Franz…lost her dog. Have you seen it?”

  He glances at the paper, then back up at me. “Nope. But who cares. Let’s talk more about you.”

  “Well, if you can ask around, that would be great,” I tell him, trying to fight the blush I feel rising on my cheeks.

  “Hey,” one of the girls says loudly. “Coop was talking about you. Your dad is Chinese, right?”

  I sigh. “My dad is from Illinois. And he’s Vietnamese.”

  “Cool. Is that why you’re so small?” Coop asks. Cute but stupid.

  I can’t help but roll my eyes. Before I can explain how thinking all Asian people are small is racist, someone shouts out, “My great-grandpa was part Cherokee.” Followed by everyone naming random countries their relatives came from.

  The girl who asked if my dad was Chinese whispers something to the guy next to her and he looks up at me and says, “So, how do you like living in the Bermuda Triangle?”

  I shake my head, not understanding. I feel like the butt of some joke I don’t get. “Look, I gotta go,” I say, not wanting to hang around to be made fun of even more. Plus, I still have a ton of flyers to put up and a bunch of unpacking to do.

  “Wait.” Coop steps forward. “Come out tonight. We’re going to the lake. There’ll be a bonfire. It’s always fun, and you can meet a bunch of people. Not all of them will be idiots like us, I promise.”

  Despite myself, I smile. “I don’t know….”

  “You can come with me….I’ll come over and we can ride our bikes.”

  He’s coming on strong and I’m still not sure I even want to go. “I still have to unpack….”

  “Oh yeah, of course. No pressure. If you do stop by, I’ll tell you all about our block, why we call it the Bermuda Triangle.”

  “Okay, maybe,” I say, hopping on my bike and pedaling away.

  “It’s at Pine Point. Eight o’clock,” he calls after me, and I raise my hand to acknowledge him. Halfway home I realize I’ve made up my mind to go, not to hear about my creepy house, but to see Coop with his boy-next-door vibe and his surfer-boy smile again.

  “HELLO?” I CALL, stepping through the kitchen door. “Mrs. Franz, it’s Haley from next door. I put up all the flyers, and I just wanted to check in….”

  I walk through the kitchen, skirting some newspapers, and into the living room. There’s a couch, and bookshelves stuffed with worn paperbacks. There are also piles and piles of photographs. I accidentally kick one trying to navigate my way through the room, and an avalanche of pictures goes sliding across the one clear path.

  I hurry to pick them up, placing them back on the stack. I pause at one, a photo of the weird set of statues outside the town hall.

  “Those are the missing girls.” Mrs. Franz’s voice startles me and I jump, causing the photos to cascade back down.

  I rush to pick them up. “I’m sorry. I’m kind of clumsy….”

  “Leave it,” she tells me, motioning for me to head back into the kitchen. She puts the teakettle on. “Has anyone found Trixie?”

  “Oh, no. Sorry. I put up a ton of flyers, though, so maybe someone will call soon.” I really hope Trixie isn’t somewhere in the house, buried under piles of paper. I keep this to myself as I move some sheet sets, still in their plastic packaging, off of a chair and sit. Mrs. Franz sits across from me, pushing a mug with a tea bag my way.

  “So…what’s the story behind the missing girls?” I blurt out.

  She looks at me like she didn’t realize I’m here. “Kaitlyn was the first to go missing. She lived in your house.” The teakettle whistles and Mrs. Franz turns off the stove. She fills my mug with steaming water.

  “What happened?” I ask, holding the warm mug in my hands.

  “At first, t
hey just thought she ran away. She was a bit wild, that one. Her parents couldn’t really control her.” She lowers her voice. “She had a bunch of boyfriends.”

  How horrible, I think, as if being a bit wild were the worst thing ever. Or having boyfriends. My friends from Chicago would get a huge kick out of that. Most have a different boyfriend every week.

  Not that I can talk. Freshman year was basically boy-crazy for me. None of my relationships got very serious, but it was fun to go to movies and hang out by the lake or go to festivals. Most of the guys wound up being losers, or thought because they took me out they were entitled to a make-out session. Yeah, right. So it was on to the next one.

  “What’s wrong with that?” I ask out loud.

  Mrs. Franz gives me a sharp look. “What’s wrong with that is that Kaitlyn vanished and was never heard from again.”

  “So how do you know she didn’t actually just run away?”

  “Because of the girls that followed. All gone without a trace, all fifteen or sixteen years old, all right from this neighborhood.”

  “And the cops never caught anyone?” I ask. On TV there’s always a clue—forensic evidence, or a slip-up the killer makes so they can be brought to justice. My dad loves those crime drama shows. I think they’re super boring, and I usually duck out before they reveal the killer.

  “Oh, they questioned a few people here and there. Didn’t find a thing. It drove the families mad, not knowing. The smart ones moved away.”

  “And our house has just been empty since…?” I ask, swallowing hard.

  “Oh, no. The first people to buy it were a nice couple. The wife got a job in Boston, though, so they left. Before you there was a woman with a dreadful set of twin boys. They weren’t even children—grown men living at home, taking advantage. They’d have these parties. They were so loud. I was so relieved when they moved.”

  I let out a shaky laugh. “There haven’t been any disappearances for years?” I ask.