Never Missing, Never Found

by Amanda Panitch

  Katharina grabs me by the shoulder. I twist, but her fingers dig in, so I go limp. I’m used to being manhandled, tossed around like I’m inanimate. If you don’t struggle, it’s over faster. “I knew her,” she says. “I worked under her sometimes. She was lazy. She wasn’t a very good manager.”

  I try twisting again, but her fingers only dig in deeper. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go; she’s supposed to see that I’m no threat and release me. “Let me go,” I say. My heart is battering my ribs.

  “We just all have to stay positive.” I don’t know if she’s talking to me or to herself. She stares off into the distance, her eyes unfocused. “She’ll turn up. You know what they say: never missing, never found.”

  I turn to ice and slip from her fingers. The muscles of my shoulder throb. “Who says that?”

  “Everyone,” Katharina says. “Haven’t you heard it before?” She sighs. “You’re right,” she continues. “We should clean up those key chains before somebody slips on them and sues.”

  Everyone. Everyone. No, that’s not something everyone says. That’s something I’ve only ever heard one person say. And that person is long gone.

  Katharina and I finish the rest of my first day in near silence. She attempts small talk every so often, but I can’t respond with anything but wooden, one-word answers. No matter how many times I look around, no matter how many times I breathe in deep and tell myself it’s all in my head, I can’t shake the creepy-crawly feeling that somebody is watching me.

  At some point between the man opening the basement door and him depositing me downstairs, I drifted off again. I didn’t know it then, but I should’ve stayed asleep. I should’ve slept for years and years, to be woken only by the touch of a police officer, rather than a kiss of true love.

  I dreamed of my sister, Melody. Melly. More specifically, I dreamed of the time a year or so back when Melody had wet the bed. I’d woken to her pulling on my arm, her eyes bright and shiny with tears. “Can you help?” she said, wiping at her nose with the back of her hand.

  I’d been sound asleep and dreaming of my third-grade crush, Gunnar, who was shy and had dimples and had once brushed my arm with his arm as we walked past each other in the hallway, which translated, obviously, into true love. But I blinked Gunnar away and forced myself out of bed. “What about Mom?” Our dad was away on a business trip, but our mom was home. “Did you wake her up?”

  Melody’s lip wobbled. “I shook her and shook her and she wouldn’t wake up,” she said. “Can you please help?”

  I sighed. The first time we hadn’t been able to wake up our mom, Melody and I had panicked, thinking our mom was dead, and called 911. After that, our mom had sat us down and told us that sometimes it was normal, not being able to wake up, and that as long as she was breathing, we should just let her be. She taught us how to listen for her heartbeat and take a spoon and hold it up to her nose to see if it fogged.

  “Okay,” I said to Melody. “I think there are clean sheets in the hall closet. I’ll change them for you.”

  Melody grabbed my hand as she followed me down the hall. It was sticky, but I didn’t pull away. She was my sister. “Thank you, Scarlett.”

  This time, in the basement, I woke up to the drip, drip, drip of water and immediately had to pee myself. I hoped that meant the drugs were wearing off.

  God, but I had to pee. I had to pee so bad it hurt; my bladder was pulsing jagged little lightning bolts of pain through my abdomen. I sat up, lifting my shoulders from what felt like a mattress, with a creak that was only in my head.

  The next thing I noticed was the dark, and the third thing I noticed was the cold. My eyes were beginning to adjust to the gloom of the basement, helped along by the pale light filtering in through the one high, barred window. The slowly appearing shapes shook as I shivered. I was joined by a small table, two plastic chairs that might have come from a classroom, and a dresser in the corner. I stood up, stepping off my bare mattress and onto a thin, rough rug that protected me, at least, from the concrete floor.

  I took a step toward the stairs. If I could make it to the door at the top, surely I would be free. “Hello?” I called, just in case. Maybe this was a mistake. This had to be a mistake.

  I was halfway up the stairs when the door creaked open, and there she was.

  In another life, she could have been my teacher or my pediatrician or the nice mail lady who gave me lollipops whenever she saw me come to collect the mail. Because she didn’t look like a monster. For years after, I thought of her as a monster, and she was a monster, and it scared me to think of how well she wore her human disguise. It made me wonder if everybody in the world was like that, if that’s just what happened when you became an adult: you grew horns and claws and slipped on human skin like a bathrobe.

  “What’s your name?” she asked me. Silver hair, tied back into a low ponytail, glittered in the light behind her. Her lips were a bright, bright red, her skin as white as the belly of a fish. Snow White all grown up and turned into Cinderella’s evil stepmother.

  “Scarlett,” I said. My voice trembled only once.

  The woman looked down at me over the bridge of her nose. “Scarlett is a ridiculous name for a child,” she said. “You’ll be Jane. Jane is a good, simple, elegant name.”

  “But that’s not my name.”

  Quick as a flash, the woman was halfway down the stairs and I was reeling backward, my cheek stinging with a blow. “You won’t ever talk back to me,” she said, and it was the calmness in her tone that scared me more than anything. “You’ll only speak when spoken to, and you’ll only call me ma’am. Do you understand, Jane?”

  My mind raced, unable to catch up to what was going on.

  “Do you understand, Jane?” she said again, taking a step toward me.

  I shrank back, cringing against the wall. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good.” And she was back at the top of the stairs, moving gracefully, as if she were a dancer. “You’ll start work tomorrow. And you best behave, or you’ll end up like the last girl.”

  I couldn’t stop the words from bursting out. “What happened to the last girl? Ma’am?”

  A small, cold smile split her cheeks. “Trust me, Jane. You don’t want to end up like the last girl.”

  And then I was alone, and I was back on my mattress, and it was warm and wet beneath me.

  —

  When I woke up the next morning, I stank like pee and I could hardly breathe for the fear. I would have been shaking, only I was as petrified as an old piece of wood and didn’t think I could move.

  I scrambled to my feet when the woman opened the door at the top of the stairs. “Come, Jane,” she said. “I’ll show you your duties.”

  I swallowed hard and forced myself up, step by step. The woman made a tsking noise deep in her throat when I got within smelling distance. “First you’ll need to wash, of course.” Her voice was measured, and each word ended abruptly. I didn’t realize it then, but she was trying to suppress an accent. “I’ll give you some of the girls’ old clothes. They’re clean and warm, though I expect they will be large on you.”

  I was silent, which was apparently the wrong move. The woman loomed overhead. “Are you not going to thank me, Jane?”

  After that, the thanks couldn’t come fast enough. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, ma’am.”

  “Good.” She sounded, if not pleased, at least not angry. “Come.”

  I let her clothe me—sure enough, the clothes were too big, but they were clean and warm—and pour me a bowl of cereal. “Do not get used to me feeding you,” she warned me, then shook her head as I tried to take a seat at the table. “Sitting is for guests. You are a worker now. You stand.”

  I stood and shoveled the cereal (dry) into my mouth as quickly as I could. It stuck to the inside of my mouth and my throat; every crunch echoed inside my head.

  “Do you like your cereal?” the woman asked.

  I knew enough by now, even after one nigh
t, to know that there was only one answer. “Yes, ma’am,” I said between bites. Not with my mouth full—I knew she wouldn’t like that.

  She gave me an appraising look. “You seem smarter than the last girl,” she said. “Maybe you won’t come to a bad end.”

  I took another bite of cereal.

  “I almost came to a bad end,” she said. “When I had to leave my country. And I had to leave my country. There was nothing there for me but bombs and sad men.

  “There was only one way for me to get over here, to this country, where I would be safe. The government did not want me, so I had to depend on bad men. Do you understand? No, you don’t. You are too young. But you will understand one day.”

  I watched her through narrowed eyes as I ate. She was gazing out the window, eyes misty, but I suspected they’d snap back on me if I so much as moved a muscle toward the exit.

  “Slowly I became more than that girl. I am who I am because I am hard. Do you understand me, Jane?”

  I didn’t, but I nodded anyway. Her lips stretched into an approximation of a smile. “I will make you hard. Neither of our families wanted us, did they, Jane?” Her laugh was a bark. “No matter. I will show you how we girls survive in such a world, Jane.”

  —

  When I pull into the driveway, tired from my first day at Adventure World, Matthew is waiting for me on the front stoop. His face lights up as I turn off my ignition, and he races to my car as I get out. His smile is a beam of sunshine. If it wouldn’t kill him, I’d stuff him and embalm him and keep him safe in my closet so he could be sweet and loving and seven forever. “Did you get my free tickets?” he says. “Can we go to Adventure World now?”

  I ruffle his hair. “I just spent eight hours at Adventure World,” I say. “I’m not going back now. Maybe next week.” I could wear a cute sundress and cute sunglasses and parade my cute brother around in front of Connor. Connor would tumble immediately into love and we’d run off and get married and raise Matthew as our own. “Who’s watching you? Is Dad home?”

  “He’s still at work.” Matthew runs back to the stoop, disappointed, apparently, in me and my lack of free tickets. Little user. Maybe it’s best he grows up after all.

  “So Melody’s home? Or the babysitter?”

  Matthew disappears inside before he can answer me. I’m not a huge fan of his babysitter, a flat-eyed girl from the other end of the street who never laughs at any of his jokes, but I’d much rather shove twenty bucks at her and usher her out the door than have to put up with Melody and her stupid cookies and her distaste for my very existence.

  So naturally, when I get inside and dump my clear fanny pack on the front table, a dramatic gesture meant to signify to the zero people watching that I’m simply too exhausted to cart it one more step, I hear the dulcet tones of Melody’s DVD aerobics wafting from the living room: “One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Work that body, girl, work it!”

  I stop in the doorway. Today is my first day as a working woman. Or at least, one where I’m working for pay. Time to grow up, maybe. “Hi, Melody,” I say. “What’s going on?”

  Her movements are sleek, like a snake’s, and sweat shimmers over her face. “What does it look like?” she puffs, squatting and stretching her arms over her head.

  On days Melody doesn’t have field hockey practice, she likes to work out anyway, just in case a pinch of fat was considering taking up residence on one of her hips. Sometimes she runs; sometimes she lifts weights on the machine in the basement. When she’s stuck in the house watching Matthew, she digs up one of our mom’s old aerobics DVDs from a million years ago and gets to sweating. “Nice seeing you, too,” I say, going to move away. I’m dying for some celery with peanut butter.

  Who am I trying to kid? I’m dying for a cookie. Two cookies. Three cookies.

  “Wait,” Melody says. I swivel back to face her. Maybe this is it: a meeting of the hearts. A change of the minds. A day that will go down in Contreras family history.

  She spreads her legs wide, almost into a split, and leans over to balance on her arms. “How was work?” she asks.

  “It was good,” I say. “It wasn’t too busy today, but everyone said it would get busy once all the schools get out. Everyone seems nice.” I don’t want to play it up too much, though, make it seem like I’m trying to make her jealous. She’s never asked about my day before, never. “The work itself kind of sucks, though. It’s just grunt work, you know, ringing people up at the register, stocking shelves, that kind of thing.”

  “That’s not so bad,” she says. She lunges, then stands back up, then lunges again. I hover in the doorway, waiting to see if she has anything else to say. Maybe we can be like the sisters I read about in books or see on TV, cuddling close and whispering our secrets into each other’s ears. Like I used to have at Stepmother’s. It’s the only thing I miss.

  “So. Did you hear about the missing girl?” she asks.

  I flex my fingers to keep the blood moving. They’re suddenly as cold as the floor of the basement. “Of course I did. She worked at Adventure World.”

  Lunge, squat, stand. Lunge, squat, stand. Melody turns her head to look at me as she twists and thrusts. “I heard she went missing while she was there,” she says, panting. Her eyes are shining with interest, with excitement. My stomach turns. This is all a game to her. It’s entertainment. “Did you hear anything today? Does anyone have any theories?”

  “She’s missing,” I say icily. “That’s all anyone knows.” My fantasies of closeness fizzle and disappear with a pop, as they always do. And yet they always come back.

  “Scarlett!” Matthew calls from the kitchen. “I’m hungry.”

  I back away, relieved for the excuse to escape. “Matthew’s hungry,” I say unnecessarily. “Have a good workout.”

  “Wait!” Melody calls.

  I hesitate, but I don’t stop. Once bitten, twice burned. Is that what they say?

  I spent five years in therapy with the wise and fabulous Dr. Martinez after I fought my way out of the underworld. She slowly carried me from a place where I wouldn’t acknowledge what had happened to me, where I would close my eyes and cover my ears anytime she tried to ask me a question, to a place where I could talk openly and honestly about what it had been like in the basement, with Pixie, with the girls upstairs, with Stepmother. I didn’t exactly reach a sunny beach, but I did finally learn to see the sun peeking through the clouds. To stop looking over my shoulder every second of every minute of every hour of every day.

  Anyway, I told Dr. Martinez about my troubles with my sister, how she would no longer speak to me, would flinch away when I tried to take her hand, and Dr. Martinez told me to avoid yelling, to avoid getting angry, because I couldn’t help how Melody felt. She had to go through her own adjustment period too, and I couldn’t expect things to go right back to the way things had been before I “left.”

  Dr. Martinez kept on telling me to be patient for one year, two years, three years, and then she stopped, because it became clear that whatever problem Melody had with me, it wasn’t going away with time.

  That’s why I eventually convinced my dad to let me quit therapy. I told him—and Dr. Martinez—that I was fine, that I’d moved on. I would never really move on, and I think they knew that, but they believed me enough to let me go. But despite all I’d shared with Dr. Martinez, despite all the progress I’d made with my own mind, there were certain corners that I could never explore. Certain thoughts I can never, even now, let free.

  —

  The next morning I’m sent again to the south side, but not to headquarters; I’m to work at a store called Wonderkidz, which I’m guessing is a Wonderman-themed shop for kids. It’s a clear, warm day, unlike yesterday, and the sunshine is bright and crisp in my lungs. It’s so clean and fresh it almost makes me forget the specter of the missing girl staining the cobblestones.

  Wonderkidz isn’t far from headquarters, and I see Connor’s coppery red hair glinting in the sunli
ght before he sees me. I raise my arm and wave it so enthusiastically I think something tears in my chest. He still doesn’t see me, which is fortunate; by the time he turns around and his lips break into a smile, I’m restrained enough to give him a small, calm, collected wave. Cool. Enthusiasm is not cool. People like Melody don’t do enthusiasm. “Morning,” I say. “I’m off to Wonderkidz.”

  “I know,” he says. “I’m the one who wrote the schedule on the whiteboard.”

  “With great power comes great responsibility. I hope you’re using it wisely.”

  “I just hope you don’t hate me at the end of your shift. Remember, it’s not my fault. Blame Cynthia.”

  “That bodes well,” I say. “Did you stick me with Lizzy again?”

  His jaw drops in mock shock. “Like I would ever do that to you,” he says. “What do you think of me? In all honesty, though,” he continues, “you’ll probably be begging to wash Lizzy’s feet before an hour’s gone.”

  I ask him to elaborate once we continue on, even threaten him with a plush sword hanging from one of the stands we pass, but he refuses. I want to tell him that whatever’s in store at Wonderkidz, I’ve been through worse. That whatever trauma he’s joking about inflicting upon me is an actual joke, because nothing could ever faze me again.

  Within five minutes of entering the store, I want to claw my ears off and stuff the bloody holes full of cotton.

  “Is that going to play all day?” I ask him.

  The store itself isn’t bad. It’s small and open to the elements, with space for only two registers, and it’s out of the way at the very edge of the south side, so people actually have to mean to come here. The walls and shelves are stacked with superhero-themed kids’ stuff: plush replicas of Skywoman’s cloud lasso, plush replicas of the Wondermobile, plush replicas of the eponymous Blade’s blade…basically, plush replicas of everything you could possibly make a plush replica of.

  It’s the sound track that’s the problem. There are four speakers, one in each corner of the store, aimed directly at the registers and blasting a skin-crawling, spine-tingling, teeth-gritting song from the Wonderman and Skywoman movies, sung—and screeched, definitely screeched—by a group of what has to be hellspawn, because those noises can’t be coming from the throats of sweet, innocent children.