Kate shrugs. “No idea.”
Elizabeth: “It’s gotta be in here somewhere.”
Allison pulls out a pair of latex gloves from a jacket pocket and puts them on. She feels the Sanderson women watching her. “I may come across something that we might want to pull prints from.”
Allison brings the tin to the front of the bureau and sifts through it.
Kate: “Mom, do you guys need me anymore? Can I ride my bike to Sam’s house now?”
Elizabeth: “Bike? I thought I was going to drop you off.”
Kate: “I want to bike over.”
Elizabeth groans and runs both hands through her hair. “I really wanted to give you a ride over. I don’t like you out by yourself right now.”
“It’s fine, Mom. I’ve been doing it all summer. It’s not even that far and I haven’t done anything in days and I feel like a slug.”
Elizabeth looks at Allison for some sign of approval, or maybe disapproval. Allison doesn’t give either. Elizabeth says, “I guess so, as long as your leaving now is okay with Detective Murtagh.”
Allison: “Yes, of course. But is there anything else you need to tell me before you leave?”
Kate’s “Nope” is instantaneous to the end of the query. She rises on her toes and falls back to the floor, itching to be gone.
Elizabeth: “You can stay for a few hours. Be back before dinner. And make sure you have your phone on. Is it charged?”
Kate is already walking out of the room. Her blue pack bounces with each step. “Full charge, Sarg.”
“Be careful.”
Allison calls out. “Kate?”
Kate is in the hallway, but turns around and stands in the doorway. “Yeah?”
“You said we could check your room, and thank for you that. Do you mind if we see what’s in your pack?”
Kate shrugs, walks into the room, shimmies out of her pack, and holds it out to Elizabeth. “Sure. Take a look. Just my phone, headphones, our picture flip book we’ve been working on all summer, granola bar, and . . . two lemonade juice boxes.”
Allison stands next to Elizabeth and watches as she goes through it. The contents that Kate catalogued are all there, along with a few stray pens and pencils, and a brown book.
Elizabeth: “What’s this?”
“I, um, started a new diary.”
Elizabeth takes it out. The book is small, secret-sized, definitely not big enough to be the book from which Tommy’s pages have been coming. She turns and flips it in her hand, as though confirming its small dimensions. She inspects the front and back covers, both decorated in a neat but loopy scrawl, different from Tommy’s handwriting.
Kate: “You’re not gonna read it, now, with me standing here, are you? It’s just, you know, my diary. I don’t want you reading it. Not now. It’s my stuff. Maybe later.” She reaches for the book hesitantly, and Elizabeth turns away.
Allison would very much like to read it but won’t press her on it if she balks. She’s confident that she’ll be able to find the missing pages (if they’re in the house) in either of the Sanderson kids’ bedrooms.
Elizabeth flips through the pages slowly.
“Mom! I said don’t. There’s nothing there for you.”
Elizabeth hands the diary to Allison. “Can she flip through and not really read it, to make sure that it’s all your handwriting and no one else’s?”
Allison verifies the pages have Kate’s and only Kate’s handwriting, and color of the ink is purple and blue and sometimes green. It’s about a quarter full. She hands it back to Kate.
Kate stuffs it back in her pack.
Elizabeth says with a voice that’s supposed to be soothing, but has an obvious edge to it, “I know, I’m sorry. Just making sure, right? We’ll talk about this when you get back.”
Kate gives her mom a hard stare and zips up her pack, loudly. Allison can’t help but think of what she would’ve said to her own parents at that age: No we’re not.
Kate: “I’m going now. Bye.”
Elizabeth talks to the back of Kate as she walks out of the room. “I’m going to call you in half an hour to make sure you got there and that your phone is on.”
Elizabeth and Allison listen to Kate go out the back door. Elizabeth says, “She hasn’t been out of the house, really, since Tommy went missing. She needs to get out, see her best friend.”
Allison: “It’ll be good for her.”
Elizabeth nods but her stare is aimed outside the room, and the house, and following her daughter.
Allison says, “You’re welcome to stay and watch me, but you don’t have to be here in the room, either. I’ll call you in if I have any questions.”
“I’d prefer to watch, if that’s okay.”
Allison starts with the built-in bookcase and then the bookcase along the wall, methodically removing each book, occasionally asking Elizabeth if she recognizes the titles. She checks behind and under the bed. Next she goes through his desk and then the milk crate of notebooks. She sits at Tommy’s desk and reads every page of every book, looking for more entries, mentions of Arnold, and signs of pages having been removed. Elizabeth reads over her shoulder, and Allison hears her reacting emotionally to what she reads. She laughs at some of the cartoons and clicks her tongue or swallows heavily at the more teen angsty pictures and proclamations, and she sighs at the “school is like drowning” title page.
Elizabeth says, “Oh jeeze,” and mumbles apologies as Allison flips through pages of lurid nudes and sex scenes.
Allison says, “He’s a teen boy. I don’t think there’s one who hasn’t drawn a penis.”
After the milk crate, Allison moves on to the bureau. She goes through his drawers first. Elizabeth is no longer hanging over Allison’s shoulder. She sits at Tommy’s desk, and she goes through some of his notebooks and sketch pads again. Allison doesn’t blame her for not wanting to see what’s inside her son’s bureau drawers. There isn’t anything there, no signs of a diary nor any drug/alcohol paraphernalia. From the bureau she moves on to the closet, which smells like a locker room. There’s a half-full laundry hamper on the floor. Elizabeth mumbles something about getting around to washing his clothes. Allison goes through the pockets in the dirty shorts and jeans. Nothing.
From Tommy’s closet they move on to Kate’s room, which is a disaster and smells of dust, wet sneakers, and unlit, too-sweet scented candles. Allison tries not to step on anything but there’re clothes, hangers, books, and assorted preteen debris all over the floor.
Allison has to say something. Against her better judgment, she tries to be lighthearted in the face of what was the result of a traumatic experience in this room. “Whoa. I thought my room was a mess when I was a kid.”
Elizabeth says, “This isn’t Kate’s fault. I went a little nuts last night looking for the diary. I threw everything out of her closet. I didn’t find it. Kate gave it to me.”
Allison won’t find the missing pages, either.
Kate’s bike is fire engine red, with tires thick enough to belong on a monster truck. It was Tommy’s first gear bike, which he outgrew over the course of two summers. Mom was crazed, given how much she’d spent on it, and tried to sell the bike, but never got a serious offer. Last summer Kate wanted a new bike and not Tommy’s old one, but Mom shrewdly struck a deal with her; Kate could paint it any color she wanted (it was originally silver). Kate getting to paint the bike sealed the deal and she got to put new tires on the bike, too. It wasn’t that she was so into off-roading or trail riding; Kate reasoned the wider the tire, the less likely it became for her to ever wobble and fall. Kate ended up loving the souped-up bike. Tommy was totally jealous of the tires and often rode her bike without asking, which was both a source of fury and pride. That Tommy thought her bike was cool meant she’d never relinquish it.
She plows through the backyard, the overgrown grass grabbing at her tires. She eventually picks up enough speed to weave between two thick fir trees (a neat trick, one she hasn’t alwa
ys been able to pull off without crashing or scraping an arm or leg against coarse bark) onto a small path that Tommy wore out through the brush that leads to the edge of their neighbor’s property. The path is also a shortcut to their street. Kate navigates the snakey path and rides smoothly over a little lip and onto the blacktop. She doesn’t look back at the news vans parked behind her, confident that they won’t follow as long as she doesn’t turn to look at them. At the end of her street Kate takes a left. She’s not going to Sam’s house.
It’s a cooler-than-normal late August day. There’s no humidity and an underlying crispness in the air that makes autumn easier to imagine. Her fat tires chew up the blacktop and spit out small bits of sand and rock. The sun is bright, and Kate regrets leaving the house without sunglasses. She thinks about taking her bulky helmet off (it’s a charcoal gray/black and it makes her head look like a mushroom cap) and letting the wind blast through her hair, but she won’t stop the bike. Now that she’s out on the road and by herself, she doesn’t want to stop pedaling ever. The urge to be the one who disappears suddenly becomes a compulsion. Maybe the people who go away are the ones who are not afraid, not sad, and not alone. Maybe there’s a place where they gather and say things like What is to be done with all the silly people we left behind?
Kate turns off Massapoag Avenue and its shallow, dirt-covered shoulders and onto a sleepy residential side street. She rides down the road’s exact middle without yellow lines to guide her. Shortly after the street curls to the left she hops a tall curb, which is no match for her greedy tires, and then powers her bike through the dried-out front lawn of Josh’s house. Almost all the way across she says, “Oops,” out loud, remembering that Josh’s parents freak out over their grass. She makes it to the driveway and gently lays down her bike, a fallen apple in front of the closed garage doors. She takes off her mushroom helmet and leaves it on the handlebars. As she walks to the front door, she hopes that she sees the rut her tires chewed through the lawn only because she knows it’s there.
Kate rings the bell.
Josh’s mom is a pair of eyes peeking through a small rectangular window. Kate waves. Mrs. Griffin opens the door. She wears jeans and a black fleece zipped all the way up to her chin. She says, “Kate?” like her name is a puzzle.
“Hi, Mrs. Griffin.”
“Hi, yes, wow, I wasn’t expecting—it’s great to see you.” Josh’s mom leans her head over and past Kate. “Is your mom here, too? Are you here by yourself?”
“It’s just me.” Kate shrugs. “I rode my bike over. Wanted, you know, to get out of the house, be in the sun.”
“I can imagine. Are you doing okay?” Mrs. Griffin groans at herself and says, “Of course I know things aren’t okay, but are you doing okay?”
“Yes and no. A lot of sitting around and waiting.” Kate stops talking and gives a half smile, a derp face, as Tommy would call it. It’s obvious that Mrs. Griffin doesn’t know what to do with her. And that’s fine. Other people should be made to feel uncomfortable, too.
“Your mom let you come over by yourself?”
Now that she’s admitted to leaving out the diary pages to Mom, Kate decides to be direct with everyone, and to say whatever comes to mind. Without painfully deliberating and weighing every word of each response, talking will be easier. “Kinda. She thinks I went to my friend Sam’s house. Which I will do. I didn’t lie to her. I’m going there, but only after.”
“After what?”
“Can Josh come outside? Maybe shoot some hoops with me for a little while? Sam won’t play basketball with me, and she’ll sit in her room and talk about Tommy, and I want to be outside for a little bit first. It’ll probably do Josh some good, too, don’t you think?”
“Um, yeah, okay, I think so. He’s home. In his room. I’ll ask him. But—” She pauses and looks out over Kate’s head again.
“But what?”
“If a news van or anything like that comes by while you guys are outside, I’m going to have to call you in. Is that okay?”
“Sure. No problem.”
“Thank you. It’s just—we’ve been getting a lot of calls and, um, messages today, from different places, and it’s been, I don’t know.” She stops and shakes her head.
Kate says, “Yeah. Us too. Mom handles all that.”
“I’m sure she does. She’s a strong person, your mom. Anyway, this was very nice of you to come over, Kate. Do you want to come in? Need a drink or anything?”
“Nah. I’m good. And I’ll wait over in the driveway for Josh.”
“Josh. Right. Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
Kate walks down the stairs and thinks about not waiting for Josh and going into the backyard and then into the woods from which Tommy disappeared. Maybe in her own diary she could create a short comic in which she calls out Tommy’s name into those crowded trees and her voice is enough to bring him back. Instead, Kate sits down cross-legged on the driveway next to her bike. She stares out at the empty street and the houses that look like they’ve always been part of the landscape. She imagines the houses as the backs of giant sleeping monsters, and she wishes to see what it all will look like when the houses finally get up and crawl away. The garage door whirs to life behind her and Josh walks out, bending under the still-rising door when it’s halfway open. He has a basketball cuffed against his left side. It’s Boston Celtics green and white, an outdoor ball, the kind that is all rubber, smells like a tire, and bounces as wildly as an excited electron.
Josh says, “Hey.” His hair is just-got-a-haircut short. It’s thick, bristly, like wire. His Washington Nationals T-shirt is so dark blue it’s almost black. His baggy light blue shorts go past his knees and down to midankle. His basketball sneakers are big and red, untied, and on so loosely there’s no way his feet won’t fall out when he takes a step.
Kate says, “Hey. Is that the best ball you have?”
“My good ball is in my dad’s car.”
“Gimme.”
Josh lets the ball fall toward her. Kate snags it, takes two hard dribbles to the net and throws up a shot with two hands. She knows she’ll never be a basketball player for any team yet is self-conscious that she still shoots with two hands instead of one. Her T-shirt comes up over her stomach, and she pulls it back down in midshot. The ball bounces hard off the backboard even though she didn’t intend it to. The ball’s first two bounces are over her head, and she has to sprint to chase down the rebound before the ball lands on the lawn.
Josh says, “Is there anything going on, or, um, new with Tommy?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know. Everyone is sorry. I’m sorry you were the last one to see him.” If it sounds like an accusation, then good.
Josh hides his hands in his pockets and edges out toward the basketball hoop. He looks behind him, toward the bay window, as though looking for someone else who heard what Kate said to him.
She says, “I gave Mom the rest of Tommy’s diary.” Her having finally given up the diary to Mom is an act of acceptance, although whoever said Acceptance is the price of freedom has a funny definition of freedom. Kate doesn’t feel free; in fact she feels like a quitter, and feels sadder than ever, believing like Mom does, that their Tommy is truly gone, and gone forever. In a few weeks Kate will give her new therapist honest attempts at further articulating why and how she thought she was helping Mom by initially keeping the diary and tearing out the pages and leaving them in the living room, although she’ll never be able to adequately explain her actions. And with the passage of time, those actions will belong to another person, someone she’ll miss but who will be no longer an influence on her life.
Josh: “The detective was asking me stuff about the diary yesterday. And I saw the picture of the shadow-man-thing he drew today, too.”
“Right. So that’s about it. But looks like there are pages missing, though.”
Josh doesn’t say anything.
Kate says, “Is your m
om watching us?”
“Yeah. Probably.”
“Let’s shoot.” Kate shoots, pulls down her shirt. This shot goes in. Josh taps the ball back out to her in that annoying, nonchalant way of boys, making it look like giving any sort of physical effort beyond breathing is the uncoolest thing in the world. That’s what they call a hardo, right? She hates it, and wonders why would Josh, of all kids, act like that in front of her, and now. Josh isn’t Luis, the one she has an obvious crush on. If he’s not equivalent to a big brother, Josh is like a first cousin, one you see at all the family gatherings and with which you swap your most embarrassing stories about your freaky, related parents.
Kate rotates the basketball in her hand and says, “I thought you hated the Celtics.”
“I don’t hate hate them. I won the ball at Canobie Lake Park.”
“You won it?”
Josh shrugs. “Yeah.”
Kate thinks he’s lying. She thinks she can tell when he’s lying. She throws the ball to him hard. He’s slow to put up his hands and the ball hits him in the gut. He struggles to swallow a reaction and not touch where the ball hit him.
She says, “Your turn.”
Josh shoots. His form has an odd hitch and wiggle to it, with the ball down by his hip, he turns, or swivels, and desperately heaves it up there, as though his arms aren’t strong enough. It takes a long time to get the shot off, but he makes it.
Kate says, “Fancy.”
Josh smiles and says, “Catchphrase, right?”
His saying Tommy’s saying to her, it might be the nicest thing anyone has said to her in a week. She says, “Maybe.”
Josh goes through his ritual contortions again and makes a second shot in a row.
Kate says, “Did Arnold give you any coins like he gave Tommy? I found them. On Tommy’s bureau.”
Josh doesn’t say anything and dribbles the ball between both hands slowly, awkwardly. Even Kate notices how slow and uncoordinated he’s gotten, compared to how fast and athletic he was when they were all in elementary school together. How does that happen?
Disappearance at Devil's Rock Page 18