The Girls She Left Behind

by Sarah Graves

  “Okay,” said Lizzie, still not quite buying it. The story was possible, of course, maybe even likely. This stuff happened to people all the time, and it was at least an understandable reason for Peg’s reluctance to discuss it.

  But it felt way too much like a fallback, the kind of tale a nervous perp tried putting over on you when the first big lie didn’t cut it. Or maybe, Lizzie thought, she was just too used to life in the big city, where everybody was lying and everyone, it seemed, had something to hide.

  “Okay,” she repeated, moving toward the door. “Call me again if anything happens, all right? Anything at all, even if you’re just scared. Or—” She hesitated, but what the hell. “—if you just need to talk.”

  Peg declared that she would, a promise Lizzie wasn’t sure she believed. But for now she’d done all she could and it was good to get outside. In the graveled dooryard she breathed in the sharp fragrance of the sleet-slaked pines with a sense of relief.

  As she climbed into the Blazer the last of the storm clouds parted, exposing the stars and a slice of moon. But as she drove back to Bearkill in the pine-scented darkness, the white crescent overhead seemed to sharpen unpleasantly into a claw, raking her with new doubt.

  Lizzie still wasn’t sure why she felt that Tara Wylie was in serious trouble. Maybe she was overreacting. But if the big city had taught her anything, it was that a young girl on her own was the potential star of a world-class creepshow.

  And in this world there were plenty of creeps.

  Mulling this thought, she rolled into town on Main Street, as silent now at seven in the evening as the remote country road she’d just been on. Slowing between the downtown’s two-story wood-frame storefront buildings, she glanced automatically side to side at a row of defunct stores, once-prosperous businesses repurposed into bottle-recycling centers, a videogame arcade, and the local food bank.

  A dozen blocks later she turned right onto a dead-end street. Her small rented house was a ranch-style structure with a poured-concrete front step, a rusting wrought-iron porch rail, and a picture window looking out on a postage-stamp yard, just like all the others on the block.

  After locking the Blazer and setting its alarms she went up the curved stone walk and keyed the front door open twice: once for the doorknob, and again for the dead bolt she’d had installed after moving in.

  She’d already pushed the door open and begun stepping inside when the shape hurtled silently from the darkened interior at her. “Hey!” she managed, and then it was on her, pushing her to the floor.

  “Dammit!” she yelled, struggling to right herself. But her attacker was too heavy, his tongue slobbering and his hot breath gusting at her, smelling of dog food as he nuzzled her, whimpering in delighted greeting.

  “Oh, all right,” she gave in finally, because the dog was unstoppable and because she really was glad to see him. “Okay, Rascal,” she managed. “Get off me, you big knucklehead.”

  The dog groaned with happiness, shoving his massive head under her jaw. One of her first acts after arriving in Bearkill had been agreeing to care for the big black-and-tan hound after his owner’s death. But, she’d insisted, it was just temporarily.

  She was not a dog person. She’d made that very clear. “Okay, Rascal, you can…okay, get off now…okay!”

  At last the enormous canine backed off and sat, looking proud of himself. Urging him out into the yard, she propped the door so he could come in on his own when he was ready; fifteen minutes later they were both back inside, the door double-locked again and the porch light off. She’d walk him after he’d eaten, she decided.

  “So,” she said, pouring out his ration of kibble as his thick toenails clickety-clicked impatiently around the outdated kitchen. The cream-colored linoleum, decades-old electric stove, and round-shouldered Frigidaire were all from the 1950s. The only modern item was the police scanner on the countertop.

  “How was your day?” The dog plunged his long black snout into his dish to snarf up his evening meal, his ear tips brushing the floor on either side as his eyes practically rolled up into his head with pleasure.

  Dylan’s Thai food was supposed to be her own dinner, but her stomach wasn’t convinced; she was pondering the idea of frying an egg when she noticed the blinking light on her landline phone.

  Drat. Only a few people had the landline number. As Rascal shifted to his water bowl and began washing down his meal with a sound like a plunger being used to unclog a stubborn drain, she pushed the PLAY button and heard Dylan’s voice:

  “Hey, I took your unscheduled visitor to the hospital. She’s being admitted overnight for a psych evaluation.”

  She felt her eyebrows go up. The woman had looked nervous, but not unstable.

  “Nothing to do there now,” Dylan went on. “She’s settled for the night, but you might want to go and have a peek at her in the morning.”

  Then came the kicker: “She seemed to think she might have something useful to say about your missing girl, but she got upset and never did tell me anything,” Dylan said.

  “And listen, I got a call,” he added, his tone changing. “The little kid I mentioned? A patrol officer in Bangor made a traffic stop and found her, I’d let him know that I was interested so he called about it.”

  Lizzie’s heart stopped. Nicki…

  “The report earlier was a false alarm. It turns out the kid really does belong to the folks she’s living with after all. Just thought I’d let you know,” Dylan finished, and hung up.

  So it wasn’t her. Again…

  The woman from the office earlier, though; that was curious, that Dylan’s interview with her had gone south so fast.

  Frowning to herself, Lizzie grabbed a granola bar, took a sizable bite out of it, and stuffed the rest in her jacket pocket for later; it wasn’t the fried egg sandwich she’d had her mouth set for, but it would have to do.

  Rascal’s walk and the TV watching she’d planned for the rest of this evening would have to wait, too—the first House of Cards DVD was already in the player—as would a glass of wine.

  She yanked her bag off the hook by the door, reset the answering machine, and wrapped Rascal’s collar with its new license and rabies tags around his glossy black neck—Trey Washburn had been very helpful, getting the dog’s health status up to date. Outside, she locked the front door twice behind her, then rattled the knob to make sure.

  And according to Dylan she said something about Tara Wylie, too. So why didn’t he try to follow up on that?

  Only one way to find out. In the driveway, Rascal leapt up into the Blazer’s passenger seat and allowed his doggy seatbelt to be buckled around him, its lamb’s-wool padding crossing snugly over his broad chest. Getting him accustomed to the belt had been difficult at first, but seeing him perched there like a missile ready to be launched should she need to brake or swerve suddenly had been more than she could bear.

  “Good boy,” she said now, and the dog looked over at her as if in agreement; this, she was beginning to realize, was why they were called companion animals.

  On the dark rural highway headed toward the county medical center she hit the gas. The Blazer’s big V-8 engine responded with a surge of power, tires whining on the damp pavement and the crescent moon strobing whitely from between the trees.

  Nothing to do at the hospital tonight, Dylan had said. She toggled the dashboard’s cherry beacon on.

  Yeah, right.

  —

  The sweet smell of wood smoke mingling with the piney perfume of evergreen trees, the rustle of the nighttime breeze, and the crunch of dry brush breaking underfoot all told fourteen-year-old Tara Wylie that she was still somewhere near…

  Home! The realization forced a frightened sob from her throat just as someone shoved her hard from behind, urging her along.

  Stumbling, she put her bound hands in front of her to break her fall, but at the last instant the rope fastened around her chest pulled cruelly tight again, yanking her back upright.

&
nbsp; “Walk,” a voice whispered.

  Tauntingly, her mind ran through all of the many opportunities she’d had not to be in this situation—chances she hadn’t recognized or had wasted when they arose:

  On Sunday night—could it have been only two days ago? It felt like ages, but it was Tuesday night now, she knew—Aaron had decided on the spur of the moment to visit a pal of his in Bangor.

  And that had been her first chance: not going at all. But on that freakishly warm Monday morning in the early dawn, with a big, handsome boyfriend and his motorcycle waiting, who could resist?

  Not Tara, certainly, especially since there was no school that day on account of teachers’ conferences, and Aaron promised they would be back by nightfall.

  Feeling a spirit of adventure thrilling in her, she’d stuffed a sketchbook and some drawing pens—black ones with points as fine and sharp as hypodermic needles—into her backpack and hurried out before her mother was awake. A few breathlessly exciting hours on the motorcycle later, they arrived at Aaron’s friend’s place, an apartment on Stowe Street up behind the public library.

  Which was her second chance to bail out. The neighborhood was sketchy, lots of mailboxes on each unkempt old three-decker house. Heaped trash bags mounded high in the alleys between buildings, and a general air of deliberate meanness and neglect everywhere had given her the creeps right off the bat.

  Hanging out drinking on the front porches were tattooed men and women with ropy arms, facial piercings, and unwashed hair. She didn’t feel threatened, exactly; the freedom she was enjoying was too sweetly intoxicating for that. But Tara hadn’t liked the porch-people’s challenging stares at her at all, and once she got inside she’d liked even less the buddy that Aaron had wanted so much to visit.

  At first she couldn’t even understand why Aaron wanted to. Aaron was a clean freak, and this guy’s cramped, messy apartment had smelled like old bacon grease and dirty socks. Worse, when the friend got a look at Tara his eyes, puffy and sly, had lit up in a way that made her wish she’d waited out on the sidewalk with her sketchbook.

  Only needing the bathroom very badly had made her stay. When she came back out, still cringing from the eye-watering filth of the place, Resident Evil was already blaring out of the guy’s game console, with Aaron and his pal slouched together in front of it unblinkingly thumbing their game controllers.

  Sighing, she’d gone looking for something to drink. Which was how, in the grimy disaster of a kitchen, she’d found a syringe lying there on the littered counter with the needle still attached to it. Next to it lay the cotton ball with a dot of dark-red blood staining it.

  And even she knew what that meant. She’d been to the anti-drug lectures at school, seen the scary photographs. Heroin…

  She’d felt her shoulders slump dejectedly; so that was why Aaron had wanted to come. He’d always said weed and beer were okay but that sticking things in your veins was for losers.

  But people said a lot of things, didn’t they? Things that when push came to shove, they really didn’t mean. And although she liked Aaron a lot, it didn’t even cross Tara’s mind to stay and put up with this kind of stupidity.

  She wasn’t even mad at him, somewhat to her surprise. Just disappointed and suddenly very eager to get home to her own room, to her undone homework and her cheerleading practice tomorrow, and to the new kitten that her mother was having to feed because Tara wasn’t doing it, she’d realized with a pang of guilt.

  So she’d shouldered her backpack, and when she peeked back into the living room to say she was leaving, neither of the guys had even looked up.

  Outside, the unfriendly loiterers watched expressionlessly as she went down the front steps and started off down the street. Feeling their eyes on her back like the laser guns of the aliens in the videogame, she walked faster, feeling her mood improving steadily the farther away she got from them.

  Feeling fine, actually. The hell with them, she thought as she put her face up into the sunshine. It was a long walk across Bangor to the river, but the unnaturally warm weather made an afternoon in January feel almost like spring.

  Once she crossed over the Union Street Bridge she started hitchhiking to Bearkill, walking backward with a smile on her face and her thumb sticking out.

  Which was where her next mistake started.

  —

  The first two rides Tara accepted were all right: a nice lady in a Kia going to visit her sister in Eddington, then three young guys in a Subaru. The guys were all clean-cut, funny, and nonthreatening, clearly feeling that she was way too young for them and much more interested in one another’s jokes and stories than in her.

  But they were going only as far as Woodland. So by midafternoon with the sun already low in the sky she was out there hitching again, squinting hopefully into the glare as car after car zoomed by, not stopping. Nervously, she hoped she wouldn’t have to walk too far in the dark.

  And then the hippies came along. That’s what Tara’s mother always called people like them, anyway, the men long-haired and the women in flowered granny dresses and leather sandals. Some had come as teenagers to build rugged homesteads, part of a back-to-the-land movement in the 1980s; others were newer transplants. But they all liked handmade stuff, organic food they grew themselves, and marijuana—at least according to Tara’s mother.

  These hippies drove a little old Volvo sedan that smelled dankly of patchouli oil. Climbing into the backseat, Tara felt comforted by the bearded man’s twinkling eyes and cheerful smile. The red-haired woman riding beside him wore a faded T-shirt and tattered overalls brightly embroidered with astrological signs.

  They were heading up north, they said, but they needed to stop at their own place first. Did she want to hang out there for a little while, then get a ride all the way to Houlton?

  Tara definitely did. It was already getting late, and she had to be in school tomorrow; she’d never meant for her adventure with Aaron to last more than a day.

  So she agreed, and minutes later they were bumping down a long driveway through a stand of birch trees whose trunks gleamed whitely in the setting sun. They stopped before a dome-shaped house made of salvaged wood and mismatched windows, festooned with tinkling wind chimes and small, bright flags fluttering on twine.

  Half a dozen dogs ran out barking as they got out of the car. Perched everywhere, on the deck that surrounded the house and on junk cars scattered about the yard, cats of every color and size watched, squinty-eyed, as they made their way inside.

  The woman, whose name was Iris, had skin so pale you could almost see through it. In the kitchen, which had a wood-burning cookstove and a hand pump but no faucet and smelled of vegetables decomposing in the compost bucket, she handed Tara a steaming mug.

  “Thank you,” Tara managed, suddenly shy, and the woman beamed at her, waving her into the living room and to a huge, soft chair covered in tie-dyed cotton. Settling into the chair with her tea, she noticed other people: A tall, skinny man sat cross-legged out on the deck, wearing a long caftan and sandals. A woman and a little girl worked at a loom on another part of the deck, and in a chair-swing hanging from a nearby tree a young boy lounged with a baby asleep on his chest.

  This was a commune, Tara realized, feeling excited to witness such an exotic phenomenon. She’d been aware that some people got together this way, sharing everything and living in peace and harmony. But she had never seen it, and being here made her life seem bigger, suddenly—more colorful and adult.

  She sipped the bitter tea proudly, glad these odd people had decided to allow her into their world. Strange music came from speakers perched on the rough wooden bookshelves, which were full of books she had heard of but never seen: Our Bodies, Ourselves, Moosewood Cookbook, The Joy of Sex. The music was droning, atonal, with weird drum thumping and string plucking; gazing about in wonder, Tara supposed that you had to get used to it before you could like it.

  She decided to try. Then a woman in a flowing, geometric-print tunic came in,
carrying a tray with a pottery bowl of soup, a large piece of black bread, thickly buttered, and a spoon.

  “Welcome,” the woman said gently, offering Tara the tray.

  The soup smelled delicious, and Tara was ravenous. Thanking the woman, she ate every bit of the soup—the broth and vegetables and the tasty bits of green stuff floating in it—and sopped up the last of it with the thick dark bread, which she also devoured.

  When she finished and set the tray aside, it was nearly dark out. The man on the deck was gone, as was the boy from the swing. Faint whiffs of marijuana drifted from somewhere.

  Then the red-haired woman returned. “I’m sorry, it’s taking us a little longer than we thought but we’ll just be another half hour or so. Is that all right?”

  Tara thought apologizing to a hitchhiker for a delay was not the way things usually worked. But she was content to stay for a while longer, especially if a ride all the way home was at the end of the wait.

  Settling back in the big, soft chair that smelled of some kind of herbal infusion, letting the weird, droning music wash over her while the sounds of the communal residents preparing a meal clattered pleasantly from the kitchen, she let one of the cats hop into her lap and curl up there, purring loudly.

  Soon she’d be seeing her own little rescued kitten. Poor little Phoenix. She hoped her mother wasn’t too mad about having to take care of him while she was gone.

  Then she thought of calling home. She always did call when she took off like this. Her cell phone was in her bag, which she’d tucked in beside her in the chair. But if she used it now, she’d have to explain where she was and how she got there, and it would spoil the pleasant atmosphere she was enjoying.

  Better to explain once she got home, she decided, which would be in only a few hours anyway.

  Thinking this, Tara felt her eyelids drooping. She’d been up very early getting ready to go with Aaron, and riding on the back of a motorcycle was exhausting. Not to mention all the walking afterward. So with the evening shadows deepening to night, she’d let her eyes drift shut.