The Girl in the Headlines

by Hannah Jayne

  I hadn’t thought of that, and now I was overwhelmed. Just seeing that he was alive and had checked into a game sent me soaring, but the idea that I could catch him online and maybe even message him?

  “If that’s even him on the account.”

  I snarled. “It’s his account.”

  Nate was patient. “But it might not be him who logged on to it, okay? I just don’t want you to get your hopes up.” Nate squeezed my hand, and I snatched it away from him.

  “Thanks,” I said between gritted teeth.

  I went back to the room, sat on the bed, and turned the iPad back on every thirty minutes. Then every hour until my eyelids got heavy. At close to two a.m. Nate came through the door, and I clicked the iPad on with my bare toe.

  HSOJ was now the top scorer, the timestamp twenty-three minutes after one.

  “He was there,” I said breathlessly. “He was on again. I just missed him.” My heart was thrumming, but my eyelids were so, so heavy. I fell asleep clutching the iPad.

  * * *

  Sunlight was barely filtering through the curtains when I woke up. Nate was awake in his bed, iPad on his lap. I gaped.

  “What are you doing? Stop. You’re going to wear out the battery, and I didn’t bring the charger.” I got up and snatched the tablet from him.

  “I was helping you,” Nate said slowly. He thumbed the iPad awake, touched the Minecraft app. I gasped. High Score: HSOJ.

  And right under that, IDNA<3.

  I cried, pulling Nate into a hug. “He’ll recognize that, Nate, I know he will. Good thinking, and thank you.”

  Nate shrugged. “It was either that or SUCKYBIGSISTERA.”

  I punched him softly on the shoulder. “It was MYBIGSISTERSUCKS, but thanks for going with the first one.”

  “It’s just—”

  “Nate, he’s on!”

  “What?”

  “Josh! Josh’s account is activated. He’s just logged in.” Nate grabbed me, and we both sat down on the bed. I licked my lips, my heart thudding. “I don’t even know how to play this game.”

  Nate handed me the iPad and grabbed his laptop off the table. I heard him clicking away, and then a bubble popped up on my screen.

  IDNA<3 would like to play with you. Accept?

  The cursor on my screen moved, accepted IDNA<3’s request. I watched, mesmerized as the little writing bubble writhed, and then the word Hi popped up. Nate looked over his shoulder and grinned. I sat next to him, nudging him out of the way and grabbing the keyboard.

  IDNA<3: Hi back.

  HSOJ: Want2 play?

  IDNA<3: Not really my sport.

  HSOJ: U like stix.

  I squealed. “That’s Josh, that’s Josh for sure!”

  IDNA<3: Where RU? Safe?

  HSOJ: Dontno. Y?

  IDNA<3: I’ll find u. I promise.

  HSOJ: Theyr back.

  Player HSOJ has logged off.

  “No! Josh!” I slammed the keys, hitting the Refresh button at least a dozen times before Nate took the iPad from me and closed his laptop. I fell into him, my heart breaking all over again.

  “That was him, Nate. That was him! Whoever has him was coming back! What if they take his iPad? What if they hurt him? We have to go now. We have to go find him now.”

  “Shh, shh,” Nate whispered into my hair. “I don’t know what we can do.”

  I pointed at the laptop. “Can’t you trace him or whatever? You know, the iPad pinging, wouldn’t his computer or iPad or whatever ping too? Find it! Just look it up.”

  “Andi, I’m sorry. I don’t know how to do that. I don’t even know what kind of device he’s on.”

  I opened the iPad and clicked on the app again.

  IDNA<3: Are you there? Are you there, Josh?

  My heart clanged like a fire bell, the tears rolling down my cheeks. I couldn’t have had him and then lost him. I couldn’t take that cruel joke.

  “He’s not answering, Nate.” I sniffed.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What if he’s—”

  “We’ll just try again, okay? In an hour. Maybe Josh started to recognize the pattern,” he said hopefully.

  “He’s nine. He’s probably terrified.”

  “Yeah, but theoretically, the people who have him gave him access to some sort of device with internet. They’re either decent people or stupid people.”

  “What kind of decent people take a child?” I asked miserably. “God, Nate, I’m his big sister. I was supposed to protect him. I told him I would always protect him”

  “This isn’t your fault, Andi.” Nate’s voice was stern, and I blinked. “You didn’t do any of this. I know that now. I know you. We’re going to work it out.”

  I wasn’t sure we would work it out, but I appreciated the sentiment. I wanted to believe everything that Nate said, that there were people who could help and that Josh wasn’t in immediate danger and that we could find him. But all I could think about was what a failure I was, a teen fugitive and runaway who let her little brother get swept up by a murderer or dumb people. That maybe Josh had seen the news and believed what they said about me, and maybe he was hiding from me as much as I was hiding out from the world.

  “Promise me we’ll find him, Nate. Promise me.”

  Nate slipped his arms around me, resting his cheek on my knees. “I don’t know how, but I promise you we will.”

  Thirty-Three

  Later that morning, I was back in the newspaper.

  Though it had only been three days, Nate and I had fallen into a quiet routine. He’d wake up in the morning and station himself at the front desk; I would creep out of the room like the fugitive I was, staying against walls as if there was a firing squad everywhere and sneaking into the lobby with its fake plastic camera and plethora of day-old breakfast indulgences. He would busy himself with something like stacking newspapers or tossing the apples that had gone soft from the basket while I gobbled down a pouchful of mini muffins and drank thick orange juice from a machine. We’d nod at each other politely like acquaintances do, the whole thing a show that no one was watching but made me feel better. If I were to get caught and thrown in jail—either for murder or for squatting in a cheap motel—I didn’t want to bring him down with me.

  Today, though, my eyes went right to him when he stopped what he was doing, hastily stacked the rest of the newspapers, and laid a lone Newsweek on top. I jutted my chin.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. Why?” Nate was way too chipper, way too eager to bite into one of the mealy apples he usually tossed.

  “You seem jittery.”

  Nate thumbed over his shoulder to the enormous coffee mug that lived on his desk. “Too much bad coffee.” A satisfying smile.

  “And you’re hiding the newspapers.”

  “They don’t sell well. I mean, what even is news anymore, am I right?”

  I felt the breath feather in my lungs. “Let me see.”

  “It’s just Kardashians and Trumps and—”

  I snatched a thin paper. “And me.”

  I was there on the front page, a black-and-white picture of me cut out from the field hockey group photo. I’m not really smiling, because that was the photo where we all decided to look tough and fierce, the photo we posted so that other teams would step back and our school would know we meant business. All together, we looked like tough, strong women; cut out and on my own, I looked like a psychopath with a stick.

  “Oh my God.”

  Next to my photo was one of my family taken at least eight years ago. We were in the hospital, and my dad and I were crowded around my mother and an itty-bitty just-born Josh in their hospital bed. Mom and Dad were looking at Josh adoringly, and I was smiling at the camera, most likely because someone told me to and I was a notorious rule followe
r. But surrounded by the headline FUGITIVE DAUGHTER? and paired with my lone field hockey picture—well, I didn’t even need to read the article to know the writer wanted her readers to believe this was a tight family unit and I was the one thing that was not like the others. I was the thing that didn’t belong.

  I felt gutted.

  I felt hollowed out.

  I remembered that moment in the picture as if it had just happened, as if I’d just strolled out of that hospital room wearing my booties and the little paper shower cap on my head. Dad and I had waited for hours in that hospital room while my mother breathed like a freight train and stretched on a giant yoga ball. I twisted my hands and fretted, patting my mom’s arm and asking the nurses for more cool washcloths, more Jell-O, more medicine. My mom was hurting, and no one was doing anything.

  Finally, everyone started to sputter around, and the nurse took me by the shoulders and asked, “Is there someone out there to take her?” And my mom sat up, her hair soaked and matted to her forehead, and she and my dad both said, “She’s our daughter. She stays.” I stood by my mom’s shoulder and squeezed her hands and mouthed the words as my dad told her to push-one-two-three-four. And then Josh was born, and we all hugged and kissed, and we were a family, all complete, all together, and it didn’t matter—or didn’t occur to me that it might matter—that I had come to the family via a social worker and a Buick rather than the screaming, gooey mess that Joshy was, with tiny yellowish fingers and almost-purple toes.

  It was a happy moment when the nurse snapped that photo, a moment when we were all together, a perfect, loving family with our newest member, and I wasn’t the other; I wasn’t the one that didn’t belong. But clearly, it was only the people in the photo who thought that way.

  Under the article was a smiling, black-and-white photo of Lynelle. She was wearing a high-necked blouse I had never seen, and her eyes looked sweet and earnest.

  Oh God.

  The headline swam in front of my eyes: BEST FRIEND OF ANDREA MCNULTY SPEAKS OUT. I tried to read past the headline, but my eyes set on the callout text in bold black ink. “I’m heartbroken. She fooled us all,” says Lynelle Howard.

  I handed the paper back to Nate.

  “Do you want to read it?”

  “I don’t have to. I’m the outlier, the stranger, the one who infiltrated the family and attacked. Even Lynelle said it.” Saying it out loud didn’t normalize it, didn’t make it any easier. Every syllable was a bitter stain on my tongue, a grease print on my soul. “How is anyone ever going to believe I didn’t do this, Nate?”

  “They’re going to find out who did this, Andi. They’re going to find out it wasn’t you. There’s a reward and everything now.”

  Maybe that should have made me happy, but all it did was ruin me more. My parents’ lives reduced to dollar signs. Someone out there deciding if $50,000 was worth giving a family closure, bringing a villain to justice, or not quite enough to get off the couch for. I wiped the tears from my eyes.

  Nate sucked in a deep breath, and if he was going to pat me on the shoulder or tell me “there, there,” I was going to sock him or scream or tear every single one of these newspapers into goddamn confetti. But all he did was give me a hard shove toward his desk and jostle me backward until I fell on my butt. I was going to say something but stopped when I heard the tinkle of bells over the door.

  Nate climbed up onto his stool, and I pulled my legs into my chest and pressed myself into the farthest corner of his desk, my heart thundering against my rib cage.

  “Can I help you, Officers?”

  I was certain the cops were there because they could hear my heart pound, because they could hear the blood thundering in my veins from outside the flimsy glass door. They were here for me, to snatch me up and toss me in jail and throw away the key, and the whole world would cheer, led by the stupid news reporter, and no one would ever ask what really happened, and no one would ever look for the man who really did this. I let out a sob, and Nate coughed at the same time, a gurgling, ugly-sounding thing, and I realized he was covering for me.

  “We’re looking for this girl.”

  I imagined the cops holding out a picture of me, probably another horrible shot—maybe this one of me blowing fake smoke from the top of a water gun or dressed up in prison stripes on Halloween—and my heart continued to thud when Nate didn’t immediately answer.

  Oh my God.

  He’s going to turn me in.

  He’s going to turn me in and take the reward money and run, and I will die in prison, and Josh will never be found, and no one will ever know the truth about what happened and—

  “Is this the chick from the news? Alex or something?”

  “Andrea.”

  “I mean, I recognize her, but only from her being on TV.”

  “Are you sure you haven’t seen her around here?”

  I watched Nate’s feet switch position on the stool. “Look around. I don’t get a whole lot of customers. I think I’d remember someone like that.”

  I stopped breathing.

  “Okay if we check the premises?”

  “Sure, but I should tell you the pool is closed.”

  There was a slight rumble as though the cop actually laughed, and I wanted to throw up. Just get them out of here!

  The cops and Nate thanked each other, and I thought I could breathe until those bells tinkled again, and what I can only assume was another officer rushed in, his voice breathy.

  “Guys, I think we’ve found the car.”

  Thirty-Four

  All the air was sucked out of the room. I was huddled under that stupid desk, clutching my knees to my chest so tightly that I swore I could feel my ribs breaking and splintering. I needed to shrink, to hide, to make myself completely invisible. I couldn’t get caught. I couldn’t go to jail. I was innocent, but who would believe me now? Holed up in a crap motel, my mother’s car stashed in a falling-down portico.

  My God, even if I didn’t do it, I was guilty.

  I was guilty of running.

  Of ditching the police.

  Of dyeing my hair and breaking into my house and fighting with Lynelle and abandoning my little brother.

  I was guilty.

  Suddenly, I didn’t want to hide. Suddenly, exhaustion wore to my bones, and the grief, the life-ending grief of losing my father and seeing my mother in that hospital bed blanketed me, and all I wanted was peace.

  “I’m here.”

  My voice was small, barely audible from my spot under the counter, and I crawled out on hands and knees, pushing aside Nate’s pant leg and standing up on shaking legs. I put my hands over my head.

  “I’m here,” I said again. “I didn’t do anything. I’m just scared, but I’m done—”

  Nate’s eyes were huge. He grabbed me by the arm, and we crouched by the counter again. “What the hell are you doing?”

  I blinked. “Where are the police?”

  “They took off around back to get the car.”

  “Why are you still here?”

  “They want to see the check-in log from the night…you know…until now.”

  I nodded. “So they’ll know I’m here.”

  “You’re not. You’ve never been here. Tim Esup was. I’d say you’ve got about five minutes to get back to your room, grab all your shit, and get moving.”

  “Where am I supposed to go?”

  “They’re going to search every room. Get whatever you need, and come back here through the back. There’s a utility closet there. Here’s the key. Once the cops are gone, I’ll call someone.”

  It felt like a fifteen-minute conversation, but Nate’s lips were moving so fast. His eyes were constantly darting around me, but otherwise, he was cool, too calm, his breathing relaxed, and I wanted to know why.

  “I’m just going to turn myself in. I can’t do
this anymore.”

  “You’re going to go to jail.”

  “Maybe that’s where I belong.”

  “Damn it, Andi. You spend three days giving me this spiel about how you’re so different. How your adoptive parents really loved you and you were a perfect family, and then you’re just going to throw it all away? You turn yourself in, you’re going to jail, and you can forget about finding out who killed your dad and went aggro on your mom. Or who took your little brother. You want that? That’s fine by me, but don’t mention me at all. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t even know you.”

  I felt like he had slapped me in the face. I blinked as I waited for him to say something else, to apologize for being so harsh, but all he did was drop a key on the counter, gather a sheaf of papers from the printer, and walk directly out the front door, the stupid little bells tinkling as the door snapped shut behind him.

  Somehow, I put one foot in front of the other. Somehow, I went right back to huddling in the shadows, waiting for cars to pass before I went to “my” room, sunk my key in the lock. There was nothing there I really wanted, nothing I needed, but I knew enough to know I had to erase any trace that I had been in that room, if not for me then for Nate. I wasn’t going to get him in trouble. I looked around blankly, trying to figure out what to do, what to take.

  “Hello, Andrea.”

  I stiffened. That voice.

  I had heard it before—fifty times, a hundred times. In my dreams.

  In my nightmares.

  I stopped, turning slowly.

  She was thinner than I remembered, her dark hair now streaked with gray, but her hands were the same—clawed fingers that I remembered pinching me, that I remembered were yellowed from nicotine. They still were.

  “Rita?”

  She was wearing a light-blue smock, a coil around her wrist heavy with keys. She had a maid’s cart behind her.

  “I’m so happy you remember me.” She was smiling, but my heart was hammering. I didn’t want a reunion with the mother who had dumped me, not now, not ever.

  I could hear the faint calls of the police wafting in through the open bathroom window, the sound setting my teeth on edge. “I have to go.”