by KD McCrite
“Myra Sue would not be writing anything to send off to get published,” I declared.
“April Grace, have you told your daddy and mama about this?”
“I guess I should’ve, but she swore she’d tell J. H. Henry that I loved him—which I do not, in the very worst way!— and then she said she’d tell Mama I tore my new coat, and some other stuff. Besides,” I sighed, “I didn’t want to be a big, fat tattletale.”
“I see,” Mimi said. “Well, we better see what we can find, Sunshine.”
I reached under the bed and pulled out an armful of papers. Then I paused and eyeballed Mimi as she hauled out a pile of dirty socks, some jeans, and underwear.
“What did Myra tell you?” I asked her.
She frowned. “What d’ya mean?”
“When you two went strolling down Rough Creek Road the other day. I saw you, and y’all were talking like two best friends.”
Her face cleared. “Oh, that. I saw her outside, and it was clear that she was upset, and when I asked her why she was crying, she told me she felt ugly and dumb. I told her that she was most certainly not ugly or dumb!”
My sister feeling ugly and dumb?
“Are you kiddin’? She has always acted like she thinks she’s a cross between Albert Einstein and Vanna White or somebody.”
Mimi stared at me with her eyes narrowed slightly, like she was trying to see inside my head, then she lay down flat on her belly and reached way, way under the bed.
“You don’t like your sister very much, do you, Sunshine?” she asked. Her voice came out kinda puffy and grunty and muffled.
I had never heard such words spoken, just plain that way, hanging between us like dirty sheets on the clothesline. Just as ugly, too.
I didn’t want to think about those words any longer, so I said, “Myra and me don’t get along sometimes, but I sure don’t want anything bad to happen to her. She’s my very own sister.” My voice broke and I swallowed hard in case I was fixin’ to start bawling like a baby. Then I cleared my throat and asked, “What else did you and Myra talk about? Did she tell you she was gonna run away?”
Mimi scooted back out from where she’d gone halfway into the dusty darkness under the bed and raised herself up on both elbows.
“No, she did not. If she had, I’d have done my best to talk her out of it, and failing that, I’d have told your folks.” She had a coughing spell with her head turned to her shoulder, then she said, “She told me she’d wanted to be an actress for a long time, and she told me how she’d messed up the Christmas program.”
“I know. That was weeks ago.”
“And she feels that she’d let Isabel down.”
“Yeah, well, she loves Isabel St. James.”
Mimi raised her eyebrows. “Why? That woman is snippy and uppity, and she’s not very friendly.”
I shrugged. “She’s not so bad once you get to know her. And Myra wants to be just like her, and when she flubbed up onstage . . . well . . . that just proved she wasn’t like Isabel, I reckon.”
“And she’s having a hard time understanding that. You know, Sunshine, it’s hard when you compare yourself to other folks, because you’ll either think you’re better than them or worse than them. It’s best just to be yourself.”
I looked at that purply-red-haired Mimi in astonishment.
“Wow, Mimi. You’re smart.”
She smiled and ran one hand over my head like I was a sweet little kitten.
“No, Sunshine, I’m not. I’ve just done a lot of living and I’ve learned a lot of things. If I was smart, I’d not be in the mess I’m in now.”
“What mess is that?”
She looked away.
I knew I should have been scouring through Myra’s clutter for clues, but right at that moment, something told me to listen to my mimi.
“Mimi? What mess is that?”
“Oh, Sunshine.” She sighed. “I reckon I’m a little bit sick. And it seems I don’t have anyplace to go.”
“What d’you mean, you’re sick? Sick how? What’s wrong?”
“Honey, I have lived a hard life, and you can’t live a hard life and be a healthy old woman. And now, let’s drop it because I should never have said a word. It’s just that you’re such a smart little girl, it’s easy to talk to you, and I guess I sorta forgot there for a minute that you’re just a kid.”
“You should tell Mama,” I said.
She met my eyes and said, “Well, let’s not talk about it anymore, you and me. Right now, your sister is the most important thing going on in this family.”
She went back to digging stuff out from under the bed, and I could see she had said all she was going to say to me about being old and sick, but you better believe I was going to let Mama know just as soon as all this mess with Myra Sue was over.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Mimi said when we’d pulled out every bit of junk, stuff, and things. She eyeballed that pile around us.
“I don’t know, exactly. Like I said, she was scribbling in secret all the time. Just look and see what you find. Of course, I found a list in her coat pocket and it turned out to be nothing, so maybe anything we find here will be nothing, too.”
“Let’s not give up hope!” she said encouragingly.
So we started sifting through all that mess. We made a trash pile where we put used Kleenexes (eww), two broken hairbrushes, a dried-up apple core, something that looked like a dried-up fur ball that Queenie might have barfed up (but she’s never been here, so I didn’t know what it was but it went in the trash right quick), plus a broken pencil and two dried-up Bic pens.
I started uncrumpling all the wadded-up papers I found. Some of it was homework. Some papers were tests that sported lots of red checkmarks. Oh boy. If Myra Sue had been doing so much homework, wouldn’t she have made better grades than Ds? I bet if Mama and Daddy had seen those papers, they’d have had a fit. Last semester, she brought home all Cs on her report card. Maybe she really had been doing all that scribbling to raise her grades so she wouldn’t get in trouble when report cards came out, but I doubted it.
One page I smoothed out was a letter, written to “Dear Sir.” It read, “I am a beautiful, twenty-year-old actress, with long, blonde hair and azure-blue eyes. I have a lovely figure. I want to be an actress in the movies, or maybe on television. Being live onstage frightens me, so I need to be on film instead. I am a fan of Days of Our Lives and would be perfect on that program, even better than Christie Clark, who plays Carrie Brady.” That’s where she stopped. It was a purely dumb letter. I found two more almost like it, except “lovely” had been spelled “loverly” and “azure” had been written with two z’s. There were some other letters there, too, all to “Dear Sir” and all telling how gorgeous, smart, and talented she was, but none of them were completed. It was like all that writing she had been doing these last few weeks had been practice for concocting big, fat lies.
Wouldn’t it be the craziest thing in the whole entire world if my sister decided to run off to New York City and try to get on some crazy soap-opera show? Listen, I’ve read about New York City and seen pictures and everything. It’s a big, scary place. Even ole Myra wouldn’t do something so purely dumb as to go there all by herself.
Mimi made a nice stack of the magazines, everything from Cosmopolitan (which I’m sure Mama knew nothing about, or it would have been in the burn barrel a long time ago) to Young Model to Tiger Beat. You know something? Every one of those magazines had mailing labels on them, and the names on those labels were Jennifer and Jessica Cleland. Since Myra, Jessica, and Jennifer were so close and shared everything, it seemed to me my sister might have said something to the other two about this crazy running-away idea.
“Mimi,” I said, “take a look at these weird letters I just found.”
I handed them over to her, then I got up. I needed to tell somebody to get in touch with those dumb Cleland girls.
“Sunshine!” Mimi said, reaching for me. “Where you goi
n’?”
“I need to talk to Mama and Daddy.” I shook her hand off my arm.
“You shouldn’t be up. You’re sick.”
“I’m fine.” I stuck my feet in my fuzzy house slippers and put on my warm, thick robe.
Mama and Grandma were downstairs, both of them pale as skim milk. The expressions in their eyes scared me. Grandma was knitting so fast the needles blurred.
“Mama?” I said. My voice came out weak and frightened.
She turned to me. “Honey,” she said, with a version of a smile, “what are you doing out of bed? Are you all right?”
“Mama, Jennifer and Jessica might know something about Myra.”
“The sheriff has a list of all of Myra Sue’s friends. He and his deputies are talking to everyone.”
“How about I fix you a nice ham sandwich?” Grandma asked. She put aside her knitting and got up from her rocker. Grandma has always had the need to cook or stay busy when she’s worried.
“I’m not hungry,” I said. Any other time, those words coming out of my mouth might have shocked me and everybody else, but right then I knew if I swallowed a bite, it would come back up.
“Maybe you’d feel better if you splashed some water on your face, honey,” Mama suggested.
“Where is everybody? I thought our friends would be here.”
“They’re out lookin’, child,” Grandma said softly. “Everybody’s out lookin’ for her, except us. We’re stayin’ here, looking after you and Eli. Maybe your sister will show up, or call. Now, go splash some water on your face, like your mama said. Maybe a nice bath would make you feel better.”
“Maybe,” I said, and slogged out of the room. I just passed the telephone when it rang. The sound startled me so bad, I jumped.
“Hello?” I answered. Mama and Grandma rushed into the hall.
“Um, hello? May I please speak to Mia Suzanne?” The voice was very polite but very peculiar sounding, as if the caller spoke from far away.
“You have the wrong number,” I said.
“Oh! I’m sorry.” And she hung up.
I replaced the receiver and watched while Mama and Grandma went back to the living room, looking defeated.
About twenty seconds later the telephone rang again.
“Boy, oh boy,” I thought, reaching for it. “If this is one of those pranksters, I’m gonna give ’er what’s coming to ’er!”
“Hello!” I snapped.
“Oh. Um. This is Krista Collier. I’m calling to speak to my friend Mia Suzanne.” It was that same voice. She did not sound like a prankster, though.
“There is no Mia Suzanne in this house, and if you—”
Mama yanked the receiver out of my hand.
“Who is this? Where are you calling from?”
I moved over next to Grandma, and she pulled me into the circle of her arms. We hung on to each other as we watched Mama talk on the phone. Mama’s eyes got bigger and her mouth opened. She was paler than I’d ever seen her in my life—so pale she was almost blue.
She grabbed a pen from the holder on the telephone table and scribbled something down on the pad there.
“Yes. Yes, thank you. Thank you very much!” she said.
She pushed down the button to end the call, then immediately dialed another number.
“Sheriff’s office? This is Lily Reilly. My daughter is Myra Sue Reilly and—yes, that’s right, the girl who’s missing. I just received a phone call from a girl in Elmwood, Iowa. Her name is Krista Collier. She says that she and my daughter planned to meet at a bus station in St. Louis and were going to travel together to New York City.”
Grandma and I gawked at each other. Myra Sue going to New York City? And I’d just told myself my sister would never be that dumb. Good grief. Mama kept talking to that person in the sheriff’s office.
“No, I don’t know the girl. Apparently she and my daughter struck up a correspondence from a pen pal column in a teen magazine, and it seems they’ve been making plans on the phone . . .” Her voice broke. “Excuse me,” she sobbed, then cleared her throat. “Here’s the girl’s phone number.” She choked out those numbers, then said, “Please. Please, find my daughter. She’s traveling alone somewhere, and she’s so young. She’s . . . She’s calling herself M-Mia Suzanne.” She stopped and gulped in some air. “She doesn’t know anything about the world . . . please . . .”
So that explained all those phone calls Myra Sue nearly broke her neck to answer all the time. Boy, oh boy.
Mama dropped the phone and sank to the floor, crying so hard it was like her body would break. Grandma let go of me, plucked up the receiver, and talked with the person. I squatted on the floor next to Mama and put my arms around her like she was my child. She hung on to me and cried and cried and cried.
I guess the sound of Mama’s sobbing reached Mimi. She rushed down the steps, her face full of fear and concern.
“What’s happened? Have they found Myra?”
Grandma held up one hand, finished talking with the person on the other end of the phone line, then hung up. She beckoned Mimi, and they went into the kitchen.
I patted Mama’s back, smoothed her hair, and gave her kisses until she cried herself out.
“Come on, Mama, let’s get up and go to the kitchen. I’ll pour you a cup of coffee and bring you a cool cloth for your face.”
She nodded, and I helped her to her feet. It was like assisting a little old lady, walking Mama to the kitchen and setting her down at the table.
Mimi put a cup of tea in front of her. “Chamomile,” she said softly. “Better for you than the other kind. It’s calming.”
“Thank you,” Mama whispered. She wrapped her fingers around the cup like her hands were cold.
I went to get her a cool, wet cloth for her face, and she smiled sweetly at me when I sponged her skin with it.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” she said, pulling me to her and giving me a hug. Then she just held me for the longest time.
From his crib in the bedroom, Eli began to cry.
“I’ll fetch him,” Mimi said, and was gone before Grandma had a chance to get out of her chair.
Mama took Eli from her when Mimi brought him into the kitchen. He wasn’t crying anymore. Mimi seemed to have a knack for calming him down.
“My sweet little guy,” Mama murmured, kissing his little face.
“Lily, you feel up to telling us about that call?” Grandma said.
Mama nodded. “Apparently this girl who called a bit ago, this Krista Collier from Iowa, she’s a pen pal I never knew Myra Sue had, and apparently they’ve been corresponding and talking on the phone for a while.”
“That’s what all that secret writing was about!” I hollered, interrupting Mama.
She looked at me. “All what secret writing?”
“When Myra said she was doing her homework, except I didn’t think she was. I think she was writing to that girl.”
“And she was writing these,” Mimi said, pulling from her pocket those crumpled pages we’d found under the bed.
Mama and Grandma looked at those letters, then Mama looked at me with a frown.
“You knew about this?”
“No, ma’am. I mean, not those letters, specifically. Mimi and I found them under Myra’s bed a little while ago. It’s just that every time I saw Myra Sue, she was writing. She’s never been all excited about homework, but suddenly she was, and it seemed plenty odd to me.”
“Why didn’t you say something to someone?” Grandma asked. She was frowning at me, too.
“Because . . . because I couldn’t prove she was doing anything other than homework, and no one else seemed to think the way she was acting was anything to worry about. Everyone just said she was going through a phase and would grow out of it. She wasn’t starving herself again. I had no idea she was writing to some girl in Iowa. And besides, she made me promise never, ever to say anything about it to you.”
“You should have told me anyway, April,” Mama said.
I knew if I had told them earlier, “Ole Myra is doing an awful lot of writing in her room,” they would’ve said, “Good! Your sister needs to study more and bring home better grades.” More than likely, they would’ve been proud that she was working so hard. They probably would’ve told me not to bother her. But I saw no benefit in being logical at that present moment, so I just kept my mouth shut.
“Well then, I guess maybe I should have spoken up earlier, too,” Mimi said, surprising everyone.
“What’s that?” Grandma gave her the dirty eyeball. “What do you know about all this, Sandra?”
Mimi sighed. “I really didn’t want to say anything.” She stopped right there.
“Say it, say it!” Grandma snapped.
“Well, I was hoping to get someone to take me to the store to buy some smokes last night, but when I went to get my purse, I noticed most of my money was missing out of it. Eighty dollars.”
Dead silence.
“I hope you’re not saying Myra Sue stole money from you,” Grandma said.
“Now, Grace, I did not say that.” Mimi spoke quietly, kindly.
“It sure sounds to me—”
“Bus tickets cost money,” Mama interrupted. “Myra Sue wouldn’t have had enough to buy one, even if she’d saved her allowance for a long time.”
“That’s for sure,” I blurted out, thinking about my own allowance.
Again, silence fell over us. Then Mama excused herself and went away from the table with Eli. She came back in a minute without the baby, but with her wallet in her hand.
“I had forty dollars in here,” she said. “It’s gone.”
“Maybe someone broke in,” Grandma said.
“And only stole one hundred and twenty dollars?” Mama said. She shook her head. “No. Myra Sue took it to buy a bus ticket.” It seemed like something got hold of Mama, and she started to shake again. “Oh my goodness, my little girl, out there somewhere, alone . . .”
Grandma went to her and cradled Mama against her while Mama cried some more. Mimi got up and went outside. She did not wear her coat and she did not take her cigarettes.
“Mama, you want some more of that calming tea?” I asked, wishing I knew what to do. I also wished I had been a big, fat tattletale.