The Girl in the Headlines

by Hannah Jayne

  Nate laughed harder than he should have. “And leave all this?” He held his arms out to the palace that was the Midnight Inn, with its MDF furniture and faux wood paneling.

  “Well, this is a particularly fine establishment. But if you went to college, you could get a better job and live in a better motel. Maybe one where the wood isn’t stick-on.” I peeled a long strip of “wood grain” from the nightstand, and he slapped it back on.

  “I did some junior college. It was tight, though, and not that interesting. Full of stupid people too.”

  Now it was my turn to laugh. “Stupid people in college?”

  “It was basically glorified high school. A day care center before those idiots get out into the real world.”

  “So you’re anti-junior college.”

  Nate was quiet for a moment. “My perception of you is that you don’t know what the real world is. Because it sure as hell isn’t college, where you get a meal plan and they assign you a room and a bed, and finals and pledging Gamma-whatever-my-ass are the biggest worries you have.”

  I felt a little bit stung but shrugged. “So this is the real world?”

  “Yep. It’s ugly. It stinks sometimes. You have to work for every dollar if you’re one of us, work for every damn thing. Every time I walk in a store, the clerks think I’m stealing.”

  “You are.”

  Nate snorted. “Not all the time.”

  “So why do you do it? Why are you still here if life is so rotten and”—I pinched a discarded sock between my forefinger and thumb and tossed it onto the floor—“smelly?”

  Now Nate smiled, and I saw that it was wide and genuine. “Because it’s also great and awesome to be alive. To be alive and invisible.” He stretched his arms and then tucked them behind his head. He was still smiling, but now I could see a hint of sadness there.

  “You’re not invisible,” I told him. “I see you.”

  There was a beat of awkward silence between us, and if this were a movie, the music would start to play, and we would lean in for a long, slow kiss. I needed to break the moment, so I looked around and told him, “You know, you’ve got pretty great maid service around here. Why don’t you let her in once in a while?”

  “Maid service isn’t part of my contract.”

  “So you don’t even get the chocolates on your pillow?”

  Nate screwed up his eyebrows. “What do you mean chocolates on the pillow? Where are you staying, girl, the Ritz?”

  “No,” I laughed. “Here. Tonight. There was a chocolate on my pillow after the maid came.”

  Nate was silent, his face slightly ashen. “I’m pretty sure our maid doesn’t actually even wash the sheets. I know for a fact that she doesn’t leave chocolates on anyone’s pillow.”

  Twenty-One

  My mouth went dry. “What? But…” It felt like the chocolate was still there, lodged in my throat—maybe poisoning me or slowly killing me while we talked.

  “Let me see it.”

  “Uh…” My stomach roiled.

  “You ate it.”

  “It was chocolate. On my pillow.” I pressed my hands against my belly, sure I was going to vomit. I stood on shaky knees. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  Nate stood up behind me, tried to steady me with a hand on my elbow. “Are you sure?”

  I sighed. “No. But what if I’ve been poisoned, Nate! What if I—”

  I wanted to panic, but part of me sparked at the idea of swallowing poison, of lying down and closing my eyes and letting darkness wash over me, this whole story finally over.

  “No,” I spat. “I’m not leaving Josh. I’m not giving up. Even if I’m”—I gagged—“dying.”

  “Good.” Nate handed me a glass of something, and I gulped it down.

  “What is this? It’s awful. Some sort of antidote?”

  “It’s orange Crush. Flat. Do you think I’m some sort of mad scientist?” He sat back on the bed. “Maybe I’m wrong and the maid really did leave the chocolate. Could be part of our new upgraded service.”

  I knew Nate was lying but I didn’t care. I was already a wanted woman and a fight starter; I couldn’t take being the victim of a poisoning too.

  “Let’s talk about Josh.”

  We sat on opposite beds, and once I was mostly sure I wasn’t going to writhe with a poison-induced death rattle, Nate offered to order us a pizza, and I agreed. When it finally came, I thanked him meekly and inhaled a piece.

  Nate started. “So the police don’t really know that Josh was taken.”

  “That’s what they keep saying.”

  “Yeah, but unless there’s more information that they’re not telling the public—and there probably is—they’re just assuming that he was taken.”

  I wanted that to be good news, but it only weighed heavier on my gut.

  “So what are we supposed to do about that?”

  Nate rolled over on his bed and snatched a notepad and pen from the nightstand drawer. He handed them to me.

  “This pad of paper is from the Motor Lodge on Community Parkway.”

  “I get around.”

  “To motels…”

  He nudged my shoulder. “Just make a list of the places your kid brother liked to go. Everything you can think of.”

  “Everything?”

  He nodded. I thought for a second, and the lump in my throat rose again. The tears were threatening to fall, but I gritted my teeth. “This is for Joshy,” I muttered to myself. “You need to hold it together for him.”

  The pen started moving.

  I wrote down every place Josh and I had ever gone, every single place I could think of where he said anything like, “This is cool!” or “I like it here.” I wrote down:

  • the mall (esp the Disney Store)

  • Chuck E Cheese (but we only went there once)

  • the park on Asbury and the park on Lowell

  • Starbucks

  • the library

  • Disneyland

  • San Diego beach

  • the Grove Market

  • Safeway

  • the guitar store

  • my practice field

  • Todd’s house, Alan’s house, Becca’s house (because they have a pool, not because he likes Becca)

  “Like this?” I showed Nate the list, and he studied it, nodding.

  “Little kid got around.”

  “Not by himself,” I said.

  Nate pulled the pen out of my hand and drew lines through Todd, Alan, and Becca’s houses. “We know that he won’t be there, because their parents would have already said something to the police. And Disneyland”—he stopped to draw a line—“and San Diego beach are out, because he’d have to get on a plane or hitch for way too many miles.”

  I nodded like I was paying attention, but all I could think of was Josh alone, out there somewhere, trying to thumb a ride or get on a plane or get back to me or our parents.

  I silently prayed that he didn’t know what happened to our parents, that whoever had him or wherever he’d gone, he was blissfully ignorant.

  Without looking at me, Nate reached over and squeezed my hand. It wasn’t romantic, more like a show of solidarity or understanding, and I swallowed down those tears that were always threatening to fall.

  “We can definitely check out the other places, but I don’t have a ton of hope on those. I mean, it’s been a whole day now. You’d think some employee would find him if he’s been hiding out in the ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese, right?” Nate smiled, and I thought about little Josh, only eyebrows showing as he wriggled deeper and deeper into a sea of multicolored balls.

  “Maybe he’s hiding in Cinderella’s castle in the Disney Store?”

  “Nah. I’ve never met him, but I feel like Josh would be more of a Buzz Lightyear kin
d of guy. Am I right?”

  I smiled because he was right, and I remembered Josh in his Buzz Lightyear pajamas, the ones with the feet and the big zipper up the front, but he said they were not babyish because the feet were actually moon boots. Then he started taking giant marching steps and telling me how he was walking on the moon and that it was nice but had “no atmosphere.” We both laughed, him because I was laughing, me because I knew he didn’t understand his own joke.

  “My God, Nate, what if they have him?” There was a choke in my voice, and I couldn’t bear the thought of Josh being scared or cold or lost or confused. “What if he’s with my dad’s murderer?”

  “We’ll find him.”

  I wanted to nod and feel as confident as Nate was, but I felt like I was in a hole, and the sunlight above me was being blocked out little by little as someone—Lynelle, the world, the police—bricked me in.

  “I need to go back to my house.”

  “We’ve already been over this. The police are probably still crawling around, and if not them, the media will be.”

  I shook my head. “Then I’ll dodge them. I’ll go in the middle of the night or, I don’t know, dress up like a plumber or a cactus or something. But I’m going.”

  “Why do you even need to go there?”

  “I don’t know—for clues.”

  “You know the police have already pawed through that place, top to bottom.”

  “I don’t care. They could have missed something. They don’t know—they didn’t know how we lived.”

  Nate got up and started to pace. “I guess we could do that. Maybe you could get some clothes or some money or something?”

  “Yeah, whatever. I just—we need to go.”

  Nate looked out the window. “Not now. It’s late. You need to get some sleep.”

  I was so zoned out and exhausted that I didn’t think about the chocolate on my pillow or how it got there. I forgot to be frightened that someone must have left it for me. I unlocked my door and fell into my bed, clothes on, smeared makeup and all.

  Twenty-Two

  I was asleep in my crappy little motel room when it woke me up. For a blissful three seconds, I thought I was in my room at home, completely engulfed in my fat down comforter, until my brain and eyes adjusted and I realized where I was, that the phone on my nightstand wasn’t my phone or my nightstand at all. It was the remote control, and it was fastened there in this gross dingy room, and the sound that woke me? It happened again, and I sat upright. I willed my heart to stop thumping, tried to hold the breath that seemed to rip through my lungs and thunder through the room.

  Someone was trying the door.

  It was locked and bolted, but I didn’t trust either to hold. I tried to run. I tried to get out of the covers and pull on my shoes and head for the bathroom, maybe to vault out the window, but I couldn’t move. I was rooted there, just like that goddamn remote control, glued to that spot on this bed with my eyes wide and sweat breaking out all over my body.

  Time’s up.

  It had to be him. It had to be him coming to murder me, too, or take me somewhere to do horrible things to me. There were two large thumps against the door, and I could see the yellow lights as the door bowed just slightly. Finally, something inside me shook loose, and I was on my feet, tucking my shoes under my arm. I was panting and Tim—or Cal—was out there pounding, and suddenly it stopped, and the silence was deafening.

  I grabbed my field hockey stick and held it with a death grip, ready to lop off a head, while I pushed the curtains aside, just barely, to look out the window. There was no one out there—just a long, desolate outdoor corridor splotched with ugly yellow lights every six feet or so.

  Had I imagined him?

  No.

  You were asleep. You must have been dreaming.

  No.

  Heart thundering, stick gripped so hard my palm throbbed, I unlocked the top lock and the dead bolt and pushed the door open a half inch.

  “Hello?” I said, my voice a hoarse whisper. “Is anyone there?”

  No answer.

  I stepped outside, my bare feet freezing on the concrete, snapping my head back and forth. “Hello?” I said again, feeling like every horror movie victim ever.

  You were dreaming.

  Relief washed through my every limb, and I felt a whoosh of cold as the wind whipped over me, the sweat drying on my neck.

  And then I saw the footprint.

  A black smear against the white paint, a shoe print where someone had kicked the door. It hadn’t been there before.

  Had it?

  The place wasn’t what I’d call clean, but I would have noticed a gigantic boot smudge against the door, wouldn’t I?

  I stepped back into my room and was working the locks when I heard the clattering in the bathroom. I was sure it was the mirror falling or the cheap fake wood shelf above the toilet that stored the extra towels and my hair dye. I dragged my stick again and inched toward the bathroom. I came face-to-face with a man twice my size with shoulders that nearly filled up the full open doorway. He smiled, and adrenaline rushed through me, and my stick was in the air, my grip so hellaciously tight that I felt the instant the wood hit his forehead. The vibration went up my arm and stopped at my shoulders as I dragged the stick down his face, his nose exploding with cherry-red blood.

  The smile went to a bared-teeth growl, and the man grabbed my stick. He gave it a tug, and I knew I should let go, but I couldn’t, and I went vaulting forward, my head crashing against the wall. I slid down, my body deadweight as it hit the thin carpet, and I thought I heard my bones crack. He leaned down to grab my leg, and I kicked out with full force, kicking and spitting and clawing at the carpet. My nails broke and flipped off, my fingertips rubbing raw as I dragged myself to my feet and just out of his reach.

  “Hey!” His voice was gruff and raw, and I couldn’t stop running. I was undoing the locks with fingers that wouldn’t work as he tripped over my field hockey stick, righting himself just as I pulled the door and saw the first blessed streaks of light.

  I was running, and ice was breaking in my chest, piercing my lungs. I was also crying and barefoot and—

  “Andi?”

  Nate jumped aside, and I ran into his room and slammed the door, looking frantically for something to push against it. “Lock it, lock it!” I screamed.

  He did and I pulled the curtains, sank low onto the floor, crawled into a dark corner, and drew all my limbs in, making myself as small as possible.

  “Andi, what’s going on? I heard—”

  “He’s out there, Nate.” My voice was a tense hiss. “Shh! He’ll hear you. Come away from the window.”

  Nate slowly crouched down just as a figure crossed in front of the curtains. “That’s him. That’s him.” I was whispering and rocking myself and scared to death, a weird numb feeling wrapping up my whole body.

  “Did he do this to you?”

  I nodded, finally remembering the thunk against the wall, the way my forehead split open. The blood was dripping into my eye now, and I recoiled from the sting.

  “Who was it?” Nate asked gently. “Did you recognize him?”

  I shook my head no, my body racking with silent sobs.

  Nate went to the window again, and I didn’t have the energy to stop him. I wanted to tell him to crouch, to be careful, but I had no words, so I just watched, wide-eyed, while he pushed the curtains over an inch and did a sweeping gaze.

  “I don’t think he’s out there anymore.”

  I’d seen too many horror movies where the murderer stayed silent, holding his breath right outside the closet door, machete in hand, to let Nate open the door. I crawled across the floor and threw myself against his legs, knocking him to the floor.

  “What—?”

  I was on top of him, my heart thundering against his. I pushe
d my shaking finger to my lips, and Nate complied, nodding. I don’t know how long we lay like that, but it seemed like centuries. Eventually, we heard footsteps, a car door slamming, an engine revving. Only then did I inch off Nate and onto the floor while he crouched, peered out the window.

  “Don’t see anyone out there.”

  He pulled open the door, and I fit myself between the bed and the wall, too scared to think of the disgusting things on the bunched-up comforter that was half hiding me.

  Nate stepped outside, and I was frightened all over again, waiting for the swishing sound of the knife that beheaded him or the machete that cut him in two. It took exactly six seconds for him to step out and look up and down the hall. In those six seconds, I was sure he was dead, which meant I would be too, and I started to crawl, everything suddenly aching: my torn-up fingers, my bruised knees, the throbbing headache behind my right eye.

  “We need to get you cleaned up.”

  I was so overjoyed to see Nate that I jumped up, and even though my muscles protested, I threw my arms around him, my body melting into his. He was stiff and awkward at first, arms pinned to his sides, but then he softened, his arms snaked around my waist, and he held me too. I couldn’t help it. I started to cry.

  This time, he didn’t pat me like an animal or say anything. He just held me and let me cry, my face buried in his T-shirt. When I’d cried every last tear, I sniffled and stepped back.

  “I’m sorry. I was so worried. I thought you were dead.”

  “You fought off some dude and you were worried about me? You are a little messed up, aren’t you?” His voice was soft and kind, and the way he smiled sent heatwaves all through me, even though I’d just fought for my life and I was in a cheesy motel room with a near stranger in his boxer shorts.

  My cheeks burned.

  “You’re in your underwear.”

  Nate nodded. “You’re staring.”

  “I’m just—I mean…”

  He smiled again. “I was sleeping. Let me just—” He pulled on a pair of sweatpants and took my hand, leading me toward the bathroom. I stopped about five feet away, certain another brute was about to clatter through the window and snatch me up.