Don't Try to Find Me: A Novel (3 page)

MOSTLY, I’M OKAY. I
mean, no one’s done anything bad to me directly. But there’s this feeling like a lot of bad things have happened to the people around me, and they’re just going to keep happening.

Across the aisle, there was this couple that kept fighting. He had a shaved head and tattoos around his neck, like a collar; she was dark-skinned with her hair dyed blond, so dry it had turned into stalks of wheat. Their voices were rumbling in this low, angry way, and every so often, one of them would burst out with some kind of threat. He’d say, real mean, “You BETTER shut the fuck up,” and she’d say, a half hour later, “You fuck with the bitch, you’re going to get fucked right back.” I tried not to listen, but I couldn’t tune it out completely. It made my stomach knot up.

Then they actually started to scuffle. The bus driver called out, “Quiet down back there! Don’t make me pull over!” like they were a couple of kids acting up on a school trip. And I guess it was like that, because the couple actually separated themselves same as a teacher would, and the guy went to a new seat.

Meanwhile, the old lady next to me just kept droning. She talked for hours, nonstop. No, that’s not true, she stopped to go to the bathroom. Fortunately, Hellma went to the bathroom a lot.

(Seriously, her name is Hellma. I would ask why her mother hated her so much, giving her that name, but I think her mom must
have been a Gypsy fortune-teller. She must have known how Hellma was going to turn out.)

I don’t like using the bus bathroom. It stinks like cigarettes back there, because a bunch of smokers huddle up in the last couple rows. They’re crouched down low and taking these fast, deep puffs and waving their hands around a lot, as if that’s really going to make the smell go away. If the bathroom’s occupied, you have to lurk in the aisle next to them, waiting. They don’t look up. It’s almost like they’re not people anymore, just these trolls under a bridge with one motivation.

I also don’t like going to the bathroom because I have to pass a lot of creepy old guys. They look at my body but never my face. It’s like they’re on death row and I might be their last meal.

Kyle told me why that is. He’s only a few years older than me and non-creepy. I met him while we were waiting to reboard the bus, after a forced stop in a half-empty station where litter was blowing around the floor like tumbleweeds. I was determined not to sit next to Hellma again. So after the bus stopped and we all had to get off, I hid out in a bathroom stall for a long time just to make sure Hellma would be ahead of me in the line.

Kyle’s not really cute, but he’s normal and that counts for a lot right now. He didn’t look me up and down. He said hi, and I said hi, and we stood waiting. A few minutes later, he said, “I’m glad the bus isn’t totally full. I need a new seat.”

“Why?” Did he get stuck next to a Hellma, too?

“The guy next to me seemed really cool for a while. He was asking me questions about sports and, like, current events. I thought he had been traveling out of the country or something. But then he tells me”—Kyle lowered his voice—“that he ‘just got out of the pen.’”

“What’s that?”

“Like the state pen? The penitentiary?” He looked around, like he was a little afraid we’d be overheard. “He told me that when people are released from prison, they get a Greyhound voucher. They
can go anywhere in the country. Like the government is saying, ‘Bro, this trip’s on us.’”

I thought of all the looks I’d gotten waiting for the bus, and every time I went back to the bathroom, and whenever one of the men passed my row. Now it made perfect sense.

“All you have to do to get a free bus ticket is commit a crime?” I said. “Sweet.” I was being sarcastic, but I wasn’t sure what I was even making fun of. Kyle? The government? Convicts? I felt embarrassed, and I wanted Kyle to stop talking to me so that I wouldn’t have to hear myself say anything else stupid.

He must have picked up my cue because he went silent. I didn’t like that. In the spaces between words, my mind can go all sorts of places. Dr. Michael once taught me how to get out of them, but that was a long time ago. Like, another life.

“Are you a convict?” I asked, because it was all I could think of. Maybe it’s like with undercover cops. If you ask, they have to tell the truth.

He laughed. “Is it that obvious?” He gestured down to his UC sweatshirt. “College student or mass murderer, take your pick.” Then he paused. “Actually, I’m not a college student anymore. I need to get used to that.”

“You got kicked out?”

“Wow, you really think the best of people, huh?” He smiled in this friendly way, and I guess I do think the best of some people, because I liked him already. “I stopped going to my classes. I’m on track to being a dropout.”

“Why are you telling me that?” I was curious, and I had nothing to lose. Worst-case scenario, he’d stop talking to me. No big deal.

“I’m practicing saying it. I’m on my way home and I have to tell my parents. They’re going to be pissed. They paid out-of-state tuition.”

“Where’s home?”

“Just outside Chicago.” His eyes lingered on my face. “Where’s home for you?”

I should be practicing my story, too. With Hellma, I didn’t need to, since she was only interested in herself. But if anyone suspects me, it could ruin everything.

That’s a new one, having to worry about being too conspicuous. If I were a superhero, my name would be Ordinary Girl, and my superpower would be staying under the radar. It’s never been hard for me to go unnoticed.

“I just met you,” I told Kyle. “Shouldn’t we leave some mystery?”

He laughed. “Okay, woman of mystery. Just tell me this. How old are you?”

“Eighteen. I’m taking a year off before I go to college.”

“I’m eighteen, too.” His patter suddenly stopped, and he seemed less confident. Younger. I got this feeling he might be lying, too. So that’s us, two “eighteen”-year-olds on a bus.

He’s sitting next to me, asleep against the window. I guess he’s my new friend. I’m traveling a lot farther than he is. I kind of wish I could spend a few days in Chicago—he makes it sound like a pretty cool place—but that’s not in my plan, or in my budget. I’ve got to make my cash last. No more asking my parents for $20 for a movie. I don’t have to ask them for anything ever again.

I don’t have to think about them either. I wrote my dad off ages ago, so he can’t hurt me anymore. And my mom—I’m working on that one.

Neither of them deserve to be in my head.

I’VE NEVER GONE THIS
long without showering before. I do what I can in the bus station bathrooms—brushing my teeth, washing my pits, putting on deodorant, I even tried this spray-in shampoo that’s like applying dandruff—but I’m a little nervous about what he’ll think when he sees me. When he smells me.

I’m being strategically nervous. (Redirection, an old Dr. Michael trick.) Focus on how I smell so I don’t have to think about how he’ll look at me, or what we’ll say to each other, or how it’ll feel. I’ve only
lived two places in my life, and both of them were in California, and both were with my parents.

But I know I can handle this. I repeat that over and over. It seems like the best Dr. Michael coping statement for the job. I wouldn’t have done this, choreographed every aspect over the past months, if I couldn’t handle it.

Maybe I shouldn’t think about Dr. Michael anymore either. It’s not like I mattered to him. I only had one of him, and he had hundreds of me.

Kyle and I both transferred buses in Dallas. We have an unspoken pact: I don’t question his story, and he doesn’t question mine. It turned out he was hitting on me, in the bus station. It’s kind of flattering, if you don’t consider the total lack of young female competition or Kyle’s cuteness deficit. I wouldn’t call him ugly, though. Especially since I did go ahead and hook up with him.

It was something to pass the time, since I didn’t have my phone and couldn’t play any games. I have my music, and he leaned his head close, and we shared one of my earbuds. It was kind of sweet, something you’d do with your boyfriend. I haven’t had an official boyfriend yet, but when I do, that’s what it’ll be like. We’ll share things, like earbuds and music. Maybe that’s what’s waiting for me, when I reach my final destination.

That makes it sound so ominous, doesn’t it? It’s not my FINAL final destination. But I’ll be off this bus, finally.

My first hint that Kyle was a little into me (or that he was bored playing games on his phone) came when he asked if he could hear what I was listening to. For some annoying reason, I thought of my mom. What she’d say if she saw Kyle and me huddled up together. I bet she’d ask something like “What do you really know about this person?” She would try not to sound too afraid, though she would be. My mom is always so fearful and hoping somehow I won’t notice it. She’s white-knuckling her way through life. I don’t want to do that, and I won’t miss that about her.

Scratch that. After what she did, I’m not going to miss
ANYTHING
about her. I bet she didn’t even know when it happened, the moment she lost me. She’s probably totally confused by this whole thing, how I could ever leave, and that doesn’t make me feel bad for her. It pisses me off more.

Speaking of piss, I kind of have to go. But I’m doing my best to hold it until the next station. Last time I went into the bus bathroom, it was vaporous and chemical, like something had recently been burning. It definitely wasn’t cigarettes. It freaked me out, and I tried not to breathe in. I didn’t know if it was meth or heroin or what.

I’ve always been kind of scared of meth, the way it supposedly makes people twitchy and enraged. I wonder if someone on the bus might lose it and turn violent, and our only security is a bus driver saying, “Don’t make me pull over!”

But there’s no point in thinking about that. I’ll think about how Kyle started kissing me, instead. Or maybe I was the one who started it, in that girl way—you know, cocking your head at an angle that basically screams, “You can do it now!” I’ve never been the first to kiss anyone. I just send out signals that no one could miss. It’s safer that way.

The thing is, I never send signals to anyone I really like, because I’m pretty sure they’d reject me, like Wyatt did. Trish said that I was so obvious about being into him that no one could miss it, which meant that he couldn’t miss it, and he had a million chances to kiss me and never did. My face gets all hot thinking about it, even now, and it was a long time ago, like a year and a half.

I’ve kissed some people, but no one I was really into. They were leftover guys. The best ones go for Trish first, of course, and they usually want to be her boyfriend, not just a hookup. Then usually the next tier of guys goes for Sasha. I’ve got better hair than Sasha; hers can get frizzy. But she’s a size 1.

When I get off this bus, when I walk into my new life, I’m nobody’s leftovers. It’s going to be perfect.

Kyle isn’t as good at maintaining his cover as I am. I’ve figured
out that the less you say about yourself, the fewer actual lies you tell, the better. It’s less to keep track of. But Kyle, he can’t seem to shut up. (Except for when we’re kissing, and even then, he’s doing this soft moaning thing that makes me self-conscious. Sure, it’s dark out, but we’re on a bus, with people all around us!) So I’m starting to piece his real story together, the one that bleeds out into the cracks while he’s spinning these tales about college life.

I think he really has been going to college up north in Arcata, like he said. He just knows too many details about life there. One of the lesser California state schools is in Arcata. Humbug State, something like that? (Dad would kill himself if that was where I wound up.) It’s hard to imagine someone moving all the way from Chicago for a school that’s not known for anything in particular. So my theory is that Kyle is actually from California, and he’s going to Chicago to run away from something or someone. Or maybe I see liars and runaways everywhere because I am one. No, I’m a girl who just had her eighteenth birthday. I’m emancipated.

Kyle was a pretty good kisser, but when he tried to slide his hand down my pants, I stopped him. It wasn’t only that I felt gross and dirty, with the whole not-showering thing, but also that I didn’t want him to make me feel too good. It’s embarrassing. Besides, I’m probably not supposed to be doing this. All the rules haven’t been established yet, but it might be cheating.

Kyle put his hand on my chest instead. He murmured in my ear, in this way that’s supposed to be sexy, that’s supposed to mean he’s soooo into me. “Vicky,” he breathed. For a nanosecond, I felt offended. Why’s he thinking of Vicky when he’s touching my tits? And then I thought, That’s me, at least until I think of something better, something that fits. It’s a lot of responsibility, reinventing yourself.

IT’S A LITTLE PAST
midnight. I’m lying in bed under the $600 quilt we bought from the Sundance catalog because it seemed so charmingly rustic, so fitting for our new old house, and I’m searching Marley’s iPad for clues for the umpteenth time. She’s scrubbed the thing clean, which I suppose is the final confirmation that she left on her own.

I don’t know her passwords to the different sites (Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter) and my efforts at guessing have come to nothing. In the time I’ve been perusing, I bet some new site has cropped up and all the teenagers have heard the call, like a dog whistle, and migrated. Why didn’t I insist on having Marley’s passwords? Why didn’t we put monitoring software on her computer and phone? We thought it was enough just to be her “friends.”

Behind our backs, all the parents we’ve had to call, the ones whose children we’ve questioned, they must be talking about us. Saying that something was going on in our home to make Marley leave, or that at a minimum, we’re guilty of negligence. We should have known. It’s always the parents’ fault, especially according to other parents. They’ll judge us, and they may very well be right.

It’s cold in here. Old farmhouses are drafty places, even with double-pane glass in the windows and in the doors that lead to our balcony. It seems like too much work to use the stone fireplace. I pull the quilt tighter around me and stare at Marley’s Facebook page, at the Betty Boop–type cartoon that she’s got as her main picture.

What’s public about Marley is innocuous. She mentions things she’s reading or watching or listening to, along with links; occasionally she comments, and responds to comments, about what other people like. Most notable is how impersonal it all is. I can’t tell how she feels about herself or anyone else. Maybe that’s the stuff she keeps private—as in, it can only be viewed by her friends and not her parents. That’s what “private” means these days.

I can’t get into her e-mail account, though that probably doesn’t matter. She never checks it anyway. No one her age does. It’s all real-time, all instant gratification.

If I’d been monitoring, I could have caught things like this, sandwiched between the pop culture references:

Facebook

JULY 25

Marley Willits

Has been losing sleep wondering what the hottest lip gloss is for summer

Kelly Fontana and 2 others like this.

Trish Allen
bitchy much, M?

If I’d been monitoring, I could have asked, “Is anything wrong between you and Trish?” They’ve been friends since third grade, and it’s out of character for Marley to take jabs at the queen bee. Or I could have “liked” it myself, shown that I admired her wit and lack of superficiality. She’d have known I cared what she thought. She’s such a talented writer, when she wants to be.

Her last post was this one, a few weeks back:

OCTOBER 18

Marley Willits

“Tell me you’re with me so far.” Gavin DeGraw, Where You Are

There were no likes for that, no comments at all. Had all her friends stopped bothering with her? I think of her sitting alone, posting, reaching out, wanting someone to be with her, to
tell
her they’re with her, sending out this smoke signal, a call-and-response with no response, and I want to cry. I should have seen this on October 18. I could have “liked” it, could have said, “I’m with you, Marley, always.” Marley might have virtually eye-rolled me, but she would have felt the warmth inside her, and it would have risen, like baking bread, and then when I knocked on her door later, she would have said, “Come in,” and we would have talked all night. Or even a half hour would have done, if it was undiluted and honest. Because obviously, every time Marley said school was fine and her new classmates were fine and this town was fine, it was a lie. And the truth is, I was the one who needed this move, the one who orchestrated it, who was willing to manipulate to make it happen, and I needed for her to be fine, so I never excavated.

Well, I’m excavating now. But I’m terrified it’s too late.

The fact that all her “devices,” as Officer Strickland calls them, have been cleared out means the police are definitively treating this as a runaway case. I got a sense of what that meant when I asked Officer Strickland if the police department will be getting Marley’s passwords to the various sites and monitoring all her communications for clues as to where she went. He was noncommittal bordering on dismissive. It’s obvious that very few of the police’s “limited resources” will go toward finding Marley. He suggested we review our phone bills to see if there are any numbers we don’t recognize. We already did, I reminded him. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Every text has been deleted, and Verizon doesn’t keep copies.

What if I had scrolled through her texts a week ago? A month ago? Maybe she’d be down the hall, asleep, instead of . . . I don’t want to finish that sentence, don’t want to articulate the possibilities.

By now, I’ve basically accepted that Marley ran away. But what no one seems to fully grasp is how dangerous it is for a young girl on
the run, especially one whose life has never required survival skills. Even though she left on her own, if she stays gone, that might not be her choice. It might be out of her control.

Even her father refuses to see it. Paul is downstairs in his office, on his own computer. If we follow protocol, he believes, she’ll be home safe and sound within the week. Fifty percent of runaways are, he repeats. Tomorrow, we’ll pay a professional to search Marley’s devices, see if we can recover what she wanted to stay hidden.

I, of all people, should have sensed something. I know firsthand that you can look one way and feel something else entirely. That you can do things no one would suspect of you, all while going about your ordinary business. You never miss a day of work (or school, in Marley’s case). You never arouse suspicion. Because mostly, people pay attention to the wrong things. All the clues you drop, intentionally or unintentionally, consciously or subconsciously—they go unnoticed. You escape detection. Then one day, you simply escape.

I click on a picture of Marley with her friends Sasha and Trish, out by Trish’s pool. Sasha’s laughing, with one of her curls boinging into her mouth, and Trish is looking sun-kissed and glamorous, camera-ready as always. They’re flanking Marley, who appears to be squinting into the sun; blown up, her smile seems forced. Her arms are tight across her stomach, hiding it maybe, but the effect is that as her friends hug her, she’s hugging only herself. Alone in a crowd, is that the expression? I think of her last post (“Tell me you’re with me so far”), met with silence.

The picture is from three months ago, the last time Marley stayed at Trish’s house. Paul and I dropped her off and then spent the weekend at a bed-and-breakfast in San Francisco. The room was all in white, everything eco-friendly, luminescent bath gels smelling of lemongrass, a giant soaking tub, and rose petals across the ivory bedspread that actually looked a bit lurid, like the scene of a crime. We had sex because it had been a long time and because we were supposed to. At least, that was my motivation. “You were so quiet,” Paul
said afterward, and he’d tried so hard, with all of it, that I didn’t have the heart to tell him I hadn’t come. I hadn’t felt much of anything. When we picked Marley up at Trish’s house, she was in no mood to talk either. Paul tried to fill the void for the first half hour of the drive and then gave up.

Why didn’t I ask Marley what happened that weekend? I mean, I did, in the laziest way, just a quick “How was it?” when she first got in the car. But I didn’t follow up later that Sunday night, or the next day. I never questioned her silence.

I’m going to call Trish, once it’s morning. I need to know what happened that weekend. Marley never asked to do another overnight, and now that I think of it, I can’t recall the last time Marley mentioned Trish. I peruse Facebook. Trish never “liked” anything again.

I’ve been so self-involved lately. Clueless. I never thought about the root of that word before, that you really can miss all the clues.

The other parents are right. I am to blame.

When Marley was little (seven, maybe? the happy years blur together), we used to play the opposite game. We had to speak in polarities. If we were thirsty, we’d say, “I definitely don’t want a glass of water.” I don’t recall how the game was first invented, but Marley loved it.

I can still see myself holding her close as she convulses in giggles, and I say, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you . . .”

It suddenly occurs to me that the note could be in opposite-speak. She was writing to me in code. I begin the translation:

Try to find me.

I won’t be okay. I’ll be worse.

Yes, I’m onto something here. This could be it.

I hate you.

I toss the iPad to the floor and begin to sob.

I’M IN THE SUNROOM,
on the silken window seat. It’s Marley’s favorite spot. “I feel like a cat,” she once said, luxuriating in the light that poured through the windows on all sides of her.

I’m staring out at the barren fields, where the almond trees used to be. I don’t know how long I’ve been immobile, hoping that Marley will come into view, when Paul speaks from the doorway that divides the sunroom from the dining room. Just beyond him is the piano that came with the house. None of us play. But it’s a pretty old piano, and its dark wood seems to fit. It belongs here, more than any of us do.

“Rachel,” Paul says again, impatience nibbling at the edge of his tone. He might have said it more than twice, more than three times, I don’t know. It’s eight
A.M
., and he’s showered, shaved, and dressed. I’m still in my pajamas.

“It’s Saturday,” I say. “She probably won’t come back on a Saturday. There’s too much going on.” It feels good to say it. I’m modulating my hopes, not pinning them all on Saturday. There are so many other days of the week for her to return.

Paul stays in the doorway. I can feel that he wants to come closer, but it’s hard to penetrate my force field. I’m sure other couples lean on each other at times like this. They’re not in separate rooms, on separate computers; one of them doesn’t crash out on the living room couch while the other lies sleepless in bed. It’s not Paul’s fault, though. He’s reached for me. I can’t seem to reach back.

“I spoke to Officer Strickland,” he says. “Someone saw our poster and called in a tip.”

My heart beats wildly. It’s our first lead.

“A man said that Marley approached him on the street not far from the school. He drove her downtown and saw her go into the bus station. Officer Strickland spoke to the ticket sellers who were working that day, but no one admits to selling Marley a ticket.”

“What do you mean, they won’t admit to it?”

“They’re not supposed to be selling bus tickets to minors. They should have asked her for ID. So now they’re covering their asses.”

I stare at him, outraged. “We need to go down there. We can tell them that we don’t want to get them in trouble; we just want to know where Marley went.”

“I’m on my way.”

“Without me?”

“You’re so emotional. Which isn’t a bad thing,” he adds hastily, “unless we’re trying to convince people they’re not in any trouble.”

I stare out at the fields. If I squint, I can practically see her in the distance. Long hair flying, Ugg boots tromping.

“Then I was thinking I’d drive to the old neighborhood and through San Francisco and put up flyers. Maybe I could talk to some people.”

“Which people?” It comes out sharply. I’m offended by his characterization of me as “emotional,” yet I’m proving his point even as I speak. Our marriage has become a bramble bush. It’s so easy to get nicked.

Paul finally enters the room and sits beside me on the window seat. He wants me to look at him, and I would, but I’m crying again, and embarrassed about it. Emotional. Of course I’m emotional. My daughter’s out there all alone. Or not alone, which might be worse.

“Why aren’t you emotional?” I ask.

“Inside, I’m a wreck. I thought she’d be home by now.”

“Would it kill you to show the wreckage every once in a while?”

He smiles, his eyes sad. “I don’t know. Maybe it would.” Then his gaze follows mine, across the field. Is he picturing Marley, too? “We can’t both go to San Francisco. One of us needs to be here in case Marley shows back up.”

He’s right. The thought of Marley taking the bus somewhere and then all the way back only to find the house empty . . . It could make her feel unloved and abandoned. Maybe she’d go away all over again. We’d never even know she’d been here.

“I listened to your voice mail,” he says. His eyes are tender in his tired face. “The one you left for Marley before you realized her phone was still here.”

“No, I knew her phone was here. I just couldn’t stop myself from talking.”

Another smile. “We’ll find her, Rach. Or she’ll come back on her own. It’ll be okay.”

“When she comes home, what do we do? Do we punish her? Put her back in therapy?”

“We hug her for a long time, and then we ground her until college.”

In the end, Paul follows his plan and I stay behind. I call Trish at exactly nine
A.M
. She answers the phone groggily. She must not turn it off even to go to sleep. Neither did Marley.

“Mrs. Willits,” she says. I envision her stretching awake: long black hair and long limbs. Marley’s pretty, in my estimation, but even I have to admit that Trish is striking. She’s not waiting to grow into her looks like Marley is. She’s arrived. “Have you heard anything from Marley?”

“I was hoping you had.”

“No. But I’ll definitely call you if I do.” I sense evasion in her tone.

“Trish, I need you to do me a favor. I need you to imagine that you’re a mother. And that means that there’s this person who you love more than anything. There’s this person that you’d die for.” Crap. I’m going to cry again. “And she’s taken off. She bought a bus ticket somewhere, and you don’t know where. But you know that bad things can happen to a fourteen-year-old, alone.” I pause. “Do you know what I’m saying?”