by A. M. Taylor
I felt awful asking Jenna all these questions, making it so much harder, so much worse. It was like I was digging through the rubble of a ruined building and kept uncovering body parts; I wanted to stop, but there was a chance there was a live one down there, and I needed to know. “Is there anyone you can think of who she might have been seeing? Anyone at school she was flirty with? Anything like that?”
“No,” Jenna replied, just looking at me.
“Are you sure? What about if I put it this way instead: Was there anyone who seemed interested in her? Even if she wasn’t interested back?”
Jenna put down the mug of coffee she’d been drinking from and licked her lips. “Yeah, there were a few.”
“A few?”
“There were some guys at school who were constantly hitting on her. As if we were just some sort of act. Like we were there just to turn them on or something, and because everyone knew Elle was bi, they’d always hit on her, super creepy, all like, ‘let me know when you want a man’ or whatever. As if because she was attracted to men and women she’d be attracted to a complete asshole.”
“Who were they?”
Jenna thought for a second. “Johnny Phillips, Mike Stiles, Adrian Turney. I don’t think she was seeing any of them though. She thought they were assholes.”
“Are you sure?”
She shrugged, and leaned back in the booth. “I guess I don’t know.”
“Did the police ask about these guys?”
“No, they just wanted to know where I’d been and if Elle had seemed different at all recently. They asked if she’d been seeing anyone else, like you did. If we had an open relationship.” She raised her eyebrows at me.
“So, there’s no reason these guys—Johnny, Mick and whoever—would be questioned by the police?”
“Mike. And no, I don’t think so. Unless they decided to question the whole school.”
“Okay. Do you have any of these guys’ numbers? So I could get in touch with them if I need to?”
Jenna shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. But they’re all on Facebook. You could just message them there.”
“Right, of course.”
Jenna gave me a thin smile and shifted in her seat, looking down into what I assumed was her nearly empty coffee mug. I could tell she wanted to leave.
“Hey, have you ever been up to the Altmans’ lake house?” I asked, and Jenna nodded.
“Yeah, plenty of times,” she said.
“What about those guys? Would they have been there too?” I was thinking about that compass drawn in the snow next to Elle’s body, all four points leading to an “N.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so. Mike might have been to a party there once or twice. Why?”
I told her about the compass, which she didn’t seem to have read about yet, and watched as her face drained even further of any color.
“Anyone could have seen that compass though,” she said after a pause. “Elle had a tattoo of it on her ankle.”
“She did?” I asked, but as soon as she had said it, it all came flooding back.
I’d sat there, in that very diner, sometime at the end of the last summer, catching up with Elle and she’d told me all about it. I hadn’t seen her in months, not since the beginning of the year probably, and we’d had a lot to talk about. She’d spent a few weeks of the summer in Austin with Nate and then they’d driven back together so that she could take possession of his old Land Cruiser.
***
“You got a new tattoo,” she says excitedly, reaching for my arm and turning it over so that she can better see the arrow pointing down towards my palm, its tail just scraping the inner crook of my elbow. “Why an arrow?” she asks.
I look down at my arm, her warm hand still wrapped around my wrist, and it feels as though I’m looking at someone else’s. I’m used to the tattoo by now—I’ve had it since January—but for some reason I feel unhooked from my body, let loose from its rigid confines. “I got it for Nora,” I say eventually, my voice sticky, constricted, and raise my eyes to meet Elle’s, watching as they widen a little. “She always seemed to know exactly where she was going. I could use a little of that in my life I guess.”
Elle grins at me and she seems to be bubbling over with something. “It’s like we match,” she says animatedly, pulling her leg up onto the diner bench and twisting her ankle towards me so I can see it: an inky black compass with all points ending in “N.” It’s still a little red, sore. “Nate got one too,” she says, “on his arm though. Guess we’ll have to force Noah to get one at some point too. But look,” her finger traces the compass on her ankle gently as she speaks, “it’s like your little arrow matches the pointers on the compass. Part of the family.”
Something heavy fills my stomach and even though I find it difficult I manage to smile at her. “Don’t you have to be eighteen to get a tattoo?”
Elle makes a face as if she’s disappointed I’d ask her such a question, and proceeds to roll her eyes. “Yeah, and Mom absolutely flipped. It was ridiculous. As if she doesn’t have more important things to worry about than me getting an effin tattoo.”
I can’t help but really smile at her then; there is nothing more endearing to me than Elle’s quiet refusal to curse. We move onto talking about her parents, who, Elle believes, are in the process of getting a divorce, although neither one of them will talk about it with her.
“As if our family needs any more skeletons we’re not allowed to talk about,” she says, all her previous enthusiasm drained.
“Shit, I can’t believe I forgot about the tattoo,” I said to Jenna, feeling deflated. I’d been assuming that whoever had drawn that compass had been to the lake house, which might have narrowed down the suspects a little, but if anyone could have seen it on Elle’s ankle, then it was far less significant.
After paying for our coffees I walked Jenna to her car, an enormous dark blue Dodge truck that looked far too big for her, and watched as she climbed into it. Before she drove off I asked her if she was heading back home.
She was staring out through the windscreen as she shook her head and said: “I can’t stand being in my room anymore. It’s so full of her. I can’t stop thinking … I just can’t stop thinking. About her. About it. I need to be distracted. By anything.”
“So, what are you going to do?”
She shrugged, looking lost, looking so much younger than seventeen—far too young for any of this—I thought. “I guess I’ll just go to school. Nowhere else to go.”
I had tried going to school as normal when Nora first went missing. Those in-between days when we all assumed she’d be found quickly and be back home soon took on a strange, vague quality to them, as if I wasn’t even there. It’s as though someone has told me about them and I’m remembering their telling of it. I remember sitting in the school gym on the Monday after she’d been reported missing, in an assembly for Nora, an assembly called by my own father, who was obviously having trouble getting the tone right. Were we grieving the loss of a fellow student and friend? Were we telling one another that there was still hope, that we could still find her? Were we being warned about the dangers of being a young woman out late at night? Were we blaming drugs? When we got to the drugs part I got up and walked out, Ange close behind me, and we spent the rest of the day crying in the backseat of her car. No one came to get us and force us back to class, and I ended up missing weeks of school.
I’d raged at my dad that night, stormed at him as soon as he got through the door, face like a distant thunderstorm. He didn’t understand, I screamed, couldn’t possibly understand; Nora hadn’t run away, she wasn’t some messed-up kid on drugs trying to find her way out. Nora was always on her way up, always, and I couldn’t understand how everyone could have suddenly forgotten that and recast her in this new role of troubled teen. He’d answered in a low voice, quiet, levelheaded, sympathetic even, telling me he knew, he knew, he knew, that he knew Nora as well as I did, but he had professional obligation
s, he’d been briefed by the police on what to say. I can still feel the hot tears that stained my face that whole evening as I realized my father had loyalties that extended beyond me, beyond Nora.
When I finally went back to school, every glance cast at me and every scrap of gossip thrown my way implying that I’d been given special treatment because my dad was also the principal, it was to a different place entirely. What had once been safe, innocuous, boring, was now unbearable. It was on one of these first interminably long days back at school that I found my first note.
***
It flutters to the floor as soon I open my locker, and I pick it up idly, expecting it to be from Ange.
It’s written in Sharpie, stark black against the clean, perfect white of the printer paper.
Your friend probably killed herself why don’t you do the same
I stare down at it, not taking it in. All I can see for a second or two is the black and white, the curve of the writing, the slope of the sentence. It starts to tremble gently in my hand, but the reaction seems completely divorced from me. I lean my shoulder against the locker next to mine, creating a shield with my open locker door, and read the note again. I almost want to laugh in some way; as if anyone could hurt me now. As if any number of notes stuffed into my locker could make me feel the way Nora being gone makes me feel. I fold the note over carefully, once, twice and then slide it into the back pocket of my jeans.
I slam my locker door shut, forgetting what it is I went there for in the first place, and walk out of school. The metallic noise of the doors banging into the wall sings in my ears as I step out into the dazzle of sun and snow. I squeeze my eyes shut and feel that familiar anvil pressing me down into the earth, the weight of life suddenly a burden too heavy to bear. I walk home through the snow slowly, slowly and crawl into bed, knowing I won’t leave for over a week. I don’t tell anyone about the note—it doesn’t even occur to me—until Serena comes home a few days later.
“You’re not asleep,” she says, coming into my room without knocking.
“No.” I don’t bother telling her that I’m never actually asleep. Just exhausted.
“Cool. I just wanted to come say hi.” She walks over to the window and stares out at the evening, which is a perfect dusky purple. “How are you doing?”
“Fine.”
“Mom and Dad are really worried.” She turns to look at me finally, staring me down, which I can tell she’s been wanting to do the entire time. Serena isn’t a stareoutthewindowattheevening kind of girl. That’s me. Or at a push Cordy, but definitely not Serena. “I’m worried too. I thought you’d gone back to school. I thought things were better.”
“They got worse again.”
“Can you tell me why?”
I have no idea how to tell her, so I just stay silent. She sighs, padding over to the bookshelf.
“Have you read anything recently? Maybe that would help you feel better.”
Several words, hell an entire sentence even, rise up inside me but end up getting trapped somewhere in my chest, so again I say nothing. Serena’s eyes drift along the bank of books, taking them all in until something stops her in her perusing. I stuffed the note in between two books rather than tearing it up and throwing it away, which I’m now regretting. She pulls it out from between The Return of the King and The Silmarillion and stares down at it before turning to look at me. My face is stuck to the pillow. I haven’t moved since she walked into the room.
“What is this, Mads?”
“An anonymous missive from a concerned classmate.”
“Maddie.” She’s staring down at it again, her eyes drawing in on themselves. “Have you told anyone about this? Shown it to anyone?”
“No.”
“Why the hell not?”
I finally push myself up, leaning my head back against the headboard and closing my eyes. “Because it doesn’t matter. That’s not the problem, Serena, just a symptom.”
“This is really fucking serious,” she says, “this is aggressive. Horrible. They’re telling you to kill yourself.”
My eyes snap open, and Serena is staring right at me, her grey-blue eyes headlights in the near-dark of my bedroom. “It’s nothing,” I say, my voice a rubber band suddenly stretched too far. “Just some sick, psycho jock trying to hurt me.”
“Has this happened to Angela too?”
“I don’t know.” I wonder suddenly what Ange might be keeping from me in light of what I’m keeping from her.
“So, you literally haven’t told anyone?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m sorry but I have to tell Mom and Dad.”
I don’t say anything as she walks out of the room, evidence in hand. I rearrange my pillows and slide back down the bed. The world isn’t any less demanding from this position but at least when it asks its impossible questions I’m not forced to come up with an answer.
I close my eyes.
After leaving Jenna, I headed over to the Altmans’. Katherine was a small woman, with none of the height and strength I always associated with Nora. Noelle looked more like her although she was much taller. The same fine features, with Katherine’s dark brown eyes and chestnut hair, rather than Nora’s deep-blue eyes and almost raven hair. We hugged silently and when she released me about a thousand different words remained stuck in my throat and all I could manage was: “I’m so sorry.”
Katherine nodded and folded her arms across her chest. Her face was a strained white, with no make-up and purplish, bruised-like bags under her eyes.
“Nate asked me to come sit with Noah. I think-I think he thought you guys might appreciate the help.” I inwardly cringed at the inadequacy of my words. Of all words.
“Of course. Thank you, Maddie. We have to … we have to go to the police station. For questioning.”
I raised my eyebrows and followed her into the house. “For questioning?”
Katherine sighed heavily as she pushed through the door to the kitchen at the back of the house. Beyond the kitchen island there was a vast window that overlooked the snow-filled garden. It was quiet and white, with a cold, icy beauty. Completely untouched. Most backyards would bear some trace of the human—childish—touch. Piled up drifts of snow where snowmen have melted, dislodged snow on the climbing frame or swing set, the disintegrating outline of a playful snow angel. A trail of footprints at the very least. But there was none of that in the Altmans’ garden. I guess Noah wasn’t much for playing, despite being only ten years old.
Katherine scraped a chair back along the tiled floor of the kitchen and sat down. She pointed towards the coffee maker to indicate that I could help myself, and I set about making us a pot.
“They let us have the evening but they want us to come in and answer questions about when we last saw Elle. We’re not suspects,” she added, before saying even more quietly, “yet.”
I turned to look at her, both of us clearly thinking about her eldest son, who had been arrested, although never charged, when Nora first went missing. He hadn’t been able to produce a solid enough alibi, or so the cops had claimed, but when no other evidence turned up, and no body either, he was released without charge.
“Is Nate here?” I asked.
“Downstairs, I think. He’s … we’re … we have to leave in a few minutes,” she said, finally finishing her sentence. Her mouth was straight and taut, pulled thinly against the pale skin of her face. “Thank you for coming, Maddie,” she said quietly, “it really means a lot.”
I looked around the kitchen and noticed how bare, almost barren, it was. There were no bouquets of flowers, no letters or notes of condolence. When Nora went missing, someone inexplicably sent the family an enormous brown-furred teddy bear with a bright red bow tie proudly fixed around its chunky neck. It sat in the corner of the living room for a few days before migrating down to the kids’ basement rec room, its cuddly, warm presence too much of an incongruence for the family room. Maybe there simply hadn’t been enough time for the flo
wers and the cards and the inappropriate plush toys to begin to flood in. Or maybe they never would. Maybe no one knew how to react, how to express comfort and sympathy, compassion and condolence to a family that had already lost so much. Or maybe it was something else entirely. Maybe people had already started talking, hushed tones hiding dark thoughts and malicious accusations. Either way, I suddenly felt extremely empty-handed. When the aroma of fresh coffee began to fill the desolate kitchen I sighed with perceptible relief. It wasn’t much, but at least I could make Katherine a cup of her own coffee.
“Thanks,” Katherine said as I handed her the mug. “Noah’s upstairs. I think he might still be asleep to be honest.”
I raised my eyebrows at that; it was already well past noon.
“You’ll be okay here with him?” she asked, hesitantly.
I nodded. “Of course. We’ll be fine.”
A door shut with emphasis somewhere in the house, and Katherine looked over at me quickly before leaving her chair and walking out of the kitchen, mug in hand. She squeezed my shoulder before leaving the kitchen, and I heard her call out Jonathan’s name, the shuffle of feet and rumble of voices and undercurrent of a murmured, urgent conversation. Before I knew it, Nate was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, looking in at me.
“Mads,” he said, his voice hollow in that large room.
I stared at him as though it was the first time I’d seen him in years, when in fact I’d seen him just two days before. Something burning began to build behind my eyes; something scratchy and insistent and all too familiar and all I managed to say was simply “Nate,” before his dad also called his name and he shrugged and made a face at me and left to join his parents at the door.
I followed him, standing where he’d just been in the doorway, and said goodbye, watching as all three of them left and the front door slammed solidly behind them. I hadn’t been to the house in a while, so I let the quiet of it sink down into my bones before heading upstairs to say hi to Noah.