The Girl in the Headlines

by Hannah Jayne

  “He came through the bathroom window,” I said by way of explanation. “I’m not going in there.”

  I expected him to argue or roll his eyes, but he didn’t. He simply sat me down on the bed and went into the bathroom himself. I heard the water running. When he came out, he pressed a warm washcloth to my forehead, and it released a starburst of pain that radiated down to my jaw. I gritted my teeth, vaguely surprised when they didn’t break.

  “So what happened?”

  “I hit a wall.”

  “I mean, overall.” Nate gently dabbed at my forehead, getting at the rapidly drying blood in my eyebrows and along my hairline.

  “I was asleep when I heard someone working the doorknob, trying to get in. Then he started kicking the door. I got my stick—”

  Nate’s eyebrows went up. “Your stick?”

  “Field hockey. My gear that I got from the car. I grabbed my stick and went to the door, but the guy went away. I thought maybe it was just someone drunk trying to get in the wrong room—”

  “And it still could have been.”

  “But then he came around through the bathroom window. It wasn’t some drunk, Nate. He was after me. He smiled when he saw me.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I hit him with my stick.”

  Nate smiled. “Good girl.”

  “Who was he, Nate? What do you think he wanted? I mean, he started chasing me. He wanted—he wanted to hurt me.” Again the realization that people were after me, that people had done me and my family harm crashed over me, and I felt the bile at the back of my throat. I was in danger. I hadn’t so much as been in trouble at school, and suddenly, the police wanted me, and a crazed man crawled through my bathroom window, ready to kill me. I sucked in a sharp breath. “Do you think it was him? The Tim guy?”

  Nate shrugged, and I wanted him to be certain. I wanted him to tell me it was definitely him and that the police would catch him and everything would be all right, but it was only a half-hearted shrug, and he went back to dabbing at my forehead, and I wanted to scream.

  Twenty-Three

  I was aching and broken when I woke up, curled at the edge of Nate’s spare bed. His bed was rumpled but empty, and there was a note propped against the lamp on the nightstand.

  In the office. Sorry it’s not Starbucks.

  There was a cellophane-wrapped Danish—this time apple—an orange that was mostly round, and a Styrofoam cup with a lid. There were at least half a dozen sugar packets and two of those little containers of creamer balanced on top of the cup. I removed the lid, sniffed at the black coffee, and took a sip. It was lukewarm and terrible. I dumped all the sugar and cream inside, sucked in a shaking breath, and turned on the television.

  I flipped through morning talk shows, my heart hammering with each click of the cheap remote. Which channel would have my face plastered all over it, the words fugitive, at large, or attempted murderer smeared across? But I had to watch. I had to know if there was any information on Josh.

  The local anchor was crouched in front of a puddle on the ground, talking about weather patterns and the upcoming storm. The lady on Channel 7 was earnestly talking about all the things in your refrigerator that could kill you, and the anchors on the national news channel were bouncing around in workout duds in Times Square talking about creative ways to get active. I felt a twinge of relief for the first time in twenty-four hours: I wasn’t on the news. People were already forgetting about me, the constant cycle of news spitting out new and uninteresting tidbits of information and non-news, and finally, I wasn’t part of it.

  I stepped in the shower, feeling a touch of lightness.

  Things could work out.

  Maybe I could even get some clothes somewhere, something other than my yoga-pants-and-T-shirt uniform that stunk of me and the Midnight Inn. Since my face hadn’t been on the news lately… My eyes went wide. I turned off the tap, stepped out of the shower. I swallowed hard and stared at my new self in the mirror. If I hadn’t been on the news, then neither had my parents and neither, I thought with a wave of nausea, had Josh. People would forget that there was a murderer on the loose, that my mom lay struggling to live in a hospital bed. People would forget that Josh was still missing.

  I didn’t care that people might also forget that I was the prime suspect, but the idea that the guy who killed my dad and tried to kill my mom might get away because of stupid workouts and a predictable weather pattern made my stomach ache. Were the cops already boxing them up? Had they already stopped looking for Josh? I didn’t know how long criminal investigations stayed open or active; I didn’t know what happened when a child went missing and wasn’t found immediately, but I knew none of it was good. I slumped on the bed. What was happening now?

  I stared at the phone on the nightstand for a good minute before picking up the receiver and listening to the dial tone. I could call the police. I could call the police and tell them that they needed to be doing a better job, that they needed to go find Josh.

  But the police traced calls.

  I wondered if the trace started immediately or if it took a while.

  My fingers hovered over the keypad. Would they know the call came from the motel? Would they ask at the front desk or know exactly what room? I glanced around Nate’s place, his little lived-in home, and I knew I couldn’t do that to him. Even if I was long gone by the time the police showed up, Nate would have to answer to them, and what would he even say? They might even throw him in jail for being on his own or somehow realize I made the call and torture him until he talked. I wouldn’t take anyone else down.

  I poked my head through the motel room door, narrowing my eyes so I could squint into the lobby where Nate was handing a set of keys to a family with two kids.

  By noon, I was pacing. By one o’clock, I was poking my head out the door, willing Nate to clock out so we could talk. By two, I was climbing the walls.

  “My God, I thought you’d never come back,” I said when Nate pushed open the door. “We need to find Josh.”

  Nate looked at the list. “Where do you want to start? I would rule out the mall, anything too public.”

  I pulled at my hair. “But I’m all disguised and mermaid-y. You said it yourself. Or we could do the clipboards again—”

  “Let’s just start over at his school, okay?”

  I sucked in a breath, wanting to tell Nate that we would start at the school and continue to cover every inch of ground, public or not, until we found my brother. Instead, I just pursed my lips into something resembling a smile, stashed a motel granola bar in my backpack, and stood up. “You ready?”

  It took almost forty minutes on the bus to get to the elementary school, and when we did, the place was deserted. I clapped a hand to my forehead. “I forgot. Early release day.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?”

  “If Josh was just hanging out at school, going to class, he wouldn’t be lost, would he? If he’s here, he’s probably hiding somewhere.”

  “If the saw cops him, he might run.” I bit my lip. “He probably thinks he’s in trouble.”

  “Why would he think he was in trouble? I thought you upper-class folks like the cops.”

  “We do.” I ignored the dig, “But I may have told Josh if he came in my room, I would call the cops, and they would arrest him and take him to jail.” I tried to smile.

  “Glad I didn’t have you for a big sister.”

  We crossed the mostly blacktop backgrounds in silence, then stepped onto the tanbark. “Do you have any siblings?” I asked.

  Nate shrugged. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  I peeked under the slide. “Isn’t that weird to you?”

  “What?”

  “You don’t even know anything about…about who could be in your family.”

  Another shrug from Nate, this one tight as
he turned his back, cupped his hands, and yelled, “Josh?” Then, “How much do you know about your family?”

  “Josh?” I whispered into a big yellow cement tube. “Joshy, are you in here?” No answer. “I know everything. My parents met in college—Berkeley. My mom was actually student teaching my dad’s—”

  “No.” Nate didn’t slow down, and I had to run to catch up to him. “Your real parents.”

  I felt a muscle flick in my jaw. “Mom and Dad are—”

  He pinned me with a stare.

  “My birth parents? Right.” I started looking around wildly for Josh, checking under bushes, spaces there was no way he could have squished himself into. “I guess not that much. My birth mother’s name was Rita.”

  “She still alive?”

  I straightened and frowned. “You think she’s dead?”

  “It’s just a question.”

  I could probably count the number of times on one hand that I’d thought about Rita. I thought about what she would think if she saw me at prom. I thought about how mortified I would be if she—a toothless druggie, I imagined—came to the Senior Night Parent Appreciation dinner. I had thought of her in the sixth grade when Mom wouldn’t let me shop at Victoria’s Secret to buy Pink underwear like all the other girls in the locker room had. I thought maybe Rita would have let me, but that was about it. I never thought about her dead.

  “I—I guess she’s still alive.”

  “Have any idea where?”

  I shrugged. “Here, I assume.”

  “And your dad?”

  I kicked the tanbark with the toe of my shoe. “I don’t really know much about him. I think I heard or found out he was serving a long sentence in San Quentin for drugs, but I could have made that up or seen a documentary on Netflix.”

  Nate smiled but rolled his eyes.

  “I don’t even have a name.” I stopped walking, and so did Nate. “Do you know your dad?”

  Nate looked at me like I should’ve known the answer, but I wanted to hear him say it. “You mean the sperm donor?”

  I felt my mouth drop open. “Really? You were an IVF baby?”

  Nate snorted. “Yes. My mother couldn’t afford Cup Noodles, but she was all about the baby in a baster. No, the sperm donor is my dad’s name, according to my mom.”

  “Good thing you didn’t take his last name.”

  Nate actually laughed. Hard. “You know what? You’re the funniest fugitive I know.”

  Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. “You’re hilarious. And this”—I held out my arms—“this is pointless.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The cops would have looked here. They would have knocked on doors in the neighborhood and, I don’t know, made the administration open the boiler room or something.”

  Nate slunk down on a bench, and I sat next to him. Our knees brushed, and I got that butterflies-in-my-stomach feeling again, then vaguely wondered if getting the feels in the middle of a murder investigation made me a psychopath.

  “It seems like the only way we’re going to find your brother is if we find out who took him.”

  I picked a leaf off the branch next to me and spun it between my forefinger and thumb. “Great. And topping the list of potential suspects is…no one.” I dropped the leaf and crushed it with the toe of my shoe. “So we’re right back where we started.”

  “Tell me everything you remember about your birth mom.”

  A picture of Rita shot through my mind. Faded, poufy ’90s hair. Denim jacket. Those fingernails—fluorescent pink and like claws.

  “She left me at a bus station when I was a baby, Nate. I really don’t think I’m tops on her mind.” Nate didn’t answer, and I sighed. “Not much, like I said. She was a druggie and maybe a prostitute.”

  “That’s all?”

  I counted off on my fingers. “Her name was Rita. She had bad hair.” I shrugged. “Jeez. I haven’t really thought about her in years. I guess that’s about all I know.”

  “Do you think she could have had something to do with this? Maybe her and your dad?”

  I snorted. “Rita couldn’t find her way to a McDonald’s ten years ago.” I refused to let myself acknowledge that she probably knew exactly where that stupid McDonald’s was and what she was avoiding was me. I didn’t expect it to still sting but it did, weirdly. “She pretty much dropped me like a hot potato and—”

  “Your dad?”

  I shrugged. “Once again, I don’t know him. I’d be surprised if Rita knew him. What I really know about her is she was a drug addict. She had me, and I think I was born addicted to drugs, but I can’t really remember if my mom told me that or I just made it up. I lived with Rita until I was three, I think. I think I was neglected or she went off to prison or probably both. It wasn’t too much later I met the McNultys. I saw Rita once, maybe twice after that. First with my social worker, then she skipped the McDonald’s meeting, and then once—”

  I was struck with a memory so visceral that I doubled over and groaned.

  “She came to one of my birthday parties.”

  “Huh?”

  “I was eight.” The memory was weirdly shaded, but little by little, like waking up from a dream, it started to solidify. “The party was at the park by our house. Unicorn themed, I think.”

  Nate chuckled, but I ignored him.

  Pink streamers danced from the trees, were draped over the pergola. Balloons, mountains of them, were strung up in arches and hearts, and unicorns—glittery ones with rainbow manes, silver-hoofed ones rearing back, one with a blue cotton candy tail—were everywhere: perched on tables, peeking through trees, poking out of the sea of glittering goodie bags on the table by the BBQ. I was grinning ear to ear, a half-toothless smile, and my mom was next to me, her belly straining as she balanced a cake and waddled to the table.

  “My mom was pregnant with Josh. Everyone was there—I mean, all my friends from school and ballet and gym.”

  Nate seemed supremely interested in checking under the slide for Josh, but I kept talking.

  “Anyway, there were picnic tables and hamburgers and hot dogs, and Lynelle was there, and I remember.” I pointed, even now, at a blank space across the park. “I saw her. Rita. She was in really short jean shorts and a T-shirt. She had a guy with her—just some random dude…”

  They were at the edge of the park, walking toward the party. Her shorts were dark, and so was her shirt, and I remember thinking, as they cleared the grass, that they were going to infect the beautiful airy pink of my party with their dark clothes, with Rita’s hair dyed an obvious blue-black. Her skin looked yellow in the too-bright sun with her too-black hair. I could see the spiderweb of purple veins on her arms as she held a gift in front of her: an enormous box wrapped in deep blue and tied with a bloodred bow.

  I don’t even look like her, I thought, moving closer to my mom—to my real mom, who had my baby brother inside her belly and who had brown hair like mine, a wide, easy smile, and nails that were trimmed and glossy. I could see Rita’s nails gripping the box she was carrying: long, clawlike, a funky neon green.

  “Maybe he was your dad?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. At least she didn’t introduce him that—”

  Another memory.

  Rita and the man closed the distance between us, and I dipped behind my mother, bunching the soft fabric of her T-shirt in my fists.

  “Don’t let her take me,” I whispered.

  “Honey?”

  “Don’t let her take me,” I said again, my voice small and garbled. I could feel the tears at the edges of my eyes. “Please. I belong here with you.”

  My mom’s eyes were soft, and she crouched down to be next to me and opened up her arms. “Oh, Andi, you’re not going anywhere, honey. You’re with us, your family. You’re right where you belong.”
/>   “So she came to your birthday party. Did she come to any other family events or anything? Was that a normal thing?”

  I shook my head, trying to think. “No. No, not at all. As a matter of fact, I think my dad asked them to leave.” I remembered crying. I remembered shrieking and hiding underneath a table, everyone at my beautiful birthday party looking from this woman to me, maybe trying to make the connection, maybe making the connection that I was hers.

  But I wasn’t.

  “Yeah. I remember my dad talking to them. Rita left the present, and she turned around. But the man… He left too—”

  But not right away.

  I was sitting under the table. The gravel was digging into the thin fabric of my shorts. The tablecloth rustled, and my head snapped up. He was under here with me. I scuttled back until my shoulder blades pressed against the table leg. He smiled.

  “We’ll see you real soon, cupcake.”

  Twenty-Four

  “I don’t know.” I shook my head. “I don’t think Rita could have gotten her shit together enough to do this. Besides, what would she gain? She obviously didn’t do it to get me back.” I laughed, but there was still a sting there. “Who knows? Maybe your dad did it.”

  “The sperm donor? It’s a distinct possibility. But I believe he’s a doctor at Mount Sinai Hospital who handles the pediatric Life Flight cases.”

  “Oh.”

  “Or he’s Steph Curry.”

  “You do bear a faint resemblance,” I lied.

  “And I have a hell of a dunk shot.” Our smiles faded, and Nate started to speak again. “What about your birth certificate? Do you have that?”

  I looked down at my yoga pants. “Obviously not.”

  “I mean in general. Do you have it at your house? Have you ever seen it?”

  I frowned. “No. I asked my mom for it when I was applying to colleges, but she never actually gave it to me. She filled out all that info herself.”

  “What about when you got your driver’s license?”

  I squinted my eyes. “She came with me. She handled all the paperwork. I just signed…”