The Stranger Game

by Cylin Busby

  “Sarah has what we believe is a type of amnesia called retrograde amnesia,” the woman explained. “Her memory loss could also be from a TBI—a traumatic brain injury—or simple lack of nutrition. We have not had a chance to run an MRI on her here, but I recommend that you do that, as soon as you get her home. . . . It could give you some answers.” She passed Mom a few papers from her file.

  Lack of nutrition. Brain injury. The words washed over me and my stomach lurched. I could feel the scratchy trail of the pill down my dry throat. I swallowed hard, willing it to work, to make me feel better somehow.

  “Can we just see her now?” Mom asked. I glanced over at her and noticed that her hair was all flattened in back, still messed up from sleeping on the plane, but the pills seemed to have worn off. She was rubbing her hands together and leaning forward in her seat as if she were about to bite this nice woman on the face. “Please.”

  “Of course, I know how anxious you are,” the woman replied, and I could see Mom’s blood start to boil. There was no way this woman could have any idea how anxious we were. None. “I just wanted you to be prepared, so that you aren’t too disappointed. What I’m trying to say is, Sarah may not recognize you. She knows her name, but she’s . . .” Here she trailed off, shaking her head in a sad way.

  “Please, can we just see her, we’ve come all this way.” Dad finally spoke, surprising us all.

  The woman put her hands on the desk and stood up, nodding to the men by the door. We were led down the hallway, taking every measured step. I saw Mom clasp Dad’s hand without a word. We stopped outside a closed door, and, with a quick knock, one of the men swung it open. And just like that, a room appeared, a sunny room with a cot in one corner and a sink and a little desk, a room for a child. And on the simple pink bedspread sat a teenager, all angles and straight dirty-blond hair that fell to her shoulders. She wore a white tank top and a pair of jeans, cheap plastic flip-flops.

  The girl looked up. She was so thin, sitting like a little girl, but her skin and expression showed that she was older. Was she nineteen, or was she thirty? It was hard to tell: her face was pale and drawn, skin pulled tight over bones. She looked like Sarah, but in disguise.

  Her eyes skipped over me. “Mom?” she said quietly.

  I tried to hear, in that one word, if she sounded like Sarah, and then realized, with an awful jolt, that I no longer remembered what Sarah sounded like. What she had sounded like. Before.

  “Sarah!” Mom cried. She pushed past me into the room, falling beside the girl and wrapping her arms around her waist. I looked over to Dad and saw what looked like tears on his face.

  “My God,” he said. “It’s her, it’s really her.” He shook his head and moved to embrace Sarah too as I stood in the doorway, hearing his words over and over again in my head: It’s her. It’s her. It’s really her.

  CHAPTER 6

  “ARE YOU TRAVELING ALONE?” the flight attendant asked. I glanced up at her, then shook my head. “Those are my parents and my, um . . .” I trailed off. I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t say the word.

  “We’re together,” Dad said. They hadn’t thought to book four seats on the return flight, so this was the only way we could all travel home together from Florida. The shelter had released Sarah to my parents with no DNA tests, no fingerprints—she was over the age of eighteen, an adult, and could leave at any time, with anyone she wanted. Now she sat between Mom and Dad, and I was a row ahead and a few seats over.

  Sarah. It felt weird to even think her name connected to an actual person. I was used to Sarah meaning an empty spot, a blank space, a bottomless pit of anger and hurt.

  The flight attendant glanced at my parents, probably wondering why their older daughter sat between them while I sat alone, but of course she couldn’t know. Sarah also looked a bit rumpled and worn, in the same clothes she’d had on at the shelter. Mom gave her a sweater to wear over her tank top.

  The last time I saw Sarah, she was wearing her white sleeveless dress. It had been a favorite all that summer. She’d dressed it up for her date with a brown leather belt, worn loose around her hips, and she’d paired it with slouchy brown suede boots. It was the day she’d yelled at me for borrowing her gray sweater.

  Later, I was so thankful that she had come into my room, stood over me as I lay on the bed, curled up with my paperback romance novel. Screamed at me. Told me I was fat. Because otherwise, when the police asked “What was she wearing?” we wouldn’t have been able to answer.

  I knew where she was going too: to meet Max at the park. The summer had not been easy for them. First our parents forbade Sarah to date him, then Max’s parents also decided things were getting too serious, too fast. But no one could seem to keep them apart; they were constantly finding ways around the rules, meeting at other people’s houses, skipping school to be together. Finally, our parents relented and let Sarah see Max, on the condition that she complete her summer school sessions with a tutor. But Max’s parents stepped in and put an end to Sarah’s hot summer plans: they sent Max away to work as a counselor at a camp in Maine for two months, saying he needed to earn money for college. Worse: there were no phones or internet access allowed at the camp. Sarah stormed around the house with a gray cloud over her head, the only bright spot an occasional letter or postcard from Camp Cumberland. Then, finally, in late August, he was back and Sarah was dying to see him.

  “Can’t I blow off Mr. Page for once?” Sarah had pleaded the night before at dinner. “I haven’t seen Max all summer and he’s about to leave for school.”

  Sarah usually got what she wanted, and what she wanted now was to skip her weekly session with her summer tutor. Without twenty-four hours’ notice, I knew he would charge for the missed session, and it wasn’t cheap—I had heard enough grumbling from Dad about how much Mr. Page’s tutoring cost. Mom glanced at Dad across the table, and his mouth was set in a firm line. “Your junior year is around the corner, you’ve got to be ready. This is serious, Sarah. Your grades this year mean college—”

  Sarah finished his sentence for him. “And college means the rest of your life, I know, I’ve got it. But I’ve been going three hours every week, all summer. I did what you guys said. Come on.” She tilted her head and met his eyes.

  Dad relented. “A compromise.” He looked over at Mom, getting a nod of approval from her, as if they had already discussed this. “If you promise to study for a few hours here at home, we’ll cancel Mr. Page. Then you can go to the park and meet your friend.” It was not lost on anyone that Dad pointedly referred to Max as Sarah’s “friend” and not her boyfriend.

  A smile spread across Sarah’s face—too fast, because Dad kept talking. “But you can’t leave Nico here by herself, so you’ll have to take her too.” He stabbed a tomato on his plate and ate it like he hadn’t just dropped a bomb on us.

  As Sarah took in this news, I could feel the icy chill of her anger move across the table. Her eyes landed on me, but I just focused on my plate, moving salad and pasta around.

  “Are you kidding me? I can’t take her—she’s . . .” Sarah stopped herself just in time. She’s what? I wanted to ask. Fat. Not cool. A sixth grader. A loser. An embarrassment. There were so many words she could use to fill the blank.

  “Nico’s only eleven, and I’m just not comfortable with her being here alone all day,” Mom chimed in. “Part of our agreement was that you would look out for her this summer.”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t say I would have to let her ruin my entire life! I’ve taken her everywhere with me. I’m done.”

  “Hyperbole,” Dad intoned, reaching for the bread.

  I knew what they were doing, and Sarah did too. We weren’t stupid. If I went with Sarah, there wouldn’t be anything “inappropriate” going on between Sarah and her eighteen-year-old boyfriend. I was a de facto chaperone, at age eleven.

  Sarah stood suddenly, even though we weren’t allowed to leave the table without permission. “Fine, then I won’t go. If I have to take
Nico, forget it.”

  Mom and Dad finished their dinner in silence. I hated the scratching sounds of the forks and knives on the plates, with no words spoken. We could hear Sarah’s door slam upstairs, then her moving around in her room. Finally, Mom said, “You know she’s not mad at you, right? She’s mad at us.”

  Mom and Dad exchanged another look, and I knew they would continue talking about this later—how to handle Sarah. How to keep her calm. It was all they ever talked about. Sarah.

  “I’m okay to be here by myself,” I said, even though I really wasn’t. After an hour or two in the house alone, I usually got spooked by something: the mailman ringing the doorbell, a weird hang-up phone call. One time, Mom had left the dryer in the basement on wrinkle guard, which meant it went on by itself every fifteen minutes. Sarah was home with me then, and I went to her, not daring to enter her room but standing in the doorway to tell her that I’d heard something downstairs. She grabbed one of her cheer batons from the closet before heading into the basement to see what was going on. I cowered at the top of the stairs, waiting for her to come back up.

  “Sarah? What is it?” I called down timidly. Of course she pretended not to hear me for the longest time. When she finally came back up, she put her finger to her lips, telling me to stay quiet. “What? What is it?” I asked anxiously, terrified that there was someone—or something—waiting for us in the dark corners. She came up the stairs quietly, then slammed the basement door behind her and locked it, looking over at me with big eyes.

  “Nico . . .” she said, her voice shaking.

  “What?” I could feel a cold wave wash over me. I was ready to run. We were about to be murdered, like on reality news shows.

  “It’s . . . it’s the . . . dryer!” She burst out laughing. “Oh man, Nico, you should see your stupid face right now! I need my phone, I’ve got to get a picture of this—did you just pee your pants?”

  When Mom came home I told her what had happened, how scared I had been, but she brushed it off. Just Sarah being silly, a joke. But—not so funny—Mom remembered it, and ever since then she brought it up as a sign that I wasn’t old enough to be left home by myself. Like now. “Nico, remember what happened when the dryer was on wrinkle guard,” she said, standing and clearing Sarah’s plate with her own.

  “That was, like, last year,” I pointed out.

  Mom acted as if she didn’t hear me. “If Sarah really wants to meet Max, she’ll take you along. And I think she wants to see him. She’ll calm down.”

  But the next morning, she hadn’t calmed down. She didn’t speak to me for hours after Mom and Dad left for work. Then she came in with the sweater, the one I had worn and stretched. She stormed out, slamming my door behind her, more chips of paint cracking from the doorframe. I still didn’t know if I was going with her or not. About an hour before she was supposed to meet Max, she was still home primping, leaning in to the bathroom mirror with a mascara wand. I heard her cell phone ring, then tense words. I thought at first it was Mom checking in, but then I heard Sarah call the person a “fucking bitch,” and I knew that even Sarah wouldn’t say that to our parents. When they checked her phone records later, at that exact time Paula had called. Her best friend. Her former best friend.

  Waiting for her in my room, I put on what I thought was an okay outfit for hanging out with high school kids: jean shorts and a black tank top. I was going to wear something else, a T-shirt that had the name of my middle school tennis team on it, but I knew Sarah would make me change. Your team came in third place this season. If that was my shirt, I’d burn it. I pulled my hair up into a ponytail and sat on my bed, reading a paperback from the library until Sarah was ready. But Sarah never came back in my room that morning. Moments later, I heard the garage door open, the tick-tick-tick of her bike wheels below my window, then the garage closing as she rode off.

  When the cops kept asking us where she was supposed to be, or where people had seen her last, my parents could only vaguely tell them MacArthur, a vast park that spread for over five miles on the edge of our suburb. It was only about a mile from where we lived, easy to bike to. It didn’t really matter, though, because when they interviewed Max, it turned out that she had never made it past the bike racks. No one had seen her. He had waited for over an hour, calling her cell about ten times.

  So it was easy to figure out who was the last person to see Sarah.

  It was me.

  And I knew right away to keep my mouth shut about what she had said to me. I almost told the detective, as he sat at our kitchen table. He seemed so warm and so relaxed, calmly asking questions while Mom sat wringing her hands. “Did your sister seem anxious or upset about anything that day?” he asked.

  Sarah’s angry face flashed through my mind. She leaned over me where I sat on my bed, cowering. She held the stretched-out sweater in one hand, but her other hand was free. Free to hit, free to slap. I knew she could make me sorry. I answered the detective: “No, she seemed fine.”

  “How about her tutor, Mr. Page, do you know him?” Mr. Page was a grandfather’s age, a retired high school chemistry teacher.

  “I don’t know him,” I had to admit. “But he seems really nice.”

  “Was Sarah excited to go meet her, uh, friend?” I noticed he looked down at the notebook in his hand as if to check their names one more time. “Did she mention anyone she was having a problem with—another boy, maybe, or a female friend?” He tapped the list with his pen.

  I shook my head. Sarah would kill me if I told them about the situation with Paula and Max. Besides, that wasn’t really a problem, it was just how Sarah operated. Paula had liked Max, had had a crush on him for over a year. And Sarah got him. She won. Plain and simple. If Paula was mad about it, or jealous—“tough titties.” That’s what Sarah would say. Like when they both went out for cheerleading and Sarah got on the A-squad. She had worked for it, it was earned. And she would be right, but I knew it still hurt Paula that Sarah was always a little bit better. A little thinner, her hair a little blonder and longer, her cheer jumps a little higher. It wasn’t fair, but it’s just how things were. Until Max.

  “Would you like something to drink?” The flight attendant leaned over my seat, pulling me from my memories.

  “I’m okay,” I answered, turning to look back at my parents, and Sarah, as she raised a glass of something to her lips. Orange juice. Sarah said orange juice gave her cankers. That it was full of empty calories. But maybe she had outgrown that. I guess she had. Or her amnesia made her forget. She seemed to remember us, our names and our faces, but we hadn’t asked too many questions at the shelter. Mom and Dad were just anxious to get her home again. To have Sarah, their daughter, back.

  Before I could stop myself, I flipped up my tray table as soon as the drinks cart moved by me and headed down the aisle. I leaned over their seats and said quietly, “Sarah, orange juice gives you cankers. You might not want to drink that.” I nodded to her half-empty glass.

  Mom instantly shot me a look full of daggers, but Sarah kept her eyes down, her face an unhealthy pale, saying nothing. I walked on numb legs to the bathroom and slid the door lock behind me. I leaned against the wall and looked into the mirror, seeing only Sarah’s old face looking back at me.

  SARAH

  THE NEXT TIME, IT wasn’t really my fault. She had yelled at him for hurting my arm, and he was mad about it. So he decided to break her rules. He let me out, just for a little bit, just to watch TV with him while she was gone. It was my first time out of the room except to use the bathroom. And even then, they would watch me. “Come sit with me,” he told me. “A little closer.” It wasn’t like a question, so I did what he said.

  My arm was still in a sling. He touched it gently and asked me, “That hurt?” I shook my head and he cracked a smile. I could tell I had made him happy and then I just wanted to see that smile again, to know that I was doing the right things. If I was good, I wouldn’t get hurt again.

  I guess he saw my eyes looking
at the door, at all the locks there. He put his cigarette out. “Don’t even think about trying to run off—that arm is nothing compared to what you’ll get.” He took off his white T-shirt, stretching it over his head. His chest had lots of hair and, under that, tattoos marked his skin. I sat with him and did everything he told me to do until he heard her car in the driveway and then he said to run, run back into the room, and I better not say a goddamn thing or I would be so goddamn sorry.

  The door locked behind me. When I heard the voices later, they sounded happy. They forgot to bring me anything for dinner, but that was okay. I was happy—as happy as I could be in the small room with the dark window. I thought the hurting had stopped. But I was wrong.

  CHAPTER 7

  THERE WOULD BE NO interviews, no media. My parents decided that right away. Sarah was too fragile, she needed to see doctors. And that wasn’t the only reason. The detectives in Florida had told us something terrifying: Whoever had taken Sarah might not have let her go. She might have escaped. If she had, they might come back for her—worried that she would remember. Worried that she was only pretending she had amnesia. They told us we weren’t allowed to say anything to anyone, even family, about her ordeal and what she could (or couldn’t) remember. This suited Mom perfectly. “Our family is our priority, not People magazine,” I heard her say into her cell on the drive home. We rode in a black SUV on the way home from the airport, Mom next to Sarah while Dad and I sat in the back.

  “A press release is fine, as long as I have approval over it, but I really don’t want reporters and media calling the house or coming by,” she explained. “How can we keep our address out of print?” The years that Mom had spent helping others to get their children back were coming in handy now: training for how to handle everything that might come our way.

  Sarah looked out the window at the scenery rolling by and I tried to see it through her eyes. As we left the city and came into Mapleview, the suburbs sprawled. Golf courses, playgrounds, and parks surrounded by turn-of-the-century homes on streets with names like Spring Oak and Fern Dell.