Last Seen Leaving

by Caleb Roehrig

  “She broke up with you?” The girl made a face. My announcement had disrupted the momentum of our argument, and for a long moment we just eyed each other in wary silence. Finally, Reiko ended the standoff with a noise somewhere between a sigh and a snort, her anger seeming to subside into irritable pensiveness. “Wow. So maybe she was planning it all along.”

  “Planning what?” I asked, bewildered, and Reiko huffed like I was an idiot.

  “To run away!” She thrust both hands into the air, as if to say Ta-da! “January quit her job, she dropped out of the drama club, she broke up with your sorry ass … I mean, it kinda sounds like she was cutting all her ties, doesn’t it?”

  When she put it that way, that kind of was what it sounded like … but I wasn’t sure it constituted proof beyond reasonable doubt. “Why, though? I get that she was unhappy, I even get that I wasn’t always a great boyfriend, but January was a fighter, not a quitter. Something must have happened to make her do all this stuff—bail on her friends and her job and the play, and then lie about it all. What?”

  Reiko’s mouth twisted up in a frown, and her eyes wouldn’t quite meet mine. A few seconds too late to sound convincing, she muttered, “I don’t know.”

  I tensed. “Reiko? What happened?”

  “There’s nothing I can tell you,” she returned evasively.

  “What does that mean?” I demanded. “If you know something that might help the police figure out what happened to her, you have to say something.”

  “I can’t—there are rules!” she shouted, and then clamped her lips together as if she’d just said something she shouldn’t have.

  “What are you talking about? What rules?”

  Reiko dragged her hands through her hair, turned to leave, and then swung back around. “Look, January was surrounded by people who always let her down, and I won’t turn into one of them. Anything I know, she told me in absolute confidence, and I will not betray that. If she doesn’t want to be found, I’m sure as hell not going to drop a dime on her—and I’m also not about to blab her secrets to people she didn’t trust with them!”

  Turning her back on me once again, Reiko yanked open the backstage door and disappeared into the darkness of the stage-right wing. The door slammed shut behind her, and when the ripples of the echo had died away, I was left with one frightening question to which I would get no answer: But what if January hadn’t run away after all?

  EIGHT

  IT WASN’T AN easy night. Reiko seemed to have been convinced that my ex-girlfriend was a runaway, but the point she’d made about January having cut all her ties wasn’t particularly comforting. That kind of tidying up of loose ends was the sort of thing people did when they were preparing to shuffle off the old mortal coil—and hadn’t that been the very first conclusion the detectives had implied when they’d come to my house? I still wanted to believe January had run away, but I didn’t know what to think anymore. Things I’d thought I’d known about my girlfriend were suddenly coming into question, and it was making me insecure.

  I didn’t know how to process what I’d learned over the past few days, and the worst part was that I couldn’t even confront January for an explanation. Why had she said I was never there for her, when the truth was that she had been the one pulling away from me? I’m also not about to blab her secrets to people she didn’t trust with them! What did January feel she couldn’t trust me with? Aside from the one significant issue in our relationship, what had I ever done to make her feel that she couldn’t count on me?

  She was one of the most important people in my life and had been since the start of freshman year; even if I’d bungled things by hoping I could make a romance work between us—and by panicking when I started to realize I couldn’t—I still loved her in a very real way. I still wanted to be someone she could count on. Why hadn’t she? And what else didn’t I know about her?

  On Tuesday morning, with January gone for almost a week, my mom called the school office and told them I would be out that day. A volunteer search party had been organized to comb the fields and wilderness that abounded in Superior Charter Township, and I had argued with my parents until they agreed to let me take part. A couple of church groups had spent the weekend tramping through the woods surrounding Dumas, the police had covertly dragged sections of the Huron River—the waterway that coiled through the center of town—and university students had canvased the Arb, a 123-acre arboretum near the center of campus. Not a trace of my ex-girlfriend had been found.

  I had a lot of unresolved feelings about January—guilt, of course, and now a growing amount of confusion and anger as I learned of the way she had portrayed me to people who had nothing else to believe but her word—but the truth was that I missed her. I missed the nights we spent sharing popcorn and ice cream while watching old movies; I missed the IMs we sent back and forth nonstop during our conveniently simultaneous computer labs; and I missed the way she always had the perfect quip on the end of her tongue, an ability to skewer a moment so accurately that you couldn’t believe it hadn’t been scripted. I missed my best friend.

  Even if January did return out of the blue, I knew we couldn’t go back to the way things once were—but I couldn’t just let things end the way they had, either. At the very least, I needed her to know that I was sorry about that stupid fight, about any hurt I’d caused her because I wasn’t able to be honest with myself about what I really wanted. Then we could get into the issue of her dishonesty.

  On his way to work, my dad dropped me off at January’s new house. A gigantic campaign sign reading WALKER FOR SENATE greeted us as we left the road and made our way down a long, curving drive that wended through topiary on its way to the hopeful candidate’s five-car garage. My ex-girlfriend’s home was a colossal mansion of brick and stone, with four gables, three chimneys, and two enormous second-floor balconies. The elevated porch, complete with a low rail of carved stone, bowed gently to echo the shape of a massive fountain-slash-koi pond in the front courtyard. Harmon and Eugenia Davenport would have eaten their hearts out.

  An impressive group of people had already gathered outside, including at least one TV news crew, and as I joined the crowd I looked around for familiar faces. There weren’t many. Aside from January’s parents and a handful of Jonathan Walker’s stuffy political friends, the only adult I recognized was Mrs. Hughes, Tiana’s mother. There was only one other volunteer from my own age group and, of course, it was Fucking Kaz. It was freezing out and I had a beanie pulled down over my ears, but Kaz—in a wool peacoat and Burberry scarf—had left his perfectly styled hair open to the elements. Without a trace of bitterness, I silently hoped he got frostbite and lost his ears.

  He noticed me almost as soon as I arrived, but instead of turning the other way, he actually waved at me, trying to get my attention like we were old friends or something. I ignored him, pushing ahead to the front of the crowd, and mounted one of the two sets of stone steps that converged on the stagelike porch. January’s parents were standing there, attended by Detective Moses and Mr. Walker’s campaign manager, Eddie Sward. Detective Moses was scanning the crowd and speaking into a walkie-talkie, while Mr. and Mrs. Walker did a lousy job of pretending to look interested in the words of an older man I didn’t recognize.

  I’d never exactly hit it off with January’s stepfather. It wasn’t that we’d argued or anything, more that he’d never seemed to consider me much worth relating to. When I would come over to see January, he would give me a perfunctory handshake, ask me a perfunctory question about my classes, and then excuse himself to take a phone call. I’d never heard him make a joke or laugh out loud—not a genuine laugh, anyway—and I didn’t think I’d ever seen him without a necktie, either. His graying hair was combed back from his aristocratic face, and his expression was distant, like he was only vaguely disturbed by the weeklong, unexplained absence of his stepdaughter. He hadn’t forgotten to affix a campaign button to the lapel of his trench coat, I noticed, and was clearly aware of the t
elevision cameras despite his attempts to appear oblivious.

  In contrast, January’s mother looked like a wreck. She’d lost some weight when she and Mr. Walker became serious as a couple, jumping quickly on board the latest diet and exercise trends that were being promoted on talk shows for Women of a Certain Age, but she’d lost even more since the last time I’d seen her. Her face was gaunt, her eyes puffy and uncertain, and her long fingers fiddled relentlessly with a strand of pearls at her throat. She wore an off-white pantsuit under an off-white jacket, her off-white hair pulled back in a tight French twist, and she looked startlingly like her own ghost.

  “She’s just a remarkable girl, so lovely,” the older man was saying to them in a strangely mannered voice, as if he were reciting something he’d committed to memory. He was balding, with a white beard and rimless glasses, and gave off a professorial air. “I told her she was too pretty to be wasting her time behind the scenes—she ought to have been in the spotlight, I told her—but she was reluctant. Her modesty was quite becoming, as a matter of fact.”

  “Thank you, that’s very kind,” Jonathan Walker murmured with a clenched jaw, shifting slightly to be in better view of the cameras.

  “She was quite engaging, January,” the man went on earnestly, “she—”

  “Flynn!” Tammy Walker caught sight of me, and her face lit up like a Christmas tree, genuine happiness splitting through a layer of grief, and the contrast was heartbreaking. “Flynn, I can’t believe you came!”

  “Hi, Mrs. Walker, Mr. Walker,” I mumbled awkwardly as January’s mother beckoned me into their uncomfortable little circle. Mr. Walker gave me the perfunctory handshake and a gruff, monosyllabic greeting, but Mrs. Walker dragged me into an intense, angular bear hug, her breath ragged and hot against my neck.

  “I’m so glad you came,” she repeated in a soft, strangled whisper, “I’m so glad you came, I’m so glad you came.…”

  Mr. Walker separated us with a gentle but uncompromising gesture, and I almost thanked him. January’s mother was staring at me in a bewilderingly hopeful way, her hands flexing open and closed. I’d seen adults drunk from time to time, authority figures acting unpredictable and a little scary, but I’d never seen one who truly appeared to be on the verge of losing it. Tammy had always struck me as a little bit high-strung, prone to becoming emotional and melodramatic at the drop of a hat whenever she and January argued, but I’d never seen her so unstable.

  Shuffling my feet self-consciously, I suddenly regretted climbing up onto the porch in the first place. Everyone in the courtyard was watching us, I realized, including the news crew. Clearing my throat, I mumbled, “I just … I’ve been really worried, since I heard … and I wanted … to tell you that.”

  It was the lamest offering of condolences ever, possibly in the history of the known universe, but I had no idea what was appropriate to say in that kind of situation. Nevertheless, mournful tears slipped from Mrs. Walker’s eyes, and she said, “Of course, dear, of course you’ve been worried—”

  “Flynn is January’s boyfriend,” Mr. Walker explained for the benefit of the bearded man, who then regarded me with some surprise. To me, Mr. Walker added, “This is Cedric Kaufmann, the director of the play January’s working on at school.”

  “Hoffman, actually,” the older man corrected gently. Shaking my hand, he stated, “I don’t believe that I know you, son.”

  “Flynn goes to Riverside,” Tammy said in a wobbly voice. “That was January’s old school, before she started attending Dumas.”

  “No, you don’t seem like the Dumas type,” Hoffman informed me neutrally, and I couldn’t tell whether I’d just been insulted or not. The look he was giving me, however, wasn’t terribly friendly. “I don’t recall January ever mentioning you.”

  “We started dating last summer,” I said, because there was a very weird silence just then, and it felt like somebody needed to fill it before the world ended.

  “She was a very lovely girl,” he told me sternly. “Very lovely.” The stagy sentimentality in his voice reminded me rather suddenly that January had called him a freak. I could see why. “I hope you appreciated her, son.”

  “Oh, he does, Mr. Hoffman,” Mrs. Walker enthused softly, that crazy smile still plastered across her face. “Flynn is wonderful for January. They’re so happy together.” It was clear she, at least, hadn’t heard any of the anti-Flynn propaganda that seemed to be going around town. “Isn’t that right?”

  Her look was expectant, Hoffman’s was skeptical, and Mr. Walker’s was detached. I was about to mumble an answer when Detective Moses interrupted and saved me from one of the most awkward exchanges of my life. “We’re about to get started, so the two of you should probably go down there and join the others.”

  She was speaking to Hoffman and me of course, and with glad footsteps I retreated to the wide lip of the stone fountain. The fish had been removed for the season, but it had not yet been emptied of water, and when the wind shifted, an icy spray speckled my face. I kept my eyes on the porch, where Detective Moses stood, holding up a flier bearing a large photo of January. It was a picture that had been taken the previous summer, on a night when we’d been hanging out downtown. January was laughing, her long blond hair spilling over her shoulders. She looked confident. Happy.

  “Listen up, everyone,” Detective Moses began in a loud voice that carried clear to the back of the crowd. “We are all here today to search for January Beth McConville. For those of you who do not know her personally, she is a Caucasian female, fifteen years old, approximately five feet five inches, and one hundred ten pounds. She has blue eyes and long blond hair. Those are her vital statistics. They are printed out on this flier”—she held it up a little higher so everyone could see it—“along with a description of the last outfit she was seen wearing: a light gray hooded sweatshirt, dark jeans, and a pair of red canvas shoes.

  “Also printed on the flier are contact numbers. If you find January today, call one of these numbers. If you find an article of January’s clothing, a dropped cell phone, a footprint, anything that looks suspicious or out of place or like it might help us track January down, call one of these numbers. What you should not do is touch anything that looks like evidence, move anything that looks like evidence, or photograph anything that looks like evidence and then post it on the Internet. We all have the same goal here, and we need to work together.

  “To that end: Do not go off anywhere alone. Ironically enough, people can and do get lost on search parties. Pick a buddy—or, better yet, a group—and stick together. Make sure at least one of you has a fully charged, functioning cell phone at all times. If possible, stay within earshot of other groups, and be aware of your surroundings. If you find January and she is injured, do not attempt to move her, and unless you are a trained medical professional, do not attempt to administer treatment. Call one of these numbers.”

  Detective Moses came down from the porch and began distributing fliers among the crowd, adults snatching them up and clutching them reverently, like church programs. Sympathetic mews rippled through the gathered volunteers as they examined January’s bright, beautiful face, committed her outfit to memory, and programmed the contact numbers into their trusty cell phones. For a sickening moment, I felt as if I’d just joined the world’s most macabre scavenger hunt.

  My mouth felt tacky and dry as the flier found its way into my hand and I looked at January’s vibrant smile. I’d seen dozens of similar smiles on TV and in the newspapers, on girls whose images usually accompanied a story of tragedy, abduction, or murder—girls you knew would never be seen again. It was surreal to me that the happy, likable girl in the news now was my ex-girlfriend. Would we really find her today? Did we want to? After all, if she were this close to home, and had been all along, then either she was camping in the woods somewhere … or she was dead.

  And January had never been a big fan of camping.

  Interrupting my thoughts, Detective Moses asked if there were any qu
estions. When there weren’t, she barked, “Okay, everyone. Let’s bring January back home.”

  NINE

  THE CROWD BEGAN to disperse, volunteers armed with flashlights, cell phones, and fliers heading in all directions, off into the relative wilderness that surrounded the Walker mansion. Detective Moses remounted the porch and herded January’s parents back inside the house, through the massive front doors of carved and polished oak. I turned around and started looking for Mrs. Hughes. I wasn’t especially anxious to tag along with a group of perfect strangers for the task ahead, and I was also sort of suddenly craving the comforting presence of a reliable and familiar adult.

  I made it three steps before I heard someone call my name.

  “Flynn!” It was Kaz. He was waving his hand in the air again, trying to draw my attention over the heads of the people between us, and I immediately turned the other way, pretending not to see him. I was screwed, though; the fountain created a huge barrier in front of me, and a gaggle of elderly volunteers bickering over a map formed an impassable obstacle on my left. By the time I got around to door number three, it was already too late. Kaz was upon me. “Hey, man, wait up!”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked sourly, as if he had no business looking for my missing girlfriend.

  “I wanted to help.” He sounded a little embarrassed, and he gave me a crooked smile. “Listen, I feel bad about the other day. We kind of got off on the wrong foot, know what I mean?”

  “You think so?” I deadpanned.

  He shifted his weight nervously and ducked his head. “Yeah. Look, I’ve been thinking about some of the things you said on Saturday, because they didn’t make a lot of sense to me, and I’ve been starting to wonder if maybe … I don’t know.”

  “What?”

  “I never told January she should be dating older guys,” he blurted, glancing up at me as if he wasn’t sure I’d believe him. “I mean, it sounded like you thought I was trying to move in on her or something like that, and that’s totally not the case. I like January as a friend, but that’s all. She isn’t my type, and she knows that. I know she knows that.”