Never Missing, Never Found

by Amanda Panitch

  “Aw,” I sighed again. Melody and I had found a nest of baby rabbits once, in the yard. We knew enough not to touch them, because that meant the mother would be scared off and would let the babies die, but we spent hours watching them from a safe distance. Even once we went inside, we’d play rabbit, which consisted of us curling up together beneath a couple of furry rugs and pretending we were baby rabbits. Sometimes we’d try to crawl around with our eyes closed and giggle as we bumped into things. It was a fun game. I’d give anything to play rabbit again.

  “You know what happened next?” she asked.

  “What?”

  Her voice went flat. “My foster father drowned them all in the sink.” I gasped. “He didn’t want them to keep having more and more babies.

  “I still got to keep Bugs and Baby, though,” she continued. “Until I had to go to a different foster home. The new foster mother didn’t want any rabbits, so she made me leave them behind.”

  My mouth gaped open, then shut, then open again. I’d become a dying fish. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “He probably drowned them, too,” Pixie said. “So you be happy that you got to have real parents, at least for a little while, and stop complaining about how they don’t want you anymore. Because some of us didn’t even get to have rabbits.”

  I tried to swallow, but my throat was dry. My hand mechanically kept working, cleaning her wounds from the inside out. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t think she was right, but I couldn’t just go ahead and say that.

  That night she cried herself to sleep and I held her close, snuggled up for warmth side by side on that dirty old mattress. It was almost like having a sister again.

  —

  The vigil is packed. Melody and I pull into the high school parking lot only a few minutes before nine and take one of the last spaces, one of the dreaded few all the way in the back behind everybody else. I back in slowly, carefully, as Melody cranes her neck, looking for people she knows. She hasn’t spoken to me since we left the house. It’s okay. She still needs me, and it feels nice to have Melody need me, even if it’s just for a little while.

  It’s a nice night, at least, if there ever is a nice night for a vigil. I can smell the candles, what must be hundreds and hundreds of them, before I get to the football field and see the swarms of pinpricks dotting the darkness. People are stuffed together, shoulder to shoulder, in the bleachers, like we’re at the state football championships or senior awards night, except that everyone is crying. I don’t know why girls even bothered to put on mascara or eyeliner if they knew they were coming here tonight, because there must be hundreds of dollars of makeup running in sooty trails down girls’ cheeks.

  “Ooh,” Melody says breathlessly. “It’s so pretty. We need to make sure we get a candle.”

  “Yeah,” I say, without thinking.

  There’s a spot big enough for two people in the front row of the closest bleachers to the exit. I’m about to ask Melody if she wants the spot when I see a flash of coppery hair, and the decision is made for me. I plop down in the seat, leaving Melody to hover above me.

  “I think I see people I know over there….” But she needs me, and so she can’t leave. “Fine,” she huffs, sitting next to me. “Ooh, it’s cold.”

  “Scarlett?” Someone nudges my shoulder. Connor. I turn back and smile as somberly as I can when I see Connor, Cady, Katharina, Rob, and a group of others I can only assume to be fellow Five Banners employees. “Guys, it’s Scarlett.”

  “Who’s Scarlett?” someone asks.

  “I’m Scarlett.” I extend my hand into the morass of Adventure World-ers. Somebody shakes it. I don’t know who. “I’ve been working at the park for a couple days now.”

  “So you didn’t know Monica?” This comes from a tiny, pretty woman with miles of black hair and dark skin. Her eyelashes look longer than my pinky fingers.

  “She doesn’t have to know Monica to be here,” someone says from the crowd.

  The tiny woman winces and jerks, like someone’s elbowed her in the side. “I wasn’t saying that!”

  This whole time Melody’s been quiet, her eyes darting back and forth, her thumb picking at her fingernails. I almost laugh. She’s nervous. I can’t believe she’s nervous.

  “I know, it’s okay,” I assure the crowd. And I’m actually telling the truth. The small woman’s question didn’t come out accusatory or judgmental; she merely sounded curious. I turn my attention back to her. “I didn’t really know her, but I met her. I interviewed with her.” I take a deep breath. “She seemed very nice. I liked her.”

  “She was very nice. I worked with her for two years.” This woman is the only one I haven’t heard immediately correct herself into the present tense. I wonder what that means. If she’s positive Monica is dead. “I’m Cynthia, by the way.”

  “Cynthia,” I say. “I’ve heard that name.”

  “I told her you were responsible for putting her in Wonderkidz,” Connor says to Cynthia, who I remember is his boss. “So it would be completely justified if she shoved you off the bleachers right now.”

  “It was nothing personal. Somebody has to do it,” Cynthia says. I can’t even look at her; I’m too busy focusing on the distance between Connor and Cady, or, to be exact, the lack of it. A splinter wouldn’t fit in there. She’s crammed herself right up against his side.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I know. It’s okay.” I glance over at Melody, who’s still wringing her fingers. “This is my younger sister, Melody, by the way.”

  As everybody greets Melody, voices rich with what I assume is admiration for her shiny hair and sparkling, flawless skin, I think about how I want to ask Cynthia about Monica, about whether she thinks Monica is dead, but I know that’s not an appropriate choice of topic, especially for Monica’s vigil. Instead, I stay silent and take one of the candles being passed through the crowd. Someone lights mine, and I bring it to my nose and breathe deep the smell of fire and smoke.

  Someone nudges me on the shoulder. I turn to see Connor, bumping me with his knee. “You look awfully pensive. What are you thinking about?”

  There’s only one right answer; I certainly can’t tell him what’s really going on in my head. “Monica,” I say. “It’s been four days since she went missing?”

  “Four days,” Cady says. Her voice is raspy, like she’s been crying. I should feel sorry for her, but I don’t. She has Connor to wipe her tears away.

  “Four days,” I echo. “I’m sure they’ll find her.”

  Somebody—an older, heavyset woman, maybe Monica’s mother or aunt—is on the field, speaking, but her microphone isn’t working, and so I can’t hear everything she says. I can just hear the snatches of sound bites that made it into the article: “cheerleader,” “volunteer,” “special ed,” “special.”

  “Yeah, it’s only been four days,” Connor says. “She’ll be fine. You know Monica. She’s a badass. She’s going to be fine.”

  I notice Cynthia doesn’t say anything, only looks down at her candle, her eyes following the leaps of the tiny flame. Rob echoes Connor’s words like the best friend he is. He’s got his gauges in tonight; they’re big and silver and reflect the orange of all the flickering lights.

  It’s Katharina, naturally, who dissents. “You guys, I don’t want to be a downer, because you know I loved Monica,” she says. “And maybe this isn’t the place to say it, but…it’s been four days. It’s time we start thinking about how she might not come home. That she probably won’t come home. I mean, it’s been four days.”

  Cady lets out a gasp that turns into a sob. Connor murmurs something in her ear, and Rob murmurs something in Connor’s ear. Cynthia still says nothing.

  That leaves me. “It’s only been four days,” I say. “There are plenty of stories about people who go missing for longer than that and come out okay.”

  “How long?” Katharina’s eyes are trained on me. Like she’s daring me.

  Melody goes rigid next to me. Trying to
look unconcerned, I shrug. “I don’t know,” I say. “Jaycee Dugard was found after years and years. Elizabeth Smart, too. That girl in Austria.” Me.

  Katharina chews on the inside of her cheek. “Can someone really be missing that long and come out okay? I mean, I know they can make it out, but would they really be okay?”

  Monica’s mother or aunt is now talking about the community’s response to what happened: “overwhelmed,” “supportive,” “so very grateful,” “so many casseroles.” My heart is hammering at the walls of my throat like it wants to evacuate. Every time Katharina moves, she wafts the scent of Violetta in my direction.

  “I feel nauseous,” I say. “I think I’m going to throw up.” A cry of alarm goes up from the people standing in front of me, and they part easily for me to make my way out. I push through the crowd, careful to keep my candle sheltered, but when I make it to the back of the bleachers, I realize it’s gone out anyway.

  At my school, the back of the bleachers—the space under the structures—is generally full of rule breakers of all stripes: the smokers, the druggies. I’ve never been one of the rule breakers, not really, but most everyone knows of their existence, and of their preferred location. Narnia for druggies, some kids call it. Accessible only to those who believe.

  There are no rule breakers here tonight. There’s one girl wrapped around another near the far end, but they just look like they’re sobbing and needed a quiet place to let loose. I’m all alone on this side, save for the mumbling roar of the crowd above and their shifting shadows cast through the slats between the rows.

  I shut my eyes and breathe in deep, trying to chase thoughts of Pixie and Violetta and rabbits and my years in the basement from my mind, and when I open them, Katharina is there. She’s just standing there, her hands in her coat pockets, staring at me, and I get the sense that she’s been there longer than a few seconds. I never heard her approach. She’s a ghost, I think wildly. She’s a ghost, Pixie, and she’s here for revenge.

  But if she were a ghost, the rational part of my brain chimes in, how could Connor and Cynthia and Rob and the others interact with her? And why would she be my age? She died when we were twelve.

  And there’s no way even the most irrational part of my brain would put her in the awful, awful Five Banners polo during the workday.

  “Hey, Katharina,” I say. “What’s up?”

  “I told them I’d come down to make sure you were okay and hadn’t passed out and died under the bleachers or something.” She’s staring up, at the underside of the bleachers, at the wads of chewed gum dotting the metal like brand-new constellations.

  I let out a nervous titter. “The way you say it makes it sound like you came down for something else,” I say. She doesn’t answer. “Did you?”

  “You seem like a nice person,” she says. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

  I feel like I should make a joke here, lighten the mood somehow, steer this conversation in a different direction, but my mind is blank. And I want to know why she was expecting anything. “What were you expecting?”

  We stare at each other, and I get the feeling we’re sizing each other up, like we’re about to step into a boxing ring. “Nothing,” she says. “That slipped out. Pretend I didn’t say anything.”

  “Okay,” I say hesitantly.

  “Sorry,” she says. “You know what they say: better the foot slip than the tongue.”

  —

  “What will you do when we escape?” Pixie asked me.

  We were in the basement, exhausted and sweaty after a long day of work. We were cuddled close on the mattress, my front to her back, my face in her hair. She smelled like the girls’ cigarette smoke. The smell didn’t bother me anymore. “You shouldn’t say that,” I told her. “She might hear you, and she’ll hurt you again.”

  “You’re right,” Pixie said. “Sorry. You know what they say: better the foot slip than the tongue.”

  —

  “What did you just say?” I ask Katharina. My own tongue, not just the proverbial one, feels thick and heavy in my mouth.

  “Nothing,” she says. “Just a stupid thing my mom used to say. She had a whole host of them.”

  “Oh,” I say. Because what else is there to say? “Okay. I should get back to Melody now.”

  Katharina sighs. “You’re so lucky to have a sister,” she says wistfully. “I always wanted a sister growing up. I had a friend—well, I don’t know if I’d call her a friend so much as a neighbor—who was almost like a sister, but it wasn’t quite the same.”

  “Oh?” I step back toward the light, back toward where Monica’s brother or boyfriend is talking about what a vibrant force of life she is. How her house would never be the same without her, so please do give her back, thanks.

  “Yeah, she had sisters,” Katharina says. Her eyes narrow, or maybe it’s just my imagination. “She always used to say, ‘A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost.’ ”

  —

  Pixie was a slow learner. Even though she didn’t have anywhere to go back to, she tried to run almost every day. She always got beaten. I started to worry that Stepmother would kill her and that I would be alone again. She wouldn’t dare to bring in someone else after taking such a big risk with Pixie, after doing me such a great kindness. So I tried not to indulge Pixie in her fantasies of escape, and whenever I could, I blocked her way out as if I didn’t know what she was trying to do. I didn’t want to lose her.

  I didn’t want to be alone again.

  Sometimes the only way to keep her from trying to run was to distract her with talk of the outside. If I talked too much about what was happening around us, about which girl had the best hair or how Stepmother seemed to be in a particularly good mood because she’d had us scrub the bathrooms only once, she’d withdraw and get quiet.

  “What do you miss most about out there?” she said once as we were stripping the sheets off the girls’ beds. “I actually miss homework. I could do a whole pile of homework right now.”

  “You must be going crazy,” I cracked. She didn’t laugh.

  “Scarlett, what about you? What’s the first thing you would do if you got out?”

  I didn’t want to answer her, but I knew that if I didn’t, she’d get quiet and her mind would turn back to escape, and then I’d spend another night sopping blood off her back. So I said, “I would buy as many baby rabbits as all the pet stores in town have, and then I would give them to you. There would be so many baby rabbits I wouldn’t even be able to see you, just a big, furry pile.”

  She let out a weak laugh. “That’s funny.” Her eyes closed. “Do you think we’d even see each other?”

  “Of course!” I said immediately, though I didn’t know whether I was telling the truth. I’d never really thought about it. “We’re basically sisters.”

  She let out another sound, a laugh so dry I could hear it scrape against the inside of her throat. “This isn’t childhood, though. I don’t know if we’d want to hold on to this.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “My foster mom had a lot of sisters,” Pixie said. “She always said, ‘A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost.’ ”

  —

  Everything is fuzzy. The world is coated in gray velvet. “What did you say?” My tongue feels like stone.

  “You heard me,” Katharina says, though distantly, as if through a wind tunnel.

  And then Melody is there, floating in the corner of my vision, her arms crossed and her chin jutting out. “What did you do to her?” And she’s in front of me, waving her hand through my field of vision. “Scarlett? Scarlett? Katharina, what happened?”

  I slump forward. Melody catches me and cradles me in her arms. My head hits her shoulder and bounces and then comes to a rest. “You’re like a piece of childhood,” I say, and then my knees are crumpling, and everything is black.

  I hope they don’t hold a vigil for me.

  I wake up unde
r the watchful eyes of a circle of people: Connor, Cady, Cynthia, and Rob. No Melody or Katharina, I note. The quartet stands above me, peering down; I feel like I’m a specimen they’re preparing to study, or a meal they’re about to eat.

  The ground is cold under me, and I can feel the sharp metal of a soda can pushing into my back through my jacket. I wince. “Where’s my sister?” I ask. She caught me. She didn’t let me fall to the ground.

  “She ran to call an ambulance,” Cady says. I go to get up, but she kneels beside me and gently pushes me down. “Don’t move, you could hurt yourself. Katharina says they’re on their way.”

  Why did Melody have to run anywhere to call an ambulance? She has a cell phone. She could’ve called them right here, with one hand, while her other hand kept my head off the dirt. “Katharina…” An electric jolt surges through my body; Cady must be made of rubber, because it doesn’t rock her at all. “Katharina,” I say again. My voice is high and thready. “What do you know about her? How long have you known her?”

  Cady’s brow creases in concern. “Are you okay? Do you know what day it is?”

  “I know what day it is,” I say, and I realize I’m shaking, and not just because of the chill. “What do you know about her? When did she start at Adventure World?”

  Cady recoils a tiny bit, just enough for me to notice. “I don’t really know,” she says. “This year, I think. Her family moved here a few months ago. I don’t know.”

  “Where is she?” I push myself up again, and this time Cady doesn’t stop me. “Where did she go? Did she run?”

  Cady glances over her shoulder. “I think she hit her head,” she says. “When’s the ambulance getting here?”

  “Soon,” Connor says. He’s hovering overhead, just behind Cady, like he wants to kneel beside me, too, but doesn’t want to intrude. He catches my eye and he cocks his head, asking through body language if I’m okay.

  I sit all the way up and answer him with words. “I’m not crazy and I didn’t hit my head,” I say. “I just need to talk to…to Katharina. Where did she go?”