[sic]

by Scott Kelly

  The parking lot is in view, and four police cars at ninety degree angles to each other form a makeshift base camp for the operation.

  I could tell them all the truth. But what’s the truth? For all I know, Kayla may really be washed up on the shore somewhere. She still hasn’t called.

  We cross to the pavement of the parking lot; one of the police car’s headlights flare to life, blinding me. The group stops, shields their eyes.

  “Sean Reilly?” someone calls from beyond the light.

  “Yeah?” I call back into the glow.

  The lights dim. Purple blotches invade my vision as I squint at a broad-shouldered police officer with a clipboard in his hands.

  “You’re Sean Reilly?” he asks.

  I walk up to him; he’s an inch shorter, but probably twice my weight. An LED light is clipped to the brim of his black cap, and shines down at the sheet on his board. When he looks up, pale blue light beams into my eyes.

  “You are the last person who saw Kayla McPherson?” he asks, jaw square, eyes sunken. There is this exhausted rigidity to him, a tension that holds him in place, but only barely.

  I nod.

  “Describe the last time you saw her, please,” he says.

  The first thing I say to someone is always a throwaway, at least in this country. I start the sentence slow, on purpose. “Right here, in the bay, riding her jet ski,” I say.

  His eyes widen. “Where are you from? Wait, let me guess.”

  “Cork,” I say, before he does. I hate it when they guess. “I’m from a city called Cork, in the Republic of Ireland. I’m an exchange student.”

  “Good to meet you, Sean from Cork. I’m Dan, from the police department.” He extends a hand, and I reach out to take it. We shake once; he squeezes too hard, like a threat and a greeting all at once. Texans.

  “Why did you two come out here so early?” he asks.

  I turn back; more searchers stream in, crestfallen, lights hanging limp as they cross into the parking lot.

  “She came and woke me up early, shook me out of bed. Told me she wanted to take the jet ski out and ride while the sun rose.” I wipe sweat off my forehead with a heavy hand. “She needed my help to get it hitched and unhitched, and to back the trailer into the water. Kayla’s always terrified she’s going to sink her truck.”

  He glances up from his writing. “Go on,” he prods. “What time did you get out here?”

  “About five thirty,” I say. “I haven’t gone home since.”

  “And then what?” he asks.

  “I helped her get it into the water. I didn’t want to go out; I wore this,” I point down at my shorts and sandals. “Too cold, in the morning. I just went for her, you know. It all happened right there.” I point to the pier. Her truck is still parked in the same place.

  “When she went out, was she wearing a life jacket?”

  “No,” I lie.

  He writes this down on his pad. Then he leans in and squints at me, lowers his voice and speaks softly. “And did you check how much gas was in the jet ski before she left?”

  “No,” I lie. “Did you find the jet ski?”

  He points to the water. A boat arrives, pulling parallel to the small wooden pier. Trailing behind is a swell of water; something is being dragged along, barely breaking the surface.

  The boat stops, and two men on the pier throw hooks into the bay, as another man wades down the nearby boat ramp. A truck trails him, and soon, a winch tows Kayla’s jet ski up the ramp. The little craft is almost completely submerged, and as it’s lifted from the bay, water pours out.

  “It sank?” I ask. I didn’t even know they could sink.

  “Apparently,” the policeman answers. “Don’t know why it sank. They found it a mile out, bobbing half underwater.”

  “Oh,” I say quietly.

  He drops the clipboard, lets it rest at his waist. There’s another long moment where I’m still and he’s staring at me. “What the hell happened?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. I want to help—I want her to be okay.” My voice cracks as I say the words. It does this because what I’m saying is true.

  His eyes soften. “We all want to find Kayla, son,” he says. “Keep praying.”

  That’s not completely true, though. Kayla, in particular, does not want to be found. If you asked her, she’d tell you she finally succeeded in murdering her shadow.

  3. Conscience

  The silence in the home of Kayla McPherson is not the absence of sound, but an entity unto its own. It is the stifling byproduct of helpless rage, an anger which consumes itself and leaves this thick quiet in its wake. But I know that if all that energy got a focus, anything to blame, then it would rip the walls down and blast out the ceiling.

  But, there’s nothing to blame, nothing to hope for. So, silence.

  No one even asked if I’d be going to school today, so I’m not.

  At ten, a need for coffee drives me out of the room. On the way to the kitchen, I pass Mr. McPherson. He sits on the recliner, gripping the sides of the chair, staring into a black television.

  There’s still some in the carafe, so I pour it into a mug and place this in the microwave.

  “There’s no cream.” His hollow voice comes unbidden from the living room.

  “That’s okay,” I call.

  I start to say something else, to use this as a gateway to some warming conversation. The thought flickers and dies; his silence burns the oxygen from the room.

  On the way back to my room, I pass Kayla’s. The walls are bare, but not because her parents don’t try to put things up. She takes it down, stuffs it under her bed.

  I return to my room to find my phone buzzing. It’s been this way for two days—a text message a minute. Everyone I go to school with is asking what happened, if the police found Kayla, if I’m all right. I answer a few, until it’s clear I can’t keep up.

  There’s only one person I want to hear from, anyway, and she hasn’t called.

  A little after noon, there’s a timid knock on my bedroom door. “Sean? You want lunch?”

  The voice is dry and thin. The little pleasant inflections are forced, straining the words to their breaking point. Kayla’s mom is the last person on Earth I want to deal with.

  “Not really,” I say through the door. “I had a big breakfast.”

  She’s coming either way, and so I scramble to prepare. I fumble with the bed sheets, throwing them off, leaning over and tossing my mobile phone into the nightstand drawer. Kayla might call that phone.

  Too dark for this time of day: I stretch to turn on a lamp, nearly knocking over the little four-leaf-clover alarm clock Kayla’s mom gave me when I first got here. Hate that gift shop crap, honestly, but it was sweet of her to think of me.

  The door cracks open. A woman in her early fifties with red eyes, sagging cheeks, and oily hair enters. She holds one clutched fist to her mouth, always an inch away from chewing on a nail—nails that are jagged like splintered boards, some gnawed down to the flesh.

  Her only child has been missing for thirty-six hours.

  Mrs. McPherson takes a few steps forward, fully entering my room, and stands there with one hand on the round, wooden bedpost near my feet. She stares at me, neither of us speaking, her grief a sickly heat. I’m not exactly pleased with the situation myself, and I think she feels my dismay as well. Feedback loop of despair.

  “It’s not your fault,” she says. “You’re a good, responsible kid. I know that. It’s Kayla’s jet ski, she knows to check the plugs and gas. I don’t want you to blame yourself.”

  Stab me in the heart. “Thank you,” I whisper. “What do you mean, check the plugs?”

  “Oh, I talked to the police. The drain plugs were out, that’s why it sank.”

  I want to ask her what a drain plug is, but her eyes are wet, and I don’t push.

  Death eats away at Mrs. McPherson—the death I unleashed on Kayla’s behalf. She spread it to the people she should want to pr
otect most.

  Stupid, selfish girl.

  Just call me, you stupid, selfish girl.

  Mrs. McPherson takes another step forward, and I see she wants to hug, so I lean up in the bed to make it easier. Her arms reach past, wrap around me; she smells like weak deodorant and strong sweat. My arms are around her, and her head passes mine, sharp chin pressing into my shoulder.

  So frail. A little whimper escapes her, and I feel her body quiver. Hummingbird brittle, shivering wreck of a creature.

  I can see the nightstand out the corner of my eye. Can’t help but think about the cell phone—her daughter could call it any minute. If she did, right now, I swear I’d let Mrs. McPherson answer. Let her know that Kayla is alive.

  If she is. Just call, damnit.

  4. Conspirators

  If there is one person who knows more than me about the fate of Kayla McPherson, it’s Jack. She talks about him, and I’ve driven her to his house a few times. The house I’m standing behind now.

  Her boyfriend, maybe. One thing I’m sure of, is that he’s the man who taught her how to die—so, there is nowhere else for me to be. Not at school, not in therapy, and not asleep.

  My fist hits the screen door and the door rebounds against the frame, plastic and aluminum flexing. I repeat this in a series of snare drum pops, in groups of five.

  I step back to observe. I’m shaded by a lone oak tree, but the sun beams into my eyes when it shoots between shifting leaves. His yard is more acorn than grass, like most of them in this neighborhood. A poor part of town, every home identical, single story and made from wood. Everywhere I look, I see cars on blocks and kid’s bikes laying in the lawn next to plastic ornaments.

  Just before I start knocking again, I hear motion from within the house, and freeze.

  A woman appears through the translucent panel of the screen door. Dark brown hair straight, down below her shoulders. Broad forehead freckle-specked. The faintest wrinkles around her eyes and lips suggest she might be mid-twenties, early thirties. Face clean, barely any makeup.

  “I’m Morgan,” she says, smiling. “Who are you?”

  “Sorry—I’m looking for Jack, it’s urgent.” Then I realize she’s asked a question. “I’m Sean,” I stammer.

  “Nice accent,” she comments. “You’re trying to not sell anything, are you?”

  “I just need to talk to Jack. He lives here, doesn’t he?”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know anyone named Jack.”

  Didn’t expect this. I step back, look around the back yard. This is definitely the house I remember.

  “I know he’s been here before. He stood right there: skinny, pale, bald head.”

  She becomes rigid, and something quiet takes control of her face. The smile fades, replaced by a subtle, fixed calm. Smooth, like a stone from the river. I don’t think I’d notice any change, if I wasn’t searching for it.

  I try to break the façade: “I need to talk about Kayla McPherson.”

  This gets a response: the edges of her eyes and cheeks crack alive.

  “Come in,” she says.

  I enter. Low light streams in from thin curtains over brown-specked windows. The kitchen is dirty: dishes in the sink, trash piled high above the trash can.

  I hesitate at the threshold to the living room. There is no furniture. Instead, there’s a large flat screen television, guarded by two waist-high speakers. A pile of movies spreads out against one wall, like a black rot. Bands of black film jut out below silver discs, torn loose from ancient VHS tapes.

  Each of the titles is in French, and appears to be black and white; probably old, from the forties or fifties.

  “Brilliant,” I mumble. “You watch all of these?”

  She nods, smiling. “La Nouvelle Vague.” The French rolls off her tongue. “Trying to see every New Wave film. You know: Truffaut, Godard, Rohmer, Charbroil, and everyone inspired by them. You need to have projects.”

  I don’t know. Couldn’t tell if those are names, or places, or titles of films, so I remain silent.

  Morgan doesn’t seem to mind the mess; she walks across some of the little silver plates on the floor. I follow her into a narrow hall. Everything is bare, not a single picture hanging. Like they just moved in, and don’t own anything but a massive television and a collection of French movies.

  There’s an open door to the right. Plastic wrap spreads into the hallway; when I turn, I see the sheet covers the room. It’s dim, as the only light streams through tattered curtains.

  Jack leans over a tragic humanoid figure, a half-formed clay statue, still wet. He’s crafting a mud homunculus in the form of a woman’s upper body, arms outstretched from the floor. Her damp, crude upper half seems to break out of the carpet, hands clawing out for a grip to pull her legs free.

  He’s wearing headphones, nodding to a beat, and shaping her. A pile of clay sits nearby, and a bucket of water next to that. His hands are caked in white. Head shaved, skeletal thin, with a tattoo on the inside of his bony forearm reading “freedom from myself.”

  I bang on the frame of the door with my closed fist. Jack jolts as he looks up; he jerks in surprise, and the entire right arm of the sculpture comes away in his grip.

  Jack glares at the severed clay limb in frustration, then hurls it on the plastic below. It lands with a wet splat, base spreading across the sheet so that her arm appears to sink back into whatever netherworld she struggled out of.

  “Shit,” he exclaims, red-faced, looking at the ruined figure, then at Morgan and I. “You gotta come and surprise me like that? You think that’s funny?”

  I say nothing, only stare at him. He stares back.

  Morgan clears her throat.

  My voice is low. “You probably don’t remember me. I picked Kayla up, dropped her off a few times.”

  “Yeah? You want some pot, or what?” he asks, arms dropping to his sides, chalk-white from sculpting. “You’re at the wrong house. I don’t do ten dollar drug deals with teenagers.”

  “I lived with her family for the past year. I know what she planned, why she disappeared. I know about her shadow.”

  Jack takes a step closer to me, and the plastic crinkles noisily underfoot. “What do you think you know about shadows?”

  “I found a duffel bag full of money in her room. She told me what she planned, you know, with her death. Kayla said she would call me when she crossed the gulf. She didn’t, though. I need to know if she’s okay.”

  Jack pulls an electronic cigarette from his pocket and puts it to his lips. The tip glows blue when he inhales, and an odorless white cloud streams from his nostrils. “Maybe she just doesn’t want to talk to you,” he says.

  “I don’t—” I stop mid-sentence. Not sure what to make of that. “She promised she would call me. That was our plan.”

  “Normal people can’t understand. Kayla liberated herself from her shadow; she doesn’t want anything to do with you anymore. Not with anyone.”

  “Did you talk to her?” I ask. “You know she’s okay?”

  He points out the window, e-cig perched between two fingers. “When you get out there, when you clear everything, something changes. You don’t want to be bothered. You only want to engage. Kayla is realizing who she is for the first time in her life, and she is happier than she’s ever been.”

  “I asked if you talked to her.” I want facts, not more of his bullshit.

  Jack waves a hand, swatting my question out of the air. “What’s the difference, really? I mean, you’re never going to see her again, no matter what. She’s dead to you either way. Right?”

  My fingers are so tight around the door frame, it takes a conscious effort on my part to release them. He makes me nervous.

  “That’s not the point,” I say, then pause, flustered. “Stop talking like that, be straight with me. I haven’t told anyone anything, because she begged me not to. But, I don’t know what the hell a drain plug is, or why the jet ski sank. It was supposed to run out of gas, and she wo
uld swim to shore. I need to tell the police. That wasn’t an accident—someone made it sink.”

  Morgan speaks quickly: “The police are already searching everywhere. If something happened to Kayla, we’ve already done everything we can do. They’ll find her. Telling the police about her plan just gets everyone in trouble, including her, if Jack is right and she’s safe. It’s of no use to anyone. Right?”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but who are you, anyway?” I ask her.

  “I told you,” she says, face smiling but eyes not, “I’m Morgan.”

  “I want to know if anyone has talked to Kayla,” I repeat. “Either of you. I can’t just abandon her if she’s hurt. I need to know what happened.”

  Jack walks over to me and puts a hand on the door frame, inches from my face—though upon noticing he’s left a clay handprint, he pulls away. As he inhales again on the electronic cigarette, it makes a soft crackling sound. All the while, his eyes never leave mine.

  I don’t back away—just tense up, in case he tries to hit me, which seems likely.

  Before he can act, though, Morgan speaks again: “She had a car waiting, on the coast, for when she got to the other side. We can go check the spot. If the car’s gone, you know she made it. If it’s still there, well, we’ve got a problem.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  She ignores my question. “The car is pretty well out of sight, so I’ll have to go with you. You driving?”

  5. Causeway

  A one-mile causeway stretches across the shipping channel in Port Lavaca’s corner of the bay; the same massive bridge I watched from the beach that long night of searching for Kayla’s body. The center of the bridge arches upward, rising yards above the rest, allowing ships to pass underneath. We cross that now, gulf dropping away below us.

  “Are you from around here?” I ask, spinning the old manual crank to lower my window.

  “I’m not really from around anywhere,” Morgan says, pulling rogue strands of brown hair behind her ear as wind rushes through. “What about you? You from around here?”

  I smile at her joke. She smiles back. Nice smile, rows of straight teeth. Face and arms dusted with freckles; reminds me of home. Even if she is a little old for me.