She made a noise of unenthusiastic affirmation. It annoyed her that Dale had shared this information with the superintendent on her behalf, though she couldn’t really pinpoint why, or how he might have better handled things. It just seemed like—well—sucking up. He liked being the person with the most information, the person whom the rest turned to when their own lines of gossip played out. Even last night, despite his discomfort at being tied publicly to Ronnie, Susanna had sensed his getting into the spirit of the community meeting, reveling a little in his position as the man by her side. “She’s been having a hard time,” she’d heard him saying softly to a work colleague of theirs, his tone of voice suggesting that he, too, had struggled heroically with the pressure of Ronnie’s disappearance—that being a support system for Susanna had taken its toll.
Or maybe she was being unfair to him. The last two days had been like this: judging Dale bitterly for his wrongs, then feeling almost suffocated by her guilt, convinced that she’d villainized him only to justify her own terrible actions.
“I can drive Abby to your mother’s while you’re cleaning up, then swing back here to get you. Does that sound OK? It should save us some time.”
“All right,” Susanna said. “Just let me kiss her good-bye.”
In the shower she cranked the heat until it was steaming, grateful for the rare few moments truly to herself. Ronnie. Emily. Even in a town this small, what were the chances that she would know them both? She thought about Emily in the bathroom after the incident in the cafeteria, how she was humming tunelessly and trying to wipe spaghetti sauce out of her hair with a brown paper towel. She thought about the way tears had magnified her big green eyes and how utterly lost and alone she seemed. Maybe she had run away. Maybe it had been too much for her to face coming back to school, knowing that her tormenters were there, even if they were—for now—hidden from sight. It made Susanna feel another wave of anger at Christopher Shelton, that little privileged shit, and she attacked herself with the washcloth, remembering how his mother had had the audacity to approach her last night, to express her sympathy. “Let me know if there’s anything my husband and I can do,” she had said, as if there were any way in the universe that Susanna would take their help—as if Nita Shelton truly had any help to offer. “I’ll tell you what you can do,” Susanna muttered now, putting her soapy head under the showerhead. “Keep your sociopathic asshole of a son in line, that’s what you can do.”
Then it happened, out of nowhere: She realized that she might not ever see her sister again. That Ronnie wasn’t just making herself scarce for a couple of weeks, wasn’t just a few clever steps from being found. How could she have known but not known? She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t hold her head so that the water didn’t stream into her nostrils, and so she hunched, gasping, and finally the attack passed. The water flowing down her back was cool now. Dale would be home any minute, wondering what was keeping her.
2.
Eighth graders were old enough to appreciate drama, but most of them weren’t yet old enough to truly fear for Emily Houchens, or to wonder if what had happened to her could happen to them. If they were wondering, it was in a thrilling way—the way they’d once wondered if the Bell Witch would get them if they said her name three times fast at the stroke of midnight, or if there really was the ghost of a dead girl in the window of the house by the old cemetery, as town legend claimed. In fact, Susanna could see that most of them were enjoying the day, the break in the routine. They didn’t even mind the hassle of the new safety measures—signing in and out of the bus or getting checked out at the end of the day by a registered parent or guardian—though they might eventually grouse if the routine continued long enough to lose its novelty.
As they’d been instructed to do by the superintendent, the teachers all kept their homeroom students through first period, explaining to them the nature of the disappearance and the safety procedures, then allowing time for a brief discussion period, so that students could, as Jesse Benton put it, “work through the trauma together.” Susanna had been given a handout titled “Methods for Helping Children Understand Crisis,” which stated that children needed “a SAFE ENVIRONMENT in which to express themselves,” “the SUPPORT of their peers,” and “ACTIVE CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION between parents and teachers.” Most of the suggested tips and activities listed in it seemed geared to much younger children, Susanna thought, and so she spoke to her class plainly and simply, explaining what she had been told and admitting that she was worried about Emily but very hopeful. The students were solemn during this speech, unusually quiet, and they hung on her every word. She knew that they would spend the rest of the day heatedly comparing notes with their peers, flushed with pleasure at the new energy in the school, teachers whispering furiously to one another, Mr. Burton coming into classrooms to silently hand off papers to the teachers, as if he were a producer passing an update to the news anchor. Susanna found she couldn’t blame them for it.
She had allowed Christopher Shelton to join the group for this special session, and it was he, surprisingly, who appeared to actually be troubled by the news. Where the other students’ solemnity seemed put on, as if they were acting out behaviors they’d seen on television, Christopher was drawn, morose; his color was bad. He sat silently in the back of the room until she invited them to ask her questions or talk about their feelings, and then he tentatively raised his hand. Some eyes widened; the students were expecting, at the least, some of his patented irreverence.
“Where are they searching for her?” he asked.
It was an odd question, she thought—more like something an adult would ask. “Well,” she said, “what I understand is that they’re starting from two different center points and working out from them. One is actually this school, because we haven’t been able to confirm whether or not she rode the bus home.” She swept her eyes across the larger group. “If any of you have information about that, please let me know. The other is her house.”
He nodded and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his coat, which he was wearing inside despite the warmth of the classroom. It was a Starter jacket brandishing the Detroit Red Wings logo, and it was so puffy that he kind of sank down into it, only a pale bit of face emerging.
He still didn’t seem himself when Susanna escorted him to the bathroom for his morning break. Where yesterday he had sauntered down the hall, eyes roving with interest from one classroom door to the next, today his head was down and his shoulders were slumped, and there was something faraway about his expression.
“Are you coming down with a cold, Christopher?” Susanna asked him on the walk back to her room. “It seems like you should be hot in that coat.”
He looked at the jacket as if he’d forgotten he was wearing it. “I don’t know. Maybe,” he said. “I lost my house key yesterday and had to sit outside until Mom got home.”
“Maybe you should go to a doctor,” Susanna said gently.
He shrugged. “I’m all right.”
She found herself worrying about him. Perhaps it was a mother’s instinct, or perhaps Christopher’s manner in sickness was just such a contrast to his usual cockiness that she felt confident for once in her power over him, and this confidence made her generous. Maybe she just needed the distraction from thinking about Ronnie and Emily. At lunch she opened the door to the supply closet to find him with his head down on the desktop, and he quickly sat bolt upright. His face was red and blotchy.
“Chris, I’m thinking I might need to call your mother to come get you,” Susanna said. She put her hand on his forehead, then touched his cheeks with the backs of her fingers. He was clammy, his hair damp.
“I’m all right,” he said again.
“You don’t want to go home?”
He shook his head.
“If you’re worried about finishing your punishment,” Susanna said, “don’t. I’ll make sure you get credit with Mr. Burton for today even if you do leave for the doctor. OK?”
“I’
m OK. I don’t want to go home.”
“Well, it’s lunchtime. Are you ready to go to the cafeteria?”
“I’m not hungry,” he said. By the windows, the radiator clanked and hissed. The room was otherwise very quiet.
“If you’re not sick enough to go home, you need something on your stomach,” Susanna said. “What if I go and bring you something back here?”
He shrugged.
“Juice? Some fruit?”
“That’s fine,” he muttered.
She went to the cafeteria, surprised at what a difference a day made—that she would now trust Christopher alone in her classroom. The menu was boiled hot dogs and baked beans, and the smell was enough to turn a healthy stomach. She went through the line with a tray, taking just a paper container of fries for herself—she had planned to have her regular microwave lunch, but she didn’t want to take the time to pop by the teachers’ lounge. The only fresh fruit was a bowl of small, mushy-looking apples, so she grabbed one of those and also a container of fruit cocktail, the kind she hadn’t eaten in years, with little cubes of peach and pear and maraschino cherries. The orange juice came in a plastic cup with a foil seal, and she took one of those, too.
Christopher picked at the food. She had insisted that he join her in the empty classroom, thinking that at least the light and fresh air would do him some good, but it was awkward between them, always awkward to be a teacher and a student out of a familiar context, away from the rituals that defined who and how they were supposed to be to each other. Susanna finally pulled out the novel she’d been reading off and on for the last two weeks, spreading it open between the thumb and pinky of her left hand so that she could lift French fries to her mouth with the right. It was a John Grisham thriller, the kind of thing she should have been able to finish in a day or two, but focusing was hard lately; planning her lessons each day was challenge enough. Still, it gave her something to fix her eyes upon, even if she did have to reread the same sentence several times, and she had gotten through most of her meal this way, hardly registering the taste of the mushy, undersalted fries, when Christopher said in a choked voice, “Mrs. Mitchell, there’s something I think I need to tell you.”
She laid the book on the desktop. His eyes were very red, as if he had allergies, and his fingers were woven together and clenched tightly. “Yes?” she asked. “What is it?”
“I know something about Emily Houchens. About where she went after school yesterday.”
Susanna’s temples prickled. She felt a sudden, horrible certainty that Christopher had hurt Emily—that perhaps he, in concert with some of the other punished students, had played another, more dangerous prank on her. “If you know something,” she said, trying to keep her voice even, “you better say so immediately.”
“Are you going to tell my mom?”
“I don’t know what you’re about to say, Christopher. There might be no way that I can’t tell her.”
She was shocked when tears started rolling down his face. “Emily gave me a note yesterday and told me to ride the bus with her after school. She said she had something to show me. She said it was about you.” His hands were tucked into the sleeves of the puffy jacket, and he wiped his eyes on the crook of his shoulder.
“Slow down,” Susanna said. “She told you to meet her? Not the other way around?”
“Yes,” he said emphatically. “I came back to the closet after lunch and the note was in one of my books.”
“And she said it was about me?”
“Yes,” he said again.
Her mouth tasted dry and starchy from the fries, and she swallowed hard. “Go on.”
“We rode Bus Five. We sat in separate seats. She told me to get off in front of the old hospital on Harper Hill, so that’s what I did. I guess it’s close to where she lives.”
Susanna had heard Emily lived in Pratt’s subdivision, near Susanna’s mother. She nodded.
“I went because—” He stopped and sniffed back phlegm, like a child would. “Because I felt bad about last week. You probably don’t think I do, but I did. It got out of control that day. So I thought if she wanted me to do this, I could do it, even if it meant I got in trouble with Mom for coming home late.”
“What did she want from you?” Susanna said. “What did I have to do with it?”
His voice was so low she almost couldn’t make it out. “She told me she found something. She wanted to show it to me.”
“What?”
“A body.” He was shaking all over now. “A dead body. She said it might be your sister’s.”
For a moment Susanna was in the shower again, the water running into her nose and mouth. She was drowning in this school desk. Her fingers scrabbled across the groove where a pencil was supposed to rest.
“She told me she would show it to me. She told me she couldn’t show her parents because they’d be mad at her. So I followed her into the woods at the top of the hill, and we went to the place where she said it was, but there wasn’t anything there. She lied about it.” He was rambling now, his words stumbling over one another. “I got mad and I told her to leave me alone, and I pushed her, but it wasn’t that hard. She wasn’t hurt or anything. Then I left her there and ran home. It was so weird. There’s something wrong with her. She just lied about it. There wasn’t a body.”
“You’re sure there wasn’t,” Susanna said. She had tears in her own eyes now, and she willed herself not to spill them. Not in front of Christopher. Not now.
“No. She freaked out and said somebody moved it.”
Susanna pressed her fingertips against her eyelids. Her head was pounding.
“I think there’s something wrong with her. I think her parents must beat her or something. She doesn’t act right.”
“And you didn’t do anything to her . . . You and your friends? Play some kind of joke on her? If you did, you can tell me. We just want to find her.”
“No!” He practically yelled it.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay. I believe you, Chris. I believe you.” She shifted out of the desk and stood. “I’m going to have to call a person at the police department about this. Can you show him how to get to where Emily took you?”
Christopher nodded.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
1.
The boy sat beside him on the ride to Harper Hill, staring out the window and twisting his fingers in his lap. He wasn’t a boy, really—Tony remembered too well the kinds of thoughts that had been on his own mind at thirteen, and they weren’t innocent—but the situation had stripped Christopher of the teenager’s bravado. His eyes were wide and round, the set of his mouth slack. At the middle school’s principal’s office he had answered Tony’s questions in a rushed whisper, eyes darting to his mother’s to check for anger, and the mother—Tony had to give her credit—had sat to the side quietly and calmly, not once interrupting. It would have been a mistake to pull Christopher from school without calling her, but Tony had been hesitant nonetheless. “She’s very protective and entitled,” Susanna had warned him in a stolen moment. “And Christopher’s playing boyfriend to Johnny Burke’s daughter, so it wouldn’t surprise me if she tries to bring Burke into things.”
“He may end up needing a lawyer,” Tony said. “Depending on what we find. Something about this story doesn’t add up.”
“Tell me about it,” Susanna had muttered.
But they were being cooperative, mother and son, and Mrs. Shelton didn’t call Johnny Burke or her husband. “My husband would complicate this,” she’d told Tony, tucking a lock of blond hair behind her ear decisively. “He’d mean well, but he’d complicate it. I’m sure that time is of the essence.”
“It is,” Tony said.
“Let’s go, then,” she told him.
Pendleton met them on Hill Street with Sharon and the dog. Tony made hasty introductions, and Sharon shook hands with Christopher’s mother.
“Sharon,” Tony said, “this is Christopher. He’s going to show us where he las
t saw Emily.”
Sharon hunched down a bit, smiling warmly, and offered him her hand. He grasped it hesitantly. “Hi, Christopher,” she said.
“Hey,” he replied hoarsely.
“This is Maggie. Do you like dogs?”
He nodded.
“You can pet her,” Sharon said.
He stroked the dog’s glossy head, and a smile twitched at the corners of his mouth.
Sharon swapped the dog’s leash for the long lead she’d used the previous night—or this morning, Tony thought, correcting himself. She looked nearly as tired as he felt, but at least she’d gotten a few hours’ sleep and a decent breakfast. Tony had been up for almost thirty hours, and the only thing he’d put on his stomach since yesterday’s lunch was a honey bun from the vending machine in the police station and lots and lots of coffee. He had not lain down, had barely sat—he worried that if he relaxed for even a few moments he’d lose whatever momentum was propelling him on and just fall over on the spot. Until Susanna’s call forty-five minutes ago, he had been on the brink of despair. The overnight search parties had turned up nothing, and the bigger group that gathered at sunrise wasn’t having better luck. With every passing moment it was less and less likely that they’d find the girl alive, and the weather last night had them all nervous. Though the bit of snow that fell was already melted from everything but the deepest recesses of shadow, a bone-chilling damp lingered.
“It’s best if we keep the group small to keep Maggie focused,” Sharon said. “Mom, you’ll want to stay up here with one of the officers. Gentlemen”—she looked from Tony to Pendleton—“who wants to join me?”
Tony crooked an eyebrow at Pendleton. “You said you wanted to see Maggie do her thing.”
He shook his head. “This is your lead, Tony. You better see it through.”
There wasn’t time for him to argue. “All right,” he said. He had to admit to himself he was glad. He didn’t think there was a connection between Emily’s disappearance and Ronnie Eastman’s, despite the fact that Emily lived in the same subdivision as Wyatt, but Christopher’s story was enough to ignite his curiosity on that front. And Pendleton was right: he had to see it through.
The Next Time You See Me Page 29