What She Left Behind

by Tracy Bilen

  “Maybe.” Mr. Paterson shrugs his shoulders. “So when is it?”

  I look at Alex. “I don’t exactly remember what the sign said—until six, maybe?”

  Alex nods.

  “No, no,” Mr. Paterson says. “I mean, when’s the party?”

  “November fourteenth.”

  “Is that a Saturday?”

  “Yeah.” I have no idea what day that is. I hope that they don’t either.

  “Okay. We’ll mark it on our calendar, then.” Mr. Paterson stands. I reach down and pick up the contaminated dog-drool-lemonade glass.

  “Let me take that for you.” Mr. Paterson leads us back through the kitchen and to the screen door.

  “Thanks for the lemonade,” I say. The Labrador jumps on me and gives me a big lick on the cheek. I don’t want to be rude so I don’t wipe it off. As we walk back to the car, the wind makes the dog slobber cold against my cheek.

  Back in the car I put my head on Alex’s shoulder. One of the coolest things about Alex is that he’s okay with just holding me even if he doesn’t understand why. Right then I know that I’m screwed. In a few days my mom’s coming back for me, and I’ll have to leave Alex.

  And if she doesn’t come back, it can mean only one thing.

  She’s dead.

  CHAPTER 9

  Saturday

  Twelve twenty. I have maybe five minutes before Dad gets home. Unless he already is. Dad always leaves work at noon on Saturdays. As Alex and I approach our driveway, my palms start to sweat. I don’t want Alex to meet my dad, because Dad is always rude to my friends, Matt’s friends, and my mom’s friends. I wipe my hands on my jeans and sigh in relief when I notice that the garage door is still closed.

  “I’d invite you in, but the place is a mess,” I say. Actually, I’d like to make out with you on the piano bench again.

  “Somehow I doubt that.”

  “I have a lot of homework?” I’ve got to figure out where my mom is.

  “Nope. Not buying that one.”

  “Okay, then. I can see only the truth will do. I’m actually a Russian spy sent here to infiltrate Scottsfield High.” And now you really have to go or my dad’s going to drive up and it won’t be pretty.

  “I always knew there was something suspicious about Altman. It’s him you’re after, isn’t it?”

  “Most definitely.”

  “Pick you up at seven thirty, then?”

  “I’ll be here.” Unless my mom comes back or I’m dead. Either one.

  Before he can say anything else, I jump out of the car and wave. Alex drives a few feet and stops. He rolls down the window. “I almost forgot,” he says. “I downloaded ‘Wildfire’ for you. Here you go.” He tosses a thumb drive out the window, then guns the engine and drives off in a cloud of dust. Oh, Dad would just love that. Please let the dust settle before he gets back.

  I go inside and put the thumb drive in my duffel bag. I’m pretty sure the song doesn’t have a happy ending. I decide to wait and play it after my mom comes back for me. I also quickly repack my bag so it’ll be ready for Tuesday. I put in everything I’ll need except for the things Dad would expect to see, like Sam and my photo album.

  Normal. You have to act normal for when Dad gets home. This had to be like any other weekend. On a normal Saturday afternoon, I would practice my clarinet, so that’s exactly what I do.

  I get out my shrunken clarinet, my portable music stand, and some sheet music from my room, and go out to my pumpkin patch, which is in the middle of the front field. I’ve always loved pumpkins, so one day at dinner a few years ago I said, “Wouldn’t it be cool to have a pumpkin patch?”

  “Not,” Matt answered. My mom was indifferent. My dad, on the other hand, was all for it. “Great idea!” he said. The next day he was outside in the middle of the field with the roto-tiller. I ran outside and watched, all happy.

  He smiled at me. He never does that anymore.

  When the pumpkins are big enough, I sometimes sit on them. When they’re not, I sit on the wooden bench my dad made for me that’s between the pumpkin patch and the skating pond. Well, we call it the skating pond, but it’s really just part of the field that dips lower than the rest and tends to flood and ice over. Matt and I used to put on our skates and chase each other on it. An iced-over hay field has lots of bumps. Matt always did his best to catch me before I wiped out, but we usually both ended up tangled together in a pile on the ice, laughing. We’d sit there for a while, talking, until we got too cold, then we’d go inside and have hot chocolate.

  I sit on the bench and unfold the music stand, then attach the music with clothes pins. The breeze feels good. I start with the “Russian Sailor’s Dance.” I love how fast it goes. Next I play “I Had a Bad Day.” Matt used to like that song. He left it on continuous repeat the day he died.

  “We still going biking, Sara?” Matt had asked, leaning against his cherry-red convertible in the school parking lot.

  I’d never heard of a Karmann Ghia before Matt had dragged it home. It’s made by Volkswagen, which meant that Matt loved the car partly because it was foreign and partly because it was cute. My dad hated it because he’s still against anything foreign on account of the whole dead-partner-Internal-Affairs issue. So Matt had to rebuild the car on his own. Even if he hadn’t despised the convertible on principle, Dad wouldn’t have been much help. He didn’t know the first thing about restoring a car. He didn’t even change his own oil.

  “Oh, sorry. I kind of forgot,” I said as I brushed by him with Lauren. “I’m going home with Lauren to work on our history project.”

  “Jay said he’ll take you home when we’re done,” Lauren volunteered.

  “And you say your brother never does anything nice for you,” I teased her.

  “It’s true. He only does nice things for my friends.”

  Stupid, stupid, selfish, stupid me.

  We didn’t actually have a history project. Instead I walked Lauren home, making my own personal detour to her next-door neighbor Ian’s house. Afterward I’d popped over to Lauren’s.

  “Hungry?” Lauren asked as she rifled through the cupboards.

  “Got any Ritz Bits in there?”

  “Most people don’t keep boxes of Ritz Bits in stock, you know.”

  “Good thing I’m friends with you, then. I see some up there on the top shelf,” I said.

  “Now how am I supposed to reach that? Jay!”

  “What? What’s the matter?” Jay said, appearing from the living room, the Wii remote in his hand.

  “Can you get the Ritz Bits down for Sara?”

  “Don’t bother. I can just get a kitchen chair and climb up,” I said.

  “Oh, no. Jay would just love to help out. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Sure. No problem.” He reached the box easily and tossed it to me like he was at basketball practice.

  “You know, if you want to play basketball, you can just go outside instead of playing it on the Wii,” Lauren said.

  “Or you can wait and play with Matt when you drop me off.”

  “Won’t your dad be home by then?” asked Lauren.

  “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  “Why is it he never lets you guys have any friends over again?” asked Lauren.

  “Too much noise?”

  “Isn’t that a toddler thing? Although I guess my brother does still kind of act like a toddler.”

  Jay flicked her on the head.

  “Ow! Come on, Sara, let’s leave Mr. Immature to his video game.”

  Once we were in Lauren’s room with the door closed she said, “So tell me about your ‘study session’ with Ian.”

  “I felt like such a dork, ringing the doorbell. I was sure his mom was going to answer. But no, it was Ian. Did you see how hot he looked today?”

  She shook her head. “Sorry, I didn’t see him at all today.”

  “Trust me, he looked hot. The first thing he said was ‘My mom had to go to the grocery store.’ And he
got this look in his eyes, you know, like he’s trying to tell me something else.”

  Lauren put her hands under her chin and sighed.

  “‘You want to go do math?’ he asked. Only he puts this pause before the word ‘math.’ So we go to his room. He’s got this basketball hoop hanging over the door, and he shut it so we could take a few shots.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Lauren, rolling her eyes.

  “The room was a mess except for his bed, which was sort of made—the bedspread was on crooked.”

  Lauren raised her eyebrows.

  “So I tried to make this shot and Ian went to block me, only I tripped on a shoe in the middle of the floor and I fell—”

  “Onto the bed,” Lauren finished.

  “Onto the bed,” I said, blushing.

  “So?”

  “We kissed.”

  “And?”

  “He put his hand up my shirt.”

  “And?”

  “Then his mom came home so we sat at the desk and opened a book.”

  Childish, selfish, stupid me.

  That’s what I was doing the day my brother blew his brains out. I’d been avoiding Lauren ever since, until Friday at the football game. I’d been afraid that if we hung out I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about Matt and how I hadn’t been there for him. But somehow that didn’t happen Friday night. She’d made me feel better.

  We still going biking, Sara? I practice the right answer every night as I’m falling asleep, but when I wake up in the morning, nothing has changed.

  One fifteen. Here I am in the middle of a pumpkin patch, trying to make it look like everything is normal, and Dad isn’t even here to see it. Where is he? The store closed at noon and Dad never works late. Enough pretending. I fold my music stand and go back into the house.

  As I pass the office, I pause mid-stride. No. She wouldn’t have. No. There’s no way she would have planned our escape using the home computer. Is there? And if she did, she surely would have deleted the history. … Right?

  Who was I kidding? My mother had a copy of The Internet for Dummies, and as far as I knew, she had never actually read it, so she probably had left a clue on the computer.

  I sit down at the computer and pull up the history. Shit! It’s all here: The Wichita, Kansas, Chamber of Commerce. Really, Mom, Kansas? A real-estate office in Lexington, Kentucky. Another in Bangor, Maine. Houston, Texas. Raleigh, North Carolina. Eau Claire, Wisconsin. San Diego, California. American Airlines. Delta. Southwest. My mom could be in any of those cities. Or in none of them. Did she leave the history because she didn’t know enough to erase it or did she deliberately leave a trail of false clues for my dad to follow?

  I look at my watch. I could call the airlines anytime, but I don’t know how long real-estate offices stay open on Saturdays. I start with San Diego, since it sounds the most appealing.

  “Homes for Hire, may I help you?”

  “Yes, hello. My name’s Michelle Peters and I called last week about an apartment. I can’t remember the name of the person who was helping me.”

  The woman at the other end of the line laughs. “Don’t worry about it. That happens more than you would think. Fortunately our agents keep track of these things on the computer. Let me check for you. Hmm. Peters, you say? Do you remember what day you called?”

  “Monday, maybe?”

  “I’m so sorry. It looks like the agent must have forgotten to enter the information. But I’m sure another agent would be happy to help you. Shall I transfer you?”

  I guess San Diego is out. “You know what? Someone just came to the door. Let me take care of that, and I’ll call back. Thanks so much for your help.”

  The conversation plays out much the same with the other real-estate offices I call, except for the one in Maine. Their answering machine says the offices are closed until ten o’clock on Monday.

  Well, at least I know where not to look. And then I realize my stupidity. Just because no one recognizes my mom’s name doesn’t mean she hasn’t called. In fact, it tells me nothing at all, since I can only hope that my mom didn’t use her real name.

  There’s one more site in the computer history that I needed to check. My mom’s e-mail account. I go to the sign-in screen. Think. What would she use as a password? I try her birthday, her mother’s maiden name (Travis), my name, Matt’s name. Then I try “saramatt.” I’m in. Way too easy, Mom.

  The cuckoo clock sings two. Dad still isn’t home.

  First, I check the sent items. Nothing since Monday. Calm down, Sara. Of course she wouldn’t keep using her old e-mail account. I start going through her in-box. Forty-three unread messages. There’s nothing from anyone named Brian and nothing with a clue as to where she might be. Until I find three receipts, all in a row. Three sets of plane tickets on three different airlines. Denver, Atlanta, Phoenix. None of the cities match the ones from the real-estate offices. All are for the two of us. And all were for last Tuesday.

  God, Mom. This doesn’t make any sense. Were we going to fly one place and then drive to another? Is one of these cities the right one or are they all meant to mislead Dad? I pick up the phone and dial the first airline.

  “All of our customer-service representatives are busy helping other customers. Please hold for the next available representative.” Come on, come on. Before Dad gets here.

  “Good afternoon. My name is Rebecca, employee number 2873. How can I help you today?” Great, I get the woman with the Southern drawl who talks slower than my dad when he’s drunk.

  “My daughter and I missed our flight to Denver on Tuesday and I was wondering if we can still use our tickets on a later flight?”

  “Sure. There is a change fee, but if you give me your confirmation number I can get that taken care of for you.”

  I read the confirmation number off the receipt.

  “One moment, please.”

  One! Come on, lady, please hurry. Ten seconds. Thirty. Forty-five. I have to get off this computer.

  “Thank you for holding. I found your reservation. What is your new departure date?”

  Damn it, no! She was supposed to say sorry, she must have misunderstood. That her records show Michelle Peters took that flight, and that it’s just her daughter who needs to reschedule.

  “Actually, I haven’t decided yet. I just wanted to make sure I can still do that. I’ll call back when I know. Thanks anyway.”

  Thank you not at all. My heart is pounding so hard it hurts. What does this all mean?

  I call the other two airlines and get two other reservation agents who would be delighted to change my reservation. Not one says “You idiot, you got on that flight.” Not one gives me any clue as to where my mother might be.

  I delete the reservations from my mom’s inbox and from the trash, and clear the history on the computer. But I have the feeling that all of this is either too late or not enough to stop my dad from finding her and us.

  I look through the unpaid bills until I find their joint credit-card statement. I call, give my “mother’s” maiden name and the last four digits of “my” social security number. Again, way too easy. I ask for the latest charges to the account. Since Tuesday: Abbot’s Party Store. Dad’s beer. Or maybe his cigarettes. Gas. Fifty dollars’ worth of groceries at the local supermarket. I open the refrigerator door. Pretty sparse. None of them seemed to have made it here. More gas. In other words, no help at all.

  “Just one more thing—can you read me the charges for Monday?”

  No airline tickets. My mom does have a second credit card. And if I’m confused, maybe that means that Dad would be confused too. At least, for a little while.

  I have to find that credit-card number. To know if my mom is still out there somewhere, using it. And if the activity on our home computer is meant to confuse Dad, I need to find the computer my mother really used. I know that she has a laptop at work, not a desktop. So where’s her laptop? She brings it home with her every night. That means she either took it with
her or it’s somewhere in this house. I’ve searched everywhere—except the attic. I pull the ladder down and am on my way up the stairs when Keith Urban starts singing from my phone. Alex.

  “Hey there.”

  God, why do I feel all tingly inside every time I hear his voice? And like I’m in some kind of alternate universe where my mom isn’t missing? Someplace where everything is okay?

  “There’s a Tarzan movie with quicksand on TV,” says Alex.

  “I told you that stuff is more common than you think. But seriously, this is what you’re doing with your Saturday afternoon?”

  “Actually I’m watching college football, but I did blow by the movie. Okay, so I didn’t actually see the quicksand, but I did see Tarzan. Or at least, I think that was him. The movie’s in black and white in any case. Thought maybe we could watch it together, over the phone.”

  “You’re going to watch Tarzan?”

  “How about this—I’ll keep watching college football and you watch Tarzan. That way I can keep track of the score and you can tell me if they make it out alive. Or I can come over and we can—”

  Rip each other’s clothes off. And then maybe I can push the terror out of my mind for just a little while. Unless Dad comes home first.

  “Actually, I’m cleaning the attic.” Which I’m beginning to think is a crazy idea. I’m never going to find anything this way.

  “Okay, yep, that’s exactly what I had in mind.”

  I open a box of old baby clothes. Mainly pink. A few in purple. Sizes six months, twelve months, 2T. I’m not even going to pretend I remember wearing any of it. Why in the world did we still have this stuff? At the bottom of the box I even find some bottles. One of them has a paper rolled up inside. Since when do you need instructions for operating a baby bottle? I take the cap off and pry out the paper.

  It’s a credit-card statement. Recent. One with just my mom’s name on it.