by Susan Perabo
•
Abby Luckett slid up beside her in the lunch line.
“You have to sit with us,” she said. “We need you.”
“What?” Meredith asked. She literally almost turned around to see if Abby was talking to someone behind her.
“We need to talk to you. It’s about Lisa.”
“Um, okay.”
There was a vacant seat at their table. The seat was sacred ground, an empty throne, and Meredith was apparently going to be the only one allowed to fill it. There were five other girls at the table. Before she sat down she looked across the lunchroom and saw Kristy and Jules watching her. Meredith felt like a spy. She had never wanted to sit at this table. Except maybe once or twice, just to see how it felt. And now she knew.
“We’re solving this, okay?” Abby Luckett announced as Meredith scooched her chair in. “We, the people at this table. We’re going to find her. Everyone else isn’t doing shit. We have to do something.”
Amanda Hammels turned to Meredith. “The cops are idiots,” she said. “They’re shit. Have you met them? They don’t know anything. They don’t even know where to start.”
“Um . . . ” Meredith said.
“She had guys following her all the time,” Abby said. “There were like three guys stalking her on Instagram. And one of them she said she’d meet up with. The guy is like thirty. She talked to him practically every day for the past month.”
“Did you tell the police about him?” Meredith asked.
“They’re not listening to us,” Abby said, scowling. “They look at us like we’re retards. They said they’d look into it, but I don’t think they’re really doing anything. They’re acting like it was some random thing.”
For a second Meredith thought about telling them about paging through the high school yearbook, that it didn’t seem to her like the cops thought it was necessarily random. Was that confidential? Was it against the law to tell them what the police had asked her?
“It wasn’t random,” Amanda Hammels said. “It was that skeeze from Instagram.”
“There are like twenty guys who are totally in love with her,” Abby said. “It could have been any one of them.”
“It did seem kind of random,” Meredith said. “It was a robbery. He asked for money. He was looking for the safe.” She glanced across the table at Becca Nichols. Becca was almost certainly Lisa’s best friend, and so far she hadn’t said a word. She was looking at her food but not eating it. Meredith recalled what Kristy had told her last week (possible? only last week?) about Becca’s older sister being pregnant. Well, when it rained it poured. What did that even mean?
“Did he look at her funny when he came in?”
“I don’t know,” Meredith said. “It was hard to—”
“Did he actually say it was random?” Amanda asked. “When he was in there, did he say it?”
“Christ, Amanda,” Becca exploded. “Who would walk in there and say, ‘Nobody move. This is a random robbery’? Seriously, are you even listening to yourself?”
“She’s trying to help,” Abby said, “which is more than I can say for you.”
“He just said he wanted the money,” Meredith said. “That was all he said.”
“Right,” Abby said. “Of course that’s what he said. That’s his cover. He makes it look like a robbery so no one will know he’s been like stalking her for two months. Nobody is going to solve this mystery but us, Meredith.”
“For her mom,” Amanda said. “For Colleen, we have to find her. And for us, too. For the whole school. For everybody. We need her. People are starting to say she’s dead. That’s not fair. That’s not cool. She’s not dead.”
“I don’t think so either,” Meredith said. “I think he’s keeping her somewhere.”
“Who?”
“The guy. Whoever he is.” She knew she was on thin ice. Maybe it was all pretend anyway, what she knew, what she thought she knew. “What do you know about him?” she asked. “The Instagram guy? Do you know anything?”
“He’s from Pittsburgh,” Abby said. “He said he was a hockey coach. He said he’d show her his big stick.”
“Wow,” Meredith said. “What did the cops say when you told them that?”
“The cops are shit,” Abby said. “They don’t care. Will you help us?”
“Sure,” Meredith said. “But I don’t think there’s really very much I can do.”
“We can only do so much, but there is so much we can do,” Amanda said. “That was our mission trip motto last year.” She bent over to retrieve her Vera Bradley backpack. When she sat up again she was smiling.
“Oh my god,” she said to Meredith. “I love your shoes.”
•
Steven Overbeck was not interested in engaging with her in social studies. Despite his sweetness, or perhaps because of it, he was clearly out of his depth, and her fantasy, college-Steven-Overbeck would have to suffice for comfort. Without his banter behind her, she thought about what Abby had said, about the hockey coach from Instagram, but she didn’t think there was anything to it. She was fairly certain that the man who came into the Deli Barn had decided only after the robbery was a bust that he would take Lisa.
Why? Why would a robber become a kidnapper?
Because he needed money. Because he thought that maybe if he kidnapped her he could ask for a ransom, and if he lost his nerve or if it wasn’t worth it he could just let her go. Because he wanted to take something. Because there was only a couple hundred bucks in the register and there was no safe (where the hell was the money anyway?) and he had risked everything, every single thing he had, going into that store with that gun, and by god he was not going to risk everything and then leave with two hundred and eleven dollars. Meredith knew that all this had gone through his mind while he’d stood there looking down at them, all this in the space of four or five seconds, and then he had noticed her hair, Lisa’s hair, and then those slim bare shoulders courtesy of her cold-shoulder top, and then the fleshy gap at her lower back between her leggings and where her top had ridden up, then the firm slope of her leggings, and then her sandals. And then his eyes moved to the other girl, the one with the brown hair who was at least fifteen pounds heavier. Perhaps it wasn’t just about good looks: Which one could he carry, if there needed to be carrying? And the fatter one was wearing flats instead of heels, so she could run like hell, couldn’t she, run for her life in those sensible shoes, whereas no one could ever hope to run for her life in those golden sandals.
No. Meredith called bullshit on herself. Lisa was hotter. And that was why. There could be no doubt. He’d taken the pretty one. Everything Lisa had ever done, every stroke of the brush, every meal not eaten, every afternoon of shopping in every dressing room, everything had led her to this moment, to this choice. Years of reading her mother’s Cosmo had finally paid off. She’d won. The man had stood there wanting something, and then what he wanted was that. That. He could figure out the rest later. And that’s what he was doing right now, while Lisa sat on the couch, watching TV with Annie the dog, and Meredith sat at her desk in social studies with silent Steven Overbeck dutifully taking notes behind her, the scratch of his pencil the soundtrack of Lisa’s endless morning.
He was figuring out the rest.
•
“What did they say?” Jules wanted to know during library period. “What did they want?”
They were sitting in the back corner of the library in the beanbag chairs. There were only three beanbag chairs and you had to ask to use them during library period, and usually the answer was no, but Meredith could tell by the look on the librarian’s face that she, Meredith, might very well get the beanbag chairs every day for the rest of the year.
“They just wanted to know what happened,” Meredith said. “They think it was some stalker guy from Instagram.”
“I heard that,” Kristy said. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Someone from the governor’s office.”
“What?” Jules asked.
“The governor?”
“Somebody from his office,” Kristy said. “That’s what people were saying on Friday.”
“My mom thinks it was a setup,” Jules said. “That she just made it look like a kidnapping.”
“I heard that, too,” Kristy said. “I heard that’s what the police think.”
“What do you mean, a setup?” Meredith asked. “Like how?”
“Like she just wanted to run away with some guy,” Jules said. “But she didn’t want to get in trouble, so she made it look like a kidnapping. They made it look like a kidnapping, she and the guy, whoever he is, to throw everybody off. But it was all a fakeout.”
“Why would you go to all that trouble?” Meredith asked. “And so where are they now?”
“A beach,” Jules said. “You know, in like Guadalajara or something.”
“You don’t even know where Guadalajara is,” Meredith said. She was surprised by the edge in her voice, so added, gently, “She’s not in Guadalajara, okay?”
“How do you know?”
“It was a robbery,” Meredith said. “I’m telling you. I was there. It was just a robbery. And then he took her, just . . . I don’t know. Just . . . because.”
“If that’s true, you are so lucky,” Kristy said. “Oh my god, it totally could have been—”
“I know,” Meredith said.
“Or maybe it wasn’t luck,” Jules said, shifting onto her side on the beanbag chair, redefining its shape. “Maybe it was just all that bad karma catching up with her.”
“That’s mean,” Kristy said.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t thought it,” Jules said. “Because I know you have. He couldn’t have picked a bigger bitch. Years of treating people like shit, and now, well . . . ”
Don’t say, “Serves her right,” Meredith thought. Don’t put those words out there. Once they’re out there . . .
“I’m just glad it wasn’t you,” Kristy said. “It would be horrible if it was you. I mean, it’s horrible no matter what . . . just not as horrible.”
“So are you like friends with them now or what?” Jules asked.
“I don’t think so,” Meredith said.
“What else did they talk about?” Kristy asked.
“Nothing,” Meredith said. “I mean, nothing really. It was all about Lisa.”
“Are you sitting with them tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” Meredith said. “We didn’t . . . I mean, nobody said anything about tomorrow. So probably not?”
“You’re popular,” Jules said. “I can’t believe it. Of all of us, I didn’t think it would be you first.”
“That’s messed up,” Kristy said. “She’s not popular. She’s just . . . ”
“Popular,” Jules said.
Lisa was taking a nap on the couch. He had given her some sheets and a blanket and gone to work and she fell asleep watching television, the dog tucked in the crook of her arm, its little paws jerking with rabbit dreams. In Lisa’s dreams all the stores in the Parkway Mall were open twenty-four hours and she was moving from store to store and taking anything she wanted.
•
After school Becca Nichols came up behind her at her locker.
“My friends are crazy,” she said. “They don’t know anything. They just wish they knew something.”
“Sure,” Meredith said. “It’s understandable. I mean . . . ”
“Are you walking home?” Becca said.
Except for their brief interaction on the town square, and the occasional forced exchange in math, Becca Nichols had never actually spoken to her before. She had moved to the area in sixth grade and immediately allied with Lisa and her group. She was prettier than Lisa, had long straight hair that was so dark brown it was almost black. It went to the small of her back and shimmered. Meredith knew this because in seventh grade she’d sat behind Becca in Algebra I and spent a long time staring at her back trying to figure out how someone’s hair could shimmer, if it was something Becca put in it or if it was just her natural good luck that made it look that way.
“My parents are picking me up,” Meredith said.
“They must be freaking out,” Becca said.
“Kind of.” Meredith closed her locker. “In their own way.”
She turned toward the door and Becca turned with her. They walked past the rows of lockers and Meredith could feel people watching her, watching them. They pushed out the front doors and stood on the pavement outside the school. It was a sunny day and didn’t feel like October, though it was only two weeks until Halloween. Kids were boarding the buses. Did Becca ride the bus? Meredith didn’t know.
“Lisa’s dead,” Becca said abruptly. “I haven’t said so to anybody else, but since you guys weren’t friends I can say it to you. I’m pretty sure he killed her. I think he killed her right away.”
Meredith felt something break in her, a crack as real as bone, something that made her want to strike Becca, the way her father had struck that closet door last summer.
“She’s not dead,” Meredith said.
“How do you know?”
“I just . . . she’s not. She’s not dead,” Meredith said.
“I think he killed her,” Becca said flatly. “That day. That afternoon.” Meredith could tell she’d been saying these things to herself all weekend. They sounded rehearsed, almost. “I think he raped her and then he killed her. I think they’re going to find her body somewhere. In a Dumpster or—”
“I have to go,” Meredith said. She could see their minivan in the lot, parked illegally, idling behind the buses. But she would have fled regardless. She would have gotten into any car in the world to get away from Becca. She would have gotten into a car with a total stranger. She would have gotten into the car with the kidnapper. She walked quickly toward the van and swung into the front seat, dropping her backpack at her feet. Her father was driving.
“Well?” he asked.
“Fine,” she said. She sat on her trembling hands. “It was fine.”
“Yeah? Good.”
She could see the Deli Barn from the school driveway. There were two cars in the parking lot and someone standing on the sidewalk out front. It was a block away so she couldn’t be sure, but it looked like Mrs. Bellow, Lisa’s mom. But maybe not. Maybe it was just some lady, popping in for a ham and Swiss. Her father turned the car the other way, even though it would be shorter to go by the Deli Barn.
“So I take it everybody knows,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said. “How—”
“We’ve gotten a lot of calls. Nice calls, I mean. Support. I guess you can’t keep something like that under wraps for very long. Was it okay?”
“It was okay,” she said.
“Do you want anything? You want to stop anywhere? You hungry?”
“No,” she said. “I just want to go home.”
“Then home it is,” he said.
•
Lisa was watching television. This is what she did. This is what you did when you were kidnapped. When you were a kidnap victim. When you were a victim of kidnapping. You were neither free nor dead and so you lived in the suspended animation of television watching. What else was there to do, you in the sweatpants and T-shirt and the unwashed hair tangled from the bed and smelling like a man you didn’t know? You watched television was what you did.
Except Lisa wasn’t exactly watching the television. She was sitting on the couch facing the television and the television was on, but she wasn’t watching it. She was just pushing the up arrow on the channel button on the remote and the channels changed and she did not stop. She went all the way up and after a hundred and something it was just black but there were still numbers in the corner and so she kept going up and up and then finally at seven hundred and something it flipped around to zero again and she started over. And again she didn’t stop on anything, not even for a second, and it was just flashes of people that she saw, and some she recognized but most she did not, but even if she did she just kep
t going and then it was past the channels and then it was three hundred and then it was four hundred and seventy-four and she just kept clicking, sitting by herself on the couch and Meredith, watching her through the glass door, wanted to run into the room and take the remote from her hand and—what? Hit her with it? Knock her out cold? Or just settle on a channel already, on Meerkat Manor or Cupcake Wars or SpongeBob, just anything, just stop anywhere, somewhere, please, and then shove the remote under a couch cushion like she and Evan used to do so that no one could find it and change the channel. Lisa with the hair, that blond hair from the yearbook Meredith had rubbed at with her thumb, hoping to diminish but not destroy it, and it was now hanging like weeds from Lisa’s head.
•
She was sitting on the floor of her bedroom. She was not going to do her homework. No one would care if she did her homework. She set up the battling animals and Evan came into the room and sat on the floor but he didn’t pick up the animals.
“The first day will be the worst,” he said.
“It was okay.”
“It’ll get better,” he said, because the lie was so obvious. “In a couple weeks it will feel normal at school. People will start forgetting. There’ll be something else.”
“Not something else like this,” she said. For years she had been comforted by Evan’s confidence, his bold predictions, his cavalier superiority; now she suddenly found it irritating. “There’s nothing else like this.”
“Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what it is. Something else is something else. There always has to be something else because the collective attention span of any group of teenagers is only a few weeks. Trust me: something new will take its place. In June they’ll give her the last page of the yearbook with an inspirational quote from Maya Angelou and that’ll be that.”
“Jesus,” she said. “Stop. Jesus, what’s wrong with you?”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t awful, Mer. I just said that’s the way it would happen.” He picked up the lion, who was doubly armed: a long ax in one hand, a sword in the other.