Messenger 93

by Barbara Radecki

  As she falls, so do we all, the crow’s voice had whispered.

  You must find her. Left-behind echoes caught in the bristles.

  Seven days.

  I made my way along the upstairs hall and listened to the usual banging and jingling coming from my parents’ bedroom as they got ready for work. Drawers and zippers and jewelry. Water running in their bathroom.

  Downstairs in the kitchen, my little brother Trevor was at the table, hunched over his new-edition manga, eating cereal. I poured myself a bowl and ate it standing at the counter.

  “Hey, Trev?” My voice sounded normal. Easygoing. “Did you go into my room yesterday?”

  “Gross,” he said through a mouthful of cereal.

  “It’s okay. I just want to return this to its rightful owner.” I dug into my back jeans’ pocket and pulled out the feather. “Did you drop it in my room?”

  Trevor side-eyed the feather for two seconds. His eyebrow lifted. “No.” He went back to reading.

  I flourished the feather. Just a little. To get his attention again. “But it’s yours, right?”

  Instead of answering, Trevor stuck an enormous spoonful of cereal into his mouth.

  “Okay, cool.” I slid the feather back into my pocket. “I guess the crow left it in my room for real then.” Since Trevor wasn’t listening anyway. “Yeah, because this crow came to me last night. It called me Messenger 93. It told me I have to find a girl. That I have seven days to save her.

  “Save her, save us all, it said.” I rinsed my bowl, stuck it in the dishwasher. “Hilarious, right?”

  Trevor turned a page, eyes intent on the next chapter. The breath coming out of his nostrils rattled a bit. It made me strangely sad.

  “Okay, well.” I gave him a farewell wave, which he didn’t see or acknowledge. “See ya.”

  In the front hall, I checked out the window. It was a questionable morning. Murky spring non-weather. I grabbed my raincoat, shoved my feet into my steel-toed boots.

  I was in the middle of tying my boots when Trevor’s voice, loud and monotone, intercepted me. “If the crow says you have to go, then you have to go.”

  I DON’T KNOW HOW long Trevor’s pronouncement tasered me.

  If the crow says you have to go, then you have to go. But I was still standing in the hall, statue-like, boots half-tied, when my mom ran down the stairs, clipping her earrings on, late for work again.

  “Hey,” she said, barely registering me. “I don’t have time to drive you to school.”

  It was okay, she never did.

  But it jolted me back to real time. I finished tying my boots, zipped up my coat, and opened the door. The outside air assaulted me, cold and wet.

  I was standing on the front porch when my mom’s voice called out. “Oh, hey, hey, before you go!” I stopped mid-door-close. Mom had stepped back into the hall. She was fumbling with a button on the cuff of her blouse. “Do you know a girl named Krista? From your school?”

  There was a startling buzz in my head. Intense enough to block out reasonable thought.

  “I got a call from Hattie’s mom. No one’s seen Krista or heard from her since lunchtime yesterday. They’re reaching out to everyone, just in case.” Mom made a sad face. “Looks like she might’ve run away. Do you know anything about it?”

  I managed to shake my head.

  “I didn’t think so. That’s what I told Hattie’s mom.” She tucked her blouse hem into her skirt and gave me a distracted smile. “So scary. But I’m sure she’s fine. A little teenage rebellion.” And she swished away, into the kitchen.

  The front door closed between us, and it was a robotic moment later when I realized it was my own hand doing the closing, and then my feet moving me away from our house.

  THE MORNING WAS WEIRDLY quiet. Like it had been stuffed with bubble wrap. There were no people walking dogs, no cars passing by or pulling out of driveways, no roar of city buses huffing down the main avenue a few blocks over. My footsteps tagging the pavement was the only sound I heard.

  Do you know a girl named Krista?

  I wandered by myself through sooty half-light, down the home-lined streets of our neighborhood, past architectural trimmed hedges and budding garden plots and wrought-iron gates.

  No one’s seen Krista or heard from her since lunchtime yesterday.

  I approached the school through the back way. Over the football field, along the track, past the old oak tree that presides over the backyard of the school. There was a crow in the branches. Small and black. Silent. It was staring out into the far distance. I kept a close eye on it as I got closer. But it ignored me, twitching its head to stare off in another far-off direction. So I kept going, keeping my breath in check. Telling myself it was a harmless coincidence.

  It wasn’t until I rounded the side of the school and hit the parking lot that the quiet stillness was ruined. The lot was teeming with cars, students hopping out, heading inside. There was a police cruiser pulled up on the curb by the doors, no officers sitting in the seats, no blazing lights.

  Anusha, L.J., and Hattie were getting out of Hattie’s mom’s SUV that had been queued up among the other cars. I could tell, even from a distance, that the girls were messed up. They were agitated, ranting and gesticulating. But also tugging at each other’s sleeves as they entered the school together. Small gestures of belonging. Of being in this as a team.

  I got to the doors and pushed in alongside everyone else. I clasped my backpack stuffed with my eleven hundred books in front of me. You have to choose armor that isn’t obvious, or it loses its power to protect you. I switched the din of chatter and shouts into white noise, as I always did. Better not to hear specific words. Better to disappear into the stream like just another one of its blind, submissive currents.

  THE REFLECTION IN THE bathroom was not a mirror-image of a Girl Unhinged. I looked okay. A little tired maybe. My pupils weren’t dilated or anything. My skin hadn’t broken out in hives or rashes. I looked like a sane and ordinary person. Unremarkable. And why shouldn’t I? There was no history of visions or voices, no misguided illusions of grandeur in my past. Okay, maybe for a couple of years when I was four/five, I was sure I was a fairy. But I didn’t think that counted as evidence of mental instability.

  Messenger 93. You must find her. Only you can save her.

  If the crow says you have to go, then you have to go.

  People believed in all kinds of things, didn’t they? In gods and goddesses. In multi-verses. Telepathy. Laws. Astrology. Signs. Omens. Borders. Love. None of these things were certain. Immutable. And no one said they were crazy.

  I washed my face, then filled my water bottle and drank a long swig. My stomach gurgled a bit. The morning’s cereal wasn’t sitting well.

  I faced the bathroom exit and girded my shoulders and stepped out.

  There was a droning excitement in the hallway that I tried to ignore. But it was hard. What I couldn’t avoid seeing, even peripherally, was the disconcerting arrival of the principal and a police officer. They marched purposefully through the throngs of students and stopped side by side at a locker. A small woman, as slight and billowy as tissue, was waiting for them in front of it. I didn’t need to get closer to know it was Krista’s mom. I’d met her once, the year before.

  My first class was on the other side of their huddle, and so I had no choice but to wander by. Me, another witness to the wreckage. Another eavesdropper. I took my time, bowing my head, threading between people. An invisible stitch.

  The principal had a lock cutter in her hands. While the police officer looked on, his face set with passive interest, Ms. Drake angled and leveraged the cutter until she’d severed the bolt. She was talking to Krista’s mom the whole time, who listened with tissue-like nods of her head. Ms. Drake pulled the metal door open and Krista’s mom bent inside. She took her time touching, then gathering Krista�
�s stuff.

  There were a bunch of mood board images taped to the inside of Krista’s locker door. My eyes honed in on one as I passed — a picture stuck to the upper left-hand corner that I’d never noticed before. It drew my attention like light to an event horizon.

  A ripped scrap of paper with a silhouette of a black bird on it. The kind of simple drawing that looks like you’ve taken the letter M by its bottom feet and stretched it out.

  So what made it stand out? All the other pictures were very Krista, for lack of a better word. Basic sunsets, basic inspirational quotes, basic instant photos of Krista and her friends making sexy, pouty faces. But what did the bird mean to her? A thick, black, single-lined wave of a bird. It was a totally different kind of keepsake. A paradox.

  “Clio!” I recognized L.J.’s commanding voice. She and the other girls were swooping in on Krista’s mom. “Are you okay, Clio?” That was Anusha. There was an edge there already. “Did you hear anything?” Hattie sounded breathless and shaky, on the verge of tears. “Did she call?”

  “No, not yet.” Clio had her arms full of Krista’s stuff, but she reached out and stroked Hattie’s arm. It was all so emotional and tender. “Just that one text.”

  “We asked around,” Hattie said. “No one’s seen her since yesterday morning.”

  “Lunchtime, actually,” said Anusha, throwing it off like it was useless information. “In the park across the street.”

  “Sitting on that bench,” said L.J. “No one thought anything of it. No one saw her leave.”

  “That’s where they found her phone, right? In the trash?” Hattie was pale, her eyes circled as if she hadn’t slept.

  “Yes,” Clio said, her hand still resting tenderly on Hattie’s arm, tethering her. “Don’t worry, we’re going through everything now. We will find her. Everything will be okay.”

  Passing kids were staring wide-eyed at their little group. If it wasn’t so awful, it could’ve passed for a stage production, or a reality show.

  Clio stepped away from the lockers. She clutched Krista’s stuff to her chest. “Thank you for everything, you guys.” She turned and hurried away down the hall, the principal and police officer in step behind her.

  “Can we do anything else to help?” Hattie fluttered after them.

  Clio glanced over her shoulder. “Yes, girls — please go to your classes. I’ll text you the minute I hear anything.”

  The girls hung back, dismissed, and Hattie pulled them into a worried clutch.

  I hunched over, hoping to merge into the throng. Who knew what they would do or say if they saw me gawking?

  3

  ALL THROUGH HISTORY CLASS, I doodled wonky bird silhouettes and Messenger 93 across loose-leaf sheets in my binder. Ms. Stathakis’s lesson on the destructive forces of colonialism played a droning background soundtrack to the whirring monologue inside my head.

  Krista had run away.

  She had run away.

  She had disappeared.

  I knew sort of how it would work. They’d be out there looking for her. Tracking every digital lead. Posting gone-girl pleas on social media. Scrutinizing her feeds and posts. Contacting anyone she’d ever talked to.

  But I couldn’t make sense of why Krista would run. She had everything anyone could ever want: Status and Love. She ruled the school — or at least grade ten. She had Boy, and they were inseparable. Dating for a whole year now. True love. She had a million friends, or friends of friends who knew who she was and thought she was cool. She had my friends.

  Hattie, L.J., Anusha, and Boy. I’d gone to elementary and middle schools with them. The five of us had been a solid unit. Obviously there had been fights and drama and tears, but we were loyal throughout. Unbreakable.

  Krista showed up when we transferred over to T. Emmet High School. As Niners, we were the bottom of the food chain. You know that dynamic exactly, so I don’t need to get super-explicit about it. A curse is cast the moment you enter those hallways. You begin your excruciating larval transformation. You pretend to be a well-adjusted human. Sometimes you turn out pretty good, sometimes you become a spirit crusher, and sometimes you disappear. One vital part of you erased at a time. Face. Voice. Heart. Soul.

  Krista was the Spirit Crusher. I was the Erased One.

  She’d zeroed in right away on our friend group. Probably because of Boy. At first she seemed fun. She had a wicked sense of humor. She could toss off a sharp zinger about almost anyone. She seemed to see through bullshit.

  I liked her in those early days with a kind of shocked awe. Oh, people talk like that? They see that stuff? They don’t pretend it doesn’t exist? Your weaknesses, your yearnings, your secrets.

  Pretty soon, when we were hanging out at our lockers in our tight new Group of Six, she started talking over me. And I let her. Then she started sidestepping in front of me as she performed her stories. I let her. She’d grab my phone and go into my socials and edit my feeds. She would never heart or comment on anything I posted. I let her do that too.

  In the second month, whenever I spoke, she would zing me: That’s so pathetic/sad/catty/callous/gross/stupid/fake/mean/wrong. At first, if someone called her on it, she’d say she was joking, Get a sense of humor. Then it became a funny bit she did. It didn’t take long for me to stop chiming in.

  She was super-nice to the rest of them. Hattie was a goddess, L.J. was a genius, Anusha was a superstar. She didn’t tease Boy or label him — no, she was deep with him, sensitive, honest, real.

  By month three, the other girls started turning on me. In person at first: Why didn’t you show up — you’re the one who asked to meet? Why did you send that text to Tyron — you know I’m into him. Then through private messages: Thanks a lot for telling everyone my business. F U for calling me a bitch behind my back. Stop talking shit about me and other ppl you call “friends.”

  I never knew what to say — because I couldn’t explain it. I didn’t set up those meets, or send any of those messages, or start any of those rumors. But it didn’t matter that I denied it. They never believed me.

  About five months into grade nine — not long after the holidays — I stopped existing for the girls in our group. Like Krista, they’d turn their backs on me when I approached. Step in front of me. Ignore me when I spoke.

  I’d lurk their social streams. Scrutinize every photo of their awesome, amazing hangs. All the experiences I’d once taken for granted, now excluded from. Razor-cut out of their lives.

  Then I stopped existing for everyone else.

  I’d built up a small but respectable following on my platforms, especially on Ittch, but then the followers started dropping off. It didn’t really hurt until Anusha left, and then L.J., and then Hattie. When my follower list was down to only Boy and a few other randos, I deleted all my accounts. If I didn’t exist, then I wouldn’t exist.

  Krista and my old crew became one big happy family. Laughing, joking, fastening onto each other, whispering into each other’s ears.

  End of March, Krista and Boy were dating.

  They couldn’t keep their hands off each other, they were so in love. I didn’t want to, but I snuck glances as they pushed against lockers or ducked into stairwells. Eyelashes curling closed like feathers, pink-cushioned communion of lips, glistening-darting tips of tongues.

  Pretty soon I stopped existing for Boy too. Maybe not on purpose, but by virtue of design. If he was with Krista, how could he see me?

  You can’t fight these things. You can only succumb.

  I accepted my place. Became a Nobody.

  For the rest of that year, then all through grade ten, I sat by myself, streamed music, pretended to scroll my phone, got deep into studying, scrawled stupidly ambitious storyboard panels.

  By then Infinity Girl had found her nemesis. Double Kross arrived on the scene like hellfire and anthrax. She had demon powers. She cou
ld zero in on the invisible force-fields that connect you to every other living being and set them ablaze. Scorching the pulsing threads of humanity until all that is left is your charred and panting body, alive but alone inside a lifeless circle of eddying ash.

  Double Kross had it in big-time for Infinity Girl. And Infinity Girl’s only protection was the optical camouflage provided by her mirrors.

  Krista had run away.

  There was no question in my mind: Krista was fine. She was too smart and too mean to be at anyone’s mercy. I could easily picture her hanging out in some den of empowered girls, laughing at us, formulating a plan to conquer the world.

  I hated Krista. Hated her.

  And maybe that was why the crow had come to me, and maybe that was why I had to be the one to find her. Which was just too unbelievable, too unbearable, to accept.

  BETWEEN CLASSES, I CASUALLY searched the halls for Boy. No one had mentioned him being gone. Police and principals weren’t breaking into his locker and going through his stuff. So he obviously hadn’t run off with Krista. And if Boy was still around, Krista’s mom would obviously have talked to him. If he knew anything about where Krista was, I assumed he would tell her. He was a good person.

  I went to his locker and stood near it, hoping for some sign of him. Waiting for him like a lost girl on a city sidewalk with my hand out.

  Kids streamed around me like I wasn’t there.

  Boy would never be okay with Krista taking off by herself. He would be devastated.

  That’s not how life was supposed to be for him.

  Boy was that guy. The smiling, swaggering one. The one who acts like he’s first across the finish line no matter how he places, who can’t walk under a doorway without dunking on the top jamb, who can’t pass up a chance to wrestle his buddies in the middle of the hall, holding and spinning and hurling them until they’re basically doing one of those pairs figure skating routines.

  I waited by his locker as the few minutes between classes ticked down.