by Lizzy Barber
‘Ouch.’
Keira shrugs. ‘I warned you.’ She touches a finger to the screen, where the name Astro7402 occurs again and again, popping up in speech bubbles in dispute with other commentators. ‘This person had a theory that something went wrong on the ride, and an Astroland employee got rid of the evidence before anyone noticed.’
I blink at the words on the screen, trying to make sense of the blocks of text. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘Astroland was brand new,’ Keira explains. ‘When you guys visited, it had only been open a few months, and there had already been several reports of glitches with the rides.’ She scrolls through the messages and comments, pausing to pick up subheadings:
5 witnesses come forward to claim major injuries.
Park forced to delay opening by 3 months due to issues with rides.
Leaked employee handbook claims “No deaths allowed in Astroland”.
‘So you’re saying something injured my sister on the ride, and nobody noticed? And then, what, they just … smuggled her away?’
‘I’m not saying anything, Rosie.’ Her voice is suddenly sharp. ‘I’m just showing you the theories that have got the most traction here.’
I hold my hands up in submission. ‘Sorry, sorry. Carry on.’
‘Apparently there were problems with the rides; several malfunctions and a number of employees injured. In the leaked handbook, there’s a statement from the park owners saying that employees must stay alert to injuries at all times, and that in the event of an incident, guests must be removed from the park as quickly and as quietly as possible, to avoid there being a death on Astroland property.’
Photocopies of the leaked document appear on the screen. The offending lines are highlighted in red pen by an unseen hand. Next to them, Astro7402 has typed, Time from carousel to exit: 2 minutes, 34 seconds, slower when considering the additional weight of carrying a three-year-old child.
I feel like I’ve been drawn into some terrible made-for-TV movie. ‘Keira, this sounds ridiculous. Do people really believe this?’
‘Dude, you should see some of the other theories.’ She hits the back button, and scrolls through the list of main articles. ‘Serial killers, witches, aliens. It’s got it all. Astro7402’s got sound evidence and a strong case. Plus, Astroland tried to get the thread shut down, threatening a libel suit, which is why they haven’t posted anything in five years.’
She goes back to the page, and pulls up the last entry on it, typed in pillarbox red by a moderator.
We at TheHive attempt to maintain integrity and freedom of speech at all times. However, due to circumstances beyond our control, we are unable to permit the continuing population of this Hive thread. To review TheHive’s Thread Posting Guidelines, please click HERE.
Keira gestures at the screen. ‘It just sounds dodgy – that Astroland would lawyer up and stop people discussing it, and yet the park’s never been shut down, or investigated seriously. They got a rap on the knuckles for the handbook, and that was it.’
She can tell by my raised eyebrow I’m not buying it. I reach out for my mug of tea, which now has that grey tinge to it that means it’s stone cold. I swirl it around into a mini tornado, then drink the remnants down in one gulp. I scrabble to the end of the mattress and rest against the wall, cool where it touches my head. I feel like a soft toy, stuffed full to bursting with cotton-wool thoughts.
‘One more, Kiki. Show me one more and then let’s stop. It’s too much.’ My head is truly pounding now; my eyes feel as though all the moisture has been sucked out of them. The combination of the crying and the stories and last night’s excesses have left me red raw.
Keira reaches an arm around my shoulder and pulls me in close. How many times have we sat like this, on the air mattress on a Sunday morning, with her laptop across us, watching silly YouTube clips or not-so-legally streaming movies? It seems so normal, and yet, so not.
‘One more,’ she agrees, clicking a final link.
This page is different from the others. I notice it right away. There are no shouty block capitals amidst the text, demanding attention and answers; no reams of images; no newspaper photocopies. Instead, there’s just a single, grainy image, looking as if it’s from CCTV, with a red arrow drawn over it by hand, pointing to a blurred-out figure. The heading reads ‘The Woman in the Navy Dress’, the author’s name a simple ‘MikeD’.
Keira scrolls down, but the page is blank. Her mouth folds into a frown. ‘That’s funny.’ She refreshes the page, taps at the keys. ‘I haven’t looked at this one for a while – it didn’t really get updated that often – but it definitely had stuff on it about a few years ago.’ She hits the back button. ‘The site must be down. Anyway, this Mike guy says that there were reports of a woman in a navy dress that could have been connected, but that no one ever followed it up.’ She tries again. The page remains blank. ‘Sorry, Ro – I really thought that was a good one.’
I push back onto the pillows and groan deeply.
Keira’s face looms over mine. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘That it’s just so pointless.’ I run my hands over my face and through my hair, trying to make sense of it all. Images of the park cram into my mind, and at the centre of them is that stupid carousel, endlessly turning, one minute bearing my sister, the next not. In each revolution, I see a different scenario: snatched by some horrible man; the looming figure of a Astroland staff member; and now this, the random shadow of a woman with nothing more than the fleeting suspicion that she may or may not have been seen with a child. ‘This is the first chance I’ve had to find someone who might have worked out what happened to her, and it’s a mess.’ I nod towards the laptop, which Keira’s now shoved onto her bed. ‘This last woman; I mean, I’m not surprised no one followed it up. You could make similar statements about hundreds of people who were there that day. What makes her so special? Why would she have anything to do with it?’
‘This is just the surface, Rosie.’ Keira lies back next to me so our heads are twinned on the pillow, her hazelnut curls tangled with my own oatmeal strands. ‘If you want to know more you need to go one stage further: you need to meet them.’
‘Meet them?’ I echo, eyeing the laptop screen, thinking about the endless anonymous voices who have poked and prodded at my family’s history. ‘How will we even find them?’
‘Come on, Rosie.’ I hear a whisper of adventure in her voice as she reaches up to her bed and grabs the laptop again. ‘This from the girl who managed to work out from Instagram that Miss Jenkins is seeing the new history teacher?’
Her fingers scuttle across the keyboard, and then she presents the laptop back to me.
There is an icon in the left-hand corner of the screen, the outline of a head and shoulders with the words ‘new user’ next to it. Under that, a name: ‘ROAR2001’.
‘Your user profile is complete.’
I wrinkle my nose. ‘Why “roar”?’
‘Rosie!’ Keira smacks her face. ‘RO-sie AR-cher. Come on – I was so pleased with that.’
‘OK, so now what?’
‘Now we can contact them. On the site.’
My chest tightens. I think of my parents’ disdain for all the amateur detectives out there; their brushes with the obsessive theorists who have appealed to them over the years, convinced they’ve found the answer. ‘What if they’re all lunatics?’
‘We’ll steer clear of the lunatics.’
‘What if we can’t find them?’ I ask.
‘We will find them, Rosie,’ says Keira.
‘What if they don’t want to talk?’
‘We—’
A knock at the door interrupts whatever pithy answer Keira has to offer, and Keira’s mum Caro pokes her angular face in, a paisley silk scarf tied around her head. ‘What are you girls doing lazing around in here, eh?’ she asks in her brusque South African accent.
Keira snaps the laptop shut and performs a deliberately casual stretch. ‘Nothing,
just playing on the Internet.’
Caro pushes the door open fully and stands with her hands on her hips. ‘Well, enough already – get some air in here. This whole room smells of alcohol and weed.’
We spring from the air mattress, but Caro’s grinning. ‘I thought that would make you get a move on.’ She comes over and kisses me on the cheek. ‘Don’t worry, Rosie, my lips are sealed.’ She zips her thumb and index finger across her mouth.
For the first time – perhaps ever – I am desperate to talk about Emily, but we don’t get a moment alone for the rest of the day. We sit side by side at the big pine kitchen table, working on our last biology project before exams, as Keira’s dad Tom potters around us making Sunday lunch. He asks me if I’d like to stay, and I text Mum quickly.
Of course, darling, comes the speedy reply. What time will you be home? Call if you need a lift. If I can’t be at home, the safest place Mum can think of me being is with Tom and Caro.
We eat beef and roast potatoes and the fluffy Yorkshire puddings that Tom always says are his speciality, even with the box of Aunt Bessie mix in full view on the counter. I observe them, this tight-knit family of three – Caro smacking a kiss on Tom’s cheek as she sits down beside him, or Tom squeezing Keira’s shoulders as he gets up to steal another potato from the bowl beside her – and think, This is what normal looks like.
Tom drops me home in the afternoon – me in the front, Keira in the back. And when he double-parks the car in the road, Keira jumps out and gives me a hug goodbye. As she grabs me, she presses a piece of paper into my hand, its hard edge grazing the inside of my palm. Then she jumps into the passenger seat, her hand on the door handle. Just before she shuts it, her mouth forms the words, ‘We’ll find them.’
As the car pulls away, I look into my palm. Three names are written on the ripped-out piece of notepaper, the black ink scrawling through the feint-rules. ‘MissMarple63. Astro-7402. MikeD.’ I stare at it for a second, then fold it tightly and tuck it in my jeans pocket.
And then they’re gone, and it’s just me and the piece of paper and the empty road.
I turn and walk towards the house.
ANNA
9
Mamma’s face twitches into a smile when I come down for breakfast; she asks me if I want some cantaloupe melon with my cereal. A fresh bunch of flowers sits on the kitchen table. The weather outside has cleared, and so, it seems, has Mamma’s frost. It’s as if Sunday never happened.
I want to ask her something – anything that could give me some clarity. I glance up at the picture of my parents’ wedding day, and a thought niggles at me. I search for a way to form the words, fearful of upsetting the careful balance of Mamma’s mood.
Eventually, as I am holding my cereal bowl in the sink, washing it two, three times until no trace of breakfast remains, I turn to Mamma and force the words out: ‘Mamma, are there any pictures of me as a baby?’
I flinch in anticipation. She pauses, dishcloth in hand, and I swear she turns a shade paler. But then in an instant it’s gone: the corners of her mouth twitch tight and she straightens herself up.
‘Anna, you know this: all the baby pictures got lost during Hurricane Wilma; they were in the garage and got soaked.’
I have vague recollections of this storm; one of only a few to have hit Alachua County before Hurricane Irma last year. I remember reports on the news about a zoo in Palm Beach that had to move all their small animals and birds into restaurants and restrooms to keep them safe, and thinking it was cute that the animals were getting a taste of what it was like to be a guest there. I remember too, because we had no relatives and nowhere else to go, that we went to a hurricane shelter with bags of saltines and our comforters, and I played cards with some of the other kids and thought that must be what it was like to go on camp. Mamma snatched me away from them; told me I didn’t know what diseases they may have, and burned the comforters and all our clothes in the backyard once we were out.
I don’t remember the photographs.
In class, Ms Abrams, the wiry, red-headed English teacher, lectures us on the role of the word ‘matter’ in Othello. I sit in my usual seat in the farthest corner of the class, speaking only when I’m asked a question and praying we won’t be asked to work in pairs.
I try my hardest to contemplate Desdemona, quivering in the face of her husband’s wrath, but my mind keeps wandering back to the photographs. Did I ever see them? Could they really all have been destroyed? My right hand mindlessly begins sketching the wedding portrait of my parents, as if each scratch of my pen can unlock a clue.
And that’s when I see it.
My fingers slacken. I lose the grip on my pen and it falls from me, landing on the floor with a clatter that makes the rest of the class look up and me to redden in shame, before the horror of what I’ve realised overrides all other emotion.
That photograph. Perhaps the only one of Mamma I’ve ever seen.
Around her neck. She’s wearing a lily cross.
Ms Abrams catches me, gives me a funny look. ‘Is everything all right, Anna?’
‘May I … could I please go to the bathroom?’
The wave of nausea washes over me like a visceral thing and I don’t wait for permission to go.
Just in time, I duck into the restroom, where the content of my breakfast upends itself into the nearest toilet bowl.
‘Hope someone’s not pregnant.’ I hear a giggle from outside the stall, and freeze.
Whoever it is makes no sound as if to leave, so I reluctantly edge out to find two girls I don’t recognise leaning against the sinks. They burst into laughter when they see me come out, hiding their faces in mock shame. They have the window open a crack and they are passing a cigarette between them. I head straight for a sink, eyes down, and splash cool water on my face, lifting handfuls to my mouth to wash away the taste of bile.
‘Sorry, we’d offer you one, but smoking’s bad for the baby!’ one of them snickers as I reach for the door.
I race back into the corridor, head down, just as the bell rings.
‘Anna!’ Ms Abrams stops me before I walk straight into her. ‘Is everything all right? I was worried.’
I shuffle my feet, trying to imagine how I can possibly summarise how not-all-right everything is. I can barely feel my mouth to speak. ‘Yes, Ms Abrams,’ I choke out. ‘It must have been something I ate.’
She cocks her head to the side but doesn’t dismiss me, which makes me blush and turn my eyes back to the floor.
Ms Abrams is so young she must have only finished college a couple of years ago, and could almost pass for a student. She is kind, never pushing me to volunteer in class, never asking why my grades are so good and yet I never raise a hand to answer questions. She’s trying to encourage me to major in English Literature at college. I haven’t found a way to explain to her that I won’t be going to college.
‘Are you planning to go to prom, Anna?’
The question takes me by surprise. ‘I … hadn’t thought about it.’
‘It seems a shame not to.’
I feel her eyes on me, trying to coax me to look up. I inspect a beige scuff mark on the toe of my shoe. ‘I know … but it’s not really the sort of thing I’m comfortable going to, Ms Abrams. Besides, my mom would never allow it.’ Please, please, let me go.
Her thoughts hang heavy in the air. ‘You’re dating the Sail boy, aren’t you? The son of the pastor?’
‘Yes, that’s right. William.’ I have to be alone. I have to think. The image of the pendant on Mamma’s neck is burning behind my eyes.
‘Hmm.’
She doesn’t say anything else for so long that I am tempted to look up. She is watching my face. Suddenly, she glances over to the clock on the far wall, twists her bag off her shoulder and deposits the textbooks in her arms inside it. She nods down the corridor. ‘OK, Anna, I won’t keep you any longer; you can go.’
William’s house is a forty-minute cycle ride from the high school, which is
over in Newberry, near the church. His family live in a small, unincorporated town which is practically all brand new, picture-perfect clapboard houses, and a ten-screen cinema complex. It seems so shiny to me, so bright compared to the dullness of home; like staring straight at the midday sun.
My gears are a little rusty, and although the storm has blown over a slick of water remains on every surface, so I press forward cautiously. As I make my way onto West Newberry Road something catches my eye: a flash of white, a man with a neat grey ponytail staring hard at me as I pass. It’s the suit that makes me notice him: white, like the man I saw from the mailbox. It’s enough to make me pull my brakes tight and turn around, but when I look again he’s gone. Or perhaps he was never there.
My mind won’t let me settle.
There is a steady stream of commuters making their way through all the little towns that make up Alachua County, but the evening is still fairly light, and the humidity that has been pendulous in the clouds has blissfully dispersed, leaving behind a crisp breeze, and the aroma of wet leaves and fresh soil.
I try not to let my mind wander as the steady hum of my wheels lulls me with their rhythm. Instead, I mark the way to myself, very deliberately taking note of the familiar signposts along the route. There’s the Equestrian Showplace, where I know some kids go in the afternoon to play with the horses, which Mamma says all have fleas. There’s the entrance to the vast Dudley Farm, the historic pioneer house, often the scene of class trips. I remember those trips: how fun it looked dressing up in period clothing, and learning to work the old hand pump; how I’d keep in the back, arms by my sides, praying I wouldn’t get called on to volunteer. I should be grateful Mamma let me go, at least. Further on, I spot the plant nursery where she buys most of her cuttings, and which to me used to seem like the most magical place on earth. All that colour. All those smells—