Messenger 93

by Barbara Radecki

  “Middle of nowhere. North of everything.” Gray pulled out his cellphone and clicked into a map. He widened it so the city became a speck within the world around it. He tapped north of the city and zoomed in a little. “This is where she lives.” He pointed to a blank area off the grid, far from the closest highway. “And this is where she used to live. Where I —” He scrolled and zoomed into a spot farther away. This time to a small town: Nipewin. He’d stopped talking.

  “Where you …?” I prompted, keeping my voice quiet.

  “Where I was born.”

  Your birth community, Lily had said to him when we’d arrived. They were waiting for you. I wondered how long Gray and Jocelyn had known each other. Been together.

  “My birth mom died when I was two,” he said, not looking at me, keeping his thumb on that one tiny spot on the map. “I was adopted out, and my parents live down here. So I don’t know anything about what it’s like up there.” He scrolled east of his birth town, then east of the home Jocelyn had run away from, to another spot. “And this is Deerhead.”

  It was also in the middle of nowhere, also small, surrounded by a few other small communities and lots of undulating green blobs that represented uninhabited woods. One of the towns near Deerhead caught my eye: Betthurry. Wasn’t that, according to the news on the TV that morning, the place where they’d found the human remains? Female. Unidentified. My hands went cold.

  Gray said, “So her picture doesn’t look familiar to you? You never saw her and your sister together?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I don’t actually know if Krista and Jocelyn know each other.”

  “The picture on the poster is a scan from a screencap. Maybe if you saw a better image …” He clicked into his photo stream. “Maybe if you see the whole thing …” He found what he was looking for and angled his phone towards me.

  It was a close-up of Jocelyn’s face — the same one he’d printed out and glued to his poster. He double-clicked the image to open it up, then showed me the whole photo.

  Jocelyn was kneeling on a rumpled unmade bed. She was wearing a small baby blue tank top. The lacy ruffles of a dark blue push-up bra peeked out from underneath. She had on tight denim shorts and her legs were bare. She was beautiful. Sending beautiful shots of her beauty to her boyfriend. Didn’t everyone in love do that?

  “I’m sorry,” I said softly. “She doesn’t look familiar.”

  Gray turned the screen back to himself. “I’ve looked at this picture a million times.”

  A million times. Of course he had. Who wouldn’t?

  “Keep thinking there might be a clue in it or something. Like, in here …” He zoomed into a corner behind her, and Jocelyn’s face disappeared out of frame. There was a corkboard on the wall and it was crowded with tokens: jokey pins and badges; earrings and necklaces tacked together in sparkling clumps; printed photos of an older smiling man.

  Gray and I tilted into each other by mistake. The weight of his shoulder against mine was shocking. Reassuring.

  He was the first to pull away. “She’s run off before,” he said. “But she usually comes down to the city. They say she’s never been gone this long without calling her mom.” He hovered his finger over the corner of the corkboard hidden by her head. “What if there’s something on there that fills in the blanks? Like, why did she run? And why to Deerhead?”

  And then it hit me: Gray and I were on the same mission. Taking the same leap of faith. Sometimes you had to look everywhere, at everything, to save people, didn’t you? And if your guide was a crow that only you could hear, or a small hidden corner of a corkboard that only you were looking at, was that so wrong?

  He will take you where you need to go.

  Because wasn’t Krista’s text to Boyd showing the way to Deerhead? Only you: Should follow me. Single eye: Don’t stop searching. Finger-pointing-up: I’m up north. Scissors: Cut off from everything we know. Stars: Where the stars shine bright and true.

  Krista could’ve meant she was in Deerhead, couldn’t she? She could’ve been pointing the way to some remote place that was cut off from the world.

  She will fall.

  Gray drummed his hands on his knees. “Damn.” He shook his head. “It’s bad. I mean — what if they — you know —”

  “What?”

  “If they —”

  “What? Say it.”

  “Stole them ... For trafficking.”

  “Trafficking?” I fought a wave of nausea. I hadn’t imagined that possibility.

  Krista materialized in my mind. Imagined video-loops of her, terrified and pleading. Girls crammed bare shoulder to bare shoulder in steel containers, spectral ships crossing the ocean.

  My body went cold. If someone had taken them, could it be the same person who’d attacked me at City Hall? Had Gray saved me from that fate?

  “Can’t they just be gone by choice?” I blinked away some rogue tears. “Someplace good?”

  “Like where good?”

  “I don’t know.” I conjured it up. Krista and Jocelyn together with a bunch of other runaway girls in some beautiful place where everyone took care of each other. “A den of empowered girls?”

  Gray gave one choked laugh. “Right.” He tapped beats on his knees. “Except they don’t usually end up someplace good.”

  Unearthed human remains. Serial killer.

  “They just found a body,” I blurted. “Up near there.”

  “In Betthurry. Yeah, I know.” Gray clicked into his browser and showed me the screen. It was a pinned article about the human remains. They still hadn’t identified who she was.

  I fought a fresh scrim of tears. Had I wished for this? Brought it on with the force of my vengeful fury?

  Gray turned the screen back so he could consider the article on his own. “When I was eight, a girl in our neighborhood went missing.” He lowered his voice, kept his eyes on his phone. “I didn’t know her — she was older than me. Ten, I think. They found her body a few weeks later. Some psycho had taken her.” He stroked his thumb along the screen. “And I never thought about her again until I heard about Jocelyn … Never realized till then that a little girl being dead was just a story to me. An anecdote. Something we joked about.”

  Everything he said hit me. I couldn’t speak.

  But Gray wasn’t waiting for my opinion. He shoved his phone back into his pocket, squinted his eyes, and said in a softer voice, “Lily and Walter asked if we want to stay for dinner. Do you want to stay?”

  It was too much, expecting the wrong kind of help, accepting the wrong attention.

  “Sure, thanks,” I blurted.

  Because the alternative was leaving. Not knowing where to go. Letting her and everyone fall.

  WALTER LADLED STEW INTO bowls and Lily passed them around while Gray and I slumped, anxious and miserable, over the table. When Walter picked up his spoon and started to eat, we ate too. It was so good: hearty vegetables, roasted tomatoes, fresh dill, a side of warm buns slathered with melting butter. Gray and I had two bowls each.

  When Gray was done, he pushed his empty bowl away and said, “I’m sorry about ditching the big reunion four years ago.” Lily and Walter stopped eating and looked up at him. I stopped and looked too. “It was my mom who stopped me from going,” he said. “She was freaking out about it.”

  “Freaking out,” Lily said, her tone flat. “White woman’s hell.”

  Walter dropped his head to hide a quick grin.

  “I know you guys want to connect me to my birth community and everything — and I appreciate that. But my mom — my white mom,” Gray said, emphasizing it for Lily, “is right. I don’t belong there.” He drummed his hands on the table. “I guess I don’t belong anywhere.”

  “How do you know you don’t belong there?” Walter said. “You won’t know until you meet them.”

 
Gray standing outside the circle dancers at the march. Not saying hi to Lily and Walter. Not talking to anyone. Wearing the dollar store mask. The mask not only a statement — but something to hide behind.

  “My birth mom is dead,” he said evenly. “Their community isn’t mine. I never saw the point.”

  Gray’s birth mother was dead. He’d been adopted by a white family.

  “And now?” Lily said.

  “It’s different.”

  Jocelyn, I thought. Jocelyn makes it different.

  Gray met Lily’s gaze. “I know what’s happening out there. I’ve read the numbers. Even if I don’t belong — It’s still — I want to do something to help.”

  “Go on.”

  I noticed for the first time how Lily’s eyes lit up every time she looked at him.

  “I want to go to Deerhead. I want to join the search. Please —” Gray prayered his hands. “Take me with you.”

  “How do your parents feel about you going up?” Walter said.

  “My dad bought me all the camping gear.” Gray pointed in the general area of the living room, reminding us of his stuffed backpack. “I’m eighteen now. An adult.”

  “Okay. Good.” Lily smiled without smiling. “We’re heading up early tomorrow morning. We’re going to spend the weekend helping with the search. I’ll call Arthur and ask if we can join the group at Jocelyn’s house. That way you can meet them.”

  “I need to go too.” I said it so loud, so fast, it surprised every one of us. But it was true: I had to get up to Deerhead too, and they were the only people who could get me there.

  Still, I knew I’d have to convince them. Lily and Walter were already preparing to speak, likely to protest, and so I barged on. “My sister is missing. She ran away, and no one can find her. And my money — the money I need to get up to Deerhead — was stolen today.” But it had to be even bigger than that. Something bad enough to force me to run after my fake-sister alone. “She’s my only family.” I blocked Trevor from my mind. My mother, my father. It was easy. Easier than you’d think. “She’s the only family I have left.”

  Everyone gave that information some breathing space.

  Lily eyed me. “How old are you?”

  I couldn’t say that I was only sixteen. If I did, my journey would end right there.

  I’m eighteen, Gray had said. An adult.

  I looked into my emptied bowl. “Eighteen.”

  “So you’ve aged out of the system,” Walter said. “You’re on your own?”

  I kept my eyes down and nodded. It was everything I could do to fight the incriminating surge of blood to my face.

  “How old is your sister?” Walter said.

  Ages scrolled through my mind at the speed of light. If Krista was too young, she’d be too vulnerable. Too old, and it wouldn’t be as urgent. But I had to say something. “Eighteen.”

  “I see.” Walter said. “Twins.”

  Twins?! It served me right.

  “A powerful loss,” he said. “She ran off without telling you?”

  I couldn’t look at any of them. I nodded again.

  Gray said, “Like Jocelyn.”

  “Surely you don’t need us,” Lily said. “Have you gone to the police? They’ll help you.”

  Walter said, “The authorities claim there’s nothing they can do if the girls go of their own accord. They don’t even need consent to leave after age sixteen.”

  Krista was sixteen. She had gone of her own accord. But there was still a posse of uniforms and detectives helping Clio. They’d set up a task force. Gone to our school. Looked through Krista’s phone, her locker, her computer, her room. They downloaded all our data. They have everything we ever did or said. They searched my house, Boyd had said. They’ve been here for hours. Clio’s despairing voice. No expense spared. They took her toothbrush for DNA evidence!

  Lily got up from the table. “They’re supposed to look for all of them. No matter who they are. They’re not taking Jocelyn’s case seriously. They haven’t even bothered to trace her phone.”

  They’d found Krista’s phone before the rest of us even knew she was gone.

  “Why can’t her mom track it?” Gray said.

  “It’s too remote up there. They’re not getting a signal. But the police could if they tried.”

  “They are looking for Krista,” I said, guilty, ashamed. “It’s just that — They don’t have any leads. No one can find her.” I gave Lily a pleading look. “I have to do something.”

  Lily ran her hands through her hair. “Okay, we’ll figure it out.”

  “We’ll do what we can to support you,” Walter said.

  Gray gave me a cautious smile, and I tried to smile back.

  SATURDAY, APRIL 14

  FIVE DAYS UNTIL THE FALL

  1

  THERE WAS A TREMENDOUS thump and I jerked out of a deep sleep and tried to focus through the dark. Dawn light was filtering in through a window and shapes began to appear. Unfamiliar shapes. I bolted up. Where was I?

  And then I recognized the crammed bookshelves — spines of hardcovers squeezed together, piles of paperbacks balanced on top. Me lying on a too-soft couch and covered with flannel blankets. A worn recliner across the way. Walter and Lily’s living room. I couldn’t see which of them had made the thump that woke me, but I remembered our trip up north and knew they must be getting ready.

  Gray and I had organized our bags for the trip the night before. Charged our phones. I was relieved I’d bought those fresh clothes from the drugstore. Something clean to change into if we were going to be gone for a couple of days. Walter and Lily were packing me a sleeping bag and some extra-warm blankets and clothes because I would probably have to overnight in Gray’s tent.

  Gray’s mask and poster were reflecting luminous blue-white at me from the depths of the living room’s darkest corner. He’d decided against bringing the Jocelyn poster with him — it was meant for here, for city people to pay attention — so he’d set it aside, along with the thrift store plastic mask.

  I glanced around for Gray and found him asleep on the floor in his sleeping bag. I breathed relief in and held it, then settled back into the couch, into the pillow, and watched him slowly appear through the shadows. His head was tilted to one side, his mouth slightly open and purring, the lines of the feather tattoo on his neck emerging through the dark.

  A voice whispered in my ear. “She will fall in five days.”

  I jolted and checked to make sure the voice hadn’t woken Gray. He was sound asleep.

  “Hey.” I whispered so quietly to the crow that it was practically just exhalations of breath. “I’m supposed to go with them, right?” It was peaceful in the room, only the rhythmic hum of Gray’s deep sleep. “Please tell me,” I whispered a little louder. “I want to be sure.”

  But the crow wouldn’t answer me, and then I knew it was gone.

  I got up, slipping out from under the blankets and off the couch, careful not to wake Gray. I crept over to that one dark corner that held his Jocelyn poster and the mask. Something told me — not a crow, not a noticeable voice, but something farther and fainter inside me — that I would need them at some important point in the future. I had plenty of room in my backpack, and they weighed almost nothing.

  I folded the poster, quietly creasing the cardboard into a flat, manageable square, and tucked it and the mask deep into my bag. Underneath the last new sweatshirt. Under Krista’s phone. Then I zipped my bag shut and crept back to the couch.

  Okay, Crow, I thought as I snuggled back underneath the blankets and waited for morning, Message received.

  WE DROVE FOR HOURS. First out of the city; then through the suburban sprawl that surrounded it; then past farmland, wide swaths of dormant fields; then into the wild. Bare boughs climbed into the sky, setting a filigree of branches, thick and thin, against t
he matted clouds.

  Walter and Lily chatted from time to time. They explained what they did. That they were both Anishinaabe. That they worked for an organization in the city that advocated for Indigenous rights. That they’d met Gray years before when his birth community was trying to reconnect with him. Gray listened intently, drawing his finger over condensation on the window beside him.

  Walter and Lily took turns driving, most of the time holding hands over the center console. I found myself staring from the back seat at their braided hands. It was as if their open affection was an artifact and I was pressing my nose to museum glass.

  Instead of stopping for food, we ate sandwiches that Lily had packed, and oranges. When I bit into the sections, juice dribbled down my hand and I made sure Gray wasn’t watching as I licked my fingers, and he wasn’t. We poured hot tea from thermoses into small plastic cups and blew the steam that rose and carefully sipped without spilling. I spent a lot of energy trying to avoid touching Gray every time we stretched our legs or reached our hands.

  At one point when Lily was driving, she glanced back over her shoulder at Gray. “So how did you hear about Jocelyn running away?”

  “I watch the online community board. Everything is on there.”

  “Hm.” She nodded. “That’s true.”

  Gray pitched forward, leaning on the back of Walter’s seat. “She was last seen hitchhiking around Deerhead after she left, right?”

  Lily said, “That’s what they told us.”

  “But why the big search this weekend?”

  I was surprised he didn’t know.

  “They’ve been going out pretty steady every day,” Walter said. “But we just got a report from a driver in those parts that there was a girl matching her description in the passenger seat of a car. They weren’t able to get the license plate.”

  Gray looked a bit nauseous. “That wasn’t on the community board. That is — Whoa — I don’t know …”

  Lily put up a cautionary hand. “We don’t know for sure that it was her.”