Never Missing, Never Found

by Amanda Panitch

  “Well, it’s my first day, so I don’t know what to tell you.” I try to sound as breezy as possible. A balmy wind blowing over a tropical beach—that’s me.

  “Do you go to Riverside?” He cocks his head, smiling.

  “No, I go to Holt.”

  “Huh.” His eyes rake my face again, and I feel myself flush. “I could swear I know you.”

  Maybe he did move here from Illinois, where I was a news item for years, a name scrolling across the ticker at the bottom of the screen. Maybe his bedroom walls are plastered with photos of missing girls. Probably not, I admonish myself. That isn’t something that would pop into a normal person’s head. Melody would never think such a thing. So creepy. “Well…it’s my first day. So.”

  His hair flashes copper under the fluorescent lighting. “Well, in any case, it’s nice to meet you, Scarlett.” He sticks out his hand. “I’m Connor, south-side assistant manager, at your service.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Connor.” I shake his hand. It’s milky white and rough, covered in calluses and scars. “So what should I do?”

  “We’re going to train you on register. You haven’t been trained on register, right?”

  “No. It’s my first day.” I’m beginning to feel like one of the Skywoman windup dolls stacked in the corner, where you pull the string on the back and elicit one of three prerecorded phrases. It’s my first day, gentle citizen of Silver City!

  “Okay, good. The other cashier should be here any minute.”

  Somewhere distant, a bell bongs. I count the chimes. Seven. Eight. Nine. Connor shakes his head and sighs. “Park’s officially open,” he says. “She’s officially late. Oh, there she is. Hey there!”

  The other cashier does not look capable of ending any sentences with exclamation points. Her skin is pallid, especially against the glow of her shirt, and her otherwise unremarkable face is distinguished by a most serious lack of eyebrows. She’s taken it upon herself to defy fate and has drawn in new ones; they start at different points on her forehead and stretch, crookedly, to the spot roughly above her nose.

  “Good morning,” I say. “I’m Scarlett.”

  No Eyebrows grunts in response and swings her till onto the counter with a clatter. “I got held up in Cash,” she says. “You can ask Rob.”

  “It’s okay, I believe you,” Connor says easily. “Once you get set up, you’ll be training Scarlett on the register today.”

  No Eyebrows grunts again.

  “Great,” Connor says. It seems he’s fluent in Troll. “Let me set you up.”

  His fingers fly over the touch screen so fast they blur. Connor notices me watching and grins. “We used to have competitions to see who could type their info in the fastest,” he says. “I always won.”

  “Lies!” a voice thunders from the front of the store. I jump, expecting someone as huge as Slugworth, but the owner of the voice reveals himself to be short and squat, more hobbit than giant. “Don’t listen to him, new girl. Don’t you see his nose growing?”

  The hobbit also wears the name tag of an assistant manager. Over the top of his collar poke the edges of a tattoo that, judging from the bloody tips of the spikes, depicts something delightfully gory. Holes yawn in his earlobes where gauges would be if not forbidden by the Five Banners dress code. “You’re Scarlett, I see,” he says. “I’m Rob, the counterpart to Connor here.”

  “Basically, he’s my evil twin,” Connor says.

  “Basically,” Rob agrees. “Your evil, far-more-better-looking twin.”

  “I don’t think that’s grammatically correct,” I say, squinting.

  “See?” Connor says. “Grammatically incorrect. Therefore, I am both the better-looking and the smarter twin. You’re my new favorite person, Scarlett.”

  “You should be honored,” Rob tells me gravely. “He only has a new favorite person every seven minutes.”

  I pretend to check a nonexistent watch. “I’ll enjoy the next six and a half minutes, then.”

  Connor waggles his eyebrows. “They’ll be the best six and a half minutes of your life.”

  Rob has a surprisingly high, light laugh. “More like six and a half seconds.”

  Connor socks him on the shoulder. “Dude,” he says. “How would you know?”

  Rob grins. His teeth are oddly small, as if they belong to a baby. “This is good,” he says. “We need this. To keep our mind off…”

  The air sags, grows heavy. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I should’ve figured you knew her.”

  “Know her,” Rob says abruptly. “She’s not dead.”

  “It’s better to be missing than dead,” I say encouragingly.

  Nobody seems to know quite what to say back to that. No Eyebrows picks at her nails. Connor says, finally, “Yeah. We all knew her. Know her.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be found soon,” I lie. She’ll never be found. Even if they find the girl they think is Monica, even if the doctors give her the okay and she has pointy crimson nails and slathered-on mascara, she’ll never be Monica again. She might act like her, pretend to fill her life, but she’ll never be the same. That’s just what happens when you join the club.

  “Yeah,” Connor says. “We hope.”

  Rob looks away. “We should go finish the schedule.”

  “We should indeed,” says Connor. “Scarlett, we’ll leave you in the very capable hands of Lizzy here. Give me a shout if you have any questions.” He leans in and whispers darkly, “Not Rob. Never Rob.”

  “Okay,” I say. Lizzy, unsurprisingly, grunts, and Connor and Rob disappear through the door set craftily into the back wall.

  “So,” I say brightly. “How about this register thing?”

  Lizzy looks at me with dull blue eyes. I’m thinking she must not have heard me somehow, though she’s not more than three feet away, when she speaks. “She looked like you, you know,” she says, and though she doesn’t specify who “she” is, we both know.

  “I interviewed with her,” I say, bouncing a little bit to hide my unease. “We didn’t look that much alike. She’s blond; I have black hair. She’s way paler than me too. So, um, how about that register?”

  She stares at me, eyes flat. “No,” she says. “You have black hair, and she might wear more makeup, but you look the same. You do.”

  The club. It rubs off on you, leaving the smell of desperation, a certain starved glint in your eye. You know there isn’t anything you can do to avoid it. Or at least I like to think so, because that means there wasn’t anything I could’ve done to change what happened to me.

  Lizzy and I don’t speak again, and she doesn’t offer to teach me the register. I wait for her to teach me, so patiently none of the customers can see my stomach rolling with nerves; it’s the same way I used to wait for Stepmother to finish what she was saying or regain her train of thought.

  And then a cry splits the silence. It comes from what sounds like right outside the store, and my heart jumps into my throat. “What was that?” I ask Lizzy. She shrugs, squinting at her hands under the counter. Her wrists are wiggling; she must be texting.

  All right, then. It’s up to me. I creep through the empty store, sticking my hand into my pocket. Weapons are expressly forbidden on Five Banners premises, and there’s a metal detector set up outside the employee entrance, but it’s not like they strip-search us. It’s not like it was hard to smuggle in my trusty canister of pepper spray, which hasn’t left my side in five years.

  My fingers relax when I find the source of the cry. It’s a kid, a little boy in a bright red Wonderman T-shirt, probably four or five years old, huddled against the outside of the doorway. Only a little bit younger than Matthew, but, a quick look around confirms, there doesn’t seem to be an accompanying adult. My heart softens, and I crouch down at his side. “Hey there,” I say. He snuffles at me, his face red and swollen with tears. “Is your mom or dad here with you?”

  At that he lets out another wail, and I pat his tousled blond curls in what I hope is a
reassuring way. I like kids. I love some kids, like Matthew. But they scare me too. They remind me of what I was like at that age. So young. Unsuspecting. Unready. “Don’t worry. It’ll be okay.” I take his sticky hand in mine and stand. Safe. I need to keep him safe.

  “Scarlett. Hey! Scarlett.” It’s Connor, weaving his way through the crowd, his eyebrows bunched into a question mark.

  “He’s lost,” I explain.

  “I should’ve suspected.” I make my own eyebrow question mark, and he clarifies. “I’m the park’s magnet for missing kids. Somehow they always find me.” It’s good he takes that moment to crouch down and look the kid in the eye, because my mouth’s gone dry and I don’t think I can respond. “Hey there, buddy. Don’t you worry. We’re going to find your mom or dad, okay?” Connor beams at him, and it’s like the sun shines just a little bit brighter.

  The kid’s lip stops quivering long enough for him to say, “My mom.”

  “Your mom? Great. We’ll find your mom for you, buddy. Can you tell me your name? No, let me guess. Your name is Wonderman, isn’t it?”

  That makes the kid crack a smile. “No.”

  Connor scrunches up his face, scratching his chin. “Orcaman?”

  The kid giggles. I find myself smiling too. “No!”

  “Skywoman, then.”

  “No!”

  Connor shakes his head in mock frustration. “Well, you’re just going to have to tell me, then, because guessing is too hard.”

  The kid sniffs. His face is already losing some of its puffiness. “Colin.”

  “Colin! That’s an excellent name,” Connor says, patting Colin on the shoulder like they’re teammates in some kind of sport. I wouldn’t know—I don’t watch any. “It’s almost like my name. My name’s Connor. C names are the best, right?”

  “Yeah!” Little Colin pumps his fist in the air.

  I stand there and watch, with increasing amusement, as Connor teases out what Colin’s mother was wearing (a blue shirt and pants like a mermaid, whatever that means), where he last saw her (outside Wonderman’s Fall, a nearby coaster), and if he knows her phone number (no, but he thinks it has a five in it). “Don’t worry about it, dude,” Connor says. He stands and looks me in the eye, as if he’s talking to me instead of the kid. I’ve always been tall for a girl; we’re nearly the same height. “You’re safe now. Let’s go to Guest Relations. We’ll find your mom and get you home.”

  My breath catches in my throat, and for a moment I feel weightless. Connor’s eyes crinkle, and I feel it, I do: safe.

  Colin breaks the connection by stomping his foot. “But I don’t want to go home. I want to ride on Wonderman’s Fall.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Connor grins at me. There’s no way this kid is tall enough, but we’ll just let him believe it for now. “Thanks for finding him, Scarlett. You saved the day.”

  For the rest of my “register training” shift with Lizzy (during which three customers come through and I gain no knowledge of the register), I bask in the glow of Connor’s words and his eyes and his smile.

  After the man pressed the cloth against my face, I woke to find myself in the backseat of a car. I sat up, and the world spun. I slumped against the wall and closed my eyes and let my head pound. Pound on the window, a small, bright part of me urged, but I could barely move, much less raise my fist. You need to get out. You need to get free.

  “Don’t bother trying to get out,” the man said from the front seat. His voice echoed in the confines of the small space, and I cracked my eyes and let the light blur around me. I had to see his face so they could catch him when I escaped, or they’d never catch him, and I would always be looking for him over my shoulder.

  “I’m real sorry it had to be like this,” he said, his voice growing softer, gentler, smoother against the jagged flashes of pain in my skull. “I tried to make it easy. You should listen to me. God knows you’d better listen to her.”

  The “her” didn’t even register. “Please let me go,” I said. My words were thick and stumbled on their way out. “Please.” That’s what my mom always told me: say “please” and I’d have a much better chance of getting what I wanted. “Please. Please.”

  My eyes were still open and I was staring out the window and all I could see was trees, bare stalks of bark luminous against the black of the sky. I tried to move my head, tried to see his face, but my neck wouldn’t listen.

  “Go back to sleep,” the man said, and I swear his voice was kind. The way my doctor’s voice would get, soft and syrupy, before he’d swoop in with a needle. “We’ll be there soon, and she will be happier if you’re calm.”

  I tried to protest, but my eyes closed of their own accord, and soon all I could see was those trees, but this time they were phantoms scratching at the sky, and they were all screaming with the same voice.

  The man was the one who woke me up the second time. I blinked slowly, groggily, and felt him shaking my shoulder. I was still in the backseat, slumped over the strap of the seat belt, my forehead cold and damp against the window. “We’re here, honey,” he said. “Can you get up? Don’t worry if you can’t. The sleepy-time stuff I gave you is probably still wearing off. I can carry you if you can’t walk.”

  The thought of being cradled in this man’s thick, hairy arms made my eyes pop open. The fog cleared from my head like a cloudy windowpane rubbed till it squeaks. “I can walk,” I said, fighting against the slur in my voice. “I can get out.”

  He opened the door for me. I gritted my teeth and focused, lifting one foot and placing it on the ground. Once I’d managed that, I swung my other foot over, lifted it, and put it on the ground. I gritted my teeth so hard I thought they might turn to sand. Now I had to hop out and run. Run to a house where someone would save me.

  “You’re taking too long. She’s waiting,” the man said, and he scooped me into his arms. My nose knocked against the bone of his shoulder and I bit back a cry of pain. My feet dangled helplessly a foot or two above the packed dirt. Over his shoulder I could just see a row of houses stretching off into the distance, a normal suburban street.

  “I can do it,” I said, my voice muffled against his shirt. He smelled like smoke.

  “You just rest,” he said.

  The houses around me blurred, then came into focus, then blurred again. I didn’t know if it was tears or exhaustion or whatever it was that the man had given me. For a second it looked like my street, but that couldn’t be; we had to have driven several hours. And the lawns were nicer than mine. I could have grown up here, though, and it probably wouldn’t have been much different from growing up on my street. Neat little houses, brightly colored shutters, the occasional toy strewn on a lawn. Maybe this was my street. Maybe the man was bringing me home.

  I blinked hard, watching the world blur, refocus, blur. No. That was crazy talk. Home was far away. I needed to get back.

  The man carried me up the driveway and pressed hard on the doorbell. From inside I could hear the tinny strains of some nursery rhyme playing. Despite myself, I felt my muscles relax just a tiny bit. Someone who chose a nursery-rhyme tune as a doorbell chime couldn’t be a bad person.

  The door opened. “Hurry, I don’t want anyone to see you,” someone—a woman, she—hissed, and I bounced up and down as the man hurried inside. The air in the house was toasty warm, and it smelled like baking bread. Someone whose house was warm and smelled like baking bread definitely couldn’t be a bad person.

  Everything was blurry again, so I couldn’t see much besides a watercolor wash when the man deposited me on what felt like a sofa. My face pressed itself into the back and wouldn’t move. It smelled faintly of smoke, like the man.

  “As we agreed,” he said.

  “Yes, yes, I know.” There was the sound of tearing paper, and the man made a noise of approval. “And here’s a bit extra for your discretion.”

  “Thank you.” A footstep squeaked on the floor.

  “Wait,” the woman said. Her voice was
low, gravelly. “I don’t want her drooling on my couch. I didn’t say to put her there. Do you know how much that couch cost?”

  The man sighed. He sounded tired. I did not feel sorry for him. “Where do you want her?” The couch tipped beneath me, and my stomach rolled over. I was back in the air.

  “The basement,” the woman said. “Like the last one.” She heaved a gusty sigh. “Hopefully, this one will work out better.”

  I got a view of white carpet and a flash of silver hair before the basement door was opened, and I was lost.

  —

  At exactly twelve-thirty, two hours or so after we rescued little Colin, Connor strides back into the store. “If it isn’t Adventure World’s own true-life Skywoman,” he says.

  Heat creeps down my neck. “I didn’t do anything except go over to him when I heard the crying,” I say. “Did you find his mom?”

  “No, I dropped him off at the costumed-character center. They like to start their training early,” he says seriously. When I roll my eyes, he laughs. “Of course. She was already waiting at Guest Relations for us, hysterical. No mermaids on her pants, by the way.”

  “Darn.”

  “So, other than your heroism, how’s your training going?”

  “Okay,” I say. I don’t want to tell the truth in front of Lizzy. However rude she’s been, I’d rather not hurt her feelings.

  “Well, it’s your lunchtime,” he says. “And coincidentally, it’s my lunchtime too. You probably don’t know where to go, so I’ll grace you with my presence on the walk over. If you ask nicely, I might even let you eat with me. You’re very welcome.”

  “Okay,” I say, because what else can you say to that?

  He leads me through the store’s aisles and out into the day. Sun peeks through the fog overhead and wavers palely in reflections on the damp cobblestones. “Rainy mornings that turn into clear afternoons are the best,” Connor says.

  I wait for him to elaborate. Crowds of kids decked out in superhero and supervillain attire roam past, chattering in chipmunk voices. The sound of the roller coasters forms a dull roar in the background, like the rumble of a crowd. “Why?” I finally ask.