Dollhouse (3 page)

The sound of frenzied barking ricocheted through the trees. Aisha froze with the camera at her face.

“Hope they’re not loose!” It was hard to tell where the barking was coming from, exactly.

“Let’s head!” Ethan whipped around.

We bolted towards the river.

The noise of the dogs died away.

“The dogs must be locked up. They’re not chasing us.” Aisha was almost out of breath.

Further up the river, Lacey’s prone form was stretched out still on the ground, one hand trailing in the water.

“What’s wrong with Lace?” I ran to her.

Aisha stepped casually over and touched Lacey’s head with her foot. “Wake up sleeping beauty.”

Lacey flinched as she opened an eye to the dappled sun. “Oh you’re back. Just thought I’d have a snooze.”

“I reckon you could get a good night’s sleep under a train,” groaned Aisha.

Lacey pulled herself to her feet. “Well, I like sleeping.”

Ethan checked his watch. “Better head back now.”

“I was hoping to find a couple more animal species.” Aisha tapped her camera.

“Baby, no.” Ethan held up two palms.

Aisha smiled widely. “I didn’t mean back where the dogs are. On
the other
side of the river.”

“Aish, I don’t want to go in any further. I’m supposed to be the guide, and I’m not even sure, exactly, of the way back. And the GPS only charts the main tracks.”

“We’ll just follow the rivers back.” Aisha held her smile.

“Yeah. But rivers can all look a bit the same, y’know? And I have to find the point we entered in here.”

“Okay, you’re right.” A lock of hair fell across her forehead. “I don’t want to get lost out here. But it’s a shame. I wanted to do a proper nature study and get us good marks.”

Ethan shut his eyes, relieved. “Yeah, I’d like to get good marks too. I need ‘em. And l know your pictures are important to you. Shame most of the animals were hiding today.”

Six different emotions seemed to cross Aisha’s face. “Pictures?”

Ethan stared back, confused.

“They are not just
pictures
.” Her voice was pained. “You sound just like my parents. They don't understand either. This what I want to do with my life. But they talk like my photography is a hobby. Like I should  go study law or something when I'm older. But my photographs are records, compositions, perspectives, emotions, reflections, abstracts, studies... You don’t get it at all. And you don’t get
me
….”

She'd fired the words at him like bullets.

He opened his mouth to speak, but jammed it shut again. Holding up a hand, he seemed be trying to use some other sense to figure out the new strangeness of her. My mom always said that even those closest to you will seem to unleash a strange person when you least expect it, but in reality the strangeness was lurking in there all the time.

“Ethan was just trying to agree with you, Aisha,” I told her. “He’s bending over backwards for you.”

 Aisha’s mouth set into a tight, small line.  “
You
—and
Ethan
—are forever sticking up for each other. I’m a bit outnumbered with you two around, aren’t I?”

She shot me a odd, questioning look, as though asking me if I'd been trying to snatch Ethan away from her, turn him against her.

“Now you’re getting hysterical.” I straightened.

“Don’t you call me hysterical. Don’t even try it. Ethan—are you okay with her calling me that?”

“Aish, you’re over-tired, or something,” said Ethan. “Let’s just go.”

She blinked in reply, her eyes large.

Turning to Lacey, she demanded to know whose side she was on.

“I’m on the side of getting off these mountains before dark.” Lacey kept her tone even.

Aisha walked away stiffly, breaking into a run at the tree line.

“I’ll go after her,” Lacey offered.

“Seems to be me who’s upsetting her. I should go.” Ethan’s shoulders hunched as he trailed the direction Aisha had run.

Lacey and I sat ourselves down, taking swigs from the water bottles. There was nothing to do but wait it out. Lacey fiddled idly with her bracelet—a darkened silver piece of jewelry she told me was her great grandmother's. A favorite song of mine ran through my head. We all had tickets to see the band in July. I wished it was July now—it was tough to wait out two long months.

Ethan crashed through the bushes, his face coated with sweat. “She come back this way?”

Lacey jumped to her feet. “You didn’t find her?”

“No—she’s out there hiding from me.”

“Maybe she’s embarrassed.” Lacey always tried to find the most flattering solution to a person’s crappy behavior.

“Whatever.” I threw up my hands. “She needs to put on her big girl pants and let us get out of here.”

We called and searched for the next half hour, but no Aisha.

Lacey stood still for a moment, looking back at Ethan and me. “What if she’s trying to get back to the pick-up point all on her own? She might have doubled back while we were looking for her.”

Ethan stared at Lacey thoughtfully. “Yeah, she might have tried that. She could also get lost trying that.”

He cupped his hands over his mouth and bellowed Aisha’s name twice, his voice rising in desperation.

“Ethan, we have to go. My mom will be waiting. I have to be there on time or she’ll freak.” I didn’t want to admit the real reason—night was coming. I couldn't imagine being stuck out here in complete darkness.

“We can’t leave Aish here by herself.” Lacey shot me a pleading look.

“Look—I’m going to walk you girls back to the path,” Ethan told us. You just need to follow it down to the pick-up. I’ll stay here and look, just in case.”

Lacey nodded.

“And what are you going to do, Ethan? Stay out here by yourself?” It wasn’t fair he had to stay out here because of Aisha’s stupidity.

Ethan rubbed his forehead with the back of his fist. “I don’t know what else to do. And if—if she doesn’t turn up at the pick-up—call police rescue.”

Ethan pressed his mouth together so hard the blood left his lips.

"I saw what you did to Ethan," I told him. "You have to stop doing that." The image of the bruise Raif had inflicted on Ethan's face deepened in my mind.

I glanced around at the tall boys who stood behind Raif—I didn't know any of them well, but I knew they'd been friends with Ethan, at least, before Aisha disappeared. Now, it seemed they were all against him. The school buzzer rang out through the corridor, but none of the boys moved.

Raif shook his head slowly and deliberately. “No I don’t. And I’m gonna keep doing it until he tells me what he did to my sister.”

“He didn’t
do
anything," I insisted.

“Why do you defend him?” His milky-green eyes darkened.

“Aisha… loved Ethan. That’s why.” My voice was small, thin. I hoped my own feelings for Ethan weren't stamped plain as day on my face.

 “Yeah
loved him
past tense. Because my sister is dead. And she was stupid to ever think he was worth more than a maggot. Him
and his grandfather
are going to get what's coming to them. There's a tour guide who swears he saw that old bastard at Devils Hole the day Aish went missing.”

Cold fingers reached around my spine. But I refused to let Raif see that his words had shaken me. There were rumors flying around everywhere, and I wasn't interested in listening to any of them. 

Dominic brushed his fair, side-swept hair back from his eye, and raised his eyebrows at me.

Was Dominic for real? Trying to do a pick-up stare while standing back and letting Raif grill me?

“Both me and Lacey were there too," I replied to Raif. "Do you think we had something to do with her disappearance as well?”

Raif gripped my shoulder. “Neither of you were the last to see my sister. Ethan was.”

I tried to wrench my shoulder away, but he held tight. "That's not true, and you know it. He was just the last person to stay out there looking for her."

The wood-paneled corridor seemed to close in around me, the ceiling and walls winding down until the end of the hallway was just a hazy pinprick. The smell of cleaning wax caught in my nostrils, making my mind spin. Panic coursed through me. It wasn't because of Raif, or Dominic, or the other boys standing there backing Raif. It was all the talking about Ethan when he wasn't here to defend himself. Worse, it was the sudden sense of the emptiness of the school now that Ethan was gone.

Lacey and the twins—Caitlin and Brianna Denshaw —hastened towards me.

"Hey, release the girl, King Kong!" Lacey glared up at Raif.

Raif let his hand drop.

I closed my eyes for a moment, filling my lungs with air.

If had been anyone else, I doubted Raif would have listened. But no one ever took any offence at anything Lacey said. With her elfin face, squeaky voice and tiny frame, she seemed so fragile.

Raif and his friends marched away down the hall.

"You should report that." Lacey's pale blue eyes flicked over me with concern.

Brianna nodded. "Yeah. He'd get kicked off the soccer team if the school knew he was bullying."

"It's ok. I just want to let it go." There was no way I wanted to talk with the school principal, and have to lie if I was asked about Ethan.

A moment of weird silence followed, where no one knew what to say. The twins, Lacey and I had all kind of inherited each other as friends. Aisha had been our common thread, the one who strung us together. Without Aisha, there was a vague awkwardness and a sense that all the spaces weren't being filled in.

"Hey," said Caitlin finally. "You and Lace should come down to Ladies Well after school. You two haven't been anywhere since...."

Lacey and I eyed each other. Neither of us had felt like being part of anything outside of school—not since the day of the hike. But Ladies Well was on the edge of the forests, and I felt a sudden urge to be close to the forest, closer to Ethan.

"Why not?" I nodded. "Could be a good change."

Lacey shrugged and nodded.

I headed off for my ecology class.

Walking into the classroom, I tried not to see the empty desk beside mine. Just like I did in every class of mine that Aisha used to be in. But of all those classrooms, this one was the worst. She haunted this room. People had pinned up the sketches Aisha had drawn on that day out there in the forest—the animals and the forest. There was even that sketch of Ethan, Lacey and I resting under the trees.

Aisha had also taken scores of photographs that day, but the police had taken all of them in case there were any clues in them. I knew the photographs would have been amazing. She had the kind of talent with photography where even inanimate objects seemed to have a mood. Maybe she picked up moods in scenes so easily because her own moods changed so rapidly.

Everyone had liked Aisha. Despite her mood-a-minute personality. She was kind of on the fringe and kind of friends with everyone at the same time. I guess she’d been one of the few kids who didn’t need a clique to merge into. That was how I became friends with her. She just walked up and talked to me. She didn’t stand back like the others—others who were either tossing up whether I’d be a good fit for their group or automatically shutting me out because they weren’t interested in adding any stragglers to their group, especially not an American straggler.

I felt eyes on me, and turned to see a suggestive grin spreading across Dominic's face.

Brianna and Caitlin Denshaw wrapped towels around themselves as they pulled themselves onto the rock. Dripping, they padded over to Lacey and me. The four of us sat watching the boys jump from the higher rocks into the pools—the boys bellowing blue murder as their bodies hit the icy water. I was glad Raif wasn’t here with them—the boys were okay when he wasn’t around.

Dominic stood shirtless on an outcrop of rocks. His back rippled as he dove into the water, and swam strong strokes to the platform's edge. Tossing his hair back, he spat water from his mouth.

I tilted my face to the weak sun. This was the only moment of normality in the past few weeks. Life had operated in suspended animation ever since Aisha disappeared. But with the deep of winter on the way, it seemed life would stop, completely freeze over. Already, all around the tiny patch of sunlit sky, gray blankets of clouds massed.

Caitlin squeezed water from her hair, her grayish-blue eyes alive with the exhilaration of cold—eyes that were almost the exact same color as her racer-back swimsuit.

Brianna’s teeth chattered. “Last time for me this winter.”

She was the quieter, more reflective version of her sister. The two of them shared the same mousey-brown hair, freckles and love of the water. They competed in regional swimming events—powerhouse Caitlin apparently having an edge over her twin.

“You guys must have Eskimo blood.” Shivering, I gazed out at Ladies Well—broad expanses of rock that trapped the river into deep, crystalline pools. I'd been here a few times in summer, and the water had been too cold for me to swim in even then. I was used to the bathwater-warm oceans of Florida in the summertime.

Caitlin grinned widely. “The more you do it, the more you get used to it.”

Brianna nudged Lacey and gestured meaningfully towards the boys. “I bet Ben needs some warming up over there.”

“What?”

"Ben Paisley. He's got the hots for you."

"Get out of town. Look at me—my dad calls me a shaved toothpick.” Lacey stared off into the trees, flicking off Brianna's words as though they were bothersome insects.

Lacey seemed not to notice Ben’s dogged attention to her over the past couple of months or so. She never showed interest in boys—or anything much for that matter. She was hard to know.  If Lacey was a place, there’d be no signposts.