Want to Go Private?

by Sarah Darer Littman

  “I just had a bad night,” I tell her. That way I’m not lying. I’m just not telling her the whole truth.

  “I read this thing in Seventeen about how you should put cucumber slices on your eyes when you have bags under them and they’re all puffy like that,” Dawn says.

  “Yeah, that’ll go down well in the cafeteria. Lily Salad-Face Johnston.”

  Dawn giggles. “Not here, stupid. At home. It’s like giving yourself a relaxing home facial.”

  Yeah, I don’t think there’ll be too many relaxing home facials going on at our house any time soon. Like any of us will be able to relax at all until Abby gets home safely. If she gets home at all …

  “Are you sure you’re okay, Lily? You just shivered like you’ve got the flu or something.” Dawn puts her hand on my forehead. It feels cool and calm. I want to grab it and keep it there, because it seems to stop my thoughts from racing, but then she’ll totally think I’m weird.

  “It doesn’t feel like you have a fever. But if you aren’t feeling well, maybe you should go to the nurse anyway. I think there’s a lot of stuff going around.”

  “Yeah,” I say, getting an idea. “Maybe I should. Thanks, Dawn.”

  “No problem. Hope you feel better!”

  I watch Dawn head down the hall toward the cafeteria, her blond ponytail swinging, totally carefree. Yesterday, my ponytail was just as carefree. But today, because of fricking Abby, it feels like everything in the world has stopped. Not for everyone else, but for me. I can’t just keep going to classes and pretending that everything is fine. Because everything is so not fine.

  I don’t go to the nurse. Instead, for the first time ever, I knock on the school counselor’s door. Normally, I’d rather die than walk into his office. But today isn’t normal.

  “Come in,” he calls.

  His office smells like chicken soup.

  “Sorry, I was just having my lunch,” he says. “But come on in and have a seat.”

  He wipes his hands on a paper napkin and holds one out for me to shake.

  “I’m Mr. DiTocco. What’s up?”

  I shake his hand and take a seat next to his desk. The smell is driving me crazy. I’m actually hungry for the first time all day.

  “Hi. Um … I’m Lily. Er … Lily Johnston. My sister … Abby …”

  “Oh, yes,” he says. “The principal told me this morning that your sister was missing.”

  “So, like, have you been expecting me or something? Like, is it normal for someone whose sister is missing to feel like they’re totally losing it?”

  “Is that how you feel, Lily? Like you’re ‘totally losing it’?”

  His brown eyes are kind and gentle. I end up crying my eyes out all over his packets of saltines.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” he says, handing me a box of tissues.

  “I-i-it’s a-all m-my f-fault,” I wail.

  He lets me cry it out until I’m down to the sniffling and nose-blowing stage before he asks me how, exactly, it is all my fault.

  “Because I told on her. And then Mom and Dad were furious, and I think that made her decide to run away with this Luke guy. I mean, if that’s what really happened.”

  “I thought Abby and your mother fought because Abby got a bad grade?”

  “Well, yeah. But the thing is, I told. Abby said not to, but I did it anyway. It just made me so happy that Perfect Abby got a D.”

  “I’m confused. How is Abby’s less-than-stellar academic performance your fault?”

  When he puts it that way, it does sound kind of … well, not stupid exactly, but not true.

  “Well, it’s not. She can’t blame me if she spent so much time online that she didn’t study. She’s the smart one in the family after all.”

  Mr. DiTocco’s fingers dance on his keyboard, then stop as he studies the computer screen.

  “I’m wondering why you would say Abby’s the smart one, Lily. You made honor roll first quarter.” He turns to me and smiles. “Looks to me like you’re pretty smart yourself.”

  “I guess. But Abby’s always been smarter. Like, if I get a B-plus, she gets an A-plus. My dad practically worships her. He’s totally convinced that she’s going to get into Harvard or Yale or Cornell, where he went. I don’t even think he cares where I go.”

  “How’s your dad holding up right now?”

  “He’s a disaster. He can’t believe Abby might have gone off with a stranger. His Abby is too smart for that. Oh, and you should have seen when the police guy asked if Abby was a slut. I thought Dad was going to kill him!”

  “The officer asked if your sister was a …?”

  “Oh, he didn’t actually say slut. He used some word beginning with p, prom-something.”

  “Promiscuous?”

  “Yeah. Which she’s not, by the way. She’s a weirdo, but not a slut.”

  “So you and Abby don’t get along so well?”

  I want to lie and pretend like we had this fairy-tale lovey-dovey sister relationship, the kind that I always wish we had but didn’t. But I can’t bring myself to do it.

  “No. We didn’t. We’re really … different. Well, obviously, because there’s no way I’d disappear on my family like this and drive everyone crazy. I’m not that much of an inconsiderate asshole — oops, sorry, excuse my language.”

  “Language excused, under the circumstances. I hear you are very angry with your sister, Lily, and that’s natural. As is the feeling that you’re ‘totally losing it’ when something this traumatic happens.”

  “I can’t do this. Like, how’m I supposed to make any sense of pre-algebra if Abby might be out there …”

  I break down again at the thought of Abby being, you know. Dead.

  “Maybe it’s asking too much of you to come to be in school today, Lily. I’m sure your parents were doing what they thought was best, trying to maintain your normal daily routine, but why don’t I call your mom and see if she can pick you up?”

  “O-k-kay,” I say, sniffling. The thought of being able to go home fills me with relief. At least there I’ll know right away if anything happens. If Abby calls or better yet, comes home. Or if they get news about anything. I won’t be stuck here at school, trying to pretend nothing’s wrong and driving myself crazy imagining everything that could be.

  “I’ll call her from next door,” he says, getting up and heading for the door. “You just hang out here for a few minutes and take it easy. Are you hungry? Help yourself to some saltines.”

  I really want some chicken soup, but I’ll settle for a packet of saltines.

  “Mr. DiTocco, do you think Abby is going to be okay?” I ask him. “Like, what do you think are the chances of her coming back alive?”

  He stops, his hand on the door handle, a pained expression on his face.

  “Believe me, I wish I could answer that for you, Lily, but honestly? I just don’t know.”

  CHAPTER 20

  TOWN OF LENOX POLICE DEPARTMENT

  AUTOMATED LAW ENFORCEMENT INCIDENT REPORT

  Lenox PD case number: 12-11-116417

  Date: 12/08/2011

  INCIDENT DATA

  Incident Type: Other Jurisdiction

  Date Reported: 12/08/11

  Time Reported: 14:30 hrs

  Responding officer: Det. Winters Reporting officer: Det. Winters

  WITNESS/OTHER

  Name: WHITAKER, CARL J., REV.

  Race: Caucasian

  D.O.B. : 6/14/59 Age: 52

  Occupation: Minister, Retreat Organizer

  Home Address: 5098 Willow Lane, Lenox, MA 01240 Home Tel: 999-601-8941

  Work address: St. Paul’s Church, 144 Walker Street, Lenox,

  MA 01240

  NARRATIVE

  Request for assistance from Huntingville, CT, PD. I responded as I am the ICAC affiliate for Lenox. Missing minor Abigail Johnston, age 14, attended Youth Directions Summer Retreat at Camp Mackagow in Lenox, July 16-19, 2011. Told friend, Faith Wilson, that she met a “boyfriend
,” known as “Luke Redmond,” at this retreat. I interviewed retreat organizer Rev. Carl Whitaker, who showed me the list of attendees. Nobody by the name of Luke Redmond attended the retreat. Rev. Whitaker remembers Abby Johnston as a shy girl who did not have many interactions with the opposite sex. All retreat attendees were supervised by counselors at all times, and did not have access to cell phones or computers while they were on the premises. Did a check of the in-house Lenox PD database and did not find any reports on Luke Redmond. Ran an MA criminal history check on the name Luke Redmond and found no record.

  CHAPTER 21

  FAITH DECEMBER 8 1:00 P.M.

  “Faith! OMG, is it true?” Grace accosts me at lunch.

  “Is what true?”

  “Abby. Is it true that she’s missing?”

  It doesn’t matter that I’m in the cafeteria surrounded by all these people. I burst into tears and throw myself into Grace’s arms.

  “Oh, no,” she says, stroking my back. “Oh, Faith.”

  People are staring, nudging each other, and whispering. Grace pulls me over to a corner and sits me down at a table that someone didn’t bother to clean up. I stare at the half-eaten apple and empty yogurt container, the sandwich crust and cookie crumbs, and I wonder if Abby is hungry — like if she’s had anything to eat since she’s been gone. If the guy who took her … or the guy she left with — if that’s what actually happened — is treating her okay. I still can’t believe Abby would do it — would go off voluntarily with some guy she’d never met. Abby’s too smart for that. At least … at least I thought she was.

  “So have you heard anything? Like do they have any idea where she is?”

  “The police came over to interview me this morning. They asked me all these questions about when I’d last seen her and what websites she goes on and … I’m so scared, Gracie. What if … ?”

  I can’t bring myself to say the words, and just thinking about it makes me start crying again. Gracie is starting to get all teary, too. It’s funny because I always felt like she and Abby were … I don’t know, that they didn’t like each other all that much. It got me down sometimes. But now … well, now it doesn’t seem to matter.

  “I’m sure they’ll find her, Faith,” Grace says between sniffles. “They have to.”

  But the thing is, they don’t, do they? Like, maybe in the after-school specials they do, but real-life stories don’t always have happy endings. And —

  “Even if they do find her, Gracie, what if she’s off with some creep from the Internet and he’s, you know … done stuff? What if he’s hurt her?”

  Grace puts her arms around me.

  “Ugh. That thought freaks me out, too. Totally. It’s just too … horrible and disgusting and awful. Sick, sick, sick. But try not to think about it, okay? It’s not going to help Abby, is it? And it’s just going to make you nuts.”

  “I guess. I just feel so … helpless. I wish there were something I could do.”

  The bell rings, signaling the end of lunch. I haven’t eaten a single thing. It doesn’t matter. I’m not hungry.

  “Faith, you have to eat something. Here, I’ve got a granola bar. Take it.”

  “It’s okay, I —”

  Grace doesn’t take no for an answer. She pushes the bar into my hand and says, “Just eat it. Starving yourself isn’t going to help bring Abby back.”

  I take the granola bar and force my lips into a smile. “Thanks, Grace. See you later.”

  CHAPTER 22

  LILY DECEMBER 8 1:30 P.M.

  When Mom comes to pick me up, she tells me they haven’t heard anything new, but there was a story about Abby missing on the local TV station’s lunchtime news with her picture. The police are hoping it’ll generate some leads.

  “On the news? So, like, everyone is going to know now?”

  I feel a pang of guilt as the words leave my mouth, and it’s clear from the look on her face that I’m now officially the World’s Worst Sister in Mom’s eyes.

  “Yes, everyone is going to know. That’s the point, Lily. We need leads if we’re going to find Abby.”

  We spend the rest of the car ride home in silence, broken only when Mom curses out some guy for cutting her off, using language I’ve never heard come out of her mouth before. And she doesn’t even say Excuse my language, Lily. It’s just another sign that the world as I know it is falling apart. Thanks to my missing sister.

  Dad’s sitting at the kitchen table, pretty much where I left him this morning. He’s got dark rings under his eyes and it’s clear he’s got a major caffeine buzz going.

  “Any news?” Mom asks the minute we walk in the door.

  “Detective Heller from the Youth Division called,” Dad says. “They’ve got a lead.”

  “They do? Heavens, tell me, Rick, what is it? That’s good news, isn’t it?” Mom says.

  “Don’t tell me it’s good till you hear what it is, Kate,” Dad snaps at her. “A woman saw Abby’s picture on the news and she recognized her. She told the police that she saw Abby at the Galleria yesterday morning … and she …”

  “What, Rick? She what?”

  “She saw Abby getting into a car. With a man.”

  “Oh, no!” Mom gasps, and she sinks into the nearest chair, her face pale beneath her makeup.

  My hands clench into fists.

  I can’t believe that my sister stole the last freaking Eggo waffle, then walked out of the house like it was any other day, knowing full well that she was planning to wreck our lives. How could she do this to us?

  I want, more than anything, for Abby to come back home alive and safe. But when she does, I’m going to freaking kill her for what she’s done to Mom and Dad and me. Slowly and painfully.

  Detective Heller comes over around four p.m., with a lady officer in uniform named Officer Ball.

  “We’ve interviewed Mrs. Cecelia O’Connell, the woman who last saw Abby,” he tells us. “She rode down in the elevator with her from the food court to level two of the parking garage in the Galleria, at approximately eleven forty-five yesterday morning. Mrs. O’Connell remembered Abby because she was interacting with her infant daughter, Samantha.”

  “Abby’s very good with babies,” Mom says.

  Yeah, yeah, Abby’s good at everything. Except being normal.

  “When they got to the second level of the parking garage, Mrs. O’Connell saw a blue car waiting near the elevators. She says it was an American-made car, but doesn’t recall the make or model or the license plate, although she does remember that it wasn’t a Connecticut plate.”

  “Is there any way to find out from the security cameras?” Dad, the techno geek, asks.

  “We’re doing that right now,” Officer Ball says. “It took a few hours to get the footage from mall security, but we were lucky that we had a specific time frame so we could narrow it down.”

  “The reason we’re here now is because we wanted to let you know that we’ve called in the FBI on this case,” Detective Heller says.

  Huh? The FBI? Like Criminal Minds or The X-Files?

  “What? Why?” Mom asks. “I mean, does that mean you think it’s more serious?”

  “Mrs. Johnston, we know that Abby was active online, although our forensic team hasn’t gotten to her computer yet, so we don’t know what she was up to. We also have a witness that saw her getting into a car with out-of-state plates, driven by an adult male. In cases where we think there’s a possibility the minor might have been transported out of state, we don’t have jurisdiction. The FBI does.”

  “You think this guy — whoever he is — has taken my daughter out of state already?” Dad says. His face is gray and he looks like he wants to grab his car keys and start driving, somewhere, anywhere, as long as he might find Abby.

  “We don’t know for sure, but we think there’s a good possibility. We really need to get into Abby’s computer,” Detective Heller tells us. “Another advantage of calling in the FBI is that they have a lot more tech resources than we
do, so I’m hoping they can get what we need off Abby’s computer more quickly than my guys could. We’re totally backed up and the state forensic lab is even more backed up. Their wait time is months, not weeks.”

  “We subpoenaed Abby’s cell phone records, but they didn’t yield any clues,” Officer Ball says. “We need to get into that computer.”

  All of sudden, Mom just loses it. It freaks me out because Mom’s so together normally. But she just sits there bawling.

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” she sobs. “I can’t believe Abby would get in a car with a total stranger.”

  Officer Ball sits down next to Mom and pats her shoulder.

  “Mrs. Johnston, to Abby this man didn’t feel like a total stranger. If what we think is correct, she’s been corresponding with him for months, and he’s been using techniques to gain her confidence — what we call grooming. Internet predators spend a lot of time building up friendships with young people. And then they betray that friendship step-by-step, by gradually breaking down barriers, creating isolation, and leading the child to harm.”

  Leading the child to harm.

  Abby is in harm. Being harmed. By some strange Internet Predator Guy. I start crying, too.

  Mom hugs me and I feel her tears mingling with mine on my cheek.

  “What can we do?” Dad asks. “There’s got to be something we can do. I don’t understand it. Why isn’t Abby’s computer top of the pile? She’s a young girl in imminent danger. Can’t you do something, for chrissake?”

  “I understand your frustration, Mr. Johnston. Believe me. You don’t know how badly I wish we had more resources. I have a daughter myself,” Detective Heller says. “But right now, we’re doing everything we can. And unfortunately, you have to do the hardest thing of all, which is wait.”

  CHAPTER 23

  FAITH DECEMBER 8 3:45 P.M.

  The last thing I feel like doing is going to stage crew to paint sets. Normally, I love it — being in the theater, joking around with friends, and being with Ted. But it feels so wrong to be going on with life as normal while Abby’s missing.