Never Missing, Never Found

by Amanda Panitch

  A few more big sips and I feel like I actually am floating. My feet are on the concrete, but my head is hovering several feet above the ground, tethered to my body by ropes of artery and tendon and bone. “So what now?” I ask. I have a feeling it’s the alcohol, but I’m suddenly feeling very daring. I want to rush to Connor’s side and confess my love.

  No. Stop it, alcohol. That’s a terrible idea. I lean over and set the cup on the floor and pray that we won’t run into Connor tonight, because I’m not sure I can rein my new friend alcohol in. “So what now?” I ask again, more subdued this time.

  Katharina downs the last of her cup and checks her phone at the same time. Such multitasking. So multitalented. “The park closes in about a half hour,” she says. “It takes an hour or so to get everybody out and close the park. Then the security sweep.” She gestures to my cup, cold and forlorn all by itself on the ground. “Drink up, babe.”

  It looks so sad all by itself. I lean back over and pick it up. “Liar,” I tell it. It’s not cold and forlorn. It’s lukewarm.

  “So we’re going to be in the park after closing?” Melody says. Again, no emotion in her voice—I can’t tell if she’s excited or cautious or repelled. “To do what?”

  Katharina shrugs. “It’s exciting to be here when everybody else is gone.” She points at my cup again. “Drink it, or I’m going to dump it on you.”

  I obediently take another sip. My head spins. “But what are we going to do?” I echo Melody. “Won’t all the rides be shut down? All the stores and everything will be shut. And…and…” I can’t think of the words. “The attractions,” I finally force out through numbing lips. “The dolphins will be sleeping.”

  And then the colors start swirling. The colors take me back to one of my favorite story lines from the Skywoman cartoon.

  So many issues and episodes and fan sites have spent hours and hours and hours talking about the similarities between Skywoman and the Blade. They’re both women, of course, which sets them apart from most of the denizens of superhero-land. They both inexplicably tend to choose outfits that maximize cleavage and fit tightly around their butts (thanks to their male artists). They’re both stubborn, and brash, and fully dedicated to their ideals.

  There’s one episode where Skywoman and the Blade meet up and talk. In fact, it’s the only canon instance where they’re together and not fighting in that season. Soon after the murder of Skywoman’s first husband at the Blade’s hands, Skywoman corners the Blade against the railing atop the roof of a skyscraper. The Blade’s arms are pinned to her sides by Skywoman’s lasso, and Skywoman’s other hand holds the sword granted to her by Wonderman. The sword’s tip hovers against the Blade’s throat. The Blade’s face is blank, as always, but one of the superb animators made her lips tremble every so often; if you aren’t looking for it, you might miss it.

  The viewer naturally expects Skywoman to try to kill the Blade, and for the Blade to escape just in the nick of time. But Skywoman just stares. “How could you do such a thing to me?” Skywoman asks. “Alex was the love of my life. Your fight wasn’t with him. He had nothing to do with this.”

  The Blade stares back, her eyes cool and hard. “Because he made you happy,” she says in her typically monotone fashion. “And as long as you’re happy, I can never be happy.”

  Just as Skywoman was once Augusta Leigh Sorensen, the Blade was once Emma Leigh Jacobs. They shared more things than their middle name. They grew up on the same street, played together as little kids. They went up through the school system together, were both on the cheerleading squad, fought neck and neck for the title of valedictorian before settling into a tie. They were frenemies, the type who would nod sorrowfully as you spilled your darkest secrets and then turn around and spread them to the world.

  That last part isn’t canon. Every flashback—of which there are few—shows them getting along beautifully; Emma even carried a limping Augusta to the finish line of a race in gym class once. Frenemies is just canon in my head and the fan fiction I may or may not have written at the beginning of high school.

  But back to the skyscraper roof. Skywoman—once Augusta—pockets her sword and pulls out a poison dart. “This’ll put you out for a while,” she says, and tosses it. It sticks in the Blade’s—Emma’s—throat, where it vibrates from the impact. Skywoman lets her lasso relax as the Blade sags against the railing, her mouth dropping open, a trail of drool sliming her chin. I think the drool was animated for comic effect, but it was always so profound to me—even this great supervillain, the only one to best Skywoman, drools in her sleep.

  The cartoon then jumps to the Blade’s point of view for thirty seconds or so, showing what’s going on in her drugged-up head. Blackness, mostly. Swirls of color. Voices murmuring in the background: first Skywoman, telling her that she’d wait to kill her, that it would be more satisfying (plotwise, I can only assume) to kill her later, when she had more to lose; then Augusta, cheering her on during her first back handspring and comforting her after a failed chemistry test and telling her that the scar on her forehead wasn’t so bad, really, it was kind of dashing.

  And then more blackness, and more swirls of color, and the camera moves back to reveal a single tear sliding its way down the Blade’s stony cheek.

  Unlike the Blade, I don’t cry the moment I realize what’s happening to me; I think the single-tear thing is a myth, anyway. But colors swirl around me in gauzy ribbons, and I sink to the floor, and the blackness envelops me. It all happens too quickly for me to feel anything but shock. The last thing I hear—or that I think I hear—is the whispering of the wolves hovering above me, deciding who will get to devour the thighs, who will feast upon the succulent throat, who wins the head. They won’t eat the head; there’s not enough meat. The head is for the wall, a trophy.

  —

  I wake embedded inside a piece of popcorn. White, soft haze fills my vision, but I’m lying against something hard and cold. Everything smells like butter, and my skin is coated with a thin slick of oil.

  I move an arm. It flops a bit against the cobblestones, a dying fish.

  That’s when I realize I’m on the ground.

  Cobblestones. Cobblestones are from, like, the 1800s. I did not travel back in time.

  Besides, they didn’t have popcorn in the 1800s. At least not movie theater popcorn, the kind I smell around me, the kind drenched in rivers of butter that tastes like chemicals and salt.

  I wince and try to lift my cheek from where it lies pressed against the stone. I can tell before it rips away that there are now grooves in my skin that might never smooth out. “Hello?” I say, or try to say. My throat is dry and raspy. A chilly wind tries to cut off my hair.

  Cobblestones. Popcorn. I’m in the park, on the main street, on the ground.

  My cheek falls back against the stone. Lifting my head is too much work. “Hello?” I try to say again, but this time the stone snatches my voice and doesn’t give it back.

  I fall.

  Somewhere behind me, so faintly I might be imagining it, someone is laughing.

  —

  “Hello?”

  I blink and cough. That didn’t sound like my voice.

  “Hello?”

  Ah. I’m not the one speaking. I’m sitting up now, somehow, though I don’t remember doing it, and someone is speaking to me. Someone who ate an entire head of garlic for breakfast, it smells like. “Hello,” I say back, wrinkling my nose.

  My wrist drops.

  Apparently, someone was holding my wrist.

  “She lives,” Garlic Breath says. “You okay, kid? Do you need an ambulance?”

  Light cracks around my eyelids. I open them and let it in.

  I’m in the park still, but not on the main drag. Above me rise the electric-red loops of the Dragon King, the tallest, fastest roller coaster in the world. Cars rush around the tracks, but there aren’t any shrieks or screams or idiots who didn’t lock their safety belts tumbling from the sky and smashing on the ground
. Warm-up loops, then.

  I’m not cold, but I shiver. “How did I get here?”

  “You tell me.” Garlic Breath stands, bathing me in a neon-green glow. He’s just a regular peon, like me, I realize, nobody important. Surrounding me are a few other green shirts. “Guys, we should call a supervisor.”

  A pit yawns in my stomach. “Don’t call a supervisor,” I say. I don’t remember how I got here, or what’s going on exactly, but I know I don’t want a supervisor involved. I’ll get in trouble once they check the security tapes to see precisely how I ended up here and discover I’ve been here overnight. I’d lose my job for sure. Maybe even get arrested for trespassing.

  As Melody would say, that’s not good for my college applications.

  Melody. The pit yawns wider, aching, like it’s the pit where a missing tooth should be. “Where’s Melody?” She was here last night. She caught me when I fell under the bleachers. She wouldn’t leave me now.

  “What’s going on here?”

  The pit turns into a stone and falls. The questioner wears the casual suit and tie of a supervisor. (Not having to wear the green polo is kind of a big deal around here.) “Do you work here?” the supervisor demands. I can’t stop staring at the light gleaming off his bald head, at the shadows that sweep it every time the Dragon King rushes overhead. “Do I smell alcohol?”

  “Scott, hey.” I breathe in the smell of sweet hay and Axe and sweat and smoke. Connor. “You found Scarlett. Scarlett, you okay? You must have fallen. Here, let me help you up.” His hand finds mine and pulls, so hard I feel my shoulder strain in its socket. He probably expected me to help him a bit, but now that I’m standing, it’s all I can do not to fall back down. I sway like a scarecrow, nodding at the calm understanding that any strong breeze or loud noise might send me tumbling into a pile of rags and hay.

  “What happened to your uniform? Did you leave it at the office before you could change?” He exhales loudly and claps me on the shoulder, enveloping me neatly with one arm before I can fall. “Crazy girl. So dedicated to her job, this one. Well, come on, Scarlett, let’s find your uniform before the park opens so we can get you on register.” He steers me away. From the corner of my eye, I can see Scott’s brow creased in suspicion, but it relaxes as he, like everybody else, falls under the spell of Connor.

  “Nice to meet you, Scarlett,” he says. There’s a heavy sort of skepticism to his tone that says he believes nothing Connor just said, but there’s something about the way Connor says things and the way his face glows when he smiles that makes people trust in him. Like I said: the spell of Connor.

  Once we’re a safe distance away, far enough that the roar of the Dragon King has faded into the roar of the wind, Connor drops his arm. I sway, but I stay standing. “Okay, so you better tell me what you were doing there,” he says. His voice is warm, as usual, but measured. “Because I know you’re not scheduled to work today.”

  “What, do you have my schedule memorized?” I feel like I might throw up on his shoes. I know I can turn, but whatever direction I go, it’s going to be his shoes.

  “Don’t change the subject.” He lowers his voice. “Were you in the park overnight? Katharina said something about that, but I didn’t think—”

  “Katharina?” The world around me crystallizes, sharpens, and the feeling like I’m going to throw up disappears. I see everything through a sheen of blue. “What did she say?”

  “That she and a few others were going to party after hours in the park. We didn’t think she was serious. It’s a crazy idea. But were you…?”

  Anger shoots through me. Party? That was no party. She poisoned me, sure as Skywoman poisoned the Blade.

  But I can see the worry on Connor’s face, even through all the blue and the bright. He’s worried. About me.

  Worry means that he cares, but I can’t have him worrying too much, especially after the heart-to-heart we shared. Worrying means that he’ll want to get close. Worrying means that he’ll want to know what’s going on. He’ll want to know my secrets, and nobody can get that close. “I have to go,” I say, and turn to shuffle away. My mind is racing. I feel terrible and furious and like I want to push someone off the top of the Dragon King, but at the same time, I want to cry. Because Connor cares. About me.

  “Wait, Scarlett!” Connor calls after me. I pause, but I don’t turn around. I don’t know what my face looks like at the moment. It’s possible I’ve transformed into a black swirling vortex of emotion. “Are you okay?”

  A hysterical laugh bubbles up in my throat. Okay. Who even knows what that is anymore? “Yeah,” I say. I hear him approaching and lurch forward before he can place a comforting hand on my shoulder. A comforting hand from him might break me. “I just need to be alone right now. Please.”

  I hear him hesitate, then back away. “Okay,” he says. “But are you still coming tonight?”

  “Tonight?” I can’t think. Black swirling vortexes of emotion don’t have brains.

  “The bonfire,” he says. “You know? At my place.”

  The bonfire. Of course, the bonfire. “Of course, the bonfire,” I echo. “Of course I’ll be there. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  I can hear the smile in his voice. “Awesome,” he says. “See you there.”

  —

  I slept soundly in Candy’s bed that night, and then, when I woke up, I got to have a real shower and eat breakfast in the kitchen with two of the other girls. We had sugary cereal, that kind that crunches with sweetness. I hadn’t had anything like it in months. It made my teeth hurt.

  Of course, I still had to clean. Stepmother brought Pixie up and left her there with me in the room, closing the door behind her with a mild “Behave,” almost as if she hoped we’d fight it out.

  We didn’t. Pixie wouldn’t even look at me; she focused on her cleaning, her eyes following the movement of her rag as if it were the most fascinating thing in the world. I watched her clean as if she were the most fascinating thing in the world, which she was. “Are you mad at me?” I asked after years of silence.

  Scrub, scrub. Scrub, scrub. She didn’t reply.

  “Because she didn’t really give me a choice. I had to tell her. I was in a really bad position.”

  Scrub, scrub. Scrub, scrub.

  “You were doing something that might have gotten us hurt. And you didn’t even tell me about it. It was like the time I caught Melody trying to light a fire in her room to toast a marshmallow. Even though she got in trouble, I had to tell, because she could’ve burned our house down.”

  Pixie peeked up, then back down. Was it the story of my family? Maybe with all her foster-family issues, she liked hearing stories about my family. Well, I could do that. “My family was really happy, at least until they left me and didn’t want me anymore,” I said. It was getting easier to accept, but it still stabbed me in the stomach and left me breathless. Pixie must have seen the pain; her eyebrows made wrinkles on her forehead. “I had a mom and a dad and a little sister. We lived in Merry Park, outside Chicago. My sister is eight now. Her name is Melody.”

  Pixie peeked up again. “I always wanted a mom.”

  My mom? I could talk about my mom. “She’s pretty,” I said dutifully. “She has short black hair and is part Cuban and part Italian and has very white teeth. She buys too many clothes and too many shoes, my dad says, but she says she doesn’t like to wear the same thing more than once so he just has to suck it up, even though he’s the one working and making the money, he says. Sometimes she cries a lot.”

  “But she has a family,” Pixie said. “Why does she cry?”

  I shrugged, my insides singing. Pixie was speaking to me. She was forgiving me. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve asked her before, but she said I wouldn’t understand.” I paused. “She sleeps a lot too.”

  “I would sleep a lot too, if I could,” Pixie said. I wondered what she meant. Maybe she’d had to keep watch over her rabbits. “Tell me more about your family.”

 
; I told her more: I cherry-picked our happiest family memories, our vacations, our various deceased pets, the time we visited my dad’s cousins in Mexico and got sick from the water, the time I decided Melody needed a haircut and chopped off one of her braids. That anecdote even made Pixie laugh. Lifted by her laughter, I told her about the time my dad tried to make us his mother’s tostadas and set the kitchen on fire, about the time my mom passed out in the middle of the grocery store and I got to ride in an ambulance with its sirens wailing, about the time I tried to pierce Melody’s ears with paper clips. “Poor Melly,” I said fondly, and then realized that, compared with us, Melody was unquestionably the lucky one.

  I told Pixie about the time Melody and I jumped off our roof after eating chicken wings, convinced we could fly (unaware that chickens were terrible fliers). I told Pixie about how, whenever I got sick, my mother would wipe my forehead with a cool, damp cloth and bring me toast and flat ginger ale. I told Pixie about the canopy bed I loved with the fire of a thousand suns, and the plastic glowing stick-on stars I’d plastered all over my ceiling, and the new pink sneakers I’d just gotten for gym class.

  She was perking up a bit. I had to bring it home. “Wanna see my scar?” I asked.

  Her eyes brightened. Good. “Scars are so cool.”

  I leaned over and lifted my shirt above my belly button. “I had to get my appendix taken out,” I said. I watched her eyes trace my scar, a thick, wormy ridge that stretched across my right hip. It bowed up and out, like a pair of smiling lips. “I didn’t clean it good enough. My mom was supposed to help me, but she didn’t, so the cut got infected. It was so gross.”

  Pixie’s eyes were bright, still, and round. “Can I touch it?”

  I nodded, and she leaned over and traced it, up and down, up and down. “It’s like a smile,” she said. “On your belly.” And she smiled herself.

  “I’m really sorry that I had to tell on you,” I said.

  “Tell me more about your sister,” she said.