The Taking

by Kimberly Derting

  I could see them now, etched all over her worn face.

  Suddenly the truth seemed inadequate, even though it was all I had. “I honestly don’t remember. If I did I would tell you.”

  I watched her sag and wondered if she believed me or not. If she thought that, for whatever reason, I was covering up my absence.

  So I asked her instead, “What do you think happened?”

  Her eyes shot up to mine, her narrow, tweezed brows finding their way to the bridge of her nose. She contemplated me for several long seconds before answering. “You ran away. You and your dad had a fight over colleges—he told me you did—and you ran away.”

  I thought about not denying her version, because for all I knew she was right. I couldn’t remember what happened, and her version sounded righter than the theory that I’d been abducted by aliens.

  But there was no way I’d have done that. I would never have left my parents, and I surely wouldn’t have left Austin.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I said, pulling up my pant leg to reveal the bruise I couldn’t stop thinking about. “Besides, how do you explain the fact that I still have this, five years later?”

  She looked at it, but there was a skeptical edge to her expression, as if she didn’t see it the way I had. “A bruise? Kyra.” She said my name the way she’d said my dad’s earlier. Like I was grasping at straws.

  “It’s exactly the same as it was. In exactly the same place. You don’t think that’s weird? And what about my phone?” I pulled it out, the one with the no service message flashing on the screen. “Why isn’t it dead? If it’s really been five years, shouldn’t it be dead by now? But look . . .” I held it out to her so she could see what I did. “It still has half its charge.”

  She closed her eyes for a long moment as she shook her head wearily. “I’m not saying I have all the answers. Obviously this is all very . . . confusing.” She reached over and patted my knee. It was self-conscious, the gesture, and felt more like something a casual acquaintance might do. Not really the kind of thing a mom does when she hasn’t seen her one-and-only daughter in five long, tormented years.

  Steel fingers clutched my chest, making it hard to breathe and making me aware of how unwelcome I felt here, in a place that should have been steeped in memories and warmth and understanding.

  “And what about Dad? How come you . . .” I shrugged, slipping my knee from beneath her hand. “Why is everything so different now?”

  She sighed, and I knew this was all hard for her too. Hard to explain. Maybe even hard to have me back. “You saw him, Kyra. He’s been like that ever since . . .” She frowned over her own explanation. “Ever since you’ve been gone. He couldn’t get over it—you disappearing. He stopped going to work. At first we all did; we were all so focused on finding you. But eventually, when everything led us to dead ends and there were no real clues to follow and no signs you were ever coming home . . . eventually we had to get back to living again. It was hard, almost impossible, but we had to. Your dad, he couldn’t do it. He started hanging out online all day, trying to find evidence, explanations, anything to figure out where you’d gone, even if they weren’t logical.” She sighed. “When he lost his job, I told myself to give him time, that he just needed time.” Tears welled in her eyes, and she shook her head. “But time just made it—him—worse. He started drinking. Eventually . . .” Her voice wavered. “Eventually, I asked him to leave. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I’m sorry,” she told me, reaching over and trying again, this time squeezing my knee. “Things’ll be okay. We’ll be okay,” she offered pensively. The attempt wasn’t great, but it was better. She got up then, the bed shifting the way it used to when she was finished reading to me after she’d tucked me in at night.

  My tongue glided over the chiseled plane of my tooth as I watched her go, back to her other family. When the door was closed, I reached beneath the pillow to where I’d stashed the phone Tyler had given me.

  I longed so badly to hear Austin’s voice. Maybe then I’d stop feeling so adrift. So . . . alone.

  I opened Tyler’s contacts list and found Austin’s name right below someone named Ashley. I figured now was as good a time as any—it was barely after ten o’clock, early still.

  Yet five years too late.

  My stomach knotted as I pressed the button and waited.

  I didn’t wait long. “Hey, Ty-Ty,” The girl that picked up on the other end was most definitely not Austin, but I knew her voice almost as well as I knew my own.

  “Ty?” she tried again.

  I was suddenly less certain than ever, and I thought about hanging up and pretending I’d never placed this call in the first place. Maybe even set the phone on fire.

  “Tyler . . . ? Are you there?”

  I swallowed, trying not to vomit on my own incredulity as I opened my mouth to speak. “Cat? Is that you?”

  My words were followed by the longest pause in history. Longer even than the time I dared Cat to call Nathan Higgins, her eighth-grade crush, and she’d accidentally professed her love to his dad in way-too-explicit terms.

  As I waited, I thought maybe we’d gotten disconnected, or that she’d had the same thought I had and decided to toss her phone in the trash and direct a flamethrower at it.

  And then I heard her. “Oh my god, Kyra, is it really you?” It wasn’t really a question, even though it technically was, and I knew right away that she’d already heard from someone that I was back. “I—I—” she started, but she choked on her own words.

  On my end, I couldn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure what I felt. I didn’t know whether I was relieved she’d recognized my voice or curious about why she was answering Austin’s phone . . .

  . . . or angry because I wasn’t really confused at all.

  It all made perfect sense.

  They were together . . . .at CWU. Living the life Austin and I had always dreamed of.

  She cleared her throat, and then I heard her again, her voice all watery and wobbly. The way I felt inside. “Kyra, oh my god, I never thought I’d see you again, and then we—I—heard you were back, and I couldn’t . . . I can’t . . . I . . .” She fell apart again, and I could hear her hiccupping as she tried to gather herself so she could start rambling once more.

  But I didn’t want to listen to her ramble. Heat crept up my neck, and my jaw tensed. “What’re you doing there, Cat?” I asked, not wanting to sound like the jilted girlfriend but feeling it all the same.

  She sniffled. “Kyr . . . come on. . . .” It wasn’t an explanation, or even an apology. But I understood all the same.

  “So that’s it then? You and Austin?” My voice cracked. “Really? My best friend and my boyfriend?” It was the oldest and lamest story in history. Betrayed by the two people you trusted most in this world.

  There was another record-breaking pause. I had no idea if she was alone or if Austin was there with her, and they were communicating silently while I sat on my end like a fool.

  “Kyr,” Cat tried again. “I swear to you, we never did anything before . . . well before . . . you went missing. . . .” She fumbled over her words, and my humiliation deepened. “We searched so hard for you, with everyone else. And we waited forever for you to come back. We just . . . we thought you were . . . dead.”

  I wanted to slink beneath the too-stiff covers in my fake bedroom and hide away forever. Instead, I hung up the phone.

  Some habits died hard. And sneaking out to Austin’s house in the middle of the night came to me as naturally as riding a bike or tying my shoes or adding extra butter to my popcorn at the movies. I get how that sounds, but mostly when I’d snuck into Austin’s room at night, we really just slept. We’d been doing that since our parents had put a ban on our boy-girl sleepovers, deciding they were inappropriate the older we got. We thought the late-in-the-game rule change was unfair of them, especially after we’d grown accustomed to our overnight playdates.

  Still, they weren’t really wrong to ban the sle
epovers, because somewhere along the way, sometime during middle school, Austin and I had crossed that line between best friends to something more. Something experimental and unknown to us. Something far more interesting and exciting.

  We’d started by holding hands in a different way, not like little kids anymore. Our fingers would intertwine, moving in and around and over, exploring and testing. My stomach would flutter and lurch as I learned the feel of each of his fingertips. I remember taking his hand in mine as an excuse to touch him, and I would trace the lines of his palms, pretending to read his future in an ominous voice.

  Eventually, holding hands wasn’t enough, and, on a late-summer day while we were at the river, we’d kissed. We’d crossed a line and never went back. After that we’d begun whispering whenever grown-ups were around, our conversations no longer as innocent as they’d once been as we navigated into uncharted waters.

  And then one night I’d snuck into his bedroom and fallen asleep there.

  That was it. A ritual had been born, and no one—not my parents or his, maybe because they all worked or maybe because they were too trusting to check on us—had ever realized what we’d been up to.

  Or maybe they’d known all along and never said a word.

  Only it wasn’t Austin I was looking for tonight.

  But since Tyler wasn’t accustomed to me coming over at all hours, his window wasn’t unlocked when I got there. Not that I would’ve just climbed in the way I would have with Austin. That was different; Austin and I had been different.

  It was disquieting all over again to see Tyler appear at his window, a slightly darker-haired version of his older brother. And one who, apparently, didn’t wear a shirt when he slept.

  I tried not to look at how defined his bare chest was. Tried to keep my gaze from moving lower and noticing his muscled stomach and his navel, which was surrounded by a tuft of dark hair.

  Hell, I chastised myself, reminding myself that I was still four years older than him. He was still Austin’s brother!

  Forcing my gaze upward, I caught him smiling at me, but not in the I-caught-you-being-all-lascivious way, and I knew I’d made the right decision, coming here. His window slid open on old aluminum tracks that scraped a little too loudly for my liking, since they hadn’t been oiled the way Austin’s had in order to keep them from broadcasting my arrival.

  “Hey,” he whispered down at me, sounding more alert than he should, considering it was approaching midnight. Unlike me, he had school tomorrow. At least according to the calendar I’d consulted no less than a dozen times when I’d finally given up trying to sleep. I just couldn’t wrap my brain around the time leap I’d taken.

  Crazy, considering I’d missed so many milestones that should make me feel like an adult: getting my driver’s license, graduating high school, starting college, voting. Going to a bar.

  “What are you doing here?” Tyler rubbed his hand over his face, something Austin used to do to wake himself up.

  I bit the side of my lip. “Couldn’t sleep. It’s just so . . . weird over there.”

  He balanced his arms on the window ledge. “I bet. You’re all my parents talked about all night.” Leaning to the side, he offered, “Wanna come in?”

  I grimaced. Suddenly it was weird over here too. Looking at him, with his too-much-like-Austin looks. “Nah. I just wanted to give you this.” I held out the cell phone. I didn’t need it anymore, so there was no point keeping it. The only two people I thought I’d wanted to talk to were now the enemy, camped out together and colluding against me. Despite Cat’s tearful pleas, I couldn’t help picturing them together, having a good laugh over the way I’d called up and thought we’d pick up right where things left off.

  Tyler winced as he looked at the phone, and I assumed he understood why I was returning it. He must’ve known. I mean, of course he knew about his brother and Cat, and now he knew that I knew too. He at least had the good grace to look sheepish, and I hoped he meant it. “Sorry” was all he said.

  “Yeah,” I answered, looking down at my borrowed yoga pants and wishing my mom were a few inches taller so they didn’t skate over the tops of my ankles. “Me too.”

  I left Tyler’s house—it was still strange to think of it like that, Tyler’s house and not Austin’s—and felt lost for a minute. I figured I might as well go home, but suddenly I wasn’t sure where home was exactly.

  The word felt foreign, even in the space of my own thoughts. Home should be the place you were most at ease. Most comfortable. Most secure.

  I felt none of those things in my mother’s house, at least not anymore. I was a stranger, sleeping in a strange room, in a home she’d made with a new family.

  Instead of crossing the street, a straight shot to the home-that-wasn’t-home, I wandered down the sidewalk, heading nowhere in particular. There was a breeze, and I was again aware of how exposed my ankles were as the wind whorled around them, tickling my skin. Despite the supersweet high waters I was sporting, it had been really nice to wear something that didn’t reek of softball diamond or day-old sweat.

  I’d expected to have to shave through five years’ worth of leg hair with my mom’s Lady Bic, maybe go through one or two of her disposable shavers in the process, but when I’d run my hands over my legs, I’d realized they were still smooth. As if I’d just shaved them the day before, right before the championship game.

  The idea that someone might have shaved them for me while I was out cold gave me the heebie-jeebies. If that were the case, I wasn’t sure I ever wanted my memory back.

  After showering, I’d tentatively reached out to touch the steamed mirror, whisking away the condensation so I could see better, looking at that other me through the damp halo. The me staring back was the same me I’d seen every day for as long as I could remember. There’d never been anything remarkable about me, unless you counted my eyes, which I’d always thought were crazy big for my face, and the freckles that splashed across my nose, making me look younger than I was. Something no teen ever wanted.

  I’d never been like Cat, with her shockingly blond hair that grew that way straight from her head rather than coming from a bottle, and her exotic-shaped eyes that she accented with jet-black eyeliner, and a pointed chin that she always held high, giving her a badass vibe. The kind of vibe I’d always wanted but could never pull off because grandmothers wanted to pinch my cheeks and give me a quarter for being so adorable.

  I’d spent forever staring in the mirror, studying myself for evidence of changes or nonchanges. It was harder than I’d expected, to dissect myself like that, and that same woozy sense of déjà vu hovered over me, like I was having some sort of freaky out-of-body experience.

  I stopped walking when I found myself in front of our neighborhood park. Like me, it looked the same as it always had. Standard-issue park stuff, really: slides, swings, sandbox, grass.

  The lights all around me were off for the night since it was way past curfew, yet I could see everything I needed to see. I knew this place like the back of my hand. It was the perfect place to be alone, and I hopped the short fence, wondering who it was possibly meant to keep out since I was practically tall enough to step over it, and then realized it probably wasn’t meant to keep anyone out at all. It was designed to keep small children inside. It was like a kid corral.

  The swings were near the tree line, and beneath them there was sand so that if you fell, you’d land in the soft powder instead of scrape a knee, or crush a skull.

  Mostly, I think neighborhood cats liked to pee in it, though.

  Austin and I used to swing as high, and as fast, as we could and then jump, measuring to see which of us had landed the farthest. That was, of course, before all the kissing had started.

  From that point on the park had become an after-dark hideaway where we’d curled up among the turrets of the jungle gym or in the tunnels as we’d practiced and practiced and practiced on each other. Making sure we got that whole kissing thing just right.

 
I sat in one of the swings, suffocated by memories as I wrapped my fingers around the chain and kicked my legs. Maybe the park hadn’t been such a great idea after all.

  Moving back and forth, I tried to let my mind go blank. I pushed higher and higher in the air, leaning my head back and watching as the stars blurred together.

  “You’re a supernova, Kyra. Someday you’ll burn so bright none of us will even be able to look at you.” My dad always used to say things like that with a chuckle, right before he said something like “No pain, no gain” while reminding me to keep practicing or telling me that I needed to straighten out my pitch. Or sometimes he’d just reach over and brush away a stray hair and tell me how beautiful I was.

  Dads say things like that sometimes.

  Said, I thought, squeezing my eyes shut and sitting upright once more. Sometimes they said things like that. I wasn’t sure what kinds of things my dad said anymore.

  Behind me, I heard a sound, a shifting or rustling in the trees that bordered the park. The place where Cat and I always imagined creepy pervs hung out in their raincoats, watching the little kiddies play on the teeter-totters.

  I turned sharply in the swing, the chains twisting together as I strained to see into the craggy shadows that filled the space between the trunks and shrubs and thick layer of ferns that choked the ground.

  I waited, holding my breath as I listened. The back of my neck prickled as I scanned, unable to stop searching, unable to let go of that strange feeling of being watched.

  I should leave, I finally decided when my heart refused to slow, even when I couldn’t pinpoint anything to be afraid of, other than my overactive imagination. Five years hadn’t changed the fact that I could still freak myself out in the dark.

  As I got up, the swing jerked against the backs of my legs, rotating first one way and then the other as the chains worked to right themselves once more. Suddenly I didn’t feel safe out here, in the park in the middle of the night, all by myself, and I wondered what I’d been thinking coming here.