Never Missing, Never Found

by Amanda Panitch

  “Because everybody thinks it’s going to rain all day, so nobody comes to the park,” he says. “But once it clears up, we get to spend a whole nice afternoon doing nothing.”

  “How industrious of you,” I say drily. “They should make you employee of the month.”

  Connor gives me a cheeky smile. “I’ve been employee of the month,” he says. “Four times, in fact.”

  Before I can think up something witty to say to that, he veers off to the side. We’re in one of the park’s squares, a bright, cheery area full of food stands and benches full, in turn, of sweaty tourists sucking down water, and there’s nothing off to the side but hedges and a fence. “Over here,” he says. He fiddles with one of the fence’s panels, and a door creaks open. “Magic.”

  My legs have sprouted roots and tied me to the ground. The hidden door in the back of headquarters is one thing; this is another. The former leads to a back room with managers, people, in it; this door could swallow me and spit me out anywhere.

  “Where does it go?”

  He lifts a shoulder in an easy shrug. “You know how whenever we walk from place to place, people tend to stop us and ask us directions or what time the dolphin shows are or where they sell cotton candy?”

  “No,” I say. “It’s my first day, remember?”

  “Oh, right,” he says. “I keep forgetting. Probably because you’re so good at your job.”

  “Probably.” If my job is standing around and doing nothing.

  “Well, anyway, they do,” he says. “So our lunch is an hour, and if we spend a half hour stopping and answering people’s questions, that only leaves half an hour to eat the delicious, grease-soaked food Five Banners fuels us with. So we take shortcuts. Secret passages, if you will. That sounds a lot more fun, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s dark,” I say. A secret passage. That won’t be full of people. Maybe Monica disappeared in a secret passage.

  “It’s just a dirt road.” Connor swings the door open wider so I can see: it is, indeed, a dirt path winding around the outside of the fence, and there are, indeed, no people. “Come on. We’ll have so much more time to eat.”

  It’s not like I never go places by myself. There’s an old cabin I like to visit way back in the woods around my house—it’s old and half rotted through, but it gives me a place to think without other people looking at me or talking at me or thinking at me. That’s different. I know those woods, and I could easily run away at any hint of danger. I can’t run away if I’m trapped in a secret passage.

  I try to take a step forward, but I can’t. When I loosen my legs to take a step backward, I find I can do that, though. “You go ahead,” I say, making my voice as breezy as the breeziest breeze that ever breezed. “I’ll meet you there.”

  Something flickers in his eyes. “You don’t even know where you’re going,” he says. “Are you…”

  “The whole thing with…you know,” I say. Guilt weighs heavy in my stomach. A fellow society member deserves more than serving as my excuse. Because even though it’s true, she’s not the only reason I don’t want to go back there. I have the memory of that man’s hands digging deep into my armpits. “I just want to stay around people, you know?”

  Connor rolls back his sleeve and flexes his skinny, pale bicep. Freckles dot his arms and make a maze that leads under his sleeve. I want to follow it. I want to find the center.

  I realize my cheeks are hot at the same time I realize Connor is speaking. “What?”

  His smile dims a bit. “I said, you don’t trust me to protect you? I fought off the Blade once. True, she was very drunk and I was escorting her backstage, away from all the children she’d traumatized, but still.”

  I force a laugh. “It’s cool if you go, really,” I say. “I’ll meet you there.”

  He steps toward me, and the door swings shut behind him. “What, and force you to miss out on even a second of my glorious company? Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I say, but something happy fills me, something golden.

  Sure enough, we’re stopped every few minutes by a guest with an inane question, but Connor is always upbeat and never loses his pitch. I fall quiet (not like I could’ve answered any of their questions anyway) and watch the master perform: his eyes flash, his arms windmill, his head tips back in a near-constant stream of laughter. How can he talk when he’s always laughing?

  And, sure enough, when we make it to the Canteen, half our lunch break is already gone. “I’m sorry,” I say. “You could’ve been eating by now.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Connor says. “I’m watching my weight anyway.” The twist in his lips keeps me from taking him seriously.

  I’ve never had a boyfriend for the same reason I don’t have friends. I’ve been kissed a couple of times, every once in a while when I’d go to a school dance, and once, clumsily, during a game of Seven Minutes in Heaven, and it never felt like all that big a deal—it was just somebody else pressing his lips against mine, the same way he might press his hand on my shoulder to move me out of the way.

  I don’t think a kiss with Connor would feel like someone pressing on my shoulder.

  The Canteen is a corrugated metal shack, rusting in spots, set back against the fence near one of the major roller coasters. It’s hidden from the guests, obviously, or it would be painted a cartoonish color and boast a name like Wonderman’s Fueling Depot (a real restaurant on the north side). The roller coaster rattles it every time it swoops overhead. I do not want to eat here, but Connor is already opening the door, and I’m following.

  The inside looks much like I would’ve expected from the outside. The one long room is scattered with picnic tables that I can just tell are splintery. Against the wall are two vending machines that sell soda and sugary snacks. The smell of old grease is thick in the air. A cafeteria-style hot bar on the far side of the room dispenses food, all of which seems to be slathered in glimmering orange fat. Oil glistens on the mozzarella sticks, on the soggy fries, on the fried chicken. My stomach lurches.

  It’s not even free. We don’t get paid for our lunch break, and we are not allowed to bring our own lunches, so basically Five Banners is forcing us to hand them back an hour or so of our day while they cackle and flip the minutes through their fingers like a stack of dollar bills.

  “Grab some food and we’ll meet over there.” Connor points at a table in the corner. The table is covered with a blue plastic tablecloth, and the blue plastic tablecloth is covered with crumbs and smears of grease. “It’s my usual spot.”

  “Okay,” I say, and I begin roaming the displays of food, eventually selecting a wilted salad (the dressing is gleaming and orange) and mozzarella sticks for the calcium, for my bones. Connor is already sitting at his table, staring intently at the burger before him, when I finish paying, so I weave my way through the tables and green shirts toward him. I have a headache by the time I get there and sit down; the noise of everybody’s chatter bouncing off the metal ceiling is deafening, not to mention the coaster’s roar overhead. The second I sit down, he shoves his burger in his mouth. He waited for me, I think, touched, and somehow that makes the glaring lights overhead feel softer, the splintery wood feel like…well, less splintery wood.

  “A salad?” Connor says between bites. “Mistake. The cooks backstage aren’t known for their skills with vegetables. I’d recommend the burger. In fact, the only thing I would recommend is the burger.”

  “I’m a vegetarian,” I say. I’m not a vegetarian. I don’t know why I said that. I stuff my mouth with a forkful of warm lettuce before I can lie to him again.

  “Nice,” Connor says. “I could never be a vegetarian. I grew up on a farm.”

  I swallow; the half-chewed lettuce slides down my throat in one solid lump. “I’d think that would make you more likely to be a vegetarian, not less.”

  “We farm vegetables,” he says. “And horses. Not that we eat the horses, just the vegetables. But you know what they say about seeing ho
w your food gets made….”

  “Do you still farm?”

  “Yeah,” Connor says. The burger lies half-eaten on his plate as he gestures around him. “When I’m not here, I spend most of my summer driving a tractor and baling hay.” I don’t even know what that means. “That’s how I get my tremendous muscles.”

  I open my mouth to ask what baling hay is, but before I can get the words out, a whirlwind descends upon our table, a whirlwind of shiny hair and chiming jewelry and flowery smells. I’m immediately thrown back to Stepmother’s house, sitting at the feet of one of the girls—Violetta—as she braided my hair with hands so limp she kept dropping the strands. She wore the same perfume, the same arrangement of necklaces and bracelets that chimed against each other with every movement.

  When the dust clears, neo-Violetta is sitting across from me, her chin propped in her hands. “Who’s this?” she asks.

  I blink. I can’t tell if she’s talking to me, or to Connor, or to the wall. “I’m Scarlett,” I say. “It’s my first day.”

  “She’s a star,” Connor says to neo-Violetta, a mouthful of half-chewed french fries garbling his words. “You’d better get in on the ground floor now so you can say you knew her when.”

  Neo-Violetta laughs. Her laugh is strong and clear, warm and friendly, with the feel of something familiar. “Scarlett, hello. Nice to meet you.” She extends her hand. I meet it above the table at an awkward angle; as we shake, my elbow hits the table’s surface and skids in a spot of orange oil. “I’m Katharina. I’m in Merch too.”

  Her name tag marks her as a regular peon, like me, not a manager or assistant manager. “Nice to meet you,” I say.

  Katharina is beautiful, far more beautiful than the original Violetta. Her proximity to Connor makes my stomach curdle, though that might just be an effect of the grease. Her hair ripples to her waist in purplish-black waves, and her eyes are huge and liquid. Her olive skin shimmers—actually shimmers—against the neon green of her polo. Nobody looks good in the polo. Nobody except Katharina, apparently. It’s so unfair—my skin is practically the same color as hers is, yet the polo washes me out.

  “So, Scarlett, I knew this was your first day before I even sat down,” she says.

  “Was it the salad?” I ask. “Connor already told me nobody gets the salad.”

  “Well, yes,” Katharina says. “That salad’s probably been sitting on the counter for a week. But, no. It wasn’t that.”

  Connor clears his throat. “We should get back, Scarlett,” he says. “Especially if we’re going to walk through the park again.”

  I stand to go, leaving most of my food untouched. I’m not sure why Connor is so eager to get out of here—we still have a good few minutes—but I’m happy to play along. Something about Katharina, perhaps her mental proximity to Violetta, makes me itch. “It was good to meet you, Katharina,” I say. “I hope I’ll see you around.”

  “I knew you were new because I know everyone.” She twists one long, silky lock of hair around her finger and lets it go; it falls right back into place. “If I don’t know you, it basically means you don’t exist.”

  I’m not sure exactly what to say to that. She’s staring at me with an expression of utter seriousness, like someone’s just died. Or gone missing. “Okay, then,” I say. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  She looks at me for a moment longer, then bursts into that familiar laugh again. “I was joking, obvi,” she says. “So you’re training today, huh? Who with?”

  I can’t remember her name. “She doesn’t have any eyebrows, and she’s not very nice,” I say.

  Katharina’s eyebrows go up in shock, as if they’re mourning the loss of their fallen comrades. “You gave her to Lizzy?” she says to Connor. “How could you? She doesn’t even have eyebrows.” Like it’s a character trait.

  “I don’t have any say in staff assignments,” Connor says defensively. It’s the first time I’ve seen him today that he doesn’t have a smile on his face. “Cynthia does them, and I can get fired if I don’t listen. It’s not my fault.”

  Katharina shakes her head at him. “Shame, shame on you,” she says, then turns back to me. “Don’t worry, Scarlett. I’ll help you.”

  “Aren’t you on the north side today?” Connor piles his fries atop the remains of his hamburger, then smashes it all down with a napkin. Ketchup oozes onto his tray.

  “Randall’s managing the north today,” she says. “Randall loves me. I’ll swap with Lizzy.”

  “I can’t approve that, you know.” Connor is staring down at the mess he made of his lunch. “You’ll have to talk to Cynthia.” To me, he says, “Cynthia’s the south-side Merch supervisor. My and Rob’s boss.”

  “Cynthia loves me too.” It might be my imagination, but I think there’s a hint of challenge in Katharina’s tone. “Don’t you worry, Scarlett. I’ll save the day.”

  “You do have very nice eyebrows.” And she does: thick (but not too thick, obvi), black, and perfectly arched. I don’t think I’ve ever really noticed somebody’s eyebrows before today.

  “We need to get back,” Connor says, abandoning his lunch and standing. “Scarlett, or we’ll be late.”

  “Don’t want to be late on my first day,” I say.

  “See you soon,” Katharina says. Somehow, I just now notice, she’s obtained a salad, a real salad, with dark, fresh greens and tomatoes that are more red than pink and carrot shavings and ranch dressing, and a bowl of soup.

  As we walk back and answer more park guests’ stupid questions, I can’t get the smell of grease out of my nose.

  —

  When Connor and I reach headquarters, we hit the cash registers only to discover that No Eyebrows is gone. I feel a rush of relief, but Connor’s brows furrow in confusion. “Where’d she go?” he mutters. “If she’s on a smoke break and left the register unattended, I swear to God…”

  “Hey, Connor.” I look over to see Rob falling out of the wall. “Cynthia had me send Lizzy to the arctic north.”

  “Godspeed, Lizzy,” Connor says. “Did she say who—”

  “Hey, hey.” It’s Katharina. “Miss me?”

  I force a smile, though I know it probably comes out more like a grimace. It’s not Katharina’s fault that she reminds me of Stepmother’s house. Of the basement. Of the lost years. “Hey,” I say.

  “She swapped Lizzy for Katharina,” Rob says. “God knows why.”

  “Shut it, jerk face,” Katharina says, smiling that enigmatic smile. “I bet Scarlett knows nothing about using the register, does she?”

  “She’s been training with Lizzy all morning,” Connor interjects. “She’s not stupid, Katharina. I’m sure she’s picked it up by now.”

  They both look at me. I want to sink down, down, down into Wonderman’s underground garage and ride away in the Wondermobile. “Lizzy wasn’t a very good teacher,” I say. “But I’ve picked something up, sure.”

  “What do you do if you have a return?” Katharina says, folding her arms across her chest.

  I look at the floor. Unfortunately, the answer is not written there. “I don’t know.”

  “See?” Katharina shoots Connor a triumphant look. “You leave her to me. I’ll take good care of her.”

  Connor’s mouth twists, but he punches Katharina’s information into the register. “Wish I could help, but Cynthia has me doing inventory for the next few hours. Give me a shout if you need anything,” he directs to me. I nod, and then he and Rob are gone.

  Whatever other impression I might have of her, I have to admit that Katharina is a good teacher. And I’m a quick learner, of course—you learn to listen carefully when doing the wrong thing will earn you a beating. By the time an hour or so has passed, I know how to check someone out, how to input discounts, how to process a return or an exchange, and what to do if I can’t find a price on something and it’s the last one in the store or I’m really busy (pick an item you think looks like it might be the same price and scan that instead; this
rule is not in the Five Banners Merch handbook, for some reason). “I feel like a cash register god,” I say.

  “You’re welcome,” Katharina says. She leans up against the counter, breaking another rule in the Five Banners handbook. We are supposed to be flagpoles, stiff and upright at all times. “How’s your first day been so far?”

  “Slow,” I say. “I haven’t really done anything yet. I thought there would be more…people.”

  Katharina nods. “It’s still early in the season, even if it is a weekend,” she says. “Wait till all the schools let out. We’ll have all four registers at this station full and lines out the door.”

  “Can’t wait,” I say. I’m not sure if I’m lying. “How long have you worked here?”

  “I just started this year.” Katharina stretches, reaching her arms toward the ceiling. Her fingertips nearly brush one of the CHECK OUT HERE signs dangling above. “I moved here a few months ago.” She relaxes and clasps her hands before her, a surprisingly demure gesture. “Do you like it here so far?”

  “I like the people,” I say, and by “people” I mean “person,” and by “person” I mean Connor.

  “The people here are great,” Katharina says. “Of course, everyone’s been all mopey over Monica, so it’s hard to really get a handle on them, I bet.”

  I blink. “She’s missing,” I say. “I think it’s understandable people would feel a little ‘mopey.’ ”

  “She probably just ran away.” Katharina’s eyes gleam. “Don’t you think?”

  My stomach swims with uneasiness. “I don’t think anything,” I say. “I barely knew her.”

  “So you did know her,” Katharina says.

  “I interviewed with her,” I say. “Other than that, no.”

  “So you did know her,” Katharina says again. “What do you think happened? Do you think she ran away? Or do you think, maybe, she was kidnapped?”

  “I don’t think anything!” My voice comes out louder than I meant it to; a guest browsing the racks of key chains jumps and sends a bunch of them cascading to the floor. “I should go clean that up.”