Missing at 17

by Christine Conradt

  Without taking his eyes off the road, he shrugged and launched into the mini version of his life as if it were no more important than describing what he’d had for dinner.

  “It wasn’t like I didn’t know. My whole childhood I got bounced around as different family members took care of me. I lived with my grandma and then my aunt . . . and then my other aunt. Finally, I went into a foster home and stayed there till I was, like, eighteen. Then I left.”

  “You left?” she inquired, as if trying to figure out how she could pull off the same escape.

  “Well, yeah,” he said, as if it were obvious. “Once you’re eighteen, they gotta kick you out of the system. I guess I wasn’t technically adopted by anyone.”

  “Where were your mom and dad?”

  “Never had a dad. My mom wasn’t allowed to keep me. Social Services wouldn’t let her.”

  “Why not?” Candace asked as she took another sip from the bottle.

  “Lots of reasons. She never shoulda had a kid is probably the number one.”

  She waited for him to say more but he didn’t. Just kept driving.

  “That’s a sad story,” Candace said, genuinely meaning it. She looked over at him, checking to see if he was upset, but he didn’t seem bothered. Instead he grinned.

  “I’m not the one with mascara all streaked down my face, though, am I?”

  Candace knew he was poking fun at her, but had to smile just a little.

  “So what’s your story?” he asked.

  Candace looked back out the window. “Well, apparently I was born to parents I’ve never met.” Musing over this, she added, “I guess it makes sense now why I never get along with my mom. She’s not even my real mother.”

  “How ’bout your dad?”

  “They got divorced about two years ago. He lives kinda far away so we only see him on holidays and school breaks.”

  “We?”

  “My brother, Andrew, and me. I guess I shouldn’t call him that. He’s not my real brother,” she said, suddenly a little more down than she was a moment ago. Hot Guy chuckled. She looked over at him curiously.

  “You sure do a good job feeling sorry for yourself.”

  She gave him an admonishing look. “Don’t be a dick.”

  He laughed and turned his focus back to the road.

  Pulling up to Hot Guy’s house, it looked like there was a party going on inside. The music emanated through the open windows, a backing track to the strains of drunken laughter and people trying to talk over one another.

  “Busy place,” Candace commented as she hopped out of his truck. She looked around, a little surprised that no one on the block seemed to mind the noise. In her neighborhood, this kind of party would’ve been shut down before it ever started. She glanced up at the buzzing streetlight that flickered sporadically on the other side of the road—not broken, but on the cusp of giving up. Just like this neighborhood, she thought. Candace could tell her thoughts were coming slow. She was starting to feel the effects of the alcohol and stumbled slightly as she made her way up the uneven pavers. Halfway to the front door, Candace jumped when the neighbor’s dog charged out of the darkness and barked as it lunged into the six-foot-high metal fence. Hot Guy laughed and took her arm to steady her.

  “That dog hates me,” he said as he opened the door. Holding her hand in his, he led her quickly through the living room filled with old, mismatched furniture and a new flat-screen television that was muted but on. The place was packed with people laughing and drinking beer and passing around a bong. Candace noted that it was a mixed crowd—some of the characters looked a lot like her own friends, only a few years older. There were a couple of guys and one lady in particular who seemed a lot older. Almost as old as Candace’s parents, but nothing like her parents. One of the guys was wearing a leather vest with a motorcycle gang logo on it. The woman had her nose, lip, and eyebrow pierced. As they passed by the kitchen, Candace could see them playing cards and doing shots. Moving through the crowd, a few people acknowledged them, sizing her up.

  “Hey, Toby,” a dark-haired, tattooed girl in a crop top said, smiling somewhat pleasantly until she noticed him tugging Candace along behind. Then the girl shook her head, annoyed, and turned her back to them. Hot Guy has a name, Candace thought, barely able to keep the realization in her head long enough to process it. Toby. Toby, Toby, Toby. She repeated in her brain, hoping she wouldn’t forget.

  Heading down the narrow hallway, the skunky stench of pot grew stronger. Halfway to the back of the house, they passed an open door to a small bedroom. Although she only got a brief look, she could see a guy sitting on the edge of a bed while a really skinny girl with bleached-blond hair in a Betty Page cut gave him a lap dance in her bra and panties. Candace didn’t realize she’d stopped walking and was staring at the guy until he looked directly at her. Without taking his gaze off Candace, he planted his palms firmly on the ass of the girl who was bent over in front of him. Then he nodded for Candace to join them. She quickly moved on and caught up with Toby, who was using a key to unlock a door at the end of the hall.

  Toby entered his room and went right to a makeshift bar that doubled as a dresser. Candace lingered in the doorway, gazing around at the old furnishings and tattered posters of bands she’d never heard of hanging on the wall.

  “Shut that,” he instructed her.

  She closed the door, giving them some quiet from the music and privacy from the mayhem going on in the front of the house. Toby pulled the vodka bottle out and poured some into two glasses. As she watched him take a swig off the bottle before screwing the cap back on, Candace began to wonder what she’d gotten herself into. Here she was, half-inebriated, in the room of a guy she’d just met. Anything could happen. In her earlier emotional state, she clearly hadn’t thought this plan through. If Mom ever found out I got into a car with a guy I met at a gas station and didn’t even know his name, she’d kill me, Candace thought.

  Then: Wait, no. I have to stop calling her that. She’s not my mom. Why would she even care what I do?

  She gazed at her new friend. Toby. Hopefully this guy doesn’t murder me. He’s too gorgeous to be a serial killer, right?

  When Candace took an awkward step back toward the door, Toby nodded to the bed.

  “You can sit,” he said.

  Candace hesitated and feigned interest in one of his Sex Pistols posters as she perched on the edge of his king-size bed. If he suddenly pulled out a machete or something, she was pretty sure she could make it out the door and down the hall where if he were going to hack her up, at least she’d have witnesses.

  She mused to herself. Okay, now I’m really being weird. Go back to the aloof, mysterious Candy everyone knows and few people love. As he handed her a glass, he said through a toothy grin, “Vodka cures everything.”

  Candace couldn’t get past the thoughts of being murdered. “I should probably go,” she said, standing back up nervously.

  Toby seemed baffled. “Go where? Back to your mom’s house?”

  She shrugged.

  “We just got here,” he said. “Let’s put some music on and just chill.”

  As he walked over to his sound system and started scrolling through playlists, she took a cautious sip of her drink. He glanced back at her a few times with an odd look, so she forced a tense smile.

  “What are you worried about?” he asked, somewhat offended. “You act like I’m going to rape you or something.”

  Candace, a little embarrassed, picked at a loose thread on his bedspread.

  “That’s funny because I was just wondering that very thing,” she said, trying to make light of the situation. Toby couldn’t help but smile at her comment. His eyes sparkled as he sat down beside her and put a finger under her chin, lifting her face to look at him.

  “Hey,” he said with sincerity. “I brought you here because I like you. And I wanna cheer you up. Nothing’s gonna happen if you don’t want it to, okay?”

  She nodded, feeling a l
ittle more at ease.

  “Trust me. I don’t need to force myself on anyone.”

  Did he really have to say that? For a moment she felt jealousy rise up inside her. Not in the über-intense, fiery way she did when she saw Ian and Jenny sucking face in the hallway outside the Spanish room, but still, she didn’t need to picture girls popping off their bras and panties and climbing on top of this guy. After all, she was starting to like him a little.

  “That’s a very convincing argument,” she said, letting go of her paranoia. “I’m pretty sure Ted Bundy used that exact argument in court.” She waited to see if he knew who Ted Bundy was.

  Toby let out a laugh. “You’re funny,” he said. “Maybe I’m the one that should be worried . . . bringing a random girl into my room and I don’t even know her name.”

  “Candace,” she replied, lightening up a little. “But everyone calls me Candy.”

  “Well, Candy, I’m Toby. And now that we got that out of the way, are you more in the mood for reggae? Or industrial metal?”

  Candace took a sip of her vodka and smiled. “I think it’s more of a reggae night.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  Five

  Good Girls and Very Bad Boys

  Candace was so busy scrolling through her phone for a photo of Avery, she barely noticed Toby grabbing the bottle and pouring a little more booze into her glass.

  “I really want to find this one picture,” she slurred. As she swiped each photo off the screen, she realized that most of the pictures she had also featured Avery. Seeing the goofy shots that she should have deleted long ago made Candace smile.

  “She’s such a good person,” Candace remarked as she studied a photo of the two of them at the beach. They’d traded bikini tops so they were each wearing the same mismatched swimsuits but conversely. “And such a great friend. I’ve known her for, like, years and years. Who knows? Maybe we even knew each other in a previous life.” Candace giggled as she took another sip of her newly filled glass.

  “If she’s your bestie and all that, why did you send her call to voice mail?” Toby asked, parting his lips slightly. In her inebriated state, Candace had already forgotten that the whole reason she even picked up her phone was because it had started ringing. Avery had been calling and yes, as Toby pointed out, she had indeed sent the call to voice mail.

  “Here it is!” Candace said, ignoring his question, and turned the phone around. It was a photo of her and Avery acting goofy at a high school basketball game. They’d painted the school’s mascot—a bull—on their cheeks. After sweating in a hot gymnasium for a couple of hours, the bull was hardly recognizable. It looked more like a brown blob with horns. Candace knew when Toby squinted and then enlarged the image that he was trying to figure out what it was.

  “That’s Buddy the Bull,” Candace explained. “Our mascot. It looked better at the beginning of the game.”

  “Looks more like bullshit.” Toby chuckled and handed the phone back to her. Candace grinned, knowing he was right. It did sort of look like someone had smeared a cow turd on their skin.

  “So why are you avoiding Avery’s calls?” he asked, before throwing back his own shot of booze.

  “Because . . .” Candace began. “I’m sure my mom’s called her by now and she’s gonna try to talk me into going home. I know she will because she’s always super-levelheaded and stuff.” Candace’s voice drifted off as she drunkenly searched for more photos, a sense of loss coming over her. Avery was the only part of her past that she wanted to keep: she was the only person Candy could trust. What would Avery say when she told her that she was dropping out of school and never going back? Probably that she was having an irrational moment and needed to sleep it off. I’m not irrational, though, Candace thought. Why would I want to stay in a place where everyone lies to me? Where I don’t fit in? There are so many better things out there. So many things that my parents didn’t want me to know. Sometimes you just have to see where you end up. Like tonight, if I hadn’t bailed out of there and gone into that gas station, I never would’ve met the excessively yummy guy sitting across from me. I never would have ended up back here at his house, listening to Jamaican drums, drinking vodka, and forgetting about my crap ball of a week.

  Avery’s the only one I can trust. But I can call her back tomorrow.

  Toby gazed at her as she drunkenly searched for more photos. There was an innocence to her pictures that he found enticing. She was enticing. And beautiful. He liked how she kept pushing her hair out of her face as she cocked her head to the side, looking at her phone. The hair would fall, she’d push it back, only to have it fall again. Where the hell did this girl come from? It was as if someone plucked her out of a PG-rated movie about a place where all the houses were surrounded by white picket fences and kids could play in the street, and dropped her into an R-rated film where every character has an angle and it can be hard to tell the good guys from the bad.

  Goddamn, her life at seventeen is so different than mine was, he thought as he switched playlists to one with some old nineties tracks. By that age, he’d been kicked out of high school and was going half days to an alternative school in Van Nuys. He could still remember watching his aunt make his brown-bag lunch as he tried to convince her to let him skip his first day of school.

  “Toby, you’ve got to go to school, kiddo,” his aunt Patricia had said as she overspread a glob of mayonnaise on a piece of bologna.

  “What are you so worried about?” she asked, unwrapping a slice of American cheese. As she dropped it onto his sandwich, her short reddish-brown hair fell over her dark eyes and she blew a quick puff of air from her lips, sending it back out of her round, pudgy face.

  “Nothing,” Toby had lied as he chewed on his dirty fingernail. He was worried about everything. This was his fourth school in five years and he was pretty sure that like all the other schools, the teachers would hate him. He didn’t want to be living with Patricia again. He liked that his mother’s sister wasn’t on drugs the way his own mom was, but if he had the choice he would have stayed with his grandma. He didn’t care what the stupid courts said. She wasn’t too sick to take care of him.

  Patricia smiled and foraged through the refrigerator looking for something additional to add to the two lunches she was packing. “Don’t stress your little head about nothing,” she assured him. “If anyone bothers you, Keenan will be all over their asses.”

  As if on cue when Patricia mentioned his name, Keenan walked into the room. “I can hear you talking about me,” he said with more confidence than most thirteen-year-olds.

  “Oh relax,” Patricia muttered with mild amusement. “Ain’t sayin’ nothing bad. Keep your cousin outta trouble today, you hear me?”

  Keenan glanced over at Toby as he picked up an apple and spun it around on the table.

  “By the way, Hank told Gage he couldn’t smoke in the house.”

  Toby watched silently for Patricia’s reaction as the spinning apple came to a stop.

  “Pot?” she asked.

  “No, Mom. Cigarettes.” Keenan reached for the apple to spin it again but Toby quickly pulled it away, grinning. Keenan smiled too and flopped over the table, grabbing Toby’s arm.

  “If Gage has a problem with Hank, he can talk to me about it. Don’t be starting shit between your brothers and your stepfather.”

  “I’m not starting anything. I’m just filling you in on what I witnessed,” Keenan protested, pulling the apple from Toby’s weaker grip and making a point of biting into it. Toby silently laughed as Keenan made a show of chewing the mashed-up apple with his mouth open, letting pieces of pulpy red skin fall out and onto his shirt.

  Toby didn’t like Patricia’s boyfriend, Hank. He was always harassing one of her older sons about one thing or another. And when she wasn’t around, which was a lot of the time, he’d start trouble with Keenan, too.

  That’s another reason Toby wished he could stay with his grandma. She didn’t like Hank either. Ever si
nce Patricia had shown up on Saturday morning wearing cheap sunglasses to cover a bruise on her cheek, Hank had been banned from Grandma’s house. Toby was pretty sure that Hank was unaware of his blacklist status.

  “Hank’s an ass,” Keenan had said to Toby one night as they were lying on the floor playing blackjack.

  “Why doesn’t your mom kick him out?” Toby asked. It was something he’d been wondering for a long time and he’d heard his grandma have conversations with Patricia about it when he was still living with her.

  “She said cuz she works so much so she doesn’t have time to find anyone else.”

  “She should meet someone at the motel,” Toby said, offering the best relationship advice a ten-year-old could.

  “Dummy, she’s a maid. How can she meet someone when there’s no one in the room? By the time she gets there, all the people are already gone. Plus there’s all truckers at that motel. She said she doesn’t like ’em because they all screw hookers.”

  Toby wasn’t sure what Keenan meant by that but it made him think about his own mom. The day the people from CPS came with his grandmother and took him away, a pretty lady in a suit had asked him where his mother was.

  “She’s at a motel,” he said. At least he thought she was. That’s where his mother said she was going two days earlier when she left him with a brand-new box of Cap’n Crunch cereal and a bag of gummy worms. Toby had liked it when his mom would go to motels because she always came back with money to buy stuff. This time, however, his mom hadn’t come home that evening and Toby stayed up watching late-night TV shows, waiting for her to come back. When the cereal ran out the next day and the candy was gone, he started to get worried so he called his grandma. When she arrived, she brought the CPS people with her.

  “Does Hank screw hookers?” Toby asked as he drew a new card from the deck and shoved his hand into a bowl of potato chips Patricia had brought in for them.

  “Hank’s too lazy to do anything,” Keenan said without emotion. “Except try to beat me up.” The truth was, Hank was especially hard on Keenan and it wasn’t unusual for their fights to get physical.