My father, on the other hand, was done. “I’m sorry about Syd,” he said, gripping the door and beginning to inch it closed. “Miranda obviously has no information about this. I’ve got to get to work and Mir has to get to school.” As if on cue, my father’s alarm clock started beeping from his bedroom down the hall. I saw his hand become a fist in frustration and I thought for a second he might punch Ray. But no—my father would never do that. My father was the most rational person on earth.
Ray shoved a business card into my dad’s hand and my dad passed it back to me. I looked down at it.
Ray Miller, Manager
Desperados Nightclub
“The hottest spot in Cruces”
575-555-5219
“She’ll come back.” I don’t know why I said it. I had no confidence it was true. If I knew anything, it was that Syd never changed her mind. She didn’t make mistakes. That was her whole deal. But then again, why would she run away? The Plan was about to come to fruition. It was all about to happen for her. It didn’t make any sense.
“I’m glad to hear you say that.” Ray looked down. Maybe he knew what a failure he was as a father. Maybe he was full of guilt and shame. I hoped so.
“And”—I swallowed hard and inched closer to my dad’s shoulder and looked Tonya right in the face—“you shouldn’t say those things about Syd.”
Tonya was so stunned, she had no response.
“What about Patience?” I thought to ask.
Ray looked surprised I’d spoken directly to Tonya, but he didn’t seem angry. Maybe he was just scared because my father was at least a foot taller than him and happened to be holding his hand in a fist. “Well, um,” Ray stuttered. “She doesn’t have a phone. I’ll write her. I guess.”
Tonya rolled her eyes. My blood boiled with hatred.
“I’ll write to her,” I said. “I’ll get in touch with Patience. Just let me do that, okay?” I knew Ray wouldn’t write Patience. He probably didn’t even have her address. I did only because I’d kept a couple of the greeting cards Patience had sent over the last few years. A Halloween card, a valentine, a birthday card that had come two weeks late. Syd threw them away without opening them. And I snuck them out of trash can and opened them and read Patience’s shaky handwriting. Never an apology. Never a reason. Just some generic note. Wish I could be with you, my valentine. Because the gesture was more than my own mother had ever made, I’d kept them, thinking Syd might want them someday.
“All right.” Ray nodded. The anger had drained out of him. He looked puny under his dumb cowboy hat. It was so rude that he hadn’t taken it off when we opened the door, as any self-respecting actual cowboy would’ve done immediately.
“Very sorry, Ray,” my father said. That his alarm was still blaring down the hall seemed appropriate. He held up his palm. It looked more like stop than good-bye. Finally Tonya turned and huffed away and Ray followed her across the gravel to his pickup. Not until Ray turned on the engine did I notice Tyler in the cab, strapped into his booster seat. He saw me see him—he’d been waiting for me to see him—and he waved wildly. He looked worried. It broke my heart. Tyler was the only one of the three of them who liked Syd.
I thought of what I’d said last night, about how Syd wasn’t the only person on Earth. I wished so much that I could go back now and unsay it.
Tonya climbed into the cab and slammed her door shut and Ray shut his, and then he eased back down the driveway and onto the road. Tyler never stopped waving at me, even after Tonya turned around and scolded him.
“Those people are insane.” My father closed the door then locked it.
“Oh god, Dad.” That was all I could get out.
“I know,” my dad said.
“What if she doesn’t come back?”
“Well, wait. We don’t know that yet. We don’t know anything.”
“What are we going to do?” Panic, like a heavier air, flooded my lungs.
“Okay, well.” For a second it seemed like he’d gone back to sleep. His long arms hung at his sides.
“What are we going to do?” I barked.
“I don’t know right this second!” He turned and stormed down the hall. His alarm stopped blaring. “Jesus.” He returned to the hallway and took a deep breath. “Syd is a smart person,” he said. “Let’s remember that first and foremost.” I was staring at him, wide-eyed. He must’ve mistaken my numb panic for some kind of dawning revelation. “Is there something to tell me, Miranda? Is something going on?”
“No,” I said. “No!” I pressed my palms to my eyes for a moment. “She’s still waiting to hear from Stanford about early admission. They’re late, but, I mean, a day late. Why would she run away? This cannot be happening.”
“Okay, then.” My father and I stood looking at each other another long moment. “I need coffee.” He shuffled past me into the kitchen and became a whirlwind of activity, setting the kettle on the stove and pouring coffee beans into the grinder. I stood in the hallway, clutching Ray’s wilted business card. I thought of Syd sitting in my car last night, staring out into the parking lot while I screamed my head off. I’d driven her home hardly saying a word. Then she’d done that weird thing, making a point to come back and tell me she loved me. She’d kissed me on the forehead. I’d watched her climb the steps to the trailer. I’d waited only until she’d opened the door before driving off. Had I pulled out too eagerly? Had my car tires kicked up dust?
Was that curt good-bye the last thing I’d ever say to Syd?
She’s gone. The idea formed around my body like a big glassy bubble, ready to burst and shred my life to pieces. It was like what they say happens in a car accident. Everything slowed down. I was suddenly standing next to myself, examining the weird little details that made up my life. There, tucked into the mirror above the hall table was a photo of my dad with his arm around my uncle Benny. I’d taken the photo a few years ago, the morning the three of us had hiked Baylor Canyon. After the hike, we’d gone to eat at La Cocina, and the woman behind the counter asked Benny how old his girl was. I’d turned to Benny in confusion, and it’d been my father who’d corrected her. “This is Maria’s daughter,” he’d said, putting his hands on my shoulders. “She’s mine.” And the woman had looked away at the mention of my mother’s name—Maria, the sheep who’d left the flock—and my father pulled me away and hustled me to a table in the back. “This town is too small,” he’d said. Below the mirror, on the table, were my dad’s keys and his NASA ID badge, placed neatly in the wooden bowl where he placed them each day after work, and my backpack, slung open on the floor, and the hairline crack in the wall that started above my bedroom door and traveled all the way to the vigas. About once a year, my father noticed that crack and would say he needed to fix it, but he never did.
I closed my eyes. It felt like I was seeing too much, like I was glimpsing reality from another place, and it freaked me out to see so clearly my little life in this little house where I’d lived for nearly ten years alone with my father. We’d been left before, the two of us. Was I being left again? Was it even possible I’d survive if it were true—if Syd was gone? I turned to my father in the kitchen. I wanted to tell him: I can see everything and nothing at once. Is that normal? But just as I opened my mouth, the bubble crashed down on me and I was back in the same old hallway, Ray’s business card in my sweaty palm.
“Miranda.” My father’s voice sliced through me. He was pouring hot water into his French press. “Let’s talk.”
“What do we do?” I rushed into the kitchen.
“Well. You have any sense of where she’d go? Did she say anything? You guys were together all day yesterday.”
“No. Nothing.” Of course, Syd said she was sad, but she wasn’t really sad, she wasn’t really depressed, she wasn’t really going to run off and become Misty Buckets.
“Has she been having problems? With boys or anything like that?”
“Why would you even ask that?” I shot back.
�
�I’m just trying to think!” he shouted.
“Well—okay!” I said.
“Would she go to her mom’s?” he asked.
“No. She wouldn’t go there.” It was one thing I knew for sure.
“Okay.” He took his coffee to the table. “Okay. Come here and sit down.”
I sat across the table from him. The sky outside was lightening. Time was passing, it had to be, though I couldn’t feel it. My dad locked eyes with me. “Miranda.” He was very serious. “I need you to be truthful with me. Okay?”
“I don’t know where she is. I swear to God.”
“I know.” He looked down at the table. “But you need to stay honest with me. I can’t help unless you tell me the truth.”
“I’m telling you the truth,” I said, getting angry.
“You just need to tell me. Everything. We need to stick together.”
I finally understood. My father was more worried about me than he was about Syd. He couldn’t help it. He had to be. I couldn’t hate him for it, though I wanted to.
“This really sucks.” He checked the time on the stove. He got up. “I have to get in the shower. I have a damn Skype call with Goddard at seven thirty.”
“What? Wait,” I said, the drum of my heart pounding in my ears.
“I have to go to work, Miranda. And you have to go to school.”
“No! Syd’s missing. We need to do something.”
“What can we do?” my father said from the doorway.
“I don’t know.” It was the worst kind of truth.
“Keep your phone on. Call if you hear anything. We’ll reconvene tonight.”
My phone! I’d been holding it in my hand this whole time and hadn’t even thought to look at it.
I had no new texts or anything. I had one missed call, but that was from Ray.
“Nothing,” I said, answering the question on my father’s face.
“We’ve just got to hang in there today. I’ll see if I can’t talk to someone—I’ll call Letty. Or you call her. I can’t imagine there isn’t something we can do.” My uncle Benny’s wife, Letty, was a social worker in Santa Fe. She was actually the very person you’d want to call for advice if a friend went missing. Letty and Benny had lived in Cruces until right after my mother left. Sometimes I missed them more than I missed my mom. One of the main reasons I wanted to go to UNM was to be closer to them. They were all the family I had, besides my dad.
“Okay,” I said. The idea of Letty getting involved gave me an inkling of hope.
“Okay,” he said. “It’s going to be okay, okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
He walked down the hall. I heard his shower turn on.
I swiped my phone on again and went to my messages. WHERE ARE YOU? I wrote to Syd. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? I pressed send. The text was delivered. That meant, at least, that Syd’s phone was turned on. I watched the text thread for a long time, but she didn’t respond. Then I looked at the clock. I’d be late if I didn’t get going. I went to my room and got dressed, smoothed my hair into a ponytail, and put on lip balm. I brushed my teeth. It was the best I could do.
I checked my face in the mirror in the hall to see if I looked like I felt: awful. But I didn’t. I looked just the same as I always did. I glanced again at the photo of my dad and Benny. The lady at La Cocina was right. There was no denying I looked more like my uncle’s kid than my father’s. If my parents had had more kids, I might’ve had siblings who looked more like my dad. Our family could’ve made a little spectrum of skin tones. But without my mom, my father and I didn’t make sense to the world. People felt free to comment on it all the time. A border patrol agent stopped us at the El Paso Airport once, asking me in Spanish to produce an ID. “This is my biological daughter!” my dad shouted. “I’m sorry, sir,” the agent said. “With young girls, we’re extra careful. We’ve seen bad things come through here.” My father shuddered, and the two of us walked to baggage claim and never mentioned it again. Another time, when I was babysitting my cousin Luciana, reading her Curious George, she looked up from the page and said, “This is like you and Uncle Peter. You’re George and he’s the Man with the Yellow Hat.”
I’d thought of that comparison a lot over the years, giving it much more consideration than I probably should’ve. I’d never mentioned it to my dad, because I thought it might make him sad, but something about it rang so true.
“I guess I’m going to school now!” I called down the hall.
I couldn’t believe I was going to school, and it wasn’t lost on me—and I hoped it wasn’t lost on my father—that he’d forced me to go to school the day after my mother left. To maintain normalcy. I hadn’t even gotten one day off.
I slung my backpack over my shoulder and checked to make sure my ringer was on its loudest setting before I shoved my phone in my pocket.
My dad hurried out of his room in a crisp shirt and tie, his hair still wet. He slung his name tag around his neck. “Call me if you hear anything. I’ll check on you today. A lot.” He stood before me suddenly and took me by my shoulders. It was something he’d done since I was a child, a very straightforward, sometimes very annoying way of getting my full attention. “Deep breaths,” he said. He squeezed my shoulders. He smelled like aftershave and toothpaste and coffee. Beneath everything, my father always smelled like coffee. I thought of mentioning how dreadfully similar things felt this morning to the morning after my mother left. It was all fear and not knowing. But I couldn’t find a way to do it.
My mother was simply not a subject either of us knew how to bring up.
“Deep breaths,” I echoed halfheartedly.
I drove to school in a daze. When I reached the stop sign at Highway 28, I had to tell myself not to turn left and drive to Syd’s to pick her up. I took out my phone. PLEASE JUST LET ME KNOW YOU’RE OKAY. I AM FREAKING OUT. I pressed send. I imagined Syd’s phone dinging beside her on the passenger seat of her car. She was going somewhere; she was getting farther and farther away every minute. Or she wasn’t—maybe she was in Cruces somewhere. Holed up with one of her college boys. Maybe she was doing all this simply to make me feel awful for screaming at her last night.
Almost immediately my phone dinged in my hand. My heart nearly hit the roof, I was so relieved. But when I looked, it wasn’t Syd. It was my dad. Love you. Skype postponed, of course. I’m going to spend some time now trying to figure out what we can do. Everything’s going to be okay. Text me a lot today, please. That my dad was genuinely worried made everything feel exponentially shittier. I was staring at his text when the person in the car behind me tapped on their horn. Who knows how long I’d been sitting at the stop sign? For a millisecond I allowed myself to imagine I’d look in my rearview mirror and see Syd in her crappy blue Ford Fiesta, giving me the finger.
I got you so good, her face would say.
But when I looked, it was a guy in a truck wearing a ball cap, with a still-asleep face and somewhere to be.
I tossed up my hand in apology and pulled forward.
5
School was the worst idea I’d ever been talked into. I hated my father for making me come here. When I pushed through the heavy doors into the main breezeway, I was sickened by the smell of it: bodies and cologne and some vague, yeasty smell that could only be found in the halls of Cruces High. I froze. As people pushed past me, I recognized a basic truth about my life: I’d only made it through high school, especially the last eight months of it, because Syd had been beside me, exuding confidence, shining her superstar light so blindingly that I was rendered practically invisible in its glare.
Now I was visible. Entirely. Excruciatingly. I’d pushed through the gates of hell, and I didn’t know what to do or how to be or even what to look at. I put my head down, glued my eyes to the linoleum, and plowed through the crowd to the locker we shared. It took me a while to remember the combination. Syd was usually the one to open it every morning. My brain was a ball of fuzz. Somehow I could still hear my fat
her’s alarm clock blaring down the hallway of my mind. When I finally opened the locker and saw the photo Syd had stuck there with a piece of chewed gum, a shot of the two of us at a football game that had appeared in the school newspaper (she looked great; I looked not great), my heart fell out of my body, plunking onto the floor like a dead fruit.
This wasn’t going to happen. It couldn’t. I had to escape this day right now.
I slammed the locker and wheeled around only to find myself staring at Erin Harris. “Where’s Syd?” she asked before I could even think.
I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t know if I should tell her the truth or if I should lie. I didn’t even know how to speak English. “I don’t know,” I said.
“She’s got our notes. I need to type them or Jones will give us an automatic C on our lab. I’ve been calling her all morning.”
“She’s not here.” I knew I shouldn’t lie and say she was sick. Erin was so concerned about grades, she’d probably drive to Syd’s house if I told her she was home, puking her guts out.
“She’s not coming?”
“I don’t know.”
“Crap,” she said. “She’s not returning my texts.”
“I know.” I stopped myself before I said more. Erin narrowed her eyes and gave me a look that indicated she knew I wasn’t telling the whole truth and for this, as well as for the automatic C, I should curl up like a dog and die.
The warning bell rang and the breezeway began to clear.
“When you see her, tell her she needs to get me the notes.”
“Okay,” I said.
Erin huffed off, her ponytail whooshing behind her.
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