The Girl in the Headlines

by Hannah Jayne

  Rita pushed her cart into the room and snapped the door shut behind her.

  My eyes widened. “What are you—”

  “I can help you.”

  “What?”

  “I know, Andrea. I know what’s been going on with you. With you and the McNultys.”

  A rush of anger shot through me. This woman, “my mother,” couldn’t send me a birthday card or a Christmas wish, but she knew what was going on with me? “I didn’t do it,” I said, feeling the ridiculous need for her to believe me.

  “Of course you didn’t, honey. I can help you now. The police are out there—”

  “I know.”

  “They’re going to search all the rooms.”

  I felt my nostrils flare. “I know. I need to leave right now.” I bit off every word.

  “You can’t. There’re cops crawling around everywhere. They’re around the front and the back now.”

  Suddenly, my eyes burned. That flicker of rage shot down to hopelessness, and I felt my knees buckle. “What am I supposed to do?” I looked around the room, the beige walls and the closet that was a foot deep. I could probably shimmy under one of the beds, but they’d surely look there. There was no place to go in the bathroom, especially if the police were around the back. “Oh God, what am I going to do?”

  Rita slid the dead bolt on the door. The breath caught in my throat, and I figured she’d pull a gun on me or toss me out, but instead she pulled aside the canvas that was covering the bottom half of the cart. She began yanking out toilet paper and mini shampoos until the bottom part was clear. She grinned and held out her hands.

  “You want me to get in there?”

  “I can hide you, Andrea. I can push this right through an entire group of cops, and no one is going to think I’ve got anything but toilet paper in here.”

  “And then what?” I said, moving closer.

  “I drive the maroon minivan at the front of the lot. It’s right next to the utility room.” Rita pulled a key from her smock pocket. “You can let yourself into the van and hide. There’s plenty of crap in there to keep you hidden.”

  I didn’t want Rita to help me. I didn’t trust her as far as I could throw her, but I could see more police cars pulling into the lot, more officers on foot looking around the half-drained pool, poking around the “landscaping.” One of the officers turned toward the room, shading his eyes with his hands. The setting sun glinted off his badge and highlighted his handcuffs, and everything inside me froze. It was Rita or the police.

  “Can you help me get in there?”

  Thirty-Five

  I crouched, and Rita came up behind me. I immediately stiffened, but there was something about her, something primitive that I recognized, and I softened, leaned against her, and let her help me into the cart.

  It was her smell.

  I remembered it. Something like dish soap and lavender. I felt like I should say something, acknowledge it, but when I turned, she gave me a wide smile and flopped the curtain down on the cart. Rita grunted, and I gripped the sides of the thing, sure that she would step on the cloth and expose me or that the entire cart would buckle and crumble under my weight. Instead, Rita kicked opened the door, and I felt a rush of cool air.

  We were outside.

  “Is that room open, ma’am?” I recognized the police officer’s voice.

  I tried to shrink in the darkness, frantically wondering whether I should wrap myself in toilet paper or take off running.

  Why did I think Rita would help me?

  “I can open it for you,” she said, her voice smooth as spun sugar. “But I’m sorry, I just cleaned it.”

  “Did, uh, the previous resident leave anything behind?”

  “No, not that I found,” I heard Rita say.

  “I’d like to check it anyway.”

  I watched the shuffle of well-shined cop shoes and Rita’s old sneakers from a crack in the cloth. His feet moved toward the door; her feet shuffled as she stepped aside. The key clicked in the lock. The door opened.

  “Okay if I keep moving? I need to restock before my shift is over.”

  There was a muffled response from the police officer inside my room, then the cart lurched, and Rita and I were moving. Just like she said, she pushed me toward the utility room, leaving the cart in a dark breezeway.

  I peeked out.

  We were well hidden from the outside; I guess even the Midnight Inn wanted to give their customers the illusion that everything that happened here was magical. I crept from the cart on legs that were shaking, rushing with lactic acid. I could see the van she referenced maybe ten feet away.

  Ten feet that felt like a thousand.

  My blood rushed in my ears.

  How did Rita even recognize me?

  My knees felt like buckling.

  Did Nate know she worked here?

  Cops’ voices and flashes of lights from the farthest corner of the lot.

  My real parents were left for dead, and I am a suspect. They are looking for a murderer.

  I darted from the safety of my little cart, my heart exploding with relief when I tugged on the van door and it actually opened. I dove in, pressed my chest against the filthy floor, edged myself as far under the bench seat as I could. There was crap everywhere, remnants of a life I wasn’t part of, and half of me had the sick urge to sift through it, to see what was so much more interesting to Rita than raising her daughter, but the rest of me wanted to blend into the filth and the dirt and not be hiding from the cops and not have been discovered by my birth mother and not wonder whether Nate knew all along.

  My heart hammered in my chest. I had one ear pressed to the floor of the van, the other straining for anything I could hear the police say. Had they searched my room? Had they found anything? Were Nate and Rita about to turn me in? I considered sneaking out the opposite door. I was hidden from the lobby and hidden enough from the team of police cars in the lot, but it was more than risky. I would be completely exposed on the highway behind the motel, and I was sure the media had already blasted their new “findings”: MCNULTY GIRL STOLE FAMILY CAR, OBVIOUSLY GUILTY, HAS TEAL HAIR.

  I closed my eyes and cried. I was stuck in a van, and I was hopeless. What was I supposed to do? Drive away?

  I could drive away.

  I had Rita’s van key tucked in my jeans. I could just drive out of here and keep driving until I was in Mexico or Nevada or anywhere else, and I would still be a suspect and Josh would still be missing. I was trapped all over again.

  I tried to lie low but still see out the window. I could see flashing yellow lights and a row of orange ones, could feel the vibration in my feet when the enormous tow truck came around. I watched an officer slide into the driver’s seat of my mother’s car and put the thing in neutral so the tow truck driver could pull the car up. I wondered why someone didn’t just drive it away; they obviously had the keys. But no, the Lexus was saddled with chains and being pulled away, and I couldn’t help but think I was next.

  I dove down flat again when the tow truck drove away and the police got out flashlights, white beams of too-bright light cutting across the parking lot, lighting up the cab of the van. I held my breath and closed my eyes, somehow believing if I couldn’t see them, they wouldn’t see me, and a cop stepped closer, his beam flooding the van with light.

  My heartbeat stopped. My stomach curled in on itself as much from fear as from lack of oxygen, and I wondered if the cop would get out those big metal hooks and chains and attach them to me, too, to get me out of the van. I tried to sink into the garbage.

  “Nothing here,” I finally heard.

  I stifled a sob of relief and shame. They had taken my parents’ car, flashed a light over me, and considered me nothing. I kept crying until I cried myself to sleep.

  * * *

  When I woke up, it was dark and t
he car was moving. I sat with a start, then hunkered down again, terrified. What is going on?

  “Is that you waking up back there?”

  It was Rita’s voice, light, jovial even, and when I glanced up, her eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. I sat up.

  “The cops are gone, but you should probably stay low anyway, just in case.”

  I nodded as though I were really hearing her, when all I was doing was trying to quell the voices in my head.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  Rita’s smile was reflected back at me. “I’ll take you anywhere you need to go, hon, but I’m headed home right now.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  “I—I didn’t know you worked there. So—you didn’t know I was staying there?”

  “I had a hunch, especially after I saw you leave with that cute front desk guy.”

  “Nate?”

  Rita snapped a piece of gum into her mouth, and her arm came back, finding me. “Want?”

  My mouth was dry, but all I could manage was a weak shake of the head. “No thanks.” It was a whisper. “Do you know Nate?”

  “Front desk boy?”

  I wished she wouldn’t call him that.

  “I know him by sight, but I don’t really know him. He your boyfriend or something?”

  “No.” I recoiled. I didn’t have a boyfriend; I wasn’t running around with a boyfriend. I was running for my life.

  And now it was in the hands of a woman who had abandoned me almost fifteen years ago, who couldn’t even make it to see me when the court required her to.

  Panic started to rise in my chest.

  “You can just drop me here.”

  Rita chuckled, and the sound ripped through me. “Honey, we’re on the highway. I wouldn’t drop you out here. I’ll take you to my place. You’ll be safe there, and then you can figure out what you want to do.”

  “Why are you helping me?”

  Rita’s eyes flashed in the rearview mirror. “Because, honey, that’s what mamas do.”

  Thirty-Six

  By the time Rita’s van crawled down a dirt road and to a run-down house surrounded by scraggly trees, I was on my knees and shaking. The car lurched to a stop, and she pushed the thing into park, killed the engine, and looked over her shoulder at me, smiling. I tried to be nonchalant and cool, maybe even look thankful that she had taken me in, but I was terrified, my head spinning, thinking of what I was supposed to do if I were kidnapped. Put a button in the keyhole so they couldn’t get the engine started. Never get in the car. Scream for my life. Look for landmarks or mile markers so I knew where I was. I couldn’t even remember what direction we were going, let alone mentally mark an exit or a building. I barely remembered the layout of the Midnight Inn. I was so frazzled that all I could focus on was my mother’s car being pulled up onto that tow truck and Rita, here in front of me, her long fingers curled around the steering wheel, the nicotine stains still visible on her nail beds when she offered me gum.

  Rita turned to me. “I know the circumstances are not real good, but I am really glad to have you here.”

  Her voice was kind, soft, and her moves were normal—nothing quick, nothing flashy, no shotgun across her lap or machete in her purse. She was still wearing her smock, but the spiral of keys around her wrist was gone. She pulled open the van door, still smiling, and said, “Why don’t you come in?”

  It was work to put one foot in front of the other, and if I thought the last three days were a weird dystopian nightmare, standing just behind Rita with her light lavender dish soap and sweat scent was sending me into a spiral.

  Someone had attacked my parents. Someone had kidnapped my little brother, and someone had dumped me at the Midnight Inn motel and made sure I had no memory of how I got there.

  And now here I was with Rita.

  It couldn’t be a coincidence.

  “So you know what happened to my parents?”

  Rita paused in front of a red door illuminated by a too-bright yellow porch light. The corners of her lips pulled down in a frown; her brows were knitted. “Oh, honey, I was so, so sorry to hear. And I just thought about how scared and confused you must have been.”

  I took a tiny step back.

  I could run. The land around the house was choked with trees and seemed to go on forever, but we hadn’t driven that long. There had to be civilization—and help—nearby.

  “I still am,” I said.

  Rita pushed her key in the lock and shoved open the red door. “It’s not much, but it’s home.”

  The living room was small and sparse but mostly clean. Couch with afghan slung over the back, mismatched chair with a heavy dent in the center and a pillow, its color faded to a nondescript brown. The coffee table was splintered wood and littered with ring stains from cups being left on it without coasters.

  Mom hated that.

  Now I hated it too.

  Coasters! I was maybe kidnapped by my birth mother, and I was thinking about fucking coasters?

  “Did you… You didn’t know I was there?”

  “At the inn? Not really, doll. At least not at first.”

  The chocolate on my pillow!

  “Did you leave a chocolate on my pillow?”

  The question seemed absurd, and Rita turned to me with a bright smile and a little laugh. “Thought it might be nice to give you the taste of a more upscale hotel.”

  I wanted to warm to the fact that Rita had thought enough about me to smuggle a chocolate onto my pillow, but the realization only left me cold. Was she planning this? Had she called the cops and orchestrated this whole thing?

  “So how long have you worked at the Midnight Inn?”

  She shrugged, one shoulder going up to the weird dangly earrings she wore. “Ten months, maybe a year?”

  I swallowed, something hard and dark in my gut.

  When did Nate say his mother left? Ten months ago?

  “And you didn’t know Nate?”

  “Nate?” Rita’s eyebrows went up.

  “The boy from the front desk.”

  “I told you, honey, I knew him by sight. We didn’t work the same shifts. Why do you ask?”

  I stiffened when she called me honey. My real mom called me honey.

  “This is just too…”

  “Weird?” Rita smiled. “I thought so too. So you and Nate are tight then?”

  “No,” I shook my head.

  “That’s good.”

  “Why is that good?”

  Rita pushed her hair back and began emptying her pockets onto the top of the television. “Well, when I heard him talking to the cops…”

  I didn’t want to rehash the scenario. “Yeah, I was there.”

  “No, hon, when he was on the phone. Hey, have a seat.”

  Rita steered me toward the couch, and the lavender dish soap-sweat smell was noxious.

  “What do you mean he was on the phone with the cops?”

  “When I was checking in for my shift, he was on the phone talking to the cops. Said something about coming by the inn, that he knew where you were.” She shrugged. “I tried to find you right then and there to get you out, but he saw me, kind of glared at me.”

  “Nate…was going to turn me in?”

  The realization was a slice to the gut, and my whole body felt heavy and more tired than I’d ever been. No…

  My eyes flashed up to Rita, doing normal and mundane things like taking off her earrings. She wasn’t watching to see my reaction. What reason did she have to lie about Nate? What reason did Nate have to turn me in?

  I’m going to sell your story to every paying website…

  You’re the funniest felon I know…

  I was too much for him. This was too much for him
. A week ago, he was a guy running the front desk at a highway motel. And because of me, he was messed up in a murder case, had escaped the cops twice. He was a nice guy but not nice enough to stick out his neck for a complete stranger.

  But he was a kid who worked the front desk at a motel. It would be his word against—

  I’d left the briefcase in his room. The paperwork, the iPad. My stomach folded over itself, and the ache was so deep I thought I would pass out. I couldn’t think about Nate’s betrayal right now; I couldn’t think of anything but finding Josh. It was only a matter of time before the cops—or Nate—found out where I was. Even if I was innocent of harming my parents, wasn’t running from the cops a crime?

  “I can’t stay,” I said. “I have to find my little brother.”

  “Josh.”

  Hearing Josh’s name on Rita’s lips sent a live wire down my spine. I turned to look her full in the face, her smile serene but somehow menacing.

  “How did you know his name?”

  Rita blinked, her wide eyes going all innocent and doe-like. “Of course I know his name. Ain’t seen him much, but he is my only nephew.”

  I must still have been tired or exhausted or drugged. She couldn’t have said… “Did you just say Josh is your nephew?”

  “Of course, Andi. You knew that.”

  I stepped back, the realization filling up the room as I shook my head, trying my best to process. “You’re Mom’s…”

  “Sister. Your mom and I are sisters. You don’t remember that? She didn’t tell you?”

  I couldn’t speak. I just shut my mouth, wagging my head dumbly.

  The visitor from the hospital. The woman who passed me in the elevator…

  “I’m just torn up over what happened,” Rita said. “It’s so tragic—and so scary. Someone just comes in and attacks a family, no motive, no clues? And takes a child and—”

  Abandons me.

  My mind was flashing back and forth: Mom and Rita were sisters? “You don’t remember that? She didn’t tell you?” Did I know that? Is that something else I forgot—or something else Mom never told me?