by Aaron Gansky
“Three other missing kids?” Ms. Knowles said.
“Oliver,” Bailey Renee whispered.
Parker looked at her, suspicion lining his bleary eyes. It’d been a long night for him, by the look of it. “How’d you know?”
“He was Lauren’s best friend. I called his family yesterday. They said they hadn’t seen him. And if Lauren’s gone, Oliver’s probably with her.”
“They romantic?” He put the cigarette in his mouth, mimed taking a drag.
“Gosh no,” Bailey said. “At least, I don’t think so.” She hoped not. A few years ago, she’d developed something like a crush on Oliver. Her crush eventually mellowed into a quiet respect, but she’d always remember him as her first crush.
“Could they have been secretly romantic?”
Sun poured in through the window behind him. Bailey scrunched up her nose and squinted.
“No, I don’t think so,” Ms. Knowles said. She sounded too eager to answer, as if she wanted Parker to think she was an involved mother. “More like business partners. They were working on some video game together.”
Detective Parker pushed his lips together as if he were kissing the damp end of the unlit cigarette. He made a note on a pad of yellow paper. “How much do you know about this game?”
“Not much,” she said softly. “She wrote everything in her journal. Never let me near it. Didn’t talk to me much about it.”
“Me either,” Bailey said.
He jerked the cigarette out of his mouth and stabbed it toward Bailey. “You know what kind of game?”
“Role playing,” Bailey said.
Parker nodded. “Knights and dragons and princesses and all that?”
“I guess so.”
He looked over the cigarette. “I could use a smoke about now.”
“How long have you been quitting?” Ms. Knowles asked.
“Two days. You said you quit, right?”
“Several years ago.”
“We’ll have to compare notes sometime. Do either of you know an Erica Hall or Aiden Price?”
Ms. Knowles shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. We don’t.”
“Not Erica, but I know Aiden,” Bailey said. “He’s not missing, is he?”
He leaned back and crossed his legs. “It would appear so. Can you tell me how you know him?”
“Everyone knows him,” she said. “He’s on the football team. Helped us win league this year. Got State Finals coming up soon.”
“Yeah, I heard about that. How did Lauren know him?”
“She started tutoring him in English a couple days ago, but nothing before then.”
“She tell you that?”
“Franky did. My boyfriend. He’s on the team with Aiden.”
Parker scribbled in his pad. “Has she changed her group of friends lately? Shown an interest in spiritual leaders or cults?”
“Cults?” Ms. Knowles asked. “No. Absolutely not.”
“How about you, Bailey? You hear her talking about anything like that?”
“I doubt she’d tell me if she did. But I don’t think she would. Oliver talks about God a lot, but I think it was normal church stuff. Nothing super crazy. Definitely not cult-worthy.”
“Got it. One more question. Do you know a Sarah?”
“Sarah what?”
“I don’t know.”
Bailey nodded. “We have a Sarah in our chemistry class.”
“Would Lauren have her number in her phone?”
Ms. Knowles said, “Possibly. They worked in the same group on a project earlier this year. I helped them put together the presentation board.”
Parker found a filthy ashtray under the papers. He pantomimed knocking ash from the end of the wet cigarette. “They get along?”
“I don’t think so.”
He opened Lauren’s cell phone. “Not much on here to point us in any directions. Mainly stuff to Oliver, but nothing to go on. Only other thing is a text from Sarah.” He showed Bailey and Ms. Knowles the text. “Look familiar?”
“Oh, poor Lauren,” Ms. Knowles said. “What a little bully!”
If I wuz as fat as u I’d kill myself.
Sarah Skeleton wrote that. Bailey stared at the message, then flipped the phone closed. She’d go to school tomorrow, long enough to see Sarah Skeleton, long enough to get herself suspended.
* * *
Lauren had no idea what time she woke up. Near the entrance to the central chamber, light crawled along the floor. The greater sun must be up, or at least on its way.
Lauren sat up and studied the slick black walls. She didn’t remember the cave, which didn’t surprise her. Oliver had put plenty of personal touches on the game they were supposed to be creating together.
Irritation warmed her from the inside out. She’d not slept for anything more than fifteen minutes at a time. Her entire body knotted, and bruises lined her limbs. Her temper stretched like old, frayed elastic.
Erica grumbled and rolled over. Sparky pulled double-duty as a pillow through the night. His skin twitched and Erica sat up. “Alright, alright. I’m up already. Geez.”
Aiden, Ullwen, and Oliver all slept with their heads on the saddlebags. Only Erica refused, and only because she had a better offer from Sparky. But Lauren still wondered if it would have been better to sleep on the backs of the horses.
Lauren stood up, took a few deep breaths, and walked to where the sun crept in. She pulled her fur-lined hood over her head to warm her ears and stood in the sunlight.
Erica joined her and started stretching again. She bent over and touched her toes, then went further and put her hands flat on the ground. How long had it been since Lauren had touched her toes? She followed Erica’s lead, bent over, and touched them with ease. She reminded herself she could only touch her toes because of her digital body, and all her self-loathing worked its way back into her heart. She stood up straight, folded her arms, and tried to slow her breathing.
“Since we’re all up, let’s get a little breakfast in us,” Oliver said. “There’s some bread and cheese left, a couple things of fruit. Go light, though. There’s not much to eat further on in the cave, and we may have to be there for a night. Two if we’re not careful. After we eat, we’ll head to the deeper caves.”
The deeper caves. The caves Oliver hadn’t bothered to explain to her.
She had no interest in fighting this battle with Oliver again. So when he suggested plumbing the depths of the mystery dwarf cave, she hardly batted an eyelash. Her frown may have betrayed her disapproval. If it did, Oliver was too hung up on Erica to notice.
Maybe that’s what this all boiled down to—Oliver’s need to impress Erica. Maybe that’s why he put in the Chameleon Soldiers and the mystery dwarf cave, and why he cut the fingers off Lauren’s gloves.
When Oliver so boldly dictated their plan, without room for discussion, Lauren unfolded her arms. She squashed the urge to argue with him because he was probably right. They needed the book. Too much of the game had already changed.
She’d learned to use her fire spell effectively, and, with a little more practice, she’d do the same with her ice and lightning spells. But those spells wouldn’t do a thing against the Mage Lord. They needed guidance. They needed to use their skills and get stronger to defeat the Mage Lord, to get home.
“I suppose,” she said as she folded her hands behind her, “you’ll want me to light the way?”
“I can make some torches,” Ullwen said.
“Well, that’d be handy and dandy,” Erica said.
“I’m not sure we want torches,” Oliver said.
“This is no time to show off, Oliver.” All the work Lauren had done to suppress her anger was undone. In a flash of heat, her patience evaporated, and she tore into Oliver the way she tore into Bailey Renee, the way her mother tore into her nearly every night. “Hooray for you: You know your way through this cave in the dark. But not all of us do.”
Oliver sighed. “Don’t get all sore again, Lau
ren. That’s not what I mean.”
Her temper snapped. She was tired of being the victim, tired of people calling her fat and ugly, tired of people insulting her ideas and calling her an overly sensitive drama queen. She was tired of her mom suggesting she needed counseling, that something was wrong with her. Lauren had a point, whether or not Oliver wanted to admit it, and she wasn’t about to let him turn this against her, like she was the one making the scene. “Why don’t you tell us exactly what you had in mind? Why not actually tell us the whole truth for once.”
Oliver put his hands up. “Look, I’m not trying to upset you. This isn’t about you or me. It’s about finding the book, okay?”
“Don’t you dare twist my words. I never said this was about me. This is about all of us. We deserve honest answers.”
“He’s just trying to help,” Erica said.
“I don’t see the problem,” Ullwen said. “We need The Book of Things to Come, and Vicmorn says he can find it. He is a monk, after all. Perhaps he knows more than we can see.”
“He’s a lying monk, is what he is. And of course he knows more than we can see. He created this whole stupid world by himself.”
“What aren’t you telling me?” Ullwen asked. “Indigo, you can tell me anything.” He took her hand. “I’m here for you. I would leave these three if not for you.”
Lauren put her hand over her heart. “So terribly sweet of you. But you don’t exist!”
“What?”
Oliver shook his head. “Indigo.”
“I am not Indigo!” Control slipped away, and anger flashed fever hot in her forehead and cheeks. The fire in the pit roared.
Sparky leapt back and bared his fangs. Erica gasped. She stared with wide eyes at the fire. Sparky ran to her heels, away from the fire. She put a hand on his neck.
Lauren pointed at Ullwen like her finger was a knife. Her voice echoed off the black stone walls. Without thought, words rushed out of her mouth like water over a cliff. She could stop them as much as a twig could dam a river. “This whole thing is a stupid game. You don’t exist. You’re nothing but a bunch of ones and zeros, some stupidly complex computer code.”
Ullwen didn’t move. He set his jaw tight. His chest inflated with a deep breath. He let her finger stab him. “I don’t understand.”
Lauren turned to Oliver. Her eyes reflected the flickering light of the fire. “You made him pretty dense, didn’t you?”
“Lauren,” Oliver said. He extended a hand toward her gently as if he were trying to calm a rabid animal.
“Don’t you Lauren me.”
Aiden grinned. “Haven’t seen this side of you. Kinda feisty.”
Lauren glared at Aiden. “Don’t flatter yourself.” To Oliver, “I am so sick of your lying.”
He’s not lying, she thought. But she couldn’t stop. She thought of her dad, her real dad in North Chester. “I’ll be back in a day or two. Won’t even know I’m gone,” he’d said. Weeks later he insisted he’d come home soon, eventually, after he found himself. He promised to show up for her birthday.
Now, Oliver was lying. Worse, he wanted her to lie. For the good of the game, he’d say. But lying was lying, and it sickened her. “I think it’s high time you start doing some explaining to Ullwen. It’s a little discourteous to drag him into this, even if he doesn’t exist.”
Oliver shook his head. “He wouldn’t understand.”
“Don’t speak about me as if I were not here,” Ullwen snapped. In one fluid motion, he hung an arrow on his bowstring and pulled the feathered end back to his ear. The flint tip pointed at Oliver’s chest.
Moving equally as fast, Aiden snapped his sword from its sheath and pressed the point under Ullwen’s chin. “Easy, bro. I can’t let you kill our best chance at getting home.”
Ullwen whispered. Aiden’s blade pressed into his skin with each word. “I deserve answers.”
Oliver turned slowly to stare down the shaft of the arrow. His breath slowed.
The fire dimmed dramatically. Sparky barked. The echo exploded through the eight caverns. He leaned back on his haunches and bared his teeth at Ullwen. Erica said, “You may want to drop the arrow, Skippy. Otherwise, it’s going to get very messy in here.”
“I have no quarrel with you four, but I deserve answers.”
“You do,” Oliver agreed. “Of course you do.”
“You say I won’t understand. You underestimate me.”
Ullwen’s fingers trembled. The feathers of his arrow quivered. How in the world did it come to this? How could Lauren have let herself get so out of control? She took a few deep breaths. The fire under her skin ran cold. The tips of her fingers turned blue and ivory. “I think we better tell him.”
“Put the arrow down,” Oliver said. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know. You have my word as a Monk of the Cerulean Order.”
Ullwen’s lip twitched. He dropped the arrow. “Make it good.”
Chapter Sixteen
And she shall see the face of Adonai and the robe of the Lord, but she will not understand it. She will not understand the light and will fail to describe His beauty. She will speak of it as a vision, and few will believe her, but she will speak the truth of what she has seen.
—The Book of Things to Come
SITTING AT HOME DROVE Bailey Renee crazy. She got so tired of being consistently reminded of Lauren’s absence. She couldn’t even turn on the television to take her mind off it. Every time she did, a news break about one of the four missing teens interrupted whatever mindless show she’d hoped to watch. Never new information—just another interview with one of the family members.
Several news stations had already called her mother, but Ms. Knowles wouldn’t have them, wouldn’t talk to them. Bailey had even gotten a call from them on her cell phone. She hung up on them, but not before she told them to leave her alone. Of course, her choice of words had been much more abrasive than her mother’s.
She sighed. No news is good news. Or really, really bad news. She couldn’t stop the same thoughts from punishing her brain. Lauren went for a late night walk and got lost, or broke a leg and was stuck in the cold. The other two teens kidnapped her and Oliver for some secret underground slave trade, or a crazy cult, or a gang initiation. She holed herself up in some underground bunker anticipating the end of the world, while Bailey Renee sat at home and anticipated the end of her family. Without Lauren, her family wouldn’t work. Her mother may be strong enough to survive an unfaithful husband, may be strong enough to be a single mother and work extra hours to provide for her daughters, but if Lauren vanished, it’d crack what little strength her mother had left. Bailey knew that as much as she knew the sun would rise each morning.
But Bailey wouldn’t let that happen. Though the police had already tried contacting her dad, and her mom had, too, both unsuccessfully, she wondered if she might be able to find him. She went to her room and tried not to look through Lauren’s open door. She grabbed her cell phone from her desk. Turned on her laptop and called her father’s cell phone. He didn’t answer. He didn’t answer his home line or his work line. She did talk to his manager, who said the same thing he’d told the police: Mr. Knowles was on vacation and wasn’t due back for another week. Camping in the Sierras, he said, with his wife.
Detective Parker had said it was awful convenient that Mr. Knowles’s vacation started the same night Lauren disappeared. Still, though the timing worked out, it didn’t feel right. Why would a man who hadn’t contacted his daughters or ex-wife in over seven years decide to kidnap one of his daughters all of a sudden? Her father may be a deadbeat dad, but he was not a kidnapper.
Undeterred, she dialed Oliver’s number. Mrs. Shaw answered. Bailey Renee kicked her shoes off, spun around in her chair, and put her feet up on her bed. “Mrs. Shaw, this is Bailey Renee.”
“Hi, hon. How are you?” Her feathered voice suggested she needed comforting as much as Bailey.
“Up and down. Can you talk for a minute?”
“Did Oliver know either of the other two kids?”
Mrs. Shaw swallowed. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “He knew Erica. They had a few classes together. But I don’t think he knew Aiden. Aiden wasn’t really the kind of kid Oliver would hang out with.”
“But Erica was? What was she like?”
“I guess she wasn’t the kind I thought Oliver would hang out with, either. She was pretty gothic—all black all the time. She didn’t smile a lot.”
“Doesn’t sound like Lauren’s type of friend either.”
“Hon, have you heard anything else about them? Has Detective Parker told you anything else? Or asked you anything? Maybe if we work together …”
Bailey Renee thought of the text from Sarah Skeleton. “Not much.”
“Have you heard from your father?”
“Nope. He’s about as deadbeat as they come.”
“I’m so sorry, hon.”
“Me, too,” she said. After they said their goodbyes and hung up, Bailey turned around. She launched her browser and navigated to Google. She typed in “missing teens common answers,” but nothing useful came up. Everything was too specific to other cases. She tried other combinations but never found anything worthwhile.
The edge of frustration pressed against her chest like a knife point. She wouldn’t give up, not this easily. Not ever. She decided to change her tactics. She dialed Franky’s number on her phone and pulled up yellowpages.com. Price. Her fingers moved quickly. Franky picked up. “Can you come get me?” she asked.
“Sure, from where?” he said.
“Home.” She typed in Hall next. Selected the addresses.
“You sound upset. Are you mad at me?”
“Of course I’m upset, stupid. But, not everything’s about you.”
“Sorry,” he said. “Don’t get all bent out of shape, though. It’s not my fault she’s gone.”