by Lisa Fiedler
I all but dive for the newspaper, my eyes going directly to the shiny little coin, which has landed, not accidentally, beside a small headline.
BROOKSVALE GIRL GOES MISSING
FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED
Sixteen-year-old Catherine Hastings, daughter of Davis Hastings, vanished from the home of a friend . . .
There’s no picture. Shouldn’t there be a picture? Isn’t that what they do when they want to find a missing person? They print a photograph so law enforcement and good Samaritans will know who to look for. My attention shifts to the other paper, today’s Newark Star-Ledger where I see the same article.
There’s an AP in the dateline, which means the article has gone out on the wire.
On the wire. The irony is not lost on me. Or is it some strange poetic injustice?
Either way, I don’t waste time reading further. I grab Cornelius’s dime and go.
* * *
• • •
Woolworth’s again. I blow past the luncheonette counter and go straight to a pay phone, where I drop my dime into the slot and tell the operator I’d like to make a long-distance call to Brooksvale, Mass. She tells me how much the first minute will cost, and I clank more of the Ringmaster’s change into the hungry telephone.
Then I dial the number of Emily’s private line.
It rings once, twice . . . I picture the princess telephone on her night table bleating like a pink plastic lamb.
“Hello?”
“Emily!”
She hesitates. “Petula!” she says loudly.
I could cry. Her parents are probably just down the hall and can hear every word. “I’m all right,” I tell her.
A grateful rush of breath comes through the phone’s earpiece like a hurricane-force wind. Then she lowers her voice and rambles in a whisper: “When you didn’t show up, I knew. I just . . . knew. And I wasn’t worried because . . . I don’t know, Cath, I just had this feeling. I thought, ‘Wow, this is it, she’s finally going to get away from that son of a bitch.’ I was so sure of it I wasn’t even surprised when your father showed up at our house.”
My heart slams against my ribs. “Emily, what did you tell him?”
“I told him I didn’t know where you were. I told him that we went to the circus last night, but this morning you were gone.”
Oh, God. Oh no. I am reeling from how close her lie was to the truth.
“I told him the show was sold out when we got there, so we just played some games on the midway, and then we met some college boys and flirted with them and got them to buy us ice cream.”
I bet my father just loved that.
“I also said you were acting kind of weird all night, like you had something on your mind, and you kept talking about this place in Maine . . . about some cabin you and your mother stayed at once when you were little.”
My hopes lift slightly. “You said I went to Maine?” I’d only told her about that cabin once, and I’m oddly touched that she remembered. That trip was the one time my mother ever considered leaving my father, and those two days away were the most peaceful two days of my life. Even though, in the end, she got scared and went back.
“You’re not in Maine, are you? Because right after I said it, I thought maybe I shouldn’t have just in case—”
“I’m not in Maine,” I tell her.
“Good.” She takes a deep breath to go on with her story. “I told them we fell asleep in the rumpus room the minute we got back—you know my parents never check—and when I woke up the next morning, you were gone. And I swear, Cathy, they believed every word. Then your father used our phone to call the police. And he said right after he finished the call, he’d go straight to the newspaper.”
“I know,” I say, my chest tightening. “I saw the article. But it was so weird, Emily . . . There was no—”
“Photograph? Well, here’s what happened with that.” I can picture her flopping onto her flowered bedspread, tugging on the spiral phone cord like she always does when she talks to Cliff Parker. “While your father was talking to the fuzz, I snuck out and went to your house. I wanted to tell your mother . . . well, I wasn’t sure what, maybe just that I was sure you were okay. And, Cathy, do you know what she was doing?”
I swallow hard. “What?”
“Somehow she’d managed to gather up every single picture of you that there was in that house! She’d gotten all the photo albums and the pictures in frames—oh, Cath, it must have been so exhausting for her.” I imagine her shaking her head, just like I am, in disbelief. “She was burning them! Right there on the living room carpet! She was destroying all your pictures . . . even your cotillion portrait. At first I didn’t understand. Then I realized it was so he couldn’t print them in the paper, so you’d be harder to find.”
My face is wet with tears. My chest is heaving. I’m nodding in agreement but of course Emily can’t see. I have no voice, no words. Mothers and daughters. Amazing.
“We let the fire burn until there was nothing but ashes and then I helped her up to bed.”
She pauses, and I reach for a napkin from the lunch counter to dry my eyes because somehow, I sense what’s coming next.
“Cathy, I’m so sorry.” Emily pauses again. She doesn’t want to say it, but I need her to, and she knows it. “She died, Cathy. She died in her sleep.”
“Probably so she wouldn’t have to listen to my father scream at her for ruining the living room rug,” I say, because I need to hear Emily laugh, and because my mother would want me to laugh.
“Probably,” Emily agrees, and I can hear her smile through the phone. Then, again: “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. She’s getting away from that son of a bitch too.” I take a long, shuddery breath. “Please don’t tell anyone I called, okay?”
“Never! I swear. And if they ask me more questions, I’ll just keep right on lying. You’ve done it for me enough times.” She’s crying now too. “I’m going to miss you so much, Cath.”
I want to say it back to her. I can’t, but I don’t have to. She knows.
Now the operator breaks in, asking for change. And it’s almost funny. Change.
Rather than depositing Cornelius’s remaining coins into the slot, I simply place the receiver back on the hook.
Goodbye, Emily. I say it in my heart and I’m sure she hears me.
As I walk slowly back to the circus, I can’t help wondering if my mother actually willed herself to die in her sleep, if only as a means of distracting my father from searching for me long enough to give me a head start.
Mothers and daughters, indeed.
When I reach the fairgrounds, I send up a prayer for my mother’s soul, and another one, thanking the Lord Almighty for making Emily Davenport the excellent liar she is.
NINE
CALLIE’S MORNING WAS ONE big game of catch-up.
Her English class was already three-quarters of the way through To Kill a Mockingbird, and the teacher, Ms. Connelly, seemed genuinely saddened by the fact that she didn’t have a single copy left for Callie, who’d either have to check the book out of the library or buy her own on Amazon.
Too bad they weren’t reading The Catcher in the Rye; Callie knew where she could get her hands on one of those.
“You can try Mr. Anderson,” Ms. Connelly suggested. “He teaches AP English Lit. They read Mockingbird in the fall, so he might be willing to lend you his copy. He shares the AP History space with Dr. Wu, behind the band room.”
Unfortunately, Callie didn’t know where the band room was. She thought maybe Jenna had alluded to it in her turbo-tour spiel, but she wasn’t sure, as she’d been suffering the lingering effects of sex wax at the time.
In chemistry class, a teacher whose name she couldn’t remember (despite the fact that it was embroidered on his lab coat) handed her a textbook and a syllabus, informing he
r from behind his safety goggles that she was roughly nine chapters behind on said syllabus, and suggesting that it might not be a bad idea to brush up on her Bunsen burner protocol. She’d never heard the word syllabus in her life; she was also a little fuzzy on what a Bunsen burner was. (At the circus, sticking to the curriculum was at the sole discretion of their teacher-slash-poodle-trainer, so science class often consisted of watching a baby llama be born or analyzing the cotton-candy-making process.)
Gym was a total nonstarter. Coach Fleisch explained that the only classes that would fit into Callie’s academic schedule were full to capacity, so she’d have to earn her PE credit for the semester by joining an extracurricular sports team. Her enthusiastic recommendation: croquet.
In history, Callie was told by Mr. Carson that she had missed the entire Industrial Revolution. He advised her to pick up a study guide from the Peer Tutoring Center, the sooner the better as there was a quiz on Thursday.
Callie had no idea where the Peer Tutoring Center was. And the thought of asking one of the 890 strangers who were her new schoolmates had her feeling slightly nauseous.
Finally, lunch.
She remembered Jenna saying that the cafeteria was down a ramp. Or was it up a staircase? It wasn’t in the hall with the orange lockers, she knew that much.
After wandering for a bit, Callie caught the unmistakable scent of tater tots and followed it to the lunchroom. Taking advantage of the fact that it was Monday, she helped herself to a salad, scanned the gigantic space for an empty table, and sat down.
She took out her new phone and, between bites of red pepper and raw broccoli, resumed her struggle to get online. She couldn’t really imagine Marcello would say no to her request to join him in Italy, but it couldn’t hurt to have a backup plan. There were circuses all over America, all over the world, and with her reputation as a gifted young tightrope walker preceding her, Callie doubted she’d have trouble finding a new position.
She knew she couldn’t work without her mother’s permission of course, but she’d cross that bridge (or high wire, as it were) when she came to it . . . if she came to it.
She was so engrossed in navigating her touchscreen that it was a moment before she noticed someone had taken the seat across from her.
Callie snapped her gaze up to see a boy studying her from the opposite side of the table.
“Hot girl riding a horse?”
Callie frowned at him. “Excuse me?”
“Hot girl riding an elephant?” This came from a second boy, who’d sidled up on Callie’s right. “Which I’m guessing is definitely better than the other way around.”
Callie’s heart slammed once, twice. She didn’t feel threatened exactly—she was sitting in a crowded cafeteria with teachers posted like sentinels at every corner—but whatever this was, it was both very uncomfortable and extremely unwelcome.
The second boy had dropped his lunch bag onto the table and was sliding into the plastic chair next to Callie. “You’re the circus freak, right?”
Her stomach flipped; a trickle of sweat began to snake its way between her shoulder blades.
“Dude, I’m pretty sure you can’t say circus freak,” the first boy admonished. “It’s not politically correct.”
“It’s not any kind of correct, you idiot.” A tall girl with long blond curls was taking the seat on Callie’s left. She offered a genuinely friendly smile, and Callie felt a wave of relief—until she said, “Contortionist! No, wait . . . acrobat—but not the regular kind, the kind with those swirly, ribbony things.”
“Rhythmic gymnast,” the boy on her right clarified, with enough authority to earn himself a raised eyebrow from the boy across the table. “What? It’s girls in leotards. I pay attention to that stuff.” He turned a goofy grin to Callie. “Hot girl on a tiger? Clown-car driver? Hot clown-car driver?”
So they were trying to guess what she’d done in the circus. Callie couldn’t tell if this constituted a clever and good-natured way to meet the new girl, or if they were simply trying to humiliate her. The fact that she’d begun to feel nauseous told her it was probably the latter.
And it was about to get worse.
Kristi came sauntering across the lunch room as if she really were Queen Isabella. “Hope you don’t mind,” she said, clearly hoping no such thing. “We just thought it’d be fun to make a little contest out of trying to figure out what you did in the circus.”
“Right,” came a familiar voice from behind Callie. “’Cause that’s what every new kid in school wants . . . to have their actual life turned into a guessing game.”
When Kip slid into the chair beside the first boy, diagonally across from Callie, she could have collapsed from gratitude. Reaching for her water bottle, she realized her hands were shaking.
“We’re just goofin’ around,” said the second boy, helping himself to the pudding cup on Callie’s tray. “Hey, I’m Zach. Sorry if things got weird.”
Was he? Was he really sorry?
“Jacob,” said the boy next to Kip. “And by the way, tiger or no tiger, you’re still pretty hot.”
The blond girl reached behind Callie to give Jacob a smack in the back of the head, then introduced herself as Emma-Kate. “Okay, so the suspense is killing us. What did you do in the circus?”
Callie sighed. “I was—am—a tightrope walker.” Somehow, it felt less like a simple explanation than it did a confession, and a pretty dirty one at that.
“Hot girl on the high wire!” said Jacob, slapping his hand on the table as if he’d known it all along. “That was definitely gonna be my next guess. And also . . . pretty freakin’ cool.”
“Yeah,” Zach agreed. “Puts a whole new spin on ‘getting high.’”
“That must’ve taken a lot of guts,” Emma-Kate allowed. “I’m not crazy about heights. And Kristi has panic attacks in Nordstrom’s mezzanine.”
Kristi glared.
“Hey, Callie, I think I saw you getting dropped off this morning,” said Zach. “Your dad drives a Range Rover, right?”
“Wait, so . . . not a clown car?”
“Jake!” Kip took a tater tot off his plate and lobbed it at Jacob. “Game’s over, pal. Move on, okay?”
“He’s, uh, he’s not my dad,” Callie said, her cheeks flushing. “He’s . . . I guess you’d call him our landlord.”
Kristi looked stricken. “You rent?”
“Yeah. Well, no. We just kind of live where my mother works.”
“So she’s a maid?” Sounds like: So she’s a topless-dancer-slash-serial-killer.
Apparently, Brad and Jenna hadn’t exaggerated the town’s opposition to the rescue facility. But her classmates were going to find out where she lived sooner or later, so she might as well get it over with. “She’s not a maid, she’s an animal specialist,” Callie said. “She works with exotic animals.”
It took Kristi exactly three sips of Vitamin Water to make the connection. “You live at the Sanctuary?”
Apparently, this was even worse than having a homicidal stripper for a mom.
“So lemme get this straight,” said Zach, intrigued. “You’re a hot circus girl who lives at the zoo for fucked-up animals.”
“Oh, that is so definitely not politically correct,” said Jake.
Kristi gave Callie a chilling smile. “My father’s the mayor of Lake St. Julian. He’s been trying to close down that disgusting place for almost a year. According to him, the Sanctuary is a hazard. And if anything tragic ever happened there, it would bring down the property values of the entire town.”
And there was the noose.
So Jenna was right. And so was Gram: Beauty on the outside, danger on the inside. Kristi Baylor, in a nutshell.
Jake shrugged. “I gotta say, K-Bay, I never quite got why your pops has such a grudge against that place. What’s he got against endangered species? They
’re not bothering anybody. They’re just trying to, like, remain on the planet.”
“It’s not a grudge, it’s politics.” Kristi’s eyes flashed. “And public safety. What if one of those tigers gets loose and winds up in your backyard?”
“Chowing down on your stupid little English bulldog,” Zach added with a snort.
“Fuck you, Zach. Pugsly isn’t stupid.”
Callie stared at her lunch, wishing she could disappear.
“Did you know the town council offered to buy the estate from Mr. Marston?” Kristi went on. “They had all these investors lined up, who were planning to turn it into a five-star resort. But Marston wouldn’t sell.”
“Seriously?” Zach huffed. “Well, that sucks. Can you imagine the awesome summer jobs we could’ve gotten at a place like that?”
“Sidenote,” said Emma-Kate. “I saw Brad Marston buying a latte at Starbucks once, and he’s pretty hot for an old guy.”
“I don’t think you’re gonna care how hot he is when his elephants trample your house,” said Zach.
“Oh my God, Zach.”
Callie whirled at the sound of Jenna’s voice.
“Did you take another croquet mallet to the skull? Nobody’s house is going to be trampled by elephants. Marston has them in secure enclosures with like a zillion different fail-safes. And, Kristi, if you’re really taking an interest in your father’s political agenda, why don’t you start with something you can actually get behind personally . . . like talking him into supporting the principal’s plan to hand out condoms in school.”
“Whoa.” Jake scowled. “Your old man’s against free condoms?”
“Like you’d ever have a reason to use one,” drawled Emma-Kate.
During all of this, Kristi had been shooting Jenna looks that could melt glaciers, but Jenna didn’t seem overly concerned. Completely ignoring Kristi’s death glare, she leaned down to whisper sharply in Callie’s ear.
“Mean Girls. Rent it.”
Without another word to Callie or anyone else, Jenna turned and walked away.