Driving With the Top Down

by Beth Harbison

  “No way,” she said, looking into the courtyard beyond the wrought-iron gates.

  She walked up the pathway, past a huge fountain with frogs spitting water, and walked up into the building. Enormous doors were propped open, welcoming her in.

  Her bare feet flapped quietly on the marble floor, and she let go of her trembling arms. It was a big, huge, beautiful hall with steps that led up and to the left and to the right, just like in old houses in movies. She walked toward the stairs and stopped to read some of the flyers hanging by big dark wooden doors that were shut tight.

  FRIDAY IS MEXICAN NIGHT IN THE DINING HALL! TACOS, FAJITAS, VIRGIN MARGARITAS Y MAS!

  SUMMER CLASS STRESS GOT YOU DOWN? COOL OFF AT SATURDAY’S POOL PARTY! REFRESHMENTS PROVIDED.

  GET THE JUMPSTART NOW! PICK OUT NEXT SEMESTER’S CLASSES IN YOUR CATALOG TODAY!

  This world felt so foreign to her. A world where people only a couple years older than her could choose to go to a pool party, or go get Mexican food from the dining hall on a whim if they were hungry.

  She kept walking and ended up on the second floor, which looked over the downstairs. No one was there, except for one girl reading a textbook and gnawing on a highlighter, and her presumed boyfriend who sat across from her, holding a novel with one hand and her ankle in his lap with the other.

  “Hey, do you have your ID?” came a voice from behind her.

  “Oh…” She was immediately defensive. What had she done? She was trespassing, probably.

  “It’s just, I’m locked out. I swear I go here.” The girl laughed. She had a spunky blond ponytail, and a T-shirt that read FLAGLER COLLEGE VOLLEYBALL. “I think I left my wallet in my room, and my phone is dead.” She held up a pink Droid phone and rolled her eyes to show that she knew how dopey she looked.

  “No, I, um … I don’t … I don’t go here.”

  “Oh. Oh. Okay, well, sorry to bother you. Are you … Are you visiting a friend or something?”

  “No, I was walking around and I just came inside. I’m probably not supposed to be in here.”

  “Whatever, it’s the summer, who cares?” The girl sat down, pulling her yoga pant legs up to her chest. “Are you in high school?”

  “Yeah, I’m a junior.”

  “Are you thinking about applying here?”

  “Maybe…” Tamara looked around.

  “It’s pretty cool. It’s small, but you know, that way you kind of make a lot of friends and everyone knows each other and stuff. I transferred from a bigger school. You ever have that feeling when you’re surrounded by a ton of people that really you’re just alone?”

  “I know what you mean, yeah.”

  “Sorry, I’m all deep about everything right now.” She laughed again. “I’m taking philosophy, which is kinda useless, but still fun. And my teacher?” She rolled her eyes back. “Drop-dead gorj.”

  Tamara laughed. “Probably makes philosophy feel a little more fun, then.”

  “Totes. That’s fucked up, right? Oh well. Anyway, I’m going to go ask that hipster couple over there if they can scan me in. Otherwise, I’m mildly screwed. It was nice meeting you…?”

  “Tamara.”

  “Tamara. I’m Taylor. Good luck getting in—maybe I’ll see ya around!”

  “Thanks.”

  The girl bounced off, and Tamara saw that the back of her shirt said, GIRLS, UNDEFEATED, BOYS, 8–7.

  The girl was let in by highlighter hipster girl, and waved good-bye to Tamara, who then left to walk back to the hotel. Once back on the outside of the wrought-iron gates, she cast one more look behind her before heading back.

  For some reason, the visit had made her sadder than ever. That girl—Taylor—had believed Tamara went there, for at least a few seconds. But she was so far from that.

  She was lost for fifteen minutes before finally spotting the street the hotel was on. She wiped away tears she hadn’t known she had cried, and straightened up. She had to go back to Colleen and Bitty and just pray they weren’t too mad.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Colleen

  The first order of business for Bitty after learning of the newspaper article was to call Lew. She and Colleen had discussed the possibilities—calling the police, calling the newspaper—and had finally decided that calling Lew directly was the best course of action. He’d started it; he could stop it.

  “Tell them I’m not some unhinged scorned wife,” Bitty hissed into the phone. “Tell them I’m not a dangerous, bereaved, abandoned wife on the run, or I swear I will tell them the truth. I swear it. You have left me with nothing left to lose. You don’t know where I am, and neither do those Keystone Cops in Winnington, so I could slip in when you least expect it, and get you—do you understand?” She made the sound a gangster in a bad movie might make to indicate slitting a throat.

  Colleen had to try not to laugh.

  Obviously Lew was arguing back, but then Colleen saw a light come into Bitty’s eye.

  “I didn’t want to have to do this,” she said, then bit her lip for a moment, a gesture Colleen recognized as what she did when she wasn’t sure where she was going. “Listen to me, Lew. Are you listening? Good. You know how you’re always impatient for me because I don’t know how to work this damn iPhone?” She waited while he obviously agreed she was an idiot. “Well, you’re right. I can’t. I didn’t want to tell you this, but when I got home that day, I thought there was an intruder, so I turned the thing on so I could call the police if I needed to. But earlier I’d taken a picure of the prettiest little blue jay. Right outside our kitchen window. Well, I guess it’s your kitchen window now. And— What? Okay, I’m getting to the point! When I turned on the phone, I accidentally hit the movie button. I recorded the whole scene I walked in on. You’re not on-screen the whole time, but there is no doubt about what was going on. Gosh, I’d hate to smudge our name by showing that around, but it might go some distance to explaining this … misunderstanding … about me.” She waited. “Lew?”

  Colleen had to hand it to her. If this worked, it was brilliant.

  “Ah,” Bitty said, a smile crossing her face. “I had a feeling you’d understand. Make sure you correct this immediately. I mean immediately. I’ll look for a retraction in tomorrow’s paper online. Right? Good. Bye, now, Lew. Your lawyer will hear from mine.”

  “Feel good?” Colleen asked when she hung up.

  “Pretty damn good.”

  They walked over to Harry’s restaurant, ate some good old spicy Cajun food, got an order of fried chicken fingers for Tamara, and went back up to the hotel room.

  Where Tamara wasn’t.

  “Good Lord, where is she?” Colleen asked, throwing down her purse, only to immediately pick it back up and retrieve her phone.

  As Colleen dialed, Bitty looked in the bathroom and then out in the halls, and came back in shaking her head.

  Colleen’s phone rang, rang, then voice mail.

  Rang, rang, then voice mail.

  Rang—voice mail.

  Voice mail.

  Either it died or she had turned it off.

  “This makes no sense.”

  “You know phones sometimes lose all reception in a tiny pocket of space. Maybe she’s in a store or went to the pizza joint. Give it a minute.”

  “You’re right,” Colleen said, trying to believe it. “I’m sure everything’s fine.” But she wasn’t. She wasn’t sure at all, and what had she done? She’d gone out and done shots and had wine instead of staying on top of her responsibility to keep an eye on this kid.

  She called Tamara’s number again. And again.

  And looked at the clock.

  “This is not okay,” she said. “Something is wrong. What am I going to do?”

  Bitty shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve never had a kid. I don’t know what to do in this situation.”

  One more call; then she left a voice mail: “Tam, it’s Colleen. It’s almost eleven. I don’t know what’s going on or why you’re not answeri
ng, if you’re upset or something is up, but come back to the hotel. Call or text me the second you get this. Please, I’m worried.” She hung up. “I don’t want to yell at her or she’ll never come back.”

  Bitty frowned. “Do you think she’s gotten into something worse than just smoking cigarettes?”

  “What, drugs? Here?”

  Bitty nodded. “Here or something she had with her? I don’t know. She was acting strange today, didn’t you notice?”

  Colleen hadn’t. How could she not? She’d thought she was doing such a great job picking up the slack Chris had dropped. “What do you mean she was acting strange? In what way?”

  “Really quiet. Kept checking her phone. Biting her lip. Eyes darting everywhere around us, like she was looking for a spook.”

  “Well, since I was driving, my eyes were on the road, Columbo, but if you noticed all these signs of something being amiss, why didn’t you say something?”

  Bitty looked surprised.

  “I’m sorry,” Colleen said quickly. “One of my biggest faults: I’m quick to worry, and when I’m worried, I’m snappish. Something doesn’t feel right. What time did we leave for the martini bar, did you notice?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither.” She groaned. “God. You know, I’d actually been toying with the idea of asking Kevin if we should take her in, you know, try and give her some feeling of family. Turns out I couldn’t even keep track of her for a week!”

  * * *

  AN HOUR LATER, Tam still wasn’t back and Colleen was certain all her worry was completely justified.

  And she was completely convinced that she’d blown a huge opportunity, the opportunity to have that daughter figure around that she’d always imagined would be there someday, somehow. Tam had started to fill that role. Even with all her quirks and the worries that buzzed in Colleen’s brain, she’d started to feel like something necessary was missing with Tam not there.

  She and Bitty were walking around St. Augustine, looking for her in the long row of shops along the narrow alley that was St. George Street. Tourists crowded the place, and some of the stores seemed to extend back forever.

  “Do you remember what she was wearing?” Colleen said, recalling how Kevin always said she’d make the world’s worst police witness.

  “Cutoffs,” Bitty said, now that she’d revealed herself to be Captain Observant. “Orange flip-flops and a retro Clash T-shirt, London Calling. Unfortunately, it was black and dark gray, so it’s not really going to stand out.”

  Colleen took out her phone and dialed Tamara again. Her call log showed that she’d now called her thirteen times in a row. She was losing hope that the girl would answer.

  They stopped everywhere. Nothing in the shell shop. Nothing in the kitchen shop. Nothing in the three vintage shops. Nothing in Hot Stuff Mon, the shop devoted to hot sauces and cooking stuff but with the catchy name that might have attracted a teenage eye.

  At one point, they came upon a cheap old hotel with a pirate theme that looked exactly like a teenage hangout, but when she opened the door hoping to find a reception desk, there was just a narrow staircase painted with the words to A PIRATE’S LIFE FOR ME.

  Nothing.

  “Do you think we should call the police?” Bitty asked.

  “I keep thinking that myself, but they would probably view it as a huge overreaction. After all, she hasn’t been gone that long, at least in their eyes. It would be hard to convince them it’s an emergency just because we’re worried about a kid we’ve spent only a few days with and don’t really know the habits of.” Though she knew enough about Tam’s habits, at least her previous ones. It was kind of hard to reconcile the fun sweet girl she’d begun to see as a comrade on this trip with the drugged-out wild child she knew Tamara to be. Maybe a few days of good was her limit, and she’d gone out trying to score something.

  Or maybe she brought something with her, and had waited as long as she could, trying to resist it, but took it today, hence her odd behavior, and had wandered off in St. Augustine and gotten lost. Or had just been waiting to get far enough from home to run away and never be found. Maybe she had even walked right into the water and drowned. The thought sent tremors through her. If something terrible were going to happen, would she have had some sort of feeling in advance or could she totally be ambushed by it? Was it truly possible something was terribly wrong right now?

  They walked through every street and alley in the main part of town, even though with every step their efforts seemed more and more hopeless. The place was so crowded and loud that Tamara could actually have been inside any one of the places they’d checked, and they might have just missed her anyway.

  Anger was now mingling with Colleen’s nervousness. This was incredibly irresponsible of Tamara. Selfish. She couldn’t have called when she knew time was getting on? Even texted?

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” said Bitty.

  “No, you’re not. Of course you’re not sure. You can’t be.”

  “Well, I know, but what am I supposed to say in this situation?”

  “I don’t know, maybe nothing?”

  Colleen’s fear was getting the better of her. As they walked along finding nothing, and she dug through every gaggle of teenagers with her eyes, she became more and more afraid. What if Tamara’s phone really had died? And she hadn’t been sure where their hotel was? That could happen easily. Maybe she went for a walk and got lost.

  Maybe someone around her had seen her and offered her help.

  “I’m not just angry,” Colleen admitted to Bitty, “I’m really afraid something has happened to her.”

  “Don’t you know her to be kind of wild, though? It’s been two and a half hours or so, right? For a rebellious teenager, that’s nothing. She probably met some people and is inconsiderate enough not to let you know, but is ultimately fine.”

  “You were the one who suggested maybe she had brought drugs along on the trip with her!”

  “Yes, but that’s not … Well, it’s as likely as anything else, but I’m sure she didn’t bring along something she’s never done before, if she did bring it. Or maybe she didn’t do that at all, she doesn’t know anyone here, and who wants to do drugs by herself?”

  “People who are addicted to drugs do, Bitty.”

  “Well…”

  She seemed to have no real response. They walked in silence some more. The shops were emptying out, and the bars were certainly letting in only people with IDs at this hour. Although, who knew, the kid probably had a fake.

  They walked to the fort, Castillo de San Marcos, where Colleen remembered Kevin telling her ahead of time that there were visible bullet holes still left in the stonework. It was dark there, and an ideal place for an angsting teenager to crouch against a wall, feeling sorry for herself. But no. Still no Tamara.

  The last real shot at a good place to find her was on the Flagler College campus in town. They walked in the grand entrance, into the women’s room off the main hall, up to the rotunda, where kids sat doing homework and eating vending machine food, and then down onto the grounds. Through gazebos, the lawn where some mini-adults sat having “dates.” Into the library and the student center. But no Tamara.

  “She’s dumb,” said Bitty. “If she wanted to get away for a bit and have a good time, this is where she should have come.”

  Colleen managed a laugh, before stopping and sitting down on one of the low stone walls. “Should I call the police?”

  “They won’t do anything about a teenager who’s been missing in a college town for, what, maybe two hours?”

  Colleen knew that was true. If the police were called every time a bored student moved from one party to another without telling anyone, they’d never get any of their important work done. Never mind that this felt important; it also wasn’t outside Tamara’s established behavioral patterns. This was exactly the kind of thing that had gotten her into trouble to begin with: reckless behavior with no regard for the consequences. Admittedl
y, maybe she hadn’t had anyone watching for her and worrying in the past, but she knew Collen and Bitty would be.

  Didn’t she?

  Finally, Bitty said what Colleen was thinking. “Do you think we should go back to the hotel? That’s the one place she knows we’d be if she came back looking for us.”

  Colleen nodded. It was the only thing they could do right now.

  “I lost my friend’s dog once,” said Colleen. “And I was up all night trying to find him. All night, just driving up and down and up and down the roads, looking for this fat ugly bulldog, and I knew that I couldn’t give up. Because if you give up, then you lose all chance of finding him.”

  “This is different. She’s a sixteen-year-old girl. And she’s smart. She might be, you know, a little foolish, but she’s not stupid. She’ll come back. She’ll find a way.”

  “I’m not afraid she’s run away forever so much.” Though now that she’d said that, she was afraid of it. “I’m afraid something happened to her. I’m afraid that she’s led a life of messing up, and that tonight is the one night she didn’t set out to do that, and she ends up hurt. Like Alice Haylon in school.”

  Alice Haylon had been a smart girl who went a little crazy at parties. She drank almost every night of the week, was loud and showy and definitely rather reckless. The kind of girl who never turned down a dare. But ultimately, she was a great girl. So when she died in a car accident, it had broken everyone’s hearts, but not necessarily shocked anyone. The shock had come when it was discovered that drugs and alcohol had had no play in her death. So the number of times Alice had gone to parties or driven back with someone who was a little buzzed—or hell, sometimes definitely shouldn’t have been behind a wheel—she had survived. And one time when she was on her way to do whatever, she had died. It had hit everyone who knew her like a one-two punch. First she was dead. Then she was dead, but not for the reasons people had assumed.

  “I know what you mean,” said Bitty, a shadow crossing her face. “I know exactly what you mean.”