Never Missing, Never Found

by Amanda Panitch

  “Good morning.” Connor looks at me in what I think is a hopeful way. “How are you?”

  I don’t answer. His face falls. “We need someone in Sweet Treats. I think I’m going to put you there.”

  “Okay,” I say. “That’s fine.”

  “Okay, good,” he says.

  The walk to the store is painful, and the wait for him to set my register up, when we’re all alone in the dark store, even more so. It’s amazing how he can spend upward of fifteen minutes not more than three feet away from my body, and yet I can manage not to look at him at all. It’s almost like he doesn’t exist. I almost wish he didn’t exist right now.

  He leaves with a “Let me know if you need anything,” and I settle in for a long morning. Even the fudge doesn’t smell appealing anymore, partially because I know it tastes like lighter fluid, but mostly because it’s associated with Connor’s laugh and the sparkle of his eyes.

  He visits once, but I turn my head whenever he tries to speak to me. Eventually he gives up and leaves.

  It’s a long morning.

  When Rob finally comes to release me for lunch, bringing, to his credit, small talk and sympathetic looks, I book it for the employment office, racing through the secret passage. I’ve very sneakily snuck in two granola bars for lunch, which I eat on the way. Energized by my nongreasy meal, I approach Mascara Girl, who’s still waiting behind the front desk. “Hi,” I say, and then continue all in one breath, “I’m Scarlett Contreras. I’ve been working in Merch, but I wanted to ask about transferring to another department.”

  She looks at me from beneath heavy lids. She does not seem impressed. “You’ll have to fill out a departmental transfer form,” she says. “It probably won’t be accepted. Most of the departments are already full for the year, but you might get lucky.”

  I wilt. It doesn’t sound like she thinks I’ll get lucky. “Okay. Thanks.”

  The form she gives me is in triplicate and is at least ten pages long, and when I try to fill it out, it leaves dusty carbon smudges all over my fingers. I give up halfway through. It’s not worth it. No matter where I end up, I’ll still be in this park, with Connor, knowing he could be around any corner. Maybe making out with Cady.

  A lump forms in my throat halfway through my walk back. I still have twenty minutes left of my “lunch,” so at least I have time for emergency maneuvers. Like a crashing airplane, I veer into the closest metal building and hope against hope it’s not a changing room for the costumed characters.

  Fortunately, I’ve chosen wisely, and the building I duck into is one of the many storehouses for old merch. As long as nobody has an urgent need for extra Slugworth coffee mugs in the next few minutes, I should be safe. I shut the dead bolt (because you never know), sag against the inside of the door, and cry.

  I’ve never been a loud crier. I did so much crying at Stepmother’s those first few months—in the basement, the bathroom, the girls’ bedrooms—that I learned how to suppress it. The secret is in managing the inhale—if you don’t take in much air, there isn’t much to wheeze or shriek out—and in looking up at the ceiling, which keeps your eyes from puffing up too much or getting too red.

  So it’s easy to hear something fall at the other end of the room.

  I stiffen. I may be a quiet crier, but I’m not silent. If someone is there, they’ve definitely heard me. I reach over my shoulder, trying to unlock the door without exposing my back.

  “Scarlett? Is that you?”

  My fingers freeze. “Katharina?”

  I take a step forward. Katharina may be crazy, and she may do crazy things, and she may be making me crazy, but I don’t think she’ll hurt me. Not during the workday, when anyone could hear me scream. I weave through the maze of shelves and dust and boxes. My fingers are tense on the can of pepper spray I keep in the pocket of my work pants. I don’t think Katharina will hurt me, but you can’t be too careful.

  Katharina is in a nest—that’s the only way to describe it. She’s gathered old T-shirts and costume pieces and uniform parts, the way birds gather bits of string and leaves, and piled them high in the corner of the warehouse. She’s curled up in the middle, only her head and hair visible. “Scarlett?” She sits up, and pieces of cloth tumble to the floor.

  “What are you doing here?” I have my answer before the words all leave my mouth. There’s a sink in the corner too, with a toothbrush and toothpaste poking from a commemorative Wonderman mug. Next to the sink is a pile of food wrappers, beside other piles: folded clothes, boxes of granola bars and bottled water and tampons. A miniature refrigerator hums. “You’re living here.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “I think you are,” I say.

  Her eyes are opaque. Her jaw tightens. “Are you going to tell?”

  Am I? I probably should. The chance that the park management knows about this is approximately zero percent. Living here can’t be safe or healthy for Katharina.

  I put off the question. “Why?”

  “I had to come to this town and I had nowhere to live,” she says. “Now. Are you going to tell?”

  I feel like I should be horrified at the thought of a girl my age living all alone, with no family, but I find myself feeling calculating. If I tell, Katharina will probably be arrested, or at least taken away by Social Services. She’ll be a subject of gossip throughout the park, an urban legend, like the alleged ghost that floats through the walls of the old haunted mansion, supposedly the sixteen-year-old ride operator who died when the attraction burned to the ground in 1971.

  If I don’t tell, Katharina will owe me.

  “I won’t tell,” I say.

  “Good,” Katharina says. “Thank you.”

  “No problem.” I start feeling my way backward. I don’t want to be around Katharina anymore. There’s no possible good reason for her to be living here. “I have to go or I’ll be late. See you.”

  “Wait,” she says. She rises, shedding pieces of cloth. “I’m glad you’re here, because I really need to talk to you.”

  “I really need to go.” I turn my back and flee. I don’t have to be afraid of her anymore; I have the upper hand now. If I ever feel threatened by her again, all I have to do is tell, and she’ll poof and be gone. Like magic.

  Rob is waiting for me at the candy store when I get back, chatting with the cashier who covered my break. “I’m not late,” I say immediately, and sneak a look at the register clock. I’m not late. I’m early, actually, by three minutes.

  “I know.” Rob looks over at the other peon. “Marley, want to get a head start over to headquarters?”

  The other kid nods and hustles, as though sensing that an awkward conversation is coming. I almost want to yell after Marley, “Take me with you!”

  My head is still spinning with the Katharina revelation, and I don’t think I can take any more revelations today. “What is it?” I say. Maybe he’ll fire me. I’d actually be okay with that, I think. It would not be cool with my dad if I quit the job that lets me pay for my car insurance and gas, but he couldn’t blame me if I got fired for reasons beyond my control.

  “Are you going to go to Monica’s memorial service?”

  That isn’t what I was expecting. I’m vaguely disappointed. “I don’t know,” I say. “It’s tomorrow, isn’t it? Tomorrow night? At Riverside?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Don’t go.”

  I blink. “Excuse me?”

  “Cady and Connor are going to be there. It’s their night.” Rob shuffles papers around on the counter. They’re inventory reports, I think. There’s no reason for them to be shuffled. “You’ve done enough. Let them grieve without worrying about you.”

  “I didn’t think Cady knew about me and Connor,” I say cautiously.

  “She doesn’t,” Rob says. “I wasn’t about to do that to her. Not now. And Connor is my best friend.”

  “So what’s the issue?” I ask. Icicles, cold and sharp and glitteringly dangerous, protrude from my words. “They’re
not together anymore. If she doesn’t know, and she isn’t going to know, then what’s—”

  “The only people who know what happened between you and Connor are you, me, and Connor,” Rob says. “And that’s how it’s going to stay. Cady’s been hurt enough. You break Cady’s heart again, I’ll break you.”

  I stare at him. The look on his face is so stone-cold serious that it’s ludicrous, and I can’t help but laugh. That’s the wrong thing to do, I can immediately tell; Rob’s jaw clamps down, and his eyes narrow. “You can’t hit a girl,” I tell him.

  “I don’t need to hit you to break you,” Rob says through his teeth. “I’m telling you, stay away from the memorial service. If you’re there, all Connor will be able to focus on is you, and he needs to be able to focus on Cady.”

  With a lack of anything else to do, I toss my hair. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” I say. “I didn’t even talk to him today.” I wonder, fleetingly, if Rob’s had this talk with Connor, too. The absolute last thing I want to do with that look on Rob’s face is test it. “Let Cady have him.”

  “Good answer,” Rob says, and his face relaxes. “Give me a ring if you need anything. I’ll be at headquarters.” He strides away, whistling. I want to cram squares of caustic fudge down his throat until it burns through his insides and lights him on fire.

  The rest of the day passes slowly; I can’t stop jumping at every noise and every greeting, certain Katharina is going to pop out from behind the candy-sand station or Connor is going to drop through a trapdoor in the ceiling to confess that he actually does want to be with me right now. But nobody shows up except customers (ugh), and so it’s almost a relief when Rob comes to take me off register at the end of my shift, his small talk extra small. I don’t leave through the secret passage. The last thing I need today is more Katharina weirdness.

  The last thing I need any day, ever, is more Katharina weirdness. I’d be perfectly happy never to see Katharina again.

  So, naturally, when I get home, her car is in my driveway and she’s sitting on my stoop. “Nobody would answer the door” is what she greets me with as she rises. If she has no house, nowhere to live, how in the world does she have a car? “I texted Melly, but she didn’t answer. I wanted to surprise her.”

  “It’s Thursday,” I say, unfailingly polite. “Thursday is field hockey night.”

  “Ah. I see,” Katharina says, unfailingly jovial. “I don’t get how she does all those things. Crazy, right?”

  Crazy. She’s going to drive me crazy. I can’t keep doing this. “Please leave me alone,” I say, still unfailingly polite. I will be unfailingly polite until the end. The end of the world, if need be. “I really don’t want to talk to you anymore. If you keep talking to me, I’ll tell everybody your secret.”

  Katharina squints at me. A curtain of hair falls across her face. “My secret?”

  “I don’t want to,” I say. “But I will.” And I still think you drugged me, I don’t say, because that would get back to Melody, and Melody already thinks I’m crazy.

  “My secret,” she repeats. “Sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The icicles from before are back, but this time they’re in my arms and legs, stiffening my elbows and knees until I can’t move. “From earlier today,” I say, and my voice sounds tinny to my ears. Probably because of the way sound waves refract through ice, which is now spreading into my torso. “When I found you in the storage building where you’re living.”

  Katharina squints at me the way I’d squint at a mouse chasing a cat. “What are you talking about? I didn’t even work today.”

  The ice freezes solid, and somehow it’s like it’s making me stronger, protecting me against the rays of her withering glare. Because Melody may think I’m crazy, but I’m not. I know what I saw, and I saw Katharina and her little nest in the storage facility in the secret passage. “I saw you,” I say defensively. “I know it happened.”

  The look she’s giving me now is the mouse’s once the cat turns around. “I have a house,” she says slowly, carefully. “I live with my parents on the other side of town. Ask Melly. She’s been there.”

  And then all at once I melt. I sink to my knees and a sound escapes my throat, a sound so odd I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before. I don’t know if it’s even me.

  “Are you okay?” Katharina kneels beside me. “Are you dizzy or something? Is that it? It was hot today. Maybe you have heatstroke?”

  She’s handing this excuse to me on purpose, I know, a rope to help drag me out of this lake of crazy. “Maybe,” I say. I can’t take the rope. Taking it is akin to admitting I’ve fallen in in the first place.

  “Yeah, I was dizzy before,” she says. She flips her hair over her shoulder, lifting the curtain for the second act. “Sad about Monica, right? I was really upset.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Well, I should be—”

  “Are you going to the memorial service?” Katharina talks right over me. “It’s tomorrow night, at Riverside.”

  “I don’t know,” I say. Rob’s stare flashes through my mind. “I didn’t really know her all that well.”

  Katharina bares her teeth in what I think is supposed to be a smile. “Melody and I are going to go, and Melly didn’t know her at all. It’s all about paying our respects. Don’t you want to pay your respects?”

  What I want? What I want is to rewind time, spooling the hours and minutes back upon each other like the film in an old cassette tape, and plop myself back in Connor’s barn, my back up against the rough wood, and then, as Connor leaned to kiss me, I’d push him away, and then I wouldn’t be in this mess at all. Connor and I would still flirt all the time, and we’d be friends, and that awkwardness wouldn’t be there between us, hitting us in the stomach every time we moved.

  But I’ve already made that choice, and if I made a different one, I’d be a different person.

  Rob’s glare flashes back into my mind’s eye and ignites a flare of shame deep in my belly. It keeps burning, though, and the shame heats into anger. Why should I be the one hiding? Connor was the one who broke my heart. I should really be out there proving to him that I’m okay. “Okay,” I say. “I think I will go to the memorial service.”

  “Cool,” Katharina says. She’s tapping away on her phone, her fingers practically a blur. “Well, if Melly’s not going to be home soon, I guess I’ll go.” She looks up, and her eyes are bright and hard. “Nice talking to you, Scarlett.”

  I watch her get back into her car, and I watch her pull out of the driveway, and I watch her pull away, and I watch her drive down the street. I watch her until her car is nothing more than a speck in the distance, and then I keep watching, just to make sure she’s really and truly gone.

  —

  I call in sick to work the next day. It’s kind of true. I am sick. Sick in the head. Sick over Connor. Sick over Melody. Sick of worrying. It gets me a black mark on my record, but I don’t much care.

  Monica’s memorial service is taking place at Riverside, on the football field, the same place where they held the vigil. The mood is very different—whereas electricity zipped through the air last time, animating candle flames and making hairs dance, now the mood is somber, the colors muted, voices low. People pack the bleachers, murmuring and crying; Melody and I have to hold hands not to be separated as we push through the crowd, which unironically thrills me. We meet up with Katharina in the bleachers, where she’s saved us seats; she greets Melody with a quick hug and whisper in her ear, then smiles big at me. It feels obscene to smile at such an event, and I don’t know whether it’s more awkward to smile or not to smile back.

  “Hey, Scarlett,” Katharina says. “Feeling better?”

  “I feel fine,” I say. I pretend to stretch, craning my neck for Connor and Rob and company. Turns out I don’t have to crane far, because they’re right behind us.

  Immediately I feel guilty. Not because of Rob’s glare, which could etch curse words in
to marble. Not because of Connor, whom I don’t even let myself look at. Not because of Cynthia and Randall and the others, who say hello soberly, solemnly, with all the gravity expected in this situation.

  No, it’s because of Cady. Cady, whose shoulders are shaking and whose forehead is in her hands. She’s squeaking and snorting and making all sorts of unattractive noises, and it’s because she’s sad, it’s because she’s devastated, it’s because her friend is dead, and I’m using her friend’s death to make some kind of personal point or jab or whatever. I don’t even know anymore. All I know is that I’m terrible. I am officially, now, a terrible person.

  I go to stand. “I should go,” I say. “I’ll wait out by the car.”

  Melody puts her hand on my arm. “It’s starting,” she hisses. “What are you doing?”

  To go now, I would have to actively push her away, so I sit back down. The memorial service is endless and torturous, and I feel worse every time I think of it that way. Every time somebody gets up and talks about how Monica tutored him in bio and saved his grade, or how Monica sold the most Girl Scout cookies in the state through sheer charm and will in elementary school and won her troop a trip to Disney World, or how Monica read Harry Potter to sick children at the local hospital. Because all I can think about through all the speeches is me, me, me.

  After a hundred years the memorial service ends, and Cady is still crying. I hate myself for feeling relieved that it’s over, because of course, for people like Cady and Monica’s family, who are standing only tens of feet away, it will never be over. For them it’s only beginning.

  “We should go,” I say to Melody. “Get out of the parking lot before it becomes a madhouse.”

  Melody isn’t listening. Well, she’s not listening to me—she’s listening intently, instead, to Katharina talking to the group behind us. “Monica would have hated this,” Katharina is saying, tossing her hair. Hair is everywhere. I am choking on hair. “So schmaltzy and corny. Making her out to be some kind of saint.”

  Cynthia lets out a dry laugh at that. “She certainly wasn’t a saint,” she says. “You know I caught her making out with Scott one night in the back of headquarters?”