If I Disappear

by Eliza Jane Brazier

  “Huh,” he laughs, and sets his hat back. He uses it like curtains: open for business and closed when he shuts down. “I wasn’t about to bury my dog on her land.” It’s surprisingly pagan but sort of sweet, the way he wants to protect his pet.

  “Then why didn’t you take her with you to Abilene?”

  This unbalances him, like it never even occurred to him. “It wasn’t that kind of trip.” He wipes his cheek. “Now, what is it you wanted to tell me about?”

  I can see he wants to change the subject, which means it’s the perfect time to get him talking about something he otherwise might not reveal. “Were you and Rachel involved?”

  “Involved?”

  “Romantically. I need to know.”

  “You might remember, I was married.”

  “I haven’t forgotten.”

  He tips his hat down again, and I can see his southern side, see that he is probably younger than I think. “Rachel . . . she didn’t think much of me, and that held a certain attraction. I like it when people share my opinions, ’specially on the things that matter.”

  I nod, satisfied that he is being honest. I hand him the piece of paper. “It’s a list.”

  His lips furrow. “Where did you find this?”

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  He reads aloud, “‘Rachel Bard. Tasia LeCruce. Florence Wipler. Clementine Atwater.’” He looks deflated; I wonder if he wishes his name were on your list.

  “I know Rachel,” I say. “And Clementine. And Florence—she was the subject of Rachel’s first podcast.”

  Episode 1: On the Murder Line. One blue-skied summer day, four teenage girls in tank tops and cutoff jeans hopped on the eleven thirty bus from Happy Camp, headed north. One was never seen again.

  That is an addition I don’t know what to do with. If this was a list of people to contact if you disappeared, why would you write down the name of a girl who had disappeared? Why would you write down your own name? In the episode, you named Florence, but you never named the other three girls that took that ride on the Murder Line, the wilderness bus route for criminals and drifters, for people who wanted to disappear. You never said that you were one of them. Maybe it’s a clue, or maybe I just want it to be one. “I don’t know who Tasia is. I was hoping you might?”

  He crinkles his brow. “I wonder if that’s Happy Camp Tas.”

  “Who?”

  “Girl who works at the coffee shop.”

  “I’ve met her,” I say, slightly thrilled, like I have been putting things together all along. “Were she and Rachel friends?”

  “Not that I knew.” His lips curl in that verboten smile. “Like I told you, Rachel didn’t really have friends.”

  “Well, we need to talk to her.”

  His eyes drift down me in a way that makes my bones feel loose. I think it’s the inclusion of “we.” A horse screams far off in the fields below, but it bounces back so it sounds like the horse is just behind us, ready to charge. I don’t want to do this alone.

  “Well, I’ll be working all week, same as you.”

  “Then we need to go today.”

  “They close at five on Sundays.”

  “Then we need to go now.”

  His lips purse. His eyes move back and forth, fast. “What are you thinking, you and I just drive off together, right in front of Addy?” It’s strange how we both think she wouldn’t approve. It’s strange how we both fear her disapproval. We work for her. We live in her houses, on her land. In isolation, it’s strange how quickly the rest of the world fades away.

  “What about the fire trail? By the creek?”

  He considers. “We could walk down through the creek, but it’s another few miles from there.”

  “Don’t you have an ATV?” I say, but I know that’s stupid. We can’t drive an ATV on the highway.

  He bites his lip. “I have a bike. A motorcycle. We could roll it down the hill.”

  I nod; this could work. “We better hurry.”

  He scoops up his gun, and I follow him along the upper perimeter trail. We are quiet all the way to his house, knowing how sound can catch and throw and distort. I wait in silence as he takes his bike, rolls it down the trail toward the creek.

  Ever since your mother warned me not to go to the creek, it feels imbued with evil, thick with the closed smell of your empty house. Even the bright greenness feels false, like it’s hiding something, the persistence of the shadows, how they wind with the wind and the vines. I watch Jed’s hips rock as he walks down the trail, and I shiver. I think about you on this path, coming and going, your own little place away from the ranch.

  “Did you ever come visit Rachel down here?”

  “Why would I come down here to see Rachel?”

  “I just assumed you hung out together.”

  He stops. “No, I mean, Rachel didn’t live here.”

  “What? But this is her house.”

  He looks down the trail. “No one lives there. They can’t. There’s no electricity. And no water hookup. And getting one all the way down here would be an endeavor.”

  “Why would they build a house without water and electricity?”

  Jed makes a face. “I don’t know if you noticed, but these people don’t exactly think things through. They like the appearance of things, but if you look closely, just about everything here is falling apart or being swallowed up by blackberries.”

  He’s not wrong. “They really are everywhere.”

  “Addy has it in her head that she can make a poison to kill them. She carts it around in her ATV. She’s been working on it since last year. Rachel used to joke that she’d kill us all. She thinks she can solve everything, that woman, like she created life and death itself.”

  “Is that what the bottles are, in the greenhouse?”

  “There are bottles for that and just about everything else you can imagine. She calls them her ‘cures.’ If the cure for one problem is a bigger problem, I reckon she might be onto something. Grace used to hate that stuff. Said it was witchcraft.” His face softens when he mentions his ex-wife’s name, like it carries its own kind of magic. “I would stay away from that place and anything she tries to give you. The most dangerous people in the world are the ones who think they know something.” I like Jed. I can’t help it. There is a smoky poetry to everything he says.

  “If Rachel didn’t live in the creek house, where did she live?”

  “With her parents.”

  “But—I thought . . .” You took pictures, wrote captions about your house, your perfect house. You lied to me. But I won’t believe it. Jed must be mistaken. Or maybe he’s lying. “I thought it was Rachel’s house, like your house is Homer’s. Didn’t they build it for her?”

  “Probably they just built it to torture her with, like they do. Probably they built it so no one could have it.” He sets his teeth, seeming happy with that answer, with any answer that paints your mother as a villain.

  “Did Rachel work on the ranch?”

  “She did some things, here and there. Took the horses out. She used to love Belle Star.”

  “Addy said no one’s allowed to ride her.”

  “I wouldn’t believe just every word coming out of that woman’s mouth.”

  “What’s going on between you and Addy?”

  His spine straightens. “She don’t like me.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t think I’m good enough.”

  “Good enough for what?”

  He cocks his head at the slipping sun. The mountains claim it early here. “Whenever they interviewed me, on Skype, way back in Texas, I remember she asked me if I would mind bein’ treated like a ‘dirty farmhand.’ I thought she meant by the guests.”

  “What did you say?”

  “This was my dream job, Sera. My dream. But these
people? They don’t want employees; they want to own you.”

  “Like they’re buying their children back.”

  He flinches in surprise. “ ’Sactly. It’s essactly like that.”

  Jed winds his bike around the blockade at the edge of the highway, then comes to a stop. He passes me the pink helmet.

  I put it on and climb up behind him. It’s strange to be this close to someone else. I can feel the life puffing in and out of his stomach, which feels softer than I expected, more real. He stomps the kick-starter and the bike comes alive, shaking with teeth-chattering power.

  He says something I don’t catch and then we’re off. I clasp my arms tight around him. A semitruck races around the corner just as we reach the road. They always appear right when you’re about to cross, just like he said. Jed jerks to a stop, waits for the truck to roar past, rattling us in its wake. Then he accelerates and steams in behind.

  The bends in the road are worse on a motorcycle. The bike lists sideways and I hold on tighter but he doesn’t laugh, like your mother did. And I’m overcome with a warmth that stings around my crown, melts into my shoulder, like it’s special when people aren’t cruel.

  The valley opens up as we cross over the river on a long suspension bridge. Light flashes on the water, and for a second, I am someone else and the weight of you and everything softly rises. The bike travels faster, and I can feel Jed’s stomach muscles tighten as he crouches forward and I think: I am in a beautiful place, with a beautiful person. And then I keep moving, and the world is flashing past: mountains and trees and breathtaking vistas, all a blaze and a dart past my eye.

  When we reach Happy Camp, I am unsteady, overwhelmed. Jed pulls easily into the parking lot outside the coffee shop, and I want to ask him, Why did you stop? I want to tell him to keep going, all the way through the winding canyon until we come out on the other side. But instead I wobble off the motorcycle. He reaches out to steady me.

  “You okay?”

  “Sometimes this place makes me sick.” I work my aching knuckles. The sun has dropped now, dipped below the mountain. The earth is painted black and blue.

  He sighs and guides me away from the bike. “I know what you mean.”

  We walk toward the store as the lights go out.

  “No!” I race forward, shove the door, which swings helplessly open, and step into the dim shop.

  “I’m in here alone all day and you come now?” A soft light emanates from the back office, throwing her into shadow.

  “All right, Tas?” Jed says in a loose, familiar drawl, and I wonder how well they know each other.

  She puts her hands on her hips, makes her eyes long. “Jedidiah. Been a while.”

  He walks over to the counter and rests his elbows on it. “How you been?”

  “All right. How are you keeping out there?”

  “Well, you know what it’s like. . . .”

  “That I do. . . .”

  I take a step in closer and Jed remembers me.

  “This is the latest recruit.” He raps his knuckles on the table. “Sera.” They both look back at me, wide-eyed.

  “We’ve met, actually.” I try to remember some defining feature of our conversation, something that will clear the clouds from her eyes, but I can’t. “You dropped a teacup.”

  She blinks blankly, like I could be anyone; then she looks back at Jed.

  “She wanted to ask you some questions. About Rachel.”

  I frown. I can speak for myself, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go right into it. It would be better to work my way there slowly, like the best investigators, like you always told me. You start by shooting the shit, getting your target comfortable. Then when they’re lulled into a false sense of security, you snap on the lie detector and cut to the bone.

  But it’s too late for that now. The shop is dark and your mother is expecting me at the ranch and Tasia is looking at me like I have exactly two minutes. So I make them count. “Before she disappeared, Rachel wrote a list of people to contact if something happened to her. Your name is on that list.”

  “She didn’t.” Tasia freezes; her hair frames her face in long, lazy dreads. “Why the hell would she go and do a thing like that?”

  I glance at Jed. “We’re trying to figure out where she is.” Tasia is silent. “The cops don’t care. Her parents think she’s been murdered.” Her eyes flicker. “We were hoping you might be able to help us.”

  She says nothing, and her expression stays constant, so it’s impossible to guess what she is feeling: angry, elated, caught?

  “Were you friends?”

  This breaks the spell. “No. I mean, I guess we were friends once, when we were kids, but . . . that was a long, long time ago.” She huffs, like she is really put out by all this.

  “How long?”

  “I don’t know, high school?”

  “Why aren’t you friends anymore?”

  “I guess we grew up. And Rachel didn’t.”

  “What do you mean, ‘grew up’?”

  “Clem got married. I got married.” I want to tell her that being married doesn’t make you a different class of person, while at the same time wanting to assure her that I was married too.

  I settle for “I don’t think being married has anything to do with it.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I meant, we moved on.”

  “Moved on from what?”

  “Look.” Her eyes go flat. “Rachel was crazy.” I hate this word. Even more when it’s said about a woman. (Which it always is.) Even more when it’s a woman saying it about another woman.

  “Define ‘crazy.’” I wish somebody would.

  “She was sick. She was obsessed with sick stuff.” I shrivel a little. I wonder what Tasia would think about me. “And she liked to cause trouble.” She gives Jed a look, like he will understand. “Look, I’m not saying I’m happy she’s gone or anything. All I’m saying is, I don’t really understand how my name ended up on some list when I’ve barely said a word to her in about fifteen years.”

  I am speechless. I stare at the floor, feeling dizzy, like your story is the winding road I came in on, bile rising in my throat. I am trying to process this. You are not sick. I know this. You care about people. You care too much; that is why Murder, She Spoke exists, because you wanted to talk about the people everyone else had forgotten. If you were obsessed, it was with answers. I know you.

  But then I think about your house. How you lied to me, told me the yellow house was yours, posted pictures, provided captions. This is where I go to find peace. I’m so lucky to have this little corner of heaven!

  You said the house was yours, but Jed said you lived with your parents. My head is spinning again. How can I tell fact from fiction? I need evidence. I need to focus on the facts, but everything feels slippery out here, like everyone’s thoughts are jaws opening, to swallow mine.

  Jed and Tasia look furtively at each other. They think they look over my head but I see them; I know what those looks mean.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t really know what you want from me,” Tasia finally says.

  “Sera just wants to make sure Rachel’s all right. . . .” Jed tries to help.

  “I have no idea how Rachel is. Real talk? I don’t care. I don’t know why my name is on that list.” She spreads her fingers. “All I can think is, she didn’t have many friends. Maybe our relationship meant more to her than it did to me.”

  “What about Florence Wipler?” I try to keep my voice even, but the name sounds like ammunition. “Her name is on the list too. Do you know where she lives?” I ask like I don’t know.

  Tasia’s eyes go veiled. “Florence was a girl who went missing, in our class. It was a big deal.” It is what inspired you, what made you feel chosen. It is what led to Murder, She Spoke.

  “Why would Rachel write her name down?�
��

  “I don’t know.” And when she realizes that won’t work, she adds, “Rachel was obsessed. She rewrote history. Suddenly she and this girl were best friends. Suddenly she knew everything about her and none of us cared. And when that wasn’t enough, Rachel went missing. She would disappear for days, come back with these wild stories, say she had been kept in a basement or grabbed off the street or dressed up like a doll.” She shudders. “Really disturbing stuff. That’s when she got kicked out of school. No, that’s not right. She was ‘asked to leave.’”

  I take a stab in the dark. “You were on the bus that day, with Florence.”

  “I—” She cranes back; her eyes narrow and contract, like she is getting a new read on me. “Yes.”

  I play it light. “What happened?”

  “I told you; I don’t know. We were arguing and Florence ran off.”

  “What were you arguing about?”

  “She— Wait, hey.” She checks in with Jed. “This is so none of your business.” She folds her arms and steps back. “I’m done talking now, by the way. Nice of you to check in. Nice to finally meet you.” She seethes like I am scum, and I am scum. I don’t care about her. All I care about is getting to you and I want to apologize, but then I feel like I shouldn’t. I am just asking. I’m just trying to help. A woman is missing; this isn’t a tea party.

  “Thank you,” I say. Jed shrugs like he’s apologizing for me. I start toward the door. The overhead bell dings.

  “Hey! By the way?” I turn but she is half in shadow. “It really sucks. When your friend dies right after you’ve had a big, dumb argument. In case you were wondering. It really fucks you the hell up.”

  * * *

  —

  My stomach sinks as Jed and I walk into the parking lot. The air has chilled in our absence, and I shiver with surprise, raise my hands to rub my bare arms.

  “Well, that was pleasant.” Jed hands me the helmet.

  “I don’t believe her,” I say, too quick. He inhales sharply. He is frustrated with me, and I don’t want to care but I do. I want him to like me. I want everyone to like me and I also want to find you, and it is becoming clear that I can’t have it both ways. “Is that the Rachel you knew?”