Never Missing, Never Found

by Amanda Panitch

“You missed work today,” she says abruptly, crossing her arms over her chest. She’s in workout attire, T-shirt and yoga pants and hair off her face, so it must be the afternoon. There’s a clock just behind me, but I can’t be bothered to roll over to check.

  “How do you even know that?”

  She uncrosses her arms and lunges forward, stripping my covers off and tossing them on the floor. “My God, Scarlett, you’re disgusting,” she says. “What is that? Crumbs?”

  I can’t be bothered to roll over to check that, either. “Go away.” I lean over the side of my bed to pull the covers back—the real world is cold!—but she neatly jerks them away with her foot.

  “Five Banners has called the house, like, eight times,” she says. “You didn’t show up this morning. If you don’t show up, you’re going to get fired, and then Dad is going to murder you.”

  Maybe I can shame her into silence. “That’s awfully bad taste to joke like that, considering what just happened to Monica.”

  “Oh, you shut up,” Melody says. “That’s so not what you’re moping about. I told them that you had car trouble and your phone had died, but that I’d let you use my car, and they said they won’t penalize you this once if you go in now. Get up and go to work.”

  “Let them fire me.”

  “You can’t let them win,” Melody says. “Get out of bed and go to work.”

  “No.” I can’t get out of bed because I can’t see the people who might be panicking over Katharina’s disappearance. I can’t look into their eyes and know that I’m the one who caused their panic and their fear. That I’m the one who inducted a new member into the society.

  “Just leave me alone,” I say, and roll over. I still have a pillow to bury my face in.

  “No.” Melody yanks my pillow out from under me, sending my head thudding to the mattress below. It doesn’t hurt, but I wince anyway. “I laid out your uniform. All you have to do is put it on. And maybe shower. You kind of smell.”

  Without my pillow, I am exposed. Naked. I sit up. “Why aren’t you siding with Katharina? Don’t you think I’m crazy? That I tried to push Cady?”

  “No.” Melody doesn’t hesitate, or flinch, and her eyes don’t dart away. “I think Katharina was wrong. Now get out of bed.”

  “You think she was wrong? Like, she made a mistake?” Melody’s belief in me bolsters my spirits enough for me to slide to the edge of the bed and put my feet on the floor. The floor is cold.

  “No,” Melody says. “I think she lied. Now get up. You definitely need a shower.”

  I get up. I’m not used to standing after so many hours in bed, and I sway a bit on my feet. “Why would she lie?”

  “I don’t know.” This time her eyes do dart away. She’s lying. She knows. But I can’t bring myself to press harder, to cut deeper, not when she’s saying she believes in me. “Am I going to have to drag you out by your hair?”

  “I’m coming,” I say, and I am. I totter to the door, where she’s so helpfully stacked my uniform pieces. I take a sniff of my armpit under the pretext of cracking my neck. God, I’m rank. “Why do you even care?”

  I didn’t expect her to come in and wrest me out of bed in the first place. I didn’t expect her to tell me she believes me over Katharina.

  Most of all, I don’t expect her to burst into tears when I ask her such a small question. She sobs so hard her shoulders shudder and her ponytail comes undone; I feel awkward standing there, like I should be gathering her into my arms and telling her everything is going to be okay. Finally she lifts her head and wipes her eyes. “Because you’re my sister,” she says. “That’s why I care.” And somehow that sets her off again; she sinks down onto the edge of my bed and places her face in her hands.

  I don’t know what just happened, but I know I’m so overwhelmed I can’t even begin to process right now. “Okay,” I say. “Thanks for…this.”

  By the time I get out of the shower, smelling like soap and something artificially floral, Melody is gone.

  —

  I spent the rest of the day Pixie found the knife convinced that Stepmother would decide to give us a random pat-down, or that the knife would slice down Pixie’s pant leg and clatter to the floor, flinging drops of blood into the air, but nothing happened. We finished our work, ate our dinner, and were ushered into the basement as usual.

  Pixie sat down at one of our chairs and pulled out the knife with a flourish. “What should I do with it?” she said. She set it on the table and stared at it. I stared at it too. It stared back.

  This was dangerous. “If she knows you have that, she could really kill us,” I said. “This isn’t a joke. Or a game.”

  “I know that,” Pixie said, sounding insulted. “You could kill someone with this.” She stood and backed away from it, as if she wanted to consider it from a different viewpoint, see if it looked any less threatening from another angle.

  I said nothing to that, because what was there to say?

  Soon after that Pixie retrieved the knife, and we went to sleep. She tucked it carefully under her side of the mattress and lay on top of it. “Night, Scarlett,” she said.

  “Good night, Pixie.”

  When she woke a few hours later to pee, her fingers scrabbled instinctively for her prize. It was gone.

  I was awake, my eyes scrunched firmly shut. My breathing was fast and shallow. I didn’t fool Pixie. “Scarlett, I can see you’re awake,” I could hear her say through her teeth. “Give it back.”

  I gave up all pretense and sat up. “I don’t have it,” I said, blinking at her.

  Pixie dove forward and grabbed me by the shoulders, shaking me so hard I thought my head would pop off. “Give it back!”

  “It’s too dangerous,” I said. “It’s for the best.”

  She shook me harder. Everything blurred, and something in my neck cracked. Her shaking slowed. “Give it back!”

  I stared at her. She could shake me until my neck broke if she had to. I wasn’t going to let her get us both killed. “No,” I said.

  She stared back at me. I stared back at her. And then the entirely unexpected happened.

  Pixie buried her face in my shoulder and began to cry.

  “Hey…hey.” I patted her gingerly on the head. It had been a while since she’d washed her hair, and it was almost sticky to the touch. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

  “No,” she whispered. “I can’t do it anymore. I can’t.” It turned into a chant. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

  I petted her hair again. “Yes, you can. It’s going to be okay.”

  She shook her head, and slime smeared over my arm. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. I can’t do it anymore.”

  “Hey, hey.” She was making me uncomfortable, and I tried to edge away, only to have her scoot along with me. “Everything’s just going to be like normal.”

  “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.” She seemed to have gotten stuck. I shook her a little, trying to jar her, but it didn’t stop the chanting.

  I was going to hit her. I couldn’t hit her. I could distract her. “Hey,” I said. “Want to hear about my family?”

  “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

  I wasn’t sure what to do. An offer to hear about my life had never failed before. “I never told you about my sister’s fourth birthday party,” I said. “I thought she was cutting her cake too slowly, so I smashed her face in it.”

  “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

  “What about the time my grandma died?” That was a sad story, but maybe Pixie needed to hear something sad. “She was in hospice and had Alzheimer’s, so she didn’t know who I was at the end and she thought my dad was her husband, which was kind of gross and weird. She kept saying, ‘Quiero hacerte el amor,’ and Melody and me knew it was wrong but we kept laughing anyway and we felt really bad.”

  “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

  I
sat back, defeated. I had nothing left. Nothing left I could tell her. Nothing left I could give her. “I wish you were different.” The words burst out before I could stop them, and they kept on falling. “When I asked Stepmother for a friend, I wish she had picked someone else.”

  This stopped her. She stopped chanting midword and spun to stare at me, her head making a full revolution like an owl’s. She was already so close I could see the tears shimmering over her golden irises. “You what?”

  Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. “Nothing.”

  She stood, looming over me. “You asked her for me?” Her voice broke. “You’re the reason I’m here?”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I said nothing.

  “You did this to me.” Her voice was stronger now. “You did this to me. This is your fault.” Her eyes were beginning to shimmer again, this time with anger, and her fingers had balled into fists. “This is your fault.”

  Forget Stepmother. Pixie was going to kill me. Without breaking eye contact, I backed away and rummaged around in the dresser drawer where I’d hidden the knife, then walked back and handed it over.

  Pixie took the knife back. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

  —

  I grab one of Melody’s homemade raisin bran muffins as I run out the door. It goes down in lumps and settles like a rock in my stomach. That’s probably why I feel so heavy; it’s not dread at all. I’m totally light and cheerful. The atmosphere inside my car is so warm and bright I might burst out of my chair and rise like one of Melody’s muffins in the oven.

  I swallow hard. This campaign to psych myself up? Not working. I feel like every person is staring at me. That every one of them knows about me and Katharina.

  I trudge through the employee parking lot and toward headquarters, where I’ve been sent today. I’m so wrapped up in my internal mantra—everything will be okay, everything will be okay, everything will be okay—that it takes me a while to notice the buzzing around me, the whispers that cloud the air like fog.

  It makes me think, with an unpleasant jolt, of my first morning. The morning Monica joined the club.

  By now everybody must know Katharina is gone. That was fast.

  My mouth dries out more and more the closer and closer I get to headquarters, and the bits of muffin in my stomach get heavier and heavier; I feel like the bottom of my stomach might burst and my intestines will just drop right out of my body and crush my feet. I hope I hope I hope Connor isn’t working today. Of course, if Connor isn’t there, then Rob will be there instead, and I hope I hope I hope Rob isn’t there either. Maybe I’ll get spectacularly lucky and learn they both decided, on the spur of the moment, to quit and jet off to Tibet to shave their heads and become monks.

  No such luck: they’re both there, in the back room, conferring before the whiteboard schedule.

  Monks probably can’t have tattoos, anyway. Or freckles.

  I wait for them to notice me. I can’t speak first. My tongue has swollen up and filled my mouth, roof to teeth.

  When they finally do realize I’m there, neither of them will look at me. Their eyes are cockroaches and I’m a light; they skitter away whenever they get too close to me. Rob finally clears his throat. “You’re going to be in Wonderkidz today.”

  I nod. I didn’t expect anything different.

  Rob gathers up my cash drawer and papers while Connor stares at the wall and pretends not to see me. The muscles working in his jaw and throat say otherwise. I look at the floor, then at the ceiling, then at the wall, then at a shelf full of Skywoman figurines. She’s in various poses: one triumphant, her fist over her head; one fighting, her whip coiled in front of her; one pensive, staring off into the distance.

  If Skywoman could go on after she discovered her beloved second husband was nothing more than the Blade’s spy, if she could hold up her head and go about saving the world and the citizens of Silver City after she’d been so punched in the gut, I can manage to face Connor and Rob and the others.

  Except Katharina, but I don’t have to worry about that. Just the thought of her makes my jaw clench. “Is Katharina working in this area today?” I ask. My voice is rusty from disuse, but I have to know for sure if they know she’s gone.

  Connor’s back stiffens like someone’s shoved a poker up his butt. Rob stops mid paper shuffle and swings around to face me. “You haven’t heard?” he says incredulously, his eyes wide, like he’s forgotten he’s supposed to be mad at and afraid of me.

  “Heard what?” The more I speak, the easier it is, like the first words are battering down the path for the words tumbling after.

  Connor and Rob exchange a look. “Katharina was supposed to work this morning,” Rob says. “She never showed up.”

  So they know. “Is she…”

  “We called the police when we couldn’t reach her,” he continues, as though I didn’t speak at all. “Normally, we wouldn’t call that quickly, but after Monica…well. They’ve been poking around. They can’t find her.”

  I speak along with Rob. “She’s gone.”

  —

  Throughout the rest of the day I am a bird gathering bits of string and leaves and tinsel, building up a nest of all everybody knows about Katharina’s mysterious disappearance. Evidently, word hasn’t spread of what happened at our makeshift memorial service, because people are still willing to talk to me. Even Tina spares me a small smile as we pass on our way to and from the Canteen. Maybe Melody isn’t the only one who didn’t believe Katharina.

  Today is Monday. Katharina worked the day shift on Sunday. Just like Monica, she waved goodbye to her coworkers, said she’d see them tomorrow, and disappeared into thin air. And, just like Monica, nobody’s heard from her since. As Rob said, they usually wouldn’t call the police after one day, but they called her house and her cell and nobody picked up. If she’d been taken like Monica had been taken, they didn’t want to lose a second of time in the hunt.

  Kyrsten in Merch swears she saw a mustachioed man in a black cape follow Katharina as she left for the parking lot, trailing after her close as a shadow. Marcus in Foods thinks Katharina mentioned taking off for a few days to visit her cousin in Florida and just forgot to register for time off. Sarah in Guest Relations says she saw, on the security camera, a blurry Katharina stealing off into the woods with Scott, the Merch supervisor, and that Scott must have killed her so she couldn’t tell his wife and kids about their torrid affair.

  One theory is conspicuous in its absence. Nobody mentions Monica. Nobody mentions that if two girls the same age go missing from the same place within a few weeks of each other, it’s probably the same person who did it. Nobody mentions that Monica is dead, and that if they don’t catch this guy, probably soon Katharina will be dead too.

  Nobody mentions it, but I know they’re thinking it.

  Mayra in Merch has a fiancé who’s a cop, and she says they don’t have any leads. They scoured the security tapes and spent this morning tracing Katharina’s last footsteps, but it’s like she suddenly sprouted wings and took flight and is hiding up in the clouds, laughing every so often and shaking them and making them rain. They’re scouring the woods near where they found Monica’s body, in case he’s keeping her nearby—because that’s what the police think, that she was taken by the same person, even if nobody at Five Banners will admit it. They’re talking to everyone who worked with Katharina during her final shift. Nobody knows anything useful. All they can say is that she’s gone.

  The police can’t find her family. When they went to the address Katharina had listed on her employment forms, nobody was home, and nobody came home. They ran the address in their internal database, or whatever it is, and discovered that the house is vacant. Nobody is supposed to be living there.

  All they have to go on is what Katharina told all of us at Adventure World. That she’d just moved to Jefferson at the end of the school year, the beginning of the summer. That she’d moved from somewhere in Ohio, or Iowa, or I
daho, or one of those states with lots of i’s and o’s. That she spoke of a cat. That she had a lot of old sayings with mysterious origins.

  And all they know now is that she’s gone.

  —

  At the end of the day, I expect Rob to bustle in, all business, to pull me off register and silence the hellspawn screeching over the speakers.

  Instead I get Connor. He ambles in, hands in his pockets, shoulders sloped with a forced sort of casualness. I half expect him to purse his lips and fire off a whistle or two. “Hey,” he says. I go to turn away, but he puts out his hand, and for some reason I stay. “Don’t move. Please. I won’t talk about…us. But I have to tell you something important.”

  I sigh. “Okay.” I’m not really sure what else to say. We haven’t really spoken since I told him to get away from me, and I’m not going to apologize for that. And I haven’t seen him since I was accused of trying to kill his ex-girlfriend/semi-girlfriend/whatever Cady is to him. I didn’t do it, so I’m not going to apologize for that, either.

  And I certainly hope he doesn’t know about Katharina.

  He licks his lips. I’m surprised to see how chapped they are. I don’t remember them being that chapped when I had them pressed against my own. “Rob was going to come and take you off register,” he says. “I asked if I could come instead.”

  Lips that chapped must be painful. I imagine them cracking, bleeding, every time he opens his mouth. “I just want to go home,” I say, or plead—I’m not entirely sure.

  He leans against the counter and sighs. “I think about you all the time. I wish things hadn’t happened the way they did.”

  “Yeah, well, it still happened, and you still hurt me.” I slam my hands against the counter, and he jumps. The Wonderkidz hellspawn screech out a particularly high note in the background. I can barely hear them. I can barely hear them in my ears, that is—I’m pretty sure that, at this point, their voices are etched deep into my soul. “Can you please just take me off register so I can go home?”

  He doesn’t move. “I tried to call you, but you didn’t pick up. I wanted to tell you that I don’t think you tried to push Cady off the Blade’s Revenge. I think Katharina was lying. Tina and Cynthia think so too.” I notice he doesn’t mention Rob. That doesn’t surprise me as much as his admission does. “I don’t know why she would lie, but you couldn’t have gotten at Cady at that angle.”