by Susan Vaught
Really? I’d like to know what they are. If I became someone else, would the alphabet voices come with me? Even if they did, I might go for it, because I’m dreading the next round.
Did he touch you, Jason?
Was he ever inappropriate with you, Jason?
Did you ever see him touching your friends, Jason?
Because you know, us alphabets are all so stupid and unaware that we’d let some bizarre electric caveman-looking strange teacher molest us and never ever say a word to anyone. We’ve had all the self-defense-tell-your-parents classes, but we ignore those because we’re weak and vulnerable and dumb and all that.
Trust me, if something bad’s happening to us and we don’t tell, it’s because we have a damned good reason. Or we know nobody can help. Or we know nobody will help. Just like anyone else, right?
Keeping your mouth closed is rarely a bad idea.
Yeah, that has more meaning than even Dad realizes.
“Mr. Watson never did anything to me,” I say before they can start with that crap. “He never did anything to anyone I know, at least not that they told me. He was just weird, like I said before.”
Agent Mercer peers into my eyes for a long time, his expression completely unreadable. I can’t tell what he’s thinking. I don’t even want to know. Finally he asks, “Weird in what way?”
“He’d stand too close to Sunshine and everybody, like he enjoyed making us nervous.” I shrug. The sensation Mr. Watson created is hard to put into words. Just… slimy. A little to the back side of normal. “Sometimes he pushed Sunshine too hard. He was irritating, and kind of stuck on himself—but we didn’t have that kind of problem with him. The touching stuff.”
At least I don’t think we did. If Mr. Watson had hurt Sunshine, would she have told me? Because she did tell me some things.
Did she tell me Mr. Watson was hurting her?
Maybe she told me everything, but I can’t pull it out of my brain and I can’t decide what I’m really remembering—what I know and what I might know.
Stupid, stupid, STUPID freak. That’s all you are. That’s all you’ll ever be. Why don’t you tell the truth?
“What clothes did you find in Sunshine’s room?” The question just pops out. I don’t mean for it to, but there it is, exactly what I’ve been wondering since Agent Mercer told us the big discovery.
Everyone stares at me. Captain Evans has her eyebrows raised. Mom looks surprised. Dad, of course, looks worried. Agent Mercer says nothing, and I can’t tell what he’s feeling, but my money would be on thrilled, because the freaky kid is starting to look guilty again.
“Why would you ask that, Jason?” he asks, and Captain Evans doesn’t start arguing with him, and I can tell everybody wants me to answer.
Because I’m a serial rapist and I’m terrified you’re on my tail. That’s why I agreed to give you my DNA and sat peacefully while you had your flunky scrape it off my jaw.
Careful. I’m sleepy and tired and upset and no meds, so I know I have to work not to get irritable and sarcastic.
Out loud, I say, “Because Sunshine is a girl. She has lots of clothes, so I can’t figure out why finding clothes in her room would be a big deal.”
“These clothes were hidden,” he says.
“What do you mean, hidden?” Now I’m confused. “She’s got a hamper in her bathroom, and a box in her closet where she keeps outgrown stuff she loves too much to give away. If the clothes were in there, they weren’t hidden.”
“You know a lot about her room and her habits,” Agent Mercer says, his now-that’s-interesting tone scratching across my nerves.
“I’ve known her since I can remember being alive. Of course I know her room and her habits.”
“Of course he does,” Mom echoes. “They’ve been best friends for over a decade, Sunshine and Jason and Derrick. They finish each other’s sentences like triplets.”
“When they were little, they had their own language,” Dad says. “Took us forever to figure out it was pig Latin with a four-letter shift.”
Wow. It’s been years since I thought about that. Our magic talk. Or agic-quay alk-xay. I almost laugh. Then I want to cry.
Unshine-way…
Agent Mercer loses a little steam, but keeps his gaze leveled on me. “Sunshine had a compartment in her closet. A place where she had loosened the boards.”
My mouth comes open an inch or so.
Oh.
That, I didn’t know.
Sunshine had a hiding place she didn’t show me?
Why does that hurt my feelings?
And what was in it?
As if reading my mind, Mercer says, “There wasn’t much in there. A small white candle, a well-worn picture of her father.” He pauses. “A picture of you and your friend Derrick and Sunshine together. The clothing was wadded up on top of all of that, like somebody stuffed it there.”
I don’t say anything. I should be thinking about the clothes but the picture of her real dad and the picture of us together and the little white candle and—
We’re graduating today and she looks all serious even though it’s fifth grade and fifth grade graduation is stupid but we’re going to junior high and she’s holding her locket tight because she thinks it’s a big deal and we all have candles because people aren’t bringing guns and bombs and meth to school yet so candles are still okay and the flame dances in her black eyes and I wonder if the candle makes my eyes look better because I’m kind of caring if they look better because I want Sunshine to like my eyes and I’m starting to wonder if I like her that way but I shouldn’t I know I shouldn’t because she’s my friend she’s not my girlfriend but when she kisses me on the cheek she lets her lips stay longer than she should just long enough to make me wonder and she’s holding her candle and I’m staring at it afraid to move my face because she might stop kissing my cheek and maybe I’m imagining she’s staying too long and I’m pretty sure I’m imagining it until she finally moves her lips only she doesn’t leave she’s just whispering in my ear and what she says is I thought your freckles would taste like chocolate and then she laughs and I have to laugh and
—She saved the candle.
This time the tears come too fast to stop and spill down my cheeks, and I don’t care about the clothes right this second, I couldn’t care less. She saved the candle.
Mom puts her hand over mine. “Jason?”
I can’t talk. I hiccup instead. They probably think I care about the clothes and maybe I sort of do, just wondering which clothes, but I really care about the candle, but all I can do is whisper, “My freckles don’t taste like chocolate.”
Maybe she was my girlfriend?
I’d give anything to hold that candle. I’d give anything to hold the locket. I’d give up my own life to hold Sunshine again.
I put my head down on the table, cheek against the wood, eyes turned away from Mom and Dad and everyone, and I cry. When my lids drift down, I almost fall asleep, then hiccup awake again as Mom slowly, gently runs her fingers through my hair and Dad’s saying something about how long I’ve been up and how I won’t take my medication because I want to help find her.
Agent Mercer and Captain Evans stay quiet until I can pull myself together again. Which I do. Sort of. Until I sit up and look at Mom, and I say, “I want her back,” and start crying all over again. This time, Mom hugs me, and I fall asleep so fast I don’t know what’s happening.
A second.
Maybe a minute.
Then I pop awake and push back from Mom. “Sorry. I—sorry.”
They know. Everybody knows now. Look at you. Look at how you’re acting, you stupid freak. Freak, freak, FREAK, freak….
Mom keeps her lips clamped together and lets go of me. Dad’s staring at the table. Agent Mercer and Captain Evans are staring at me. After a few seconds, Agent Mercer says, “Do you have anything you want to tell me, Jason?”
“If you hurt the candle, I’ll write the president and get you fired.” Best
I can do.
He blinks. “Hurt… the candle?”
“It’s important. It’s a good memory.” I frown at him, then at Captain Evans, who’s supposed to be my lawyer, but really, she’s sucking at that because I don’t think she’s trying to understand me at all. “It’s from fifth grade,” I tell Mom and Dad. “From graduation, remember?”
Three heartbeats go by. It’s Dad who comes up with, “The candlelight ceremony?”
“Yeah. What other white candle would she have?”
Agent Mercer doesn’t let a second pass before he shoots back with, “Was there something special about that night, Jason?”
Like I’m telling him. Like I’m even trying to explain. “It was a good night, that’s all. Alphabets don’t get many perfect nights.”
He waits. Thinks about this. Or maybe he’s just hoping I’ll get back to the clothes, but I don’t. I won’t go there.
Because he’ll know you’re guilty. What if it’s those clothes, you freak? He’ll crush you. They’ll all crush you. Crush and smush and smash and crash. Why don’t you tell the truth?
“When does the search begin?” I glance from Agent Mercer to Captain Evans, then at Mom and Dad. “How long until the DNA comes back and we know if Mr. Watson hurt Sunshine?”
It’s getting harder to make my ideas line up. They’re pinging back and forth and mostly staying on fifth grade and candles and freckles that might or might not taste like chocolate.
“We have our own mobile processing capacity,” Agent Mercer says. “For a simple DNA match, we’re looking at four hours, maybe five.”
“And the search?”
“Dawn,” Agent Mercer says. “But I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you—”
I stand. “I’m going to look for her, and so is Drip. You can’t stop us. Unless you arrest me, I’ll be out looking for her with everybody else. Are you going to arrest me, Agent Mercer?”
He blinks at me again. I’ve surprised him. Well, good. Maybe he needs a few surprises. Captain Evans sputters for a second, then says, “Jason, I don’t think you have to worry about that right now.”
“Not until the DNA comes back, right?” I glance from her to Agent Mercer, then at Dad. “The three of you are so sure it’s going to have something to do with me, but it isn’t. At least Mom knows that. One person on my side’s better than none.”
Unless it’s those clothes, and why would she have put those clothes in a hole in her closet? Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!
None of the three of them will meet my eyes, but Mom does. She says, “Why don’t you take a nap for half an hour? It’s at least that long until first light.”
“Because I don’t trust any of you to wake me up.” To Mom I say, “Sorry, even you.”
And then I can’t take being around any of them anymore, and I leave the little room, and they don’t try to stop me.
I walk out into the VFW main hall, and I’m surprised because it’s still really full. Almost nobody has gone home, not that I can tell. Drip sees me, waves, and heads for me even though his mom tries to grab his arm. Over against the wall, Roland Harks and Linden Green are sitting with their folks again, in a slightly different place, so I know they got up for a while, probably to give DNA or for their parents to have “the talk” with them about Mr. Watson. If they gave DNA—well, that surprises me a little. If Roland did anything to help anyone else, it’s only because he figured he’d get something from it somehow.
I let myself glare at him. I really don’t like him. Maybe I even hate him. I don’t want him out searching for Sunshine, him or Linden or either of their parents even though it’s four more people because how awful would it be if poor Sunshine had to get found by them?
“I’ve been telling my mom Watson’s a perv for forever, but she never listened.” Drip sounds satisfied, kind of like I felt when my instincts about Watson got confirmed. That, and a little pissed because I know nobody ever believed me before he tried to bail out of the VFW rather than hand over his DNA.
“I told my folks he was weird,” I say to Drip. “But I didn’t think about him being—you know, like that.”
“The agent said it’s not likely he did anything to Sunshine. She didn’t ‘match his profile,’ whatever that means.” Drip shifts back and forth, foot to foot, foot to foot, and I know his second dose of meds is burning out. He told me before that the second dose, when he takes it, never holds him like the first dose.
I barely blink, because if I blink, I might fall asleep where I’m standing. “Probably means he likes boys, or younger girls. Who knows. He’s weird.”
“I can’t believe they took him out in handcuffs.”
That image sticks in my mind. Our teacher, his hair and clothes all wild and frazzled, getting dragged away by big officers with grim faces. I can see it so clearly I wonder if it’s hallucinations instead of imaginings, so I stop thinking about it and say, “Guess that’s it with him, unless his DNA matches.”
Drip goes foot to foot, foot to foot. He frowns. I hear the door open behind me, and I figure my parents or the lawyer or Agent Mercer’s making sure I’m not running out the door or sneaking away or whatever.
“Eli’s gone. They made him leave.” Foot to foot. Foot to foot. If I wasn’t used to it, it would make me even more nuts. “Mr. and Ms. Franks are here now. Eli’s at the apartment.”
I glance at the closed door where Eli had been, and I imagine Ms. Franks inside, Sunshine-older, with her dark eyes sad and filled with tears, and I have to stop thinking about it because the image makes my stomach ache. As for Mr. Franks… his Eeyore-sad face floats in my brain with its turned-down lips and its ugly mustache, and him I just don’t want to think about, period.
“Did you know about the hole in the closet wall?” Drip asks.
My heart skips. “No, you?”
Drip shakes his head and I feel a little better, then feel stupid and guilty for that, because so what if Sunshine told Drip a secret that she hadn’t told me?
But I do feel better.
You’re an ass. You’re a total ass. What’s wrong with you? Freakspeak, speakfreak, speakyfreakyspeaky. Why don’t freaks ever speak?
Drip stops foot-shifting and starts bouncing up to the balls of his feet, then back down. Up, then back down. He’s pulling at the bottom of his shirt. “What do you think those clothes mean?”
“No idea.” Unless it’s those clothes.
Stop it. No reason it would be. She would never do that.
You disgust her. She probably left and killed herself because you make her sick. It’s all your fault. Freak speak, speak freak freak freak. Freaks never speak when they should, do they?
Drip’s going on about how it kind of hurt when they scraped his cheek. He says this loud, where his mom can hear, then drops his volume down to private levels again. “So, when the search starts, are we going back to our place?”
“Can’t. Mercer will try to follow us.”
“We can lose him.” Drip actually grins despite everything, like he can see this in his impulsive little zippy-mouse brain, clear as anything.
“Drip, he’s a trained FBI agent. How—”
“My brothers will help us,” he says. “My brothers and Roland Harks and Linden Green.”
I stare at Drip, and I can’t help it, even though it’s disrespectful and maybe even a little mean. For the first time ever, I wonder if Drip is crazier than me.
TWELVE HOURS
Just after five in the morning, the sky’s the color of rain and dull metal and the air smells wet and heavy. Outside the front entrance of the VFW, cold sticks to my cheeks and arms and elbows like fog, and when I blink I see black reachy-grabby Farkness Biters out of the corners of my eyes but I know they aren’t there, they aren’t real, but maybe they’re real just a little bit.
Stupid idiot. Of course they’re real. They’ll sneak up on you. They’ll get you, Freak. Speak Freak freak-speak freak freak freak speak. Speaking wouldn’t be a good idea.
> Not Farkness Biters. No such thing. Those are trees. But there shouldn’t be any trees this close to the VFW so they can’t be here so maybe they really are Farkness Biters?
How long has it been since I had my regular pills?
“Everybody gave DNA,” Drip’s saying to some of his brothers, who have lined up to the right of us for the grid search. “Even Freak’s dad.”
“My dad, too,” Linden Green says, and he sounds wavy and slowed like a Farkness Biter would probably sound, and I still can’t believe I’m standing here with him and Drip and Roland, and we’ve got our orange vests on, and Drip’s mom is on our left with Dad and two more of Drip’s brothers. I think it’s a bad idea but Drip swears we’re cool, that there’s a plan, that I need to shut the hell up or I’ll get us all in trouble, and he’ll explain in a few, when it’s safe and he’s finished blowing his nose.
“It’s better if we all just go ahead and give samples,” Dad says. “More efficient. The fewer questions and unknowns, the faster we find her.”
Something needs to be faster. Twelve hours. Half the first twenty-four is gone. Whenever I look at my digital watch, my heart clumps with each blink of the colon between the numbers, marking seconds, tracking minutes—and counting down time running out for Sunshine.
“No more than fifteen yards between groups,” the search coordinator tells us through an electric bullhorn. “The northern teams will progress to the school and beyond, to the county line. The southern groups will sweep the area between here and the apartment complexes, and stop at the interstate barrier fence. Eastern groups will cover the space to the city’s edge, and the western groups will move until you get to the river.”
That’s us. One of the western groups—we at least got that lucky with the assignment, because the river is where Drip and I need to go. Drip’s brothers are in the other western group, so they won’t get in the way. We probably won’t be in the exact right place, though. Who knows what team will actually end up combing across our private spot, and they won’t even know where they are. Maybe they won’t stay long.