The Girl in the Headlines

by Hannah Jayne

  Nate’s eyes flashed, and something fluttered in my stomach. Was my mom keeping my birth certificate away from me on purpose, or had I even really asked? She was my mom—she held on to important paperwork for me, not to keep it from me. Right?

  “Josh isn’t here. We should go somewhere else,” I said, standing.

  But Nate didn’t move.

  My eyes followed his to a police officer strolling up the walk. In real life, it wouldn’t have worried me. But now…my heart started to thud. The cop scanned the playground, his gaze noticeably slowing when he saw me and Nate. He blinked.

  All at once, there was a terrific flash of recognition on the cop’s face, and he was up the walk, making a beeline toward us.

  “Oh my God, Nate. What do we do?”

  Nate’s face was ashen, and I had never seen him stuck, out of ideas. I grabbed the arm of his sweatshirt and yanked, our feet kicking up dirt as we started to move. We cleared the hedge behind us and two rows of knee-high benches.

  My heart was clanging like a fire bell, my throat threatening to close.

  “Not now,” I muttered. “Not fucking now.”

  If the police were going to catch me, that was fine, I decided in a split second as I pushed passed the cafeteria, but not Nate. I wasn’t about to drag Nate down with me.

  “Out here!”

  Nate shouldered in front of me, and his hand dropped to mine. I clutched it, and we skirted the student entrance and found the lunch worker maze of behind-the-cafeteria dumpsters in the delivery lot. I was crying and sucking in air, begging my lungs to hold up. Nate and I hadn’t said anything to each other, but we ran together, a combined sprint from the school lot and across the freeway on-ramp until we were hidden by a patch of wild terrain, garbage, and discarded shopping carts.

  I doubled over, hands on knees.

  “Do you need your inhaler?”

  The look on Nate’s face was genuine and full of concern, and I wanted to kiss him, to throw my arms around him and feel his heart thud against mine right there on the gross on-ramp with the tears streaming down my face and everyone else in my life dead or gone. I wanted to stop time and live in this moment where someone cared, really cared about me, about whether I was going to live or die or go to jail or ever find justice for my family.

  I didn’t stop myself.

  I threw my arms around Nate, crushing my chest against his, and cried into his neck, the warm thud of his pulse pounding against my lips.

  “What am I going to do, Nate? Where am I going to go?”

  Nate didn’t answer. His arms just tightened around me, and I slumped against him. Desperate, alone, but feeling strangely and sadly whole for the first time in days.

  Twenty-Five

  I straightened and cleared my throat. “I’m sorry about… Maybe you should just go back to the motel, Nate. I’m only going to get you in trouble.”

  “Wouldn’t be my first brush with the law…”

  “Once this is all over, remind me to get your life story.”

  Nate’s eyes brightened. “There, that’s what I’m looking for!”

  I cocked an eyebrow. “What?”

  “Hope. You said ‘once this is all over.’”

  I smiled even though I didn’t feel it.

  “Two minutes ago, you didn’t even know what you were going to do, where you were going to go.”

  I turned, watching the traffic whiz by, the ebb and flow of cars ticking onto the highway, stopping at the metering light, heading off to homes or jobs or dates or restaurants or whatever. Heading off to lives.

  “I know where I’m going,” I said finally.

  Nate’s eyebrows went up expectantly.

  “Home. I’m going home.”

  “It’s a crime scene, Andi. Are you sure? I mean, it’s the crime scene.”

  I didn’t know if the mental block in my head was there to be helpful or harmful, but I was consumed with an overwhelming need to be home, in my home, where I knew the carpets and the drapes and the half-inch nick in the dining room table from when I decided to use an X-Acto knife to cut Play-Doh and that there was an amoeba-shaped root beer stain on the underside of the third couch cushion.

  “I know the place like the back of my hand. It’s my house.”

  “The police have probably tossed it pretty well—”

  “It’s my house, Nate. If they’ve missed anything, I’ll know.”

  Nate shrugged. “I’m coming with.”

  I was actually surprised. “Yeah?”

  He slung a casual arm across my shoulders. “Sure. I’ve always wanted to see how you fancy poodles live.”

  I stuck out my tongue at him and tried my best to get caught up in the two-teenagers-strolling-along façade, but dread was welling in my gut. In the same moment, I wanted to search our house from top to bottom, examine every inch with a magnifying glass, and run as far from that split-level coffin as my legs could carry me. This wasn’t my life. This wasn’t me.

  But I was getting more comfortable with the me I was becoming.

  * * *

  Nate and I cut along the frontage road behind our housing development, the fading light helping to keep us covert.

  “So do you really think it could have been a robbery gone wrong?” I asked.

  “Do you really think it could have been your Ken doll boyfriend in the letterman jacket?”

  “Not my boyfriend.”

  I thought of Cal again, of the sinister look in his eyes when he shoved me, of the blank look in his eyes when he saw me at school. “He didn’t react at all when he saw me. I would have thought… I don’t know, something. But there were robberies in the neighborhood. Four in the last two months. Some were pretty close to the house.”

  Nate blew out a sigh. “I know about those, and all the previous robberies followed a similar pattern. Break-in while no one was home, in and out quickly. I mean, maybe if the perp encountered your parents? I don’t know though. It doesn’t seem like the robberies were getting progressively worse. You know, more brazen.”

  I didn’t know. I didn’t know what brazen meant when it came to robberies, and I didn’t know why someone would want to break into our house. If you looked in the front window, you’d see a couch with an ugly flower print, a coffee table, and some weird statue that my mom claimed was modern art but that Josh and I thought was dried Play-Doh in the vague shape of a flower.

  A shot of electricity bolted across my forehead, and I winced, crying out.

  “Are you okay?”

  I was pressing my palms on either side of my head, eyes clenched shut against the needling pain. The sitting room—the one I’d just been thinking about—was imprinted on my brain, and I couldn’t tell if it was a static picture or a memory. I could hear voices, murmured, some I recognized, some I didn’t, but the whole thing felt very familiar, very real, like it was somewhere that I was, that I had been, rather than just a random flash. And as fast as the needling pain and the weird image started, it was gone again. I shuddered.

  “That was weird. Like a two-second headache.” I blinked, the image of the front room a negative in front of my eyes. I blinked again, seeing the outline of the couch, the two chairs, the coffee table. It looked like people were sitting in the room, but we hardly ever used it. “Weird,” I said again, shaking my head.

  “Look, I don’t think whoever is hitting neighborhood houses did this. And that jerk from school? That’s a lot for one guy. I mean, how did he get you and Josh off the premises, and why did he bring you to the Midnight Inn? What would he gain from framing you?”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. The first one was like the yip of a snappy dog, and then the peals of laughter—hysterical, unstoppable—shook my shoulders while tears rolled down my cheeks. This was a kid, using big, stupid, TV-cop words while we tried to stay hidden along a frontage r
oad on our way to breaking in to a crime scene. I was about to accuse my prom date of attacking my family, of dragging me to a motel and dumping my little brother somewhere.

  This wasn’t real life. It couldn’t be.

  “What’s so funny?”

  I was crying now, too, laughing so hard I could barely breathe and hiccuping. When I was able, I pointed to Nate. “You. Were you kicked out of the police academy or something? Raised by cops?”

  At that, Nate’s eyes flashed, and I felt like an ass. He had confided about his mom but only joked about his dad, so I assumed there probably really wasn’t one.

  I wiped tears from my eyes and pulled myself up. “It’s just that you seem to know a lot about cops and crime and…the words they use.”

  “You saying you’ve never watched an episode of Law & Order?”

  “You just…know a lot is all.”

  Nate’s eyes were on mine, and once again, I could tell he was considering how much he should tell me. “Back when my mom… The first time she took off, I went to the police.”

  I steered him around a corner. “Why? I mean, if she ran off, why would you go to the police?”

  Nate shook his head, his eyes going distant. “Because she didn’t run off. She—” He smiled, a forced, rubbery smile that was wholly unconvincing. “You know what? We need to be focusing on you and your family right now.”

  I put my hand on his arm. “No, please. I want to know. If you don’t mind.”

  “She had been hanging out with this guy. My mom—my mom is an awesome lady, but she has absolute crap taste in men. Piss-poor. And this guy was no exception. They went out for dinner—I think I was about twelve or thirteen—and she didn’t come home after. Or the next day or the next night.”

  “And you were only twelve?”

  Nate shrugged. “Something like that. Anyway, long story short, I went to the police to report her missing. They seemed real interested until they heard her name. Like I said, my mom’s a real awesome woman, but her decision-making skills aren’t great. She’d been arrested a few times, even dated some cops. So once they heard it was her, they wouldn’t even take the report.”

  I could feel my eyes bulge. “What? Why?”

  “Because they said she wasn’t missing. That they knew her and this was just part of her MO. They thought they knew my mom better than I did. Assholes. They didn’t care that this guy was a prick, that he had gotten her into all this weird shit with crystals and healing powers and talking about a freaking cult he wanted us to go live at. They didn’t give a shit. They said they would look into it, but you know what they did? They shipped me off to juvie.”

  “Juvie? But you didn’t do anything wrong!”

  “They said it was for my own safety because there weren’t any foster families available—even though I had a damn family of my own, my mom—and because there were no openings at the county facility. So they locked me up in juvie with these damn criminals while this, this asshole had my mom. And they wouldn’t even go out looking for her because they said she’s basically a runaway. She wasn’t a fucking runaway. She was a mom.”

  I could hear the ache in Nate’s voice, a low growl tinged with anger.

  “So what happened?”

  “I ran away. They had me in the office doing stuff there during the day because I wasn’t a threat, so one day, I just walked out. Hitched a ride home, found my mom.”

  I was incredulous. “Where was she?”

  “At home, on our couch, beaten to within an inch of her life.”

  Twenty-Six

  My stomach folded in on itself, and I thought I was going to be sick. “What?”

  “The guy—the asshole she was with—beat her up when she tried to leave.” Nate smiled faintly. “But my mom is really strong. She got away, and she was going to come and find me when she got better.”

  I smiled even though I wanted to grit my teeth, to scream that Nate’s mom was a terrible person who probably did run off with the crystal guy since she was currently off with some other guy. But I could see the pull she had on Nate, and I kept quiet.

  “So you learned a lot of police words?”

  “And procedures. I worked in the juvie office for six days and spent two weeks before that trying to get the police to give a damn. I kind of learned the way cops talk. And what they’re willing to do.”

  “That’s why you don’t trust them?”

  “That’s why I know that if you go to the police with whatever information you have and whatever proof you have, they’re going to put it aside and focus on their number one most likely suspect.”

  “Me.”

  Nate nodded.

  “But if they throw me in jail, they’ll be able to focus on finding Josh, so that could be a good thing. And if I have to go to jail to make sure Josh is okay—”

  Nate snorted. “You really think that’s how it works? That they’ll lock you up and throw themselves into looking for Josh? Here’s the thing: they think you did it. They think you were capable of nearly killing both your parents and doing something to your kid brother. If you show up without him, you know what they’re going to do?”

  I was too scared to answer.

  “They’re going to spend all their time getting you to talk. Getting you to tell them where Josh’s body is.”

  I felt like I was kicked in the gut, like every bone in my body had turned to liquid. “His body?”

  “After forty-eight hours…”

  “They’d have to look at other possibilities. Cal or…or the woman who came to visit my mom! I could tell them about her. They’d have to look at that, right?”

  “They didn’t with my mom, and she almost died.”

  “But—”

  “Serving and protecting? The letter of the law? Cops around here are more eager to solve a crime—whether or not they got the right guy—and close the book. It’s in the papers, they look like heroes, and who cares if you rot in jail?”

  I couldn’t believe what he was saying. I didn’t want to, but there was a ring of truth, a ring of finality to it that I couldn’t avoid. And he had been there. My only run-in with the cops had been the one time Lynelle and fifty or sixty of our closest friends had thrown an impromptu party at an old drive-in theater. And even then, I hadn’t been face-to-face with a cop; Lynelle and I were sitting in my car, idling to get into the party, when a stern-looking guy with a mustache that took up half his face jabbed his finger toward us and then toward the exit and screamed something like “Back the way you came!”

  Cal was at that party too.

  That was back when I pined for him. I remember his big hand wrapping around a beer can, and I thought about that hand gripping my wrist, maybe hurting my mom.

  “You okay?” Nate asked.

  Images flashed in my head at a thousand speed. Cal. Nate’s mom, bloodied and bruised. The cops leading Nate off to juvie. Me rotting in prison while no one looked for Josh.

  “I guess I’m on my own then, huh?”

  “Almost.” Nate offered a half smile, his cheeks tinting a faint pink.

  I stopped on the next corner, a row of my neighbors’ houses in view. I ran my fingers through my hair and sucked in an aching breath, and suddenly I was overwhelmed—by the night, by Nate, by the houses, by everything.

  “This is big. It’s all too…big. Like I’m supposed to be worrying about finals and stupid grades and stuff and not—” It was like a fist to my gut that tore my soul in half. My house. Blood spattered. Hands up in front of my mom’s face. Her eyes, darting, terror-stricken. I felt—I felt—

  I rubbed my forearms.

  I felt her blood on my skin.

  Hot, like pinpricks, then fiery trickles down my skin as if her blood were burning into my flesh.

  I was there. I was right there.

  Twenty-Seven

 
“Oh God…”

  “What?”

  I pinched my forehead. “Whatever happened, I was there. I was there, Nate, in the room. I—I feel it.”

  Nate nodded but kept silent.

  “I could see her.” I put one arm up in front of my face, my head naturally falling toward my shoulder.

  Did I scream?

  I felt the guttural sound tear from my throat. My fingers were bending, clawing.

  Was I hitting her or defending her?

  Was I behind Cal’s shoulder as he reared back, as he set to hit?

  I sank down again, closing my eyes hard against the wave of nausea and the knife blade scraping against my skull.

  Who was screaming? Was it me? Was it Mom? I spun around and I saw—

  “Open your eyes,” I heard myself hiss.

  “Andi?”

  I felt the jolt to my chest. Something sharp and hard—an elbow, maybe, the end of a weapon? And I was sliding backward, my feet trying to gain purchase, but it was so slippery, and where was Josh? I opened my mouth to yell for Josh, to yell for Mom, to beg for Dad—didn’t I?

  I felt my head hit the tile floor all over again, and my eyes flew open, wet with memory and fear and an abysmal feeling of failure or—God, please don’t let it be evil. Don’t let it be something that was borne in my veins and waited…

  “Let’s just go back—”

  Nate had my arm, was almost picking me up, but I stopped him, could feel the fear coursing through my veins. “What if it was me, Nate?”

  Nate started to shake his head, his brown eyes wild. “I don’t even really know you, but I don’t think you’re capable—”

  My bio mom was a drug addict and a thief. My bio dad—who knows? A murderer, a rapist? I couldn’t help but look at my hands, at the veins bulging in my wrists. Was I evil? Was it in me?

  “No. We have to get in the house. I have to see what’s in there.”

  * * *

  “That one,” I said. “That’s my house.”

  I expected something to overtake me when I saw the house. Something like longing or recognition or fear or just—memory. But there was nothing. I peeked over the fence. Josh’s bike was abandoned on the back lawn. The half-deflated basketball hoop was faded and heaped in the corner by the hose. The pool water was flat and black, eerily still.