The Deepest Secret

by Carla Buckley

  He tears the paper and pulls out a folded piece of dark fabric, with zippers and long sleeves. “A shirt?” he guesses, but it’s not. It’s shaped like a sausage. He turns it all around in his hands, then looks at his parents.

  “It’s a film-loading bag,” his dad explains.

  His mom leans over. “See, you put the canister of film in here and zip it closed, to keep out the light. You stick your arms through these sleeves so you can unwind the film onto a reel. What do you think? You won’t have to send in your film to your teacher. You can develop it at home.”

  “That’s cool.” He’d never seen anything like this online. But that’s the way his mom is. She’s always coming up with ideas.

  His dad stands. “Guess I’ll turn in. Been a long day. Happy belated birthday, Tyler.”

  “Thanks.”

  His dad goes down the hall.

  Charlotte’s on TV, and so is Owen. Their house is behind them, with its black front door and that wicker rocker on the porch that Charlotte and his mom sanded one year and painted red flowers all over. The television camera pans over the crowd of reporters shouting questions. Detective Watkins is there, her mouth in a line.

  Charlotte wears her hair short and red like fire. Tyler remembers when it was a plain yellow caught back in a barrette. Her mouth tilts up on one side when she smiles, though she’s not smiling now; her brown eyes have a downward slant. Her nose is narrow and long. If Tyler looks at each feature separately, they look ordinary, plain. But put together on Charlotte’s face, they all work together. She wears lots of gold jewelry, black mascara, and has her toenails painted purple even during the winter when most people wear socks. There are lots of ways in which Charlotte and his mom are different, but that doesn’t seem to matter to them. This version of Charlotte doesn’t have on any jewelry. Her lashes are pale and her eyes wide, and it’s weird how much she looks like Amy.

  Now there’s the picture Tyler took of Amy, the night she graduated from elementary school and got some attendance medal, right there on the TV screen. His mom and Charlotte put copies up everywhere, he knows, in hopes a passerby might see one and say, Wait, I know that kid—she’s playing in my backyard right now!

  “Where do you think she is, Mom?”

  “I don’t know.” Her voice is a little wobbly. “I wish I did.”

  “Do you think she ran away?”

  His mom hesitates. “Maybe.”

  Which means no. Which means she thinks somebody took Amy, and that something horrible was going to happen to her. Maybe it already has.

  The news ends and then a rerun of The Big Bang Theory comes on. The guys are looking for dates and end up in a comic-book store. They’re talking about coitus, which Tyler knows means sex. He blushes, glances to his mom to see why she hasn’t turned the channel, and sees that she’s fallen asleep, her head tilted toward her shoulder. Her hand is curled in her lap as if she’s holding onto something small and precious.

  He reaches for the remote and switches off the television. The whole house is quiet, everyone sleeping but him.

  A tube of sunscreen sits on the table beside the door. His mom keeps sunscreen by every door. He squeezes some out and rubs it across his face, the back of his neck, and all over his hands. He slides his socked feet into his sneakers, fits sunglasses to his face, and tugs down the hood of his sweatshirt. He takes his digital camera.

  It’s a carnival out there, his dad had said, which was supposed to mean something fun, but his voice had been grim. His mom had kept the drapes closed and told Tyler and Melissa they couldn’t answer the door, no matter how many times someone knocked. But now the street is empty, all the cars and people gone.

  Tyler taps his nose, his right cheek, his left. He can feel the sticky sunscreen beneath his fingers. He has nightmares where he’s forgotten a patch, a small square of skin that turns brilliant red and then bursts into flames. His forehead, his chin, and the back of his neck. All systems go.

  He’s hunkered down in his usual spot when Sophie’s downstairs light flashes on. She appears in the window, her hair scraped back and her shoulders gleaming. Her tight black dress makes her waist look tiny, and her neckline is so low that her breasts look as though they could spill right out of her top. He raises his camera and takes a picture, quick, before the blinds snap shut. But they don’t close. He takes a second picture, not believing his luck. Still, the blinds remain wide open. She’s standing there and she’s not moving, not at all. Can she see him, crouched among the bushes at the back of her yard? Is that what has her frozen in place?

  No, she’s looking down at something, not out at him. Crouching, he creeps out from the bushes, goes slow. Still her gaze doesn’t lift. Now he can see the silver ridge of a computer monitor over the windowsill. She’s staring at the screen, a crease between her eyes. He’s so close he could reach out and touch her face, which is smooth and milky white. Her lips are painted shiny red. They look soft and pretty.

  She lifts her chin and looks straight at Tyler, sending him stumbling back into the bushes beneath her window. His heart’s pounding. She’s going to yell. She’s going to come right outside and haul him up the street to his house. But her expression doesn’t change as she reaches up. An instant later, the blinds shut. She hadn’t seen him standing there. He’d gotten lucky.

  Dr. Cipriano’s house sits in shadow. No lights on in the basement. No lights on in the little shed out back. The lid is lowered on the hot tub by the back door. Dr. Cipriano used to have a friend who lived with him, and he and Dr. Cipriano used to sit in there and talk quietly, so quietly that Tyler never could hear what they were saying. But then Bob moved out.

  The woods are alive with rustling noises, the air filled with that wet vegetable smell that’s always there after a storm. A bunch of kids are hanging around the swings, talking and laughing. Tyler removes his sunglasses, tugs down his hood. Still, they all stop to stare. Like he’s the intruder? These are his woods, his neighborhood. Then he realizes they’re thinking of Amy, too.

  He follows the path through the woods. Ahead is the little bridge.

  This is where the police found Amy’s backpack. Amy had been so excited when Charlotte had brought it home for her. It has a keychain with a little pink teddy bear. Tyler had thought it sounded lame. You’re going to get beat up, he’d warned her, but she’d shrugged. What do you know? Which is true. What does he know?

  He knows it’s stupid, people have been searching everywhere, but he turns in a circle, his flashlight beam skittering along the grass and dirt, jumping into the dark spaces between the trees. If the police had been here, they’d left no sign of it. He bends to shine the light up along the curved wooden beams. There’s no face looking down at him. What did he expect, that she’d be hanging upside down for a whole day, knowing her mom and everyone else are freaking out?

  Crickets chirp all around him. Tyler’s never caught one. They always go silent as he sneaks toward them, only to resume the minute he gives up and turns around. It’s like they’re taunting him, which of course they aren’t. Crickets aren’t the highest on the insect totem pole, brains-wise. There’s a parasite that crawls into a cricket, eats all the food the cricket takes in, and then when it’s grown into a worm, releases chemicals that make the cricket jump into a pool of water so the worm can wriggle out and swim away while the cricket drowns.

  He follows the path that winds back to his street, past the playground, now empty and silent, and up to his own cul-de-sac, the houses standing around like soldiers. Amy’s house is bright, every window shining. He’s walking by the new neighbors’ house when a woman hisses through the hushed darkness. “Wait!”

  He doesn’t know that voice, has no idea where it’s come from. He stops and looks around.

  “Don’t move,” she warns. He sees her now, sitting on her porch, a pale face and bare arms floating in the darkness. “There’s a skunk, right in front of you.”

  He looks down into the dark shape of the bushes beside him.
It’s probably the same one he’s spotted creeping around the playground. “Man. I almost kicked it.”

  “We must have grubs. Damn it.” Is she upset about the grubs? Or the skunk? “It’s the second one I’ve seen. There must be a family somewhere.”

  “Yeah. They live in the storm drain.”

  “No kidding.”

  She sounds young. He can barely see her, sitting there, just the shadows of her eyes, her mouth, hair that curves to her shoulders. “Are you the babysitter?”

  “Hardly.”

  Does that mean she’s the mom? “I’m Tyler. I live next door.”

  “I know.”

  Of course she does. His cheeks burn with embarrassment.

  “I’m Holly.” A baby’s wail splits the air. “And there’s Christopher, right on cue. It’s like he’s got a clock inside him.”

  Tyler knows all about clocks. He feels like he has one inside him, too, booming in his ears. “Shouldn’t you get him?”

  “He’ll stop.” She waves a hand. “So I guess you know that little girl, don’t you? She’s your friend.”

  No, Amy’s just that bratty little kid who follows him everywhere. But how can he tell her that? Holly doesn’t say anything about his sunglasses. She doesn’t ask why he’s wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. “I guess.”

  “Mark says she’s probably a thousand miles away by now.”

  Then they’d never find her. This isn’t something his mom would have told him, or anyone else. No one ever talks to him like this. “Who’s Mark?” Mark’s wrong. He has to be wrong.

  “My husband. He’s a cop. Just joined the force, which is why he works the third shift. He has to pay his dues. Which means I have to, too.”

  “Oh.” There’s a silence. Is she waiting for him to say something? “Where did you come from?” His mom and Melissa sat in his kitchen and talked, after everyone learned the house next door was going to have a new family living in it. They’d wondered what kinds of jobs they had, whether there would be kids. They can’t be any worse, Melissa had said, meaning than the old family that had moved out, and he’d agreed. The old family had had two big slobbery dogs they let wander all around the neighborhood.

  “Toledo.”

  He knows kids from Japan, Pakistan, New Mexico, Alaska, but he’s never met anyone from Toledo. “That’s cool,” he says, and she smiles.

  “Mommy?” It’s a little boy’s voice, coming from right on the other side of the screen door.

  “Go back to bed, Connor.”

  “But there’s too much noise.”

  “Sleep in my room.”

  “I don’t know which one it is.”

  “Of course. Of course you don’t.” She stands, sighs. “I hope they find your friend.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Skunk’s gone,” and then so is she, the door closing softly behind her.

  Sure enough, way over in Amy’s yard, there’s a small white flash of fur.

  His mom’s still asleep on the couch, but she’s moved to stretch out fully on the cushions, her hand beneath her cheek.

  “Hi, Mom,” he whispers, but she doesn’t wake up.

  In his room, he turns on his computers. His gamer tag is xpkid1000, which is supposed to be funny. As if there are a thousand XP kids gaming. In the whole world, there’s maybe a thousand, total. Dylan’s online, and Mustafa. They want to try out Tyler’s new game. He picks up his controller. He won’t mention his strange new neighbor.

  Holly’s his discovery.

  EVE

  At first she doesn’t know where she is, then the room swims into focus. She pushes herself up from the sofa cushions. Her neck hurts and her cheek from where it had pressed into rough tweed. The room’s dark but has the feel of daytime, that perceptible energy that comes and goes with the sun’s arc—the increase of traffic outside, birdsong, the thump of the newspaper landing on the stoop. How long has she lain here, five hours? Six? Tyler had been beside her while they watched TV the evening before, but she’s alone now, the television staring blankly at her. The clock below it reads 7:01. Three minutes past the safe zone.

  She scrambles to her feet. “Tyler?”

  She taps on his door, and when there’s no answer, reaches for the key lying above the jamb. When she cracks open the door, she sees him asleep in his own bed, his laptop open beside him. She sighs. Of course he’s here. He knows the rules as well as she does. She stands over him and looks down, seeing with relief that the mark on his arm has entirely disappeared. Just like that—a miracle.

  She scoops up his jeans and shirts from where they lie in a pile on the floor. David told her what Detective Watkins had said, that the woman had actually treated Tyler like a suspect. They’d been in the kitchen and she’d turned to him in horror. It doesn’t mean anything, Eve, David had said. She looks at Tyler and all she sees is a teenage boy who has to stay locked up in his room. Eve had dropped the soapy sponge in the sink. Meaning what? she’d demanded. That Tyler’s not normal? How could he talk about Tyler like that? How could he be so sanguine? Calm down, he’d said. It doesn’t matter what she thinks. Tyler was home with Melissa all night.

  The basement is cool and smells of earth.

  She lifts the washing machine lid and drops in the laundry. Here is the water heater, the dehumidifier, the radon system, all thirteen years old. She’d rubbed cotton pads across the baseboards and walls, and sent them in for analysis, also thirteen years ago. She’d sealed and repainted every surface with eco-friendly paint, ordered drapes made of organic fabrics, and thrown away all the detergents and toxic cleaning products. She’d ripped up all the carpets to expose the hardwood floors and polished them by hand to a soft sheen. She’d made this house as safe as she could, when she’d learned how unsafe the rest of the world would be for her child.

  Along the far wall stands the bench press they’d gotten Tyler last year, the air hockey table, the pinball machine. Shelves filled with games, including the blocks and magnet toys that Tyler played with when he was little and that Eve can’t bring herself to give away. A large workbench with various tools hanging from hooks, a model rocket in various pieces in disarray on the floor. Tyler hasn’t been down here in weeks.

  And in the corner on the floor, almost finished, is the dollhouse she’d been making for Amy—Amy, who had loved playing with dolls even though she was about to start middle school. Amy, who had wanted to be a mom when she grew up. Eve looks down at the dollhouse, with its cheerful colors and lovely symmetry.

  No house is safe.

  Charlotte’s house stands open, every window bare, just the fragile screen of the storm door between the front hall and the world. The garage door gapes wide, revealing the chaotic interior. Owen was the one who maintained the garage, but since the divorce, the sports equipment and lawn implements have taken over, dropped wherever, leaning in piles. Charlotte said she didn’t care. Charlotte said she had enough on her hands raising three kids in a single-parent household.

  Eve raps on the doorframe and opens the door. The foyer is warm with early morning sun, the wood golden, dust motes dancing in the air. “Hello?” she calls out, and Charlotte’s mother, Gloria, appears around the corner.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” Gloria says, hugging her. “That detective’s on her way over. She might have some news.”

  Gloria sounds strangely hopeful. “What kind of news?”

  “They’ve gotten a call of suspicious activity in Metro-Dade Park.”

  Metro-Dade is miles away, north of Columbus. Why would Amy be there? “What does that mean?” Eve asks, following Gloria down the hall to the kitchen.

  “Well, I don’t know. It could be anything, I suppose. A homeless guy sleeping it off, teenagers building a bonfire.”

  Charlotte looks up from where she sits at the kitchen table, writing on a pad of paper. “Or Amy. They could have found Amy.” Her hair is damp, combed back from her face, her lips chapped. Shadows circle her eyes and Eve realizes this is the very fi
rst time she’s ever seen her friend without a touch of makeup. It makes Charlotte look vulnerable, and old.

  Eve feels old, too. She feels slow-moving and numb.

  Robbie’s beside Charlotte, leaning back in his chair. He’s in jeans and a wrinkled gray T-shirt, a red OSU ball cap slanted on his head. She’s never seen him without one, a holdover from when he used to play semi-pro ball. A yellow SpongeBob Band-Aid is wrapped around his thumb. Eve guesses he had opened Charlotte’s medicine cabinet and helped himself—this is how comfortably he’s shoe-horned himself into Charlotte’s life. He straightens and gives her a sober nod. “Hey.”

  It’s so easy being with him, Charlotte had confessed when she told Eve she was falling for him. What you see is what you get. But was that ever true of anyone?

  Charlotte’s sister, Felicia, is at the kitchen sink. She comes over to hug Eve. She and Charlotte look alike, the same narrow faces and wide-set eyes, but Felicia’s the cooler-headed sister, the one who thinks first, who doesn’t give her heart so carelessly away. “Did the reporters give you any trouble?”

  Eve shakes her head. “There’s no one out there.”

  “They’ll be back,” Felicia predicts grimly. She pours a glass of orange juice and sets it before Charlotte. “Drink.”

  Eve glances at the paper Charlotte has been writing on. The guy at the bank who gives out lollipops. Hank. The purple-haired woman at Starbucks. Daisy???

  “Remember when Detective Watkins told us that most abductions are by people the child knows?” Charlotte says. “I looked it up, Eve. It’s worse than most. It’s ninety-nine percent. So I figure that if I make a list of every single person that Amy knows, the person who took her has to be on it. Right? I mean, what do we really know about those people who have the haunted house every Halloween? Or that crossing guard who knows every single kid’s name? Is that normal?”

  Eve would be on that list. She would be at the very top.

  “The police want Charlotte to take a lie detector test,” Felicia says.