Missing Pieces

by Carly Anne West

  I follow the track as it drops to its lowest dip, a height just above my head, and I squeeze my eyes tight against the image of the car that detached from its fellow cars, like a bead of water off the end of a cracking whip, tearing through the nearest circus tent and crashing into the trees.

  They thought she landed on the ground somewhere. Wasn’t that what someone had said in one of the news stories? They finally figured out she was still in the tree.

  I walk slowly toward the tree line, stepping carefully through the overgrowth of vines and shrubs that have cropped out of the ash. I don’t want to, but I look up. I can’t help myself. I half expect to see a car painted with apples, wedged between a fork in the branches, a little girl quietly bunched up on its bench, seat belt still secured.

  The guy who found her said she looked like she was sleeping. She looked so peaceful.

  I hear crying.

  I don’t believe it at first. I’ve gotten myself all messed up over the note from Aaron, the stories about the park, the trouble I’ve gotten into … the trouble I’m going to get into when my parents find out I’m not in bed right now.

  The crying isn’t in my head, though. It’s faint, but I hear it.

  “Hey!” I call.

  I’m starting to get tired. This night has been one mistake after the next, and I’m completely over it. All I want is my bed and a dreamless sleep for once.

  “Hey! Either quit crying or tell me where you are. Otherwise, I’m out of here.”

  The crying stops.

  I wait, but not even a sniffle wafts over the air.

  “Good,” I say, even though I don’t really mean it because if I turn around and head home now, all I’m going to do is lie in bed and wonder what I heard and saw and why this entire night happened.

  “Okay, last chance. Aaron, if it’s you, screw you. I mean that. If it’s not Aaron, whoever you are …” I struggle with what to say next. “It’s okay if you’re scared.”

  Because I’m scared, too. I’ve been scared from the second we moved to Raven Brooks, just like I’m scared every time we move. I’m afraid I won’t know where to sit at lunch or what to wear. I’m afraid of saying something dumb or laughing at the wrong time or not laughing at the right time. I’m afraid I smell weird even after I take two showers because our houses always smell like other people and no matter how many air fresheners you plug in, it still seeps into your clothes. I’m afraid that if I do finally make a friend worth keeping, he’ll decide I’m not worth keeping. Maybe some people are just too weird to have friends.

  “What makes you think I’m scared?”

  It’s a girl’s voice, and I feel dizzy because all I can think of is Lucy Yi. I look up in the tree, and for a second, I swear I see a little pink car, an arm dangling from the opening on the side.

  I feel a hand close around my wrist.

  I leap backward, jerking my arm away from the cold grasp of fingers that leave a fine scratch along my hand.

  When I look into the small beam of silver light that creeps through the tree branches, I see the illuminated face of Aaron’s sister.

  “Mya, what the—? Why are you here?” I sputter.

  “I left you a message,” she says, looking betrayed, like I should have known it was her writing me a note and hiding it in the secret place only her brother should know about.

  “Okaaaay,” I say, trying to process Mya writing me to meet her in the middle of the night.

  “It’s Dad,” she says, wasting no time. “He’s getting worse.”

  My heart drops into my stomach. The note from last month, the golden apple bracelet. It was Mya who left them.

  “Ever since …” She looks around, and we both look up at the roller coaster above us. Then she says, “He’s getting worse. Way worse.”

  I rub my head, which has suddenly begun to pound. I wasn’t sure the night could get any more bizarre, but Mya is proving me wrong.

  “I know,” I say, aware that’s the understatement of the century. Mya isn’t the one I was expecting to see tonight, but maybe she could still help me figure out what to do next. “Is Aaron okay? I saw some things—and heard some things—about your dad. If you guys aren’t safe, we can call the police—”

  “No,” Mya says firmly. “Dad was in a lot of trouble before … with the other parks. If the police knew—”

  “Mya, whatever happens to your dad, you and your mom and Aaron … you need to be safe.”

  “Nicky, you’re not listening,” Mya pleads.

  “I am listening, but …” I’m starting to get desperate, too. “I just don’t know what you want me to do!”

  I’ve never understood what people meant when they described someone’s face as “falling.” It seemed like an impossible feat for all the muscles in someone’s cheeks and mouth and eyes to just slacken and sink. But that’s exactly what Mya’s face does now. Except her mouth doesn’t just slacken. It shuts. Tight.

  And just like that, all the tension leaves her small frame, and she takes a step away from me.

  “You’re the same as everyone else. You don’t understand, either, do you?” she says, and she must be right because I don’t even know what is so wrong about what I said to her. I’m still so confused over the Mrs. Tillman thing and the video and that night in Mr. Peterson’s study, but none of that matters now. It’s too late to erase what I said.

  Mya backs away three more steps, turns, and disappears into the surrounding woods.

  “Mya!” I call after her. This is the last place either of us should be wandering around alone at night, but I know it’s no use. I can’t even hear her footsteps anymore. If that’s a shortcut home, I don’t know it.

  It takes me nearly an hour to make my way back to the trellis in my front yard. I climb the slats carefully, conscious of every rattle and creak the frame makes as my weight pushes it against the side of the house. Then I slide my window open, replace the screen, and secure the latch. I sit there on the window seat with my head against the glass, watching for any sign of movement in the house across the street, worried about whether Mya made it home safely.

  I watch the house until my eyes ache and finally close.

  That night, I have the dream again about the grocery store. Only this time, I’m sitting in the front of the cart, feet dangling from a hundred yards up. I’m in a tree, branches crisscrossed over my chest, pinning me to the basket. Below me, my parents are as small as ants, scattering over the ground with dozens of others who call my name.

  But I can’t answer. I can’t say a word. And soon, I can’t hear them at all.

  * * *

  When I wake up, my head is still pounding, and I have the feeling for just a moment that I never actually went to sleep at all. My shirt and boxers are plastered to my body, and the way my bones ache, I wonder if somehow I was running all night. Is there such a thing as sleep running?

  Then I remember the night before—with Mya and the carousel and the endless walk home.

  My tailbone screams out in pain, and I realize it’s because I slept on the hard window seat, slumped against the glass, my breath clouding the pane.

  Suddenly, a loud smack against the window launches me from my morning lull. I groan and wipe the fog from the glass to find the Raven Brooks Banner resting at the top of trellis. The paper boy, we’ve noticed, has a powerful but inaccurate throwing arm.

  Usually the Raven Brooks news is full of local announcements (Catch of the Day at Dan’s: Chilean Sea Bass!), celebrity sightings (Local Tile Maker Takes Third Place in Poetry Competition!), and tragedies (Lost!: Lovely Border Collie Answers to the Name Noodle).

  This time, though, the news is graver than a lost dog. This is how I find out about the accident.

  After a long time, Mom calls from the kitchen, “Narf, can you come out for a minute?”

  I drag myself off the window seat and down the hallway. I slouch in a chair as my father sets down his editor’s copy of the paper and my mom puts a plate of waffles in front of
me.

  She sits down and puts a hand on my forearm. “We’ve got something to tell you. It’s going to be hard to hear.”

  I methodically pour syrup into every square of my waffle, avoiding the eye contact Mom is desperate to make with me while she creeps up on the news.

  “The paper landed in the trellis this morning,” I say, taking a bite of the waffle I don’t even want. “I already read it.”

  “Oh!” Mom says, then looks at Dad like, What now?

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No,” I say.

  “It’s just that, I think we ought to talk about it,” Dad tries.

  “I’m good,” I say.

  “Honey, you don’t need to be good,” says Mom.

  “I know.”

  Now it’s Dad’s turn to look at Mom. They’re stuck again.

  So am I, but I don’t know how to tell them that Aaron’s mom died last night and I haven’t figured out how to cross the street to see if he’s okay and I’ve felt like I’m going to puke ever since I read the front page.

  “They’re having a service on Saturday. Your dad and I are going to go. Do you want to come, too? Either way, it’s okay.”

  No.

  “Okay,” I say.

  Everyone brings food to a funeral. They treat it like it’s some sort of party, with these stupid paper plates that are too small to hold anything and casseroles you dish out with other people’s serving spoons.

  “You can just return it whenever it’s convenient. Don’t even worry yourself over that now.”

  People say dumb things like that. Or She looked so beautiful, didn’t she? Like no one thinks it’s creepy that you’d put a nice dress and makeup on a dead person to make them look alive again. Or It was a lovely service. No, it wasn’t. It was hot in there, and my tie is chafing my chin. And it wasn’t lovely, it was sad. That’s why people were crying.

  “Nicky, don’t you look handsome,” Mrs. Tillman says, suddenly forgetting that she had a lawyer send a letter to my parents demanding payment for the damage the synthesizer caused her store’s intercom.

  “Thanks,” I say, standing. “I’m going to get more food.”

  “Boys. I swear, if I ate like they did, I’d drop dead of a heart attack right here.”

  It was already quiet in the house, just lots of mumbling and sniffing. Now you could hear a squirrel fart.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was—”

  “It’s okay, Marcia. Just shhhh, let’s go check on the kids.”

  In the kitchen, I open and close some cabinets just to look busy. I avoid teary gazes and mournful nods in my direction until everyone finally leaves and I’m alone to contemplate how I’ve never been alone in this room. Actually, I’ve rarely ever been alone anywhere in this house. It’s like someone was always watching what I was doing: I’d go to open a door, and out would pop Mr. Peterson. I’d wander down a hallway I’d never seen, and here Aaron would come, pulling me away toward his room or the kitchen. Even Mya seemed to linger on me. In fact, the only one who never seemed to pay me much mind was Diane Peterson.

  Mom and Diane are actually a lot alike. Were a lot alike. Mom laughs at jokes Dad calls low-class, and she gets a headache when she drinks red wine. She likes cats and hates birds, and even though she says she likes dogs, I think she just says that so people don’t think she’s some kind of monster. Diane was the same way. But then she would drift, her thoughts wandering the way my grandma warned me not to let mine. She’d reminisce about the way Raven Brooks used to be, how welcoming and kind. She’d talk about neighbors who used to live there, and ones who still did but didn’t come around anymore. She’d talk about the trips their family took to London and Berlin and Tokyo, invited by theme parks seeking Mr. Peterson’s expert eye.

  We wanted a quieter life, though, Diane said once, then smiled ruefully, and I know she was remembering how the aftermath of Lucy Yi’s death was anything but quiet.

  Out the kitchen window, I see Mom and Dad huddled close to each other in the backyard, peering over their shoulders to make sure no one is around. They’re probably saying something inappropriate, something they’d scold me for saying. Or maybe they’re just trying to figure out how someone could be here one day, on the road to the outlet mall thirty miles away to buy Aaron and Mya new jackets, and then … gone.

  “Poor little thing. Imagine being ten years old and losing your mother. I didn’t even see her at the funeral.”

  Mrs. Tillman appears in the kitchen doorway and stops talking when she sees me, then looks to the woman I think is Aaron’s aunt.

  “Lisa, this is little Nicky,” she says. “Aaron’s friend from across the street. His family moved in this summer.”

  “Nick,” I say, and Mrs. Tillman’s lips tighten.

  “I’m going to find Aaron,” I say. I don’t mean to be rude. Mom would have pinched the back of my arm if she’d overheard, but I don’t feel much like making other people feel better at the moment, and I’m pretty sure the only other person who’s going to understand that is Aaron.

  I walk upstairs and leave the low murmur of mourning under me. It’s stuffy upstairs, but the air still feels lighter than it did down there, and I take a few breaths and head for the room at the end of the hall. Before I get there, I have to pass the master bedroom, though, and I’m surprised to see Mr. Peterson standing there, staring at the bed. It’s made, and I wonder if he made it this morning because he knew people would be coming over after the funeral. Or maybe he hadn’t slept in it at all.

  He’s turned a little to the side, which is why at first I think he’s staring at the bed. It isn’t until I get a little closer that I realize he’s not looking at the bed at all. He’s looking at the mirror beside the bed. Only, I don’t think he’s looking at himself. I think he’s staring at something else he can see in the reflection. I try to see what he sees, but I’m too far away, still out of the range of the mirror and far enough down the hall so my reflection isn’t there yet. I look at the wall beside me, but nothing seems out of the ordinary, nothing to be staring at the way he is—not aimlessly like he’s daydreaming, but like he’s watching something.

  All of a sudden, I feel like I shouldn’t be here, like I’m intruding even though I’ve spent almost as much time in this home as I have in my own. I want to run down the hall to Aaron’s room, but whatever’s going on with Mr. Peterson feels like something I shouldn’t interrupt. If he didn’t look so upset, I’d think he was praying. His face is all sweaty, and his lips are moving, but I can’t hear him saying anything.

  I turn around and head for the stairs. The kitchen doesn’t sound so bad anymore, and I can wait for everyone there. Aaron probably wants to be alone anyway. Maybe Mya needs something to eat. And where is Mya anyway?

  I’m almost to the first step when I hear Mr. Peterson make a kind of hiccupping sound.

  “No,” he whispers.

  I lean back and try to see his face in the mirror, but I can’t see anything from the stairs. I slink toward his room again, shoving aside the dread that’s creeping in.

  I stand where I did before, and now Mr. Peterson is holding his face like it hurts, except he looks like he’s the one hurting it because he’s pressing and squeezing so hard, his skin is turning pink and his eyes are bulging.

  “No, please,” he says, and it sounds like anguish, like begging. “Please just … stop!”

  I open my mouth to say something. Is this what it looks like when someone has a stroke? Or an aneurysm? Or a meltdown? I turn toward the stairs, regretting more than ever saying whatever it was I said to anger Mya the other night. Their dad needs help—I need to flag someone down without disturbing him, but everyone’s migrated out of the living room.

  Then I hear a kind of squeal, and the first thing I think of is a mouse we found in the attic of the red house once, but the squeal turns into a hoarse cry, and I realize that Mr. Peterson is trying to scream.

  I spin around to see what it is Mr.
Peterson can’t seem to stop seeing, and suddenly his face has gone slack, his hands limp and useless at his sides. His face is splotched red from where he squeezed it, but his eyes are half-closed, his gaze unfocused.

  I’m about to bolt for the stairs to get help when a flash of white in the corner of my eye catches my attention. Aaron is there, standing at the end of the hall, his white shirt untucked, his tie perfectly in place. He’s staring hard at me, like he’s trying to see right through me, and for the first time ever, I have no idea what to say to him.

  “I think your dad’s …”

  I want him to finish my sentence, but he just stares at me.

  I try again. “I don’t think he’s … uh … himself.”

  Aaron doesn’t smile, but his eyes squint a little. I expect him to at least be worried, but he just stands there.

  Then he says, “Really? He seems perfectly fine to me.”

  I take a few steps closer to Aaron.

  “Are … are you okay?”

  He laughs a joyless laugh, his eyes no longer squinting. “Yeah. I’m on top of the world. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m sorry … it’s just, I don’t really know what to say,” I stumble through my explanation. He’s obviously upset. How could he not be?

  “It, uh, it was a nice service. I mean, you said some nice things,” I mutter, and maybe this is why people say such stupid things after funerals. It’s impossible to come up with the right words. Still, Aaron isn’t making it very easy. We were hardly hanging out before his mom died. Now the accident. And there was that thing with …

  “Do you know where Mya is?” I ask him, and Aaron goes silent. He’s so still, I think maybe he’s figured out how to turn himself to stone.

  Finally, he says, “Why are you looking for Mya?”

  I take another step closer because the glare from the window in the hallway is casting a weird shadow on his face.

  “I guess I just want to make sure she’s okay. I mean, as okay as she can be.”