“Let’s go,” I said, and pulled him in the other direction.
At first he balked. He sat back on his heels and refused to move, and for a minute I panicked. It was as if something was about to sneak up behind me and I wanted to get inside.
“Now,” I said loudly and yanked him again. He gave up and followed me. I walked out of the circles quickly and then broke into a run as if I were being chased, and sprinted to my house.
26
I sat down with my lunch on Monday, and Tessa immediately turned to me with a serious expression on her face.
“We need to talk,” she said, and I had a feeling this talk wasn’t about last night’s homework or what I wanted to do this weekend.
“I need you to explain the secret you’ve been hiding from me.”
She pulled a newspaper out of her bag and shoved it at me.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” she asked, and I detected a bit of hurt in her voice.
“Oh Jesus, you have to be kidding me,” I said as I caught sight of the article.
“I could’ve come over and helped or something,” Tessa said.
I put down my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and grabbed the paper. I took a deep breath before looking at it, a habit I’d developed to prepare myself for whatever I’d see. It seemed like every morning I’d look at the paper lying on our kitchen table and see a picture, a story, a sentence about Abby. It had been almost three weeks since she’d disappeared and her face still smiled back from the front page of the paper pretty much every day.
I scanned the article and saw that it did in fact mention our name. But for the first time in what seemed like forever, it wasn’t about Abby. There were no words on her cross-country accomplishments or disappearance. Today’s article was about the circles.
“What’s going on?” Tessa asked. She tapped her fluorescent yellow nails against the table. “You’re not going to tell me aliens landed in your backyard, are you?”
I pushed the paper away from me. “The circles aren’t from outer space; they just showed up Saturday. Dad went to the police, but no one made a fuss about them.”
“Well, it seems as if they’re a big deal now. My mom said every news station in the area is reporting on them. She drove by to try to see the circles and your yard is full of people.”
I groaned. “Great, just what we need, another circus outside our front door.”
“I’m coming home with you,” she said, not bothering to ask me if it was okay. “You shouldn’t have to deal with this alone.”
I glanced over to where Tommy sat alone at a table in the corner of the cafeteria and wished that none of us had to deal with this alone.
27
Tessa was right. The circles had exploded into something huge. Cars were parked along my street and tall gray antennas jutted out of news vans and stood at attention against the blue sky. It was like the first days of Abby’s disappearance all over again.
I spotted Collin with a group of his friends and Dad in the middle of a circle, arguing with a bunch of men. I wasn’t surprised. Ever since the circles showed up, he’d been adamant about them not meaning anything. He wanted nothing more than to remove them, but the police had asked that he keep them until they determined who made them. What I couldn’t believe was that Mom was also outside. Unless she was going with Dad to look for Abby, she hadn’t stepped outside in the last couple weeks.
She stood off to the side, next to the big oak tree with the tire swing hanging from one of the branches.
Mom had come out for the circles.
Cameras swung toward Tessa and me as we walked up the driveway. I held my arm in front of my face and tried to conceal my pain, while Tessa put her head down and refused to look at anyone.
I dropped my book bag on the front porch and walked over to Mom.
“Rhylee,” she said, with this strange half smile on her face.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
There were news anchors positioned at different spots on the circles. I told myself they must be hard up for news to focus on some lame circles made as a prank in our yard.
Before Mom could answer, a heavily madeup reporter in a short dress began to talk. “We’re standing outside the Towers residence, home of missing seventeen-year-old Coffinberry High School student Abby, where crop circles have mysteriously appeared in their field.”
“This is ridiculous,” Tessa said, and I was so glad to have someone who agreed with me, but deep down there was a twinge of fear. Everything was getting so big now; not only were the police involved, but so was the news. My destruction was taking over more and more lives, and I could only imagine what would happen when everyone found out that I was the cause of this.
People were interviewed and everyone speculated about where the circles came from. I tried to catch Dad’s eye to get him to put an end to this craziness, but he was still with the same group of men and seemed as frustrated with them as I was with the group around me.
“Maybe it’s a brain-slurping monster from space,” Richie Fagan, one of Collin’s friends, shouted. He was standing with a group of kids who nodded in agreement. They were actually speculating about it and from the sounds of things, it seemed as if they were trying to one up one another to see how absurd their guesses about the circles could get.
Another boy from the group spoke up and said, “I bet our town has been picked for some kind of extraterrestrial experiment where we’ll be taken up to a spaceship.”
A little girl with pigtails sticking straight out of both sides of her head shrieked and her mother wrapped an arm around her.
“Relax, there’s some reasonable explanation for this,” Officer Scarano said.
“It’s some hillbilly’s idea of fun,” Jeff Vichaikul, our mailman, declared.
I wanted everyone to stop talking, to stop trying to figure out a reason for this madness, because the truth was, there were no answers. There was no way anyone could make sense out of what I’d done to Abby, and I hated that those around me thought they could.
“It’s some high school kids’ idea of a joke,” Heather Tuck, the town’s hairstylist, shouted at the camera. “How much grief can one family go through? Do you really think they deserve to be the punch line of some late-night trouble a group of kids decided to get into?”
“It’s a sign of the Armageddon,” a boy with a face full of freckles shouted. “I read it on the Internet. When things like this happen, it means the world is going to end. This is it. Next thing you know, the whole state will be infested with zombies coming to track each of us down.”
The little girl with the pigtails cried harder, and her mother shot the boy a dirty look.
Collin looked at me with panic in his eyes, and I shook my head no. “It’s nothing. The police will figure out who did this, and then everything will go back to normal.” He seemed to accept my words, but I knew better than to believe something as simple as that. Things wouldn’t go back to normal. Life would never be normal until Abby came back. We were fools to believe otherwise.
“What if they have something to do with Abby?” One of our neighbors, Karin, spoke up.
I stared at her, incredulous. This had nothing to do with Abby, but before I could object, she elbowed her way to the front of the camera and continued to speak straight to the lens as if she were asking this question to everyone who might possibly be watching. “What if it’s some kind of sign from Abby?”
“How is Abby a part of this? That’s rubbish,” Jeff said, and kicked the heel of his boot into the dirt. A cloud of dust wafted up between us. A few of the adults nodded in agreement.
“These are the fields she used to run,” Karin insisted. “If she was going to return anywhere, it would be here. She disappeared in the woods, so she’d have to cross this field to get back home. She’s trying to tell us something.”
Was she for real? She didn’t know us, and there was no reason she should act as if she did now.
“What is s
he thinking?” I asked Tessa.
“One of the things I liked about Abby,” Karin continued, “is that she was always outside running her heart out. That girl loved to run, and it’s true, it was this field that she always seemed to soar over.”
“It would make sense that she’d return to it,” Heather said, somehow won over easily by this awful reasoning. She wasn’t the only one either. Other people’s heads moved up and down as their thoughts filled with false optimism and imaginary ideas.
“No,” I shouted, probably louder than I should have. The group turned toward me and a cameraman moved in closer, but I didn’t care. “This isn’t about Abby.”
“But what if it is?” a voice asked. It was Mom. And for the first time in what felt like forever, her face turned into something that wasn’t the expressionless wilt of her thin, chapped lips. Something moved behind her eyes that had long since been at a loss for expression.
The news reporters took the idea and ran with it. They connected our fields to Abby, and I could hear my sister’s name now addressed to the camera. This would be the lead story on the news tonight, and I hated how they could talk about Abby so easily. They were using us, finding a way to put words to the nightmare of what was happening to our family.
But apparently, I was the only one who felt this way. All other discussions were stopped. The people in our yard had come to a conclusion: The circles had something to do with Abby.
28
I was on edge until the news trucks and reporters packed their gear and drove away when the sun went down.
Dad waited until the field was empty of people and then left for work. Collin sat in front of the living room windows with Abby’s comforter wrapped around his shoulders to watch the circles. He’d pulled it off her bed, and when Mom didn’t say anything he began to drag it around the house like a giant baby blanket. Collin was officially obsessed with the circles. After it was suggested that they might have something to do with Abby, he couldn’t take his eyes off them.
Mom sat in front of the computer in our family room and signed into the missing person’s page she had created for Abby. News about Abby had spread through word of mouth and there were now thousands of people who had liked the page and followed along to see how my sister’s story would end.
Mom continued to upload pictures of Abby, driven by the possibility that someone may have some kind of clue as to where she might be. She posted throughout the day, writing detailed posts full of updates and pleas for people to share any information that might help. And people were sharing. There were hundreds of messages from all over the United States, and it seemed as if everyone thought they had a clue to help.
Mom managed the page like it was her new full-time job. She pored over these messages as if they could bring Abby home. She had a notebook where she tracked each message. A column for the name of the person who posted, another for their location, and then a meticulous written record of any information they’d offered. She filled page after page with the so-called evidence she found here and studied it late into the night. She highlighted information, wrote her own notes on Post-its, and passed whatever she thought was important on to the police.
Mom was obsessed with this page and if she wasn’t at the computer, she was on her phone, checking for new posts. I’d sneaked a look in her notebook to see if anyone had any ideas about Abby, but it all seemed so far-fetched. People said they saw Abby at the Brookline Hills subway stop near Boston or at Jensen Beach in Florida. Locations I’d never even heard of and couldn’t believe Abby would be at. But Mom followed up on each clue, passing the information on to the police, poring over Google Maps and zooming in on the places, and sticking a pushpin in the location on the giant United States map she’d hung on the wall. Most people bought maps to mark off the places they’ve been; Mom used hers to mark the invisible world Abby was inhabiting. Cities, highways, and towns full of her, as if these people were haunted by her every moment.
Tonight she stuck a pin in a town about two hours away from us called Perry. It bordered Lake Erie, and I imagined Abby sitting on the shore watching the sun go down. Could she really be there? Maybe she was living the new life I so desperately wanted.
I ran my hand from one pin to another and created an imaginary path that Abby had run as she zigzagged across the whole United States. Even missing, she did the things I wanted to; these phantom sightings got her out of this damn town.
I moved to the window that overlooked the field.
“Dad should mow over the circles tomorrow,” I told her. “It would keep everyone away from our house.”
“Your father won’t do that,” she replied, her eyes going back and forth from the computer screen to her notebook.
“Of course he would.”
“Those circles are important. They need to stay there.”
“You’re joking, right?” I half expected Mom to burst out laughing. She didn’t.
“We don’t know where they came from and what they mean. So until we figure it out, the circles stay.”
“Isn’t it obvious? Someone made them as a joke.”
Mom finally looked up at me. “They stay, Rhylee.”
There was no getting through to her. Dad would say to let her be. This was her way of coping. But I didn’t understand how denial and forgetting about the rest of your family was the way a person coped. Although, what did I know? I wasn’t dealing with this any better than Mom was, so I couldn’t pretend to have the answers.
Outside, the fog rolled in over the field. Thick wisps like ghosts touched down for a brief moment and then swirled back up again. They’d do this dance over and over, rising and falling until they blew out of sight into the parts of the field where the light wouldn’t touch.
I pictured the way Abby used to run across those fields; smooth and fast so if you squinted in the sun, you could almost pretend she was flying.
Where was she? Had she run so fast that she let the wind push her faster and faster, until she too was picked up and blown forever into the dark parts of the world that you weren’t allowed to see?
29
In the deep hours of night, someone whispered my name.
I sat up in my bed. My eyes worked to adjust to the pitch black around me.
“Hello?” I asked, but there was no answer.
I stayed there, unmoving, for a few minutes and waited to see if I heard the voice again. Across the hallway, I could see a light glowing under Abby’s bedroom door.
I squinted at the narrow strip and tried to remember if anyone had gone in there. Mom avoided it like the plague, but Collin went in from time to time. He took little items of Abby’s. Her bear was first, then her comforter, and now it was stuffed animals. I noticed his bed was filled with Abby’s old toys.
But it was too late for him to be in there right now. My clock said it was 3:41.
The air was hot and sticky, and my damp hair clung to the back of my neck.
I stared at the light in my sister’s room and remembered all the times I’d listen to her move around in there as she got ready to go out with friends or when she came home from being out with Tommy. I took it for granted that she’d always be on the other side of the door.
A shadow flashed across the doorway and for a moment the hallway went dark before the light was back.
Someone was in her room.
I threw the covers off and walked to Abby’s door, even though I was scared out of my mind. I put my hand on the doorknob and turned it.
It was locked.
Whoever was inside didn’t want anyone else to get in.
I softly knocked. “Hello, Mom? Collin?”
When no one answered, I went to Collin’s room. He was curled up in his bed, Abby’s stuffed animals around him and his legs tucked against his chest. I peeked in the crack of the door to Mom’s room, and she, too, was fast asleep.
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. I told myself I was being silly. There was nothing to be afraid of.
I knocked again on Abby’s door, but it was silent on the other side.
I grasped the doorknob and twisted it.
“Open up,” I said. I didn’t care who I woke. When nothing changed, I pounded on the door.
“Who’s in there?” I yelled. I continued to beat on the wood, terrified about what was beyond, but I needed to know. I had to find out. I hit the door over and over again, until my hands throbbed and my voice was hoarse.
“What’s wrong?” Mom rushed down the hallway, in nothing but a giant T-shirt.
“There’s someone in here,” I told Mom and pointed at Abby’s room. But now the light was off. And when Mom tried the knob, the door swung open as if it had never been locked.
My sister’s room was completely empty.
I told myself it had been a dream. It had to be a bad dream to add to the nightmare that was already our lives.
30
Mary Grace and Erica slid into the empty seats across from me at lunch the next day. I was flipping through biology note cards and cramming for a test I had that afternoon. Tessa was taking her time in the food line, probably trying to decide what would do the least amount of damage, a Salisbury steak or foot-long hot dog. I could’ve told her she was fighting a losing battle; both looked and tasted nasty.
“How are you holding up?” Mary Grace asked. She had a bag of mini carrots and took tiny bites out of each, unlike normal people who tossed the whole thing in their mouths. She probably also ate baby corn as if it were on the cob, one row after the other.
I shrugged, uncomfortable, and opened my bag of barbeque chips so I could shove a handful into my mouth to avoid answering. What was I supposed to say? I kissed your best friend’s boyfriend, and she caught us and ran into the woods. Where I left her. But I’m fine.
“Can you believe Tommy is a suspect?” Erica asked.
“Tommy isn’t a suspect,” I told her.
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