With a loud thwack, the ball ricocheted off of the bat and rocketed right in between the shortstop and the third baseman. The shortstop lunged and missed, and the ball dropped in an open area of the field, causing the outfielders to chase after it in a haze of confusion. Hart chucked the bat aside and sprinted off, rounding first base and careening toward second before the ball had even reached an opponent’s glove. She didn’t slow, glancing over her shoulder to check the outfielders’ progress as her cleat stomped a cloud of dust from the second base bag. An opposing player tossed the ball infield. Hart’s base coach, a deputy with a scruffy beard, held up his hands, coaxing her to slow down at third.
“Stay, stay!” he ordered.
But the infielder fumbled the ball, and Hart put on a burst of speed, pumping her arms as she barreled toward home. The third baseman controlled the ball and threw it toward the plate. Hart slid through the dirt, her cleat skidding across the plate just before the catcher closed his mitt. He tapped her pants with his glove, but the referee spread his arms to either side.
“Safe!”
Hart stood, grinning, as the rest of her team cheered from the dugout. As she passed me, she gave me a thumbs-up. I stayed for the rest of the game. Hart’s run acted as inspiration for the other officers, and Belle Dame won, twelve to ten.
After, as the players rejoined their friends and families in the bleachers, I drifted away from the field. The sky was dark, and it was late enough to return to the motel, go to bed, and hope for jet lag to let me sleep until morning. As I cleared the blinding lights of the recreation center, a voice called out behind me.
“Hey, wait up!” Officer Hart jogged toward me, a bat bag bouncing over her shoulder. Her white softball pants were stained orange with infield clay from her sliding home run. “Just wanted to say thanks for the tip.”
“No problem.”
“Do you play?”
“Not anymore,” I told her. “My sister sort of took up that mantle for me.”
Officer Hart adjusted her bag so that it sat more comfortably on her shoulder, the bats clinking together. “You must be Bridget Dubois.”
“What gave it away?” I asked, shaking her hand. “The sibling resemblance or the bar fight from last night? Sorry about that, by the way.”
Officer Hart dismissed my apology with a casual wave. “Don’t worry about it. Bar brawls are the least of my worries. I’m glad to see you didn’t lose an eye though.”
“It was close.” I gingerly dabbed the purple bruise. “You’re new in town, aren’t you?”
“How do you figure?”
“Different kind of drawl,” I said. “Plus I’ve known almost everyone here since high school. How long have you been in Belle Dame?”
“About a year,” Hart answered. “Thought I’d transfer somewhere quiet for a while.”
“Long enough to know my sister then.”
“Yeah, Holly’s a great kid.” Hart studied my expression with a calculating gaze. “That’s why you came back, isn’t it? To find her.”
“Something like that.” I hung my heels off of the curb and bounced on my toes. “Do you know anything about her disappearance?”
The crowd at the softball field had all but dispersed. The stadium lights blinked out, plunging the street into relative darkness until my eyes adjusted to the dim yellow streetlights. Officer Hart’s gaze flickered in every direction, taking note of her surroundings. I wondered where she worked before. Her vigilance suggested it was a place far grittier than Belle Dame.
“I wasn’t assigned to Holly’s case,” she said. “We have a lot of officers working on it though. Bill Miller is a friend of the chief’s. We’re giving him daily updates.”
“There’s enough information for daily updates, huh?”
Hart arched an eyebrow. “Let me guess. The Millers won’t tell you anything.”
“Not a word.”
She lifted her cap from her head and ran her fingers through her sweaty, tangled hair. “I’m sorry. That’s gotta be difficult.”
“It’s mostly just annoying,” I said. “But I expected it. Listen, is there any way that I could get access to Holly’s case information as well? I know I’m not technically her legal guardian, but as her sister—”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
I lost my balance and stepped off the curb. “Wow, I thought that was going to take more convincing.”
Hart put her cap on, backwards this time, and shrugged. “This whole town has stories about you, Bridget. I’m not sure which ones to believe. All I know is that if one of my younger siblings went missing, I’d be pulling my hair out.”
“Thanks. I guess.”
“I should go. You got a number?”
“No, I don’t have a phone.”
“Well, go buy one.” She turned in the opposite direction, toward the apartment block near the center of town. “It’s irresponsible not to have one.”
I saluted her. “Yes, sir, Officer Hart.”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s Mackenzie. Mac, if we’re friends.”
“I could use a friend who didn’t know me in high school,” I admitted as I walked backward toward the motel.
“Call me Mac then.”
“What’s my name?”
“Don’t. Please, don’t.”
“What’s my name, Bridget?”
“Fox. It’s Fox.”
“Say it again, baby.”
I ripped myself out of unconsciousness, gasping for air. The numbers of the alarm clock on the bedside table cast a faint green glow against the stark white sheets. It was just after three in the morning. My T-shirt stuck to my chest, damp with sweat. The heavy blanket trapped my legs against the mattress. I kicked it off and curled my knees up, hugging them into my chest. I rested my head down but didn’t close my eyes. The cheap motel room was less of a nightmare than the lingering vision behind my eyelids.
After a minute or two, I got out of bed. I was wide awake now, and there was no point in pretending to go back to sleep. I wiggled into my new jeans—which lay in a heap from the night before—pulled a light sweatshirt over my head, donned a fresh pair of sneakers, and left the motel.
The town was silent save for the chirping crickets and the rasp of my shoes against the pavement. I walked in the street, balancing along the double lines in the middle. The traffic lights blinked yellow, obsolete without the bustle of moving cars. At a large intersection, I stopped below the crisscrossing wires, in the direct center of the junction. Glass and debris sparkled against the asphalt, blown into clean shapes by the pattern of traffic. It crunched beneath my shoes.
Down the road, on the outskirts of town, a light layer of fog rested on the headstones in the yard of the local cemetery. It was a rule, or so it seemed, that every cemetery was always enshrouded in fog in the middle of the night, as though the spirits that resided there escaped just long enough to hover above the ground before daybreak. They swirled around my feet, chilling the skin of my ankles left bare by my cropped jeans, as I tiptoed past the headstones. I shivered and pulled the sleeves of my sweatshirt down to cover my hands, unsure if the cold was due to the dewy night or the breath of the dead.
My parents shared a headstone. I stood at a safe distance. The engraving was visible, its letters bright white in the moonlight: In loving memory of Alexander and Therese Dubois, beloved husband and wife.
“And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb,” I muttered aloud, reading the quote that had been inscribed beneath the dates.
“And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance,” a deep voice completed.
I whirled around, balling my fists in the pockets of my jacket, but it was only Emmett, dressed in gray joggers and a black hoodie. He stepped back, raising his hands with the palms open, and lowered the hood from his face.
“Whoa,” he said. “A little on edge, aren’t we?”
“It’s three in the morning,” I replied. “What are y
ou doing out here?”
“I don’t sleep much.” He ruffled his hair, which had flattened beneath the hood. “So I take early runs.”
“Through the cemetery?”
He pointed to a headstone positioned diagonally from my parents’. “My grandad’s nearby. I like to say hi.”
“Oh.”
He gestured to the space beside me. “May I?”
“I guess.”
He moved up, folding his hands behind his back as he stood at my side. “Is this the first time you’ve been here since the funeral?”
That day, I’d argued with Aunt Ani about wearing a dress. She was still lucid then, thought it hadn’t lasted much longer. I didn’t make it through the whole ceremony. Emmett and I had stood just like this, side by side, except our fingers had been intertwined then. The funeral attendants lowered the caskets into the ground then asked for each of us to throw a handful of dirt into the fresh grave. I couldn’t do it. I stared into the silver bucket of dirt. Ani nudged me in the back.
And Emmett whispered, “Go.”
He’d probably meant to encourage me forward, but the word had had the opposite effect. Instead of grasping a handful of dirt, I spun away from the hole in the ground and ripped through the modest gathering, shoving aside friends and locals that had come to pay their respects. My name echoed through the cemetery as Ani shouted for me to return, but I fled without a second thought.
“Yeah,” I said to Emmett, wrenching myself out of the past.
“I used to see Holly here sometimes.”
“I don’t want to think about Holly in a cemetery, Emmett. Especially right now.”
“Sorry.”
Silence fell again. I stared at the headstones. Is this what people did in cemeteries? Did they linger amongst the fog and the shadows until their senses tricked them into thinking the dead could actually feel them there? I leaned my head against Emmett’s shoulder, needing a real human to touch. He was sturdy and tall, and his hands remained respectfully folded behind his back.
“I don’t need you to defend me,” I told him.
“Sorry?”
I tilted my chin up to look him in the eye. “The other night, at the bar, I was taking care of it. I didn’t need you to step in and start a fight.”
“I was just—”
“I don’t care. Don’t do that.”
He shut up, his lips pursed together. “I didn’t think, even for a second, that you weren’t able to defend yourself, Bee. And I’m sorry about your eye.”
When I didn’t reply, he softly moved out from under my touch, though his sneakers stayed planted where they were.
“Special day coming up,” he commented.
“What?”
“Your birthday. It’s Friday, isn’t it?”
I had lost track of the dates again. “Oh. I guess it is.”
Emmett looked down at me. “Are you going to celebrate?”
“No,” I answered sharply. A crisp wind pulled at my hair, untucking several strands from its braid, and Emmett’s calloused fingers smoothed the flyaways against my scalp.
“I know how hard it is for you,” he murmured. “Your birthday is the anniversary of their deaths. I get it. But your parents wouldn’t want you to feel this way.”
I wrapped my arms around myself in a tight hug, tucking my chin into the cross of my wrists. My eyes burned but didn’t water. I squeezed them shut.
Emmett’s sigh was lost in the breeze. “Are you going to the game tomorrow? Or tonight, I should say.”
“What game?”
“Belle Dame versus East High,” he clarified. “Fastpitch. Holly’s team.”
“Not much point in me going when Holly’s not playing.”
“I don’t know about that.” Emmett fiddled with the drawstrings of his hoodie. “It’s a big one. The whole town is going to be there. It would be a good opportunity for you to meet Holly’s friends and coaches. Who knows? Maybe they have some information that might help you find her.”
“You make a fair point.”
“A couple of college scouts might show up as well,” Emmett continued. “I’m sure Bill and Emily will talk Holly up to them. You should chime in too.”
“The fact that I’ve never actually seen Holly play might hinder my ability to grease the palm of a scout,” I replied. “But I guess it wouldn’t hurt to stop by.”
“So you’ll go?”
“Sure.”
He grinned, showing off his dimples again. “Great! You won’t regret it, I promise. As for tonight, can I walk you back to the motel? No offense, but you look like you got hit by a car.”
I swallowed hard and didn’t answer.
“Oh my God,” Emmett said, his face drawn with horror. “I didn’t mean that.” He smacked a palm against his forehead. “Shit, I’m so sorry, Bee. That was the stupidest thing I could’ve said.”
“It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not. Really, I’m so sorry. Can you—?”
I took his hand. “Emmett. Seriously. Relax. I know you didn’t mean it.”
He looked down at our interlaced fingers, his dark eyes hidden beneath long eyelashes. When his thumb began to rub circles into the back of my hand, I gently dislodged myself from him and motioned for him to lead the way out of the cemetery.
As I made to follow him, a splash of color near my parents’ headstone caused me to hesitate. I knelt down and plucked a bright green origami crane from where it was wedged beneath the base of the stone. I turned it over, examining the impeccable creases of the paper as a memory stole through me.
“You coming?” Emmett called from the cemetery gate.
I tucked the crane into the pocket of my jeans, patted the headstone in a mimicked farewell, and stood up.
“Right behind you.”
Chapter Nine - A Swing and a Miss
By the time I woke the next day, it was nearly lunchtime. I was cocooned in the motel blanket, curled up in a tiny ball near the head of the bed and hugging a pillow to my chest like it was a person. For once, my sleeping hours were the blank slate of darkness that they were meant to be rather than fitful spurts of unconsciousness. Despite this, unclarity sat in the space beneath my eyes and weighed down my cheekbones. I buried my face in the pillow, taking in the cool darkness from the late morning sun. Something poked against my cheek. I grappled with the sheets for the culprit.
It was the paper crane that I had found beneath the headstone last night. I stretched, flattening out against the mattress, and faced the ceiling, holding the crane above me.
“Bridget, I can’t do it!”
“Yes, you can. You’re almost done. Here, I’ll show you. Now take the left and right pieces there and pull them apart. Good. Now open up the top corner so that you can make the head… and voila! Your very own paper crane.”
I tugged on the wings of the crane, carefully unfolding the paper. It was a flyer for a local band, The Outskirts, who were playing a show at The Pit on Friday night. I smoothed the sharp creases in the paper, running my fingers along the perfectly symmetrical folds. I tried not to overthink the crane’s presence in the cemetery. It wasn’t a stretch to find it there—Holly could’ve left it right before she disappeared—but the flyer looked too clean and crisp to have been left in the dewy grass for several days.
“Where are you?” I murmured, refolding the flyer and setting the finished crane, now slightly off-kilter, to rest on the bedside table.
The motel phone rang, its shrill clangor stuck in a past world of landlines and overhead wires. I tugged the receiver up to cut the noise short, untangled the swirly cord, and raised the phone to my ear.
“Hello?”
“You sound hungover.”
“Hi, Autumn.”
“It’s after eleven,” she scolded. “Why are you still asleep?”
I groaned and rolled over, forgetting about the phone cord. It stretched across my back, pinching the fabric of my T-shirt. “I’m not. I’m up.”
“Uh-
huh. What did you get up to last night? Another round with Emmett at The Pit?”
“What are you, my mother?”
Autumn paused, gauging the tone of my comment. “I’m just worried about you. What are you doing today? Can we have lunch?”
I checked the alarm clock. “Can we make it a late lunch? I have to go buy a phone and stop by the cop shop. I can meet you after.”
“One o’clock?”
“Perfect. Oh, hey. What’s your phone number?”
I bought a pay-as-you-go phone from the nearest wireless store, unboxed it in the street, and programmed Autumn’s number into the Favorites tab. There was no one else to add, other than Bill and Emily, who wouldn’t be pleased that I had the means to call them on a whim. Autumn’s number looked lonely in the contacts list. I clicked the screen off, shoved the phone in the back pocket of my jeans, and set off toward the police station.
The door was propped open and secured with a pair of handcuffs. It was hot and stuffy inside. Two floor fans warred from opposite sides of the bullpen, blowing paperwork out of their neat stacks. Officer Scott sat at his desk, fanning himself with a case file. The legs of his uniform pants were cuffed up to his calves and beads of sweat gathered like a soggy crown on his scalp.
I lounged against the chest-high front desk. “Scott, do you actually walk your beat anymore or have you been reduced to full-time desk jockey?”
He grumbled through his mustache, flapping the hem of his polyester shirt as he joined me near the door. “Believe me, I’d rather be out there than in this hellhole. Damn AC unit’s busted again. At least there’s a breeze outside.”
I took a recruitment brochure from a sheaf on the desk and fluttered it in his face. He snatched it out of my hand with a scowl, only to resume the action himself.
“Two days in a row,” Scott said. “I told you yesterday, kid. I can’t tell you anything about Holly’s case. Did you try the Millers again?”
“Actually, I’m not here about Holly,” I told him, arranging the display of brochures so that each pamphlet was skewed at a different angle. “I was wondering if Officer Hart was around.”
Little Girl Lost: Book 0 Page 8