I pushed the clutch and shifted Vader into first gear—just a few more minutes.
Porter continued, looking very cold, up the street for several more blocks before turning right. I wove Vader in and out of parking spaces, careful to let Porter stay ahead of me but not so far ahead that I lost sight of him. After a few more blocks on the main street, Porter turned into a residential neighborhood—was this where he lived?
A minute after he turned, I inched Vader onto the same street. There were cars parked on the street outside the small, square, one-story brick houses evenly spaced up and down the street, but mine was the only car actually moving. All Porter would need to do is glance over his shoulder to see me—I didn’t think I could come up with a believable excuse to be driving two miles an hour on the exact street he was walking down in the middle of the school day.
I pulled over and planned to let Porter get really far out in front of me—but then he stopped walking.
The snow was falling faster. Landing in heavy wet flakes on my windshield, I had to leave the wipers on to clear away the white screen that kept obscuring my view of Porter. He wasn’t moving, just standing on the corner, arms folded over his chest against the cold. If one of these houses was his, why didn’t he go inside?
Between my breath and Vader’s struggling heater, the windows kept fogging up. Leaning forward in my seat, I rubbed some of the condensation off the windshield, peered through the hole I’d created, and waited for Porter to make a move.
Nothing.
He just stood there, in the cold, in the snow—he was probably getting wet.
What the hell was he doing?
Squinting, I leaned forward again. The corner he was standing on was not the edge of someone’s yard. Past Porter I could see the outline of a building much larger than the rest of the houses in this neighborhood. At the peak of the building’s entrance, an electric sign with red letters scrolled through a series of announcements:
No School February 16—President’s Day
PTA Meeting—Tonight 6PM
Spring Photos—February 12
I leaned back in my seat and considered what I was seeing. Porter, standing on a corner—no, loitering on a corner, outside an elementary school.
But why?
An uneasy dread crawled up my legs, through my stomach, and up my spine.
I thought of Porter’s giant mental health file sitting on my mother’s bed.
I thought of Porter spending part of his days in the affective needs classroom.
I thought of Porter kicking and bucking while two armed police officers restrained him in the middle of the school hallway.
I thought, honestly, about all the problems Porter Creed for sure had and all the ones he could possibly have. My hand tightened on the gear shift next to me.
Was Porter Creed a predator?
My palm was starting to sweat. I ran it down the leg of my jeans before reaching into my bag for my phone: 1:12. If Porter Creed was standing outside this school, in the snow, with no jacket, waiting for kids to get off school so he could try and groom them like the villain in an after-school special, he was going to have to stand there waiting for almost two more hours.
The front doors to the school building opened just below the electric sign reminding everyone about the Bake Sale—February 5 after school. Through the crack in the door, a little girl, maybe seven years old, with long brown hair came running out. A small blue backpack bounced with her every step. I watched her cross the parking lot, squeeze between two parked cars, and continue running across the snowy grass before she hit the sidewalk bordering the school’s edge.
Porter uncrossed his arms.
And the girl came running into them.
He lifted her up into a big hug before placing her feet back on the sidewalk. With his hand holding hers, they started walking up the street.
Straight for me.
My heart thumped, thick and heavy, urging my body to do something by sending a hot shot of adrenaline to the tips of my fingers and feet. In less than half a block, Porter would be walking right past my parked car—a casual glance to his right is all it would take for him to see me skulking, like the crazy stalker I clearly was, behind the wheel of my car.
“Crap,” I said. I pulled my feet up on my seat and turned so I could crawl into the back and hide like a lunatic. For my seventeenth birthday, I had asked my mom for darker tinting on Vader’s windows—and that’s exactly what she gave me. The next week is when my brakes went out driving Eli home from his church youth group, “Asking for the tinting was the wise choice I think,” Eli had snarked.
But right now, I was relieved to have it. I pulled my knees to my chest and watched while Porter and . . . his sister? . . . walked past me. The windows weren’t completely black, but it must have been enough, because Porter didn’t even peek in my direction.
Once they had passed, I let out a sigh and my shoulders dropped—Idiot, Ruth. I crawled back into my front seat, shaking my head at myself. Maybe I should totally let go of the whole neuroscientist thing and focus on private investigation—it was clearly such an untapped gift of mine.
Shifting into reverse, I slowly backed out of my hiding spot and continued up the street in the opposite direction Porter and the little girl had gone and thought about what I’d just seen.
He had a sister?
Who also left school two hours before she should? It seemed impossible that someone who couldn’t be older than first grade would be ditching without some kind of fire alarm going off. Why was she allowed to leave so early? And why was Porter the one to pick her up?
I didn’t know, but by the time I had reached the highway heading north to Harmony House, I had decided that I was absolutely going to find out.
CHAPTER TEN
Karen, for almost my entire visit, sat staring blankly at an old box television showing reruns of Friends in the community room of Harmony House.
The director of the facility, Samantha, had greeted me when I first arrived. “Almost no one ever comes to see her anymore. She’ll be happy to have the company.”
“Does anyone visit her?”
Samantha hesitated. “Not really. There’s this lawyer from New York who comes once a month.” Her tone was suddenly sharp and annoyed. “Makes sure we’re treating her right, I suppose. But other than that, she’s a ward of the state . . . and she doesn’t have any family, at least not any who are allowed contact with her. The researchers who used to run her through a million tests when she was first discovered are barred from having any access to her now.”
My mother and Samantha were acquaintances, fellow alumni from graduate school, which was why I was allowed to come here in the first place. So I knew some of Karen’s history. When she was two years old, her father, who must have been completely insane, started keeping Karen locked in her room day and night and wouldn’t allow anyone else in the family to even speak to her. Ever. When she was fourteen, she was accidentally discovered when her father fell asleep in his bed smoking a cigarette and the house caught fire.
When the firefighters arrived at the home, Karen’s mother had managed to escape through her bedroom window and told them that her husband and son were still trapped inside. She didn’t even mention Karen. Inside the blazing house, the firefighters had no idea where any of the other family members might be. When they came to a door on the second floor that was padlocked on the outside, they broke it down and found Karen, cowering in her dirty rags, locked inside the chicken-wire cage where her father kept her day and night.
They broke her out and carried her to the waiting ambulance. Her father and older brother were already dead from smoke inhalation.
Karen was so malnourished and small, medical staff at first thought she was six or seven years old instead of fourteen. When the mother, free of her husband’s abusive control, finally started to speak and tell them what Karen’s living conditions had been like for the previous twelve years, the news story was an international scan
dal, and researchers from all over the world wanted the opportunity to study and test Karen. Many of them did, until she turned eighteen and it was determined that all of their interference was having a negative impact on Karen’s development and improvements.
Karen was in her early thirties now. It had been almost twelve years since anyone had been allowed to study her—and yet here I was, a stupid high school student, sitting, staring at Karen staring at the TV. A blank notebook in my lap and a pen squeezed between fingers that hadn’t written a word.
All those researchers would probably kill each other to have the chance I was wasting right this very minute.
Of course, the only reason I was allowed here was because I wasn’t a real researcher—not yet anyway. Also, I wasn’t exactly studying Karen specifically, just making observations, and nothing I would write would or could be linked directly back to Karen. A simple comparison between two people, both with cognitive disabilities, one who was raised in a caring and loving home and had access to professional education all her life—and one who had none of these things.
This was the heart of my senior honors thesis—nature versus nurture. How were Maggie and Karen fundamentally different because of the vastly different environments they had grown up in?
I glanced at my phone, only fifteen minutes until my first scheduled observation was over. The blank notebook seemed to glare up at me, so I forced myself to sit up straighter and concentrate, think of something to write—anything.
My eyes drifted to the television and the purple-walled apartment of the main characters, who were sitting on the couch exchanging snarky one-liners while the laugh track played along in the background.
I wrote, The subject spent the entire time staring at first one episode of Friends, and then another. Truly, this was groundbreaking stuff. The admissions board at Princeton was going to thank their lucky stars they had snatched me up with that early offer into their neuroscience department.
I sighed and closed the notebook.
Samantha was wrong: Karen didn’t look happy to have the company, she didn’t look like she knew anyone else was even in the room. Completely the opposite of Maggie, who would smile and jump and rush to get me to play a game with . . .
Of course. How could I have been so stupid? I opened my notebook back up. I had been waiting all this time for Karen to do something, show some sign of engagement, with me, with her surroundings. Some sort of behavior I could observe—anything. But the very fact that she didn’t, wasn’t that something? Some huge way that she and Maggie were different?
Even though Maggie had a cognitive disability, she talked, moved, played—interacted with her world. Maggie had the skills required to have relationships with other people.
I was beginning to think that Karen didn’t have any of these skills—because she had been so horribly deprived of ever learning how.
What would that be like—locked away, every day of your entire childhood? Did her father think that it simply didn’t matter because she was cognitively disabled? Was he ashamed of her? How could a person be that cruel?
The door behind me opened. Karen didn’t move a muscle, but when I turned I saw Samantha coming in: my signal that our time was up.
“Well, how was the visit?” Her tone was light, like before, but her expression looked strained. Something was worrying her.
“Fine,” I said, as I packed away my notebook and pen. “Not much happened.”
The director nodded as she glanced at Karen. “She doesn’t have many words, and the ones she does have are used as single words . . . like when she wants something. Food, a drink, her favorite doll. That was one thing the researchers did determine before they were forbidden to examine her anymore, that because she had missed out on hearing language during a key point in her early development, she missed out on the opportunity to ever really acquire any functional use of language.”
I looked at Karen, still staring at the TV. “She couldn’t learn, even after they found her?”
The director shook her head. “Apparently, there’s a window for language acquisition, when we are very young—she missed hers.”
It was awful. I imagined her initial cognitive difficulties also made it more difficult for Karen to learn language once she had been found. Maggie had learned many, many things in her life—but she was still nowhere near a typical seventeen-year-old. Karen had the delays, on top of never having been taught anything. Even twenty years in a supportive environment hadn’t been able to correct all that she had lost.
I pulled my keys from the side pocket and swung my bag over my shoulder. “Can I come back next week? Maybe during a different time of day when she’s a little more . . . active?” Surely Karen didn’t always just sit and stare at the television. “Maybe during her dinnertime?” I was hopeful that I could catch her doing something—anything.
The director was biting her lower lip and her worried expression had returned. “I’m not sure, Ruth.”
Something had happened. When my mother first contacted Samantha and asked for this favor, she had enthusiastically agreed. I didn’t understand where this sudden hesitation was coming from—I worried it was me. “Did I do something, something wrong?”
“No!” she shook her head. “No, not at all,” she sighed. “While you were here, that lawyer, the one from New York I told you about, called to check up on Karen. I happened to mention that she had a visitor—I thought it was a good thing . . . but she got pretty upset.”
“The lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“Why? I mean, it’s not like I even did anything,” I said, thinking of my paltry notes. “All I did was watch her watch TV.”
Samantha shook her head, “I know, and to be honest with you, there isn’t anything wrong, legally, with you coming here under my direct supervision. So long as I have the final say on anything you write, remember. When I think about it, I’m not really sure why Ms. Atwater is so upset.” Her brow wrinkled as she stared at a spot somewhere in front of her field of vision, as if she were trying to figure it all out. “Or even if she has the right to be, for that matter . . . it’s not like she’s Karen’s legal guardian.”
She fell silent and a moment later shifted her gaze to me. “Don’t worry. This isn’t your problem; I’ll figure it out. When do you want to come next week?”
I thought about my schedule for half a second. “Monday?”
She nodded. “Okay, same time, same place.” She smiled, but I could tell she was still a little worried about the lawyer.
“Thanks again. I really appreciate this,” I said as I reached out to shake Samantha’s hand. I turned to Karen; basic social grace urged me to at least say good-bye to the someone I had been staring at for over an hour—but it felt weird since I doubted she’d even realized I was here in the first place. I decided to forget about it but when I started to turn around—Karen raised her hand.
I froze and watched. With her eyes still glued to the TV, the four fingers on her raised hand moved up and down, up and down, and then she lowered her hand.
This whole time, I didn’t think she was even aware I was in the room—but she just said “Good-bye” to me in sign language.
“Good-bye,” I said back.
But she didn’t move again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
By the time I pulled Vader into the Roosevelt High parking lot Monday morning, there were three text messages, all from my father, being ignored on my phone. The first had been cordial, even if it was a complete lie.
Great seeing you the other night! Derry really loved meeting you!
There was no way Derry loved meeting me, I had gaped at her unborn child like it was an abomination of nature and then proceeded to say almost nothing for the rest of dinner. When I didn’t reply, his next text switched tactics.
I know I sprang some pretty big news on you, but I thought you would be excited about finally being a big sister.
Was he insane? No, scratch the question mark—he was
completely out of his head if he thought for even a fraction of a second that I would be excited. And what the hell, who was he trying to convince with the finally being a big sister. As if I had been pining my entire life for the opportunity to babysit his probably halfwit spawn—for free!
But it was only with his last and final text that his true self, the dad I didn’t know and maybe didn’t even love, shed all the bullshit and got right to the point.
You can ignore me all you want, but you should know I’m trying, and it’s your crap attitude that is getting in the way of us having a meaningful relationship.
And there it was. It was almost a relief to get back to the reality of our existence. Him being a complete ass and making it perfectly okay with me to continue writing off the idea of any kind of relationship with him.
Whatever you say. I texted him back and shut off my phone before I shoved it to the bottom of my bag. I didn’t feel like dealing with him or his issues today.
There was only one objective for today—talk to Porter.
And since it was twenty-two degrees outside, give him his jacket back, of course.
I lifted it off the hook and slammed my locker door. This time, I was taking it with me to class—I didn’t care what anyone thought about me having it. Or maybe I wanted them to think something about it? Whatever, either way, Porter wasn’t slipping past me today without me using his jacket to get some answers.
He was so smart; how could he just not care about failing calc?
Sitting in class, I was ready for him to walk in the door. His jacket was right on top of my desk; he couldn’t miss it and would have to talk to me in order to get it. As the minutes in the passing period crawled around the clock hanging over the door, I waited. Worried that maybe Friday was a fluke and Porter wasn’t going to show up again today. Everyone was already here—except him.
I was contemplating just how insane it would be to stake out the elementary school where I had seen him Friday when he walked in the door—with Mr. T right behind him.
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