How We Fall (9 page)

The reporter, his eyes bright with excitement but his face appropriately grave, discussed the actions the police were taking while photos of Ellie and her family came up on screen. Police and volunteers were searching the surrounding area for “any other signs of the missing girl.”

Other signs. So, her body.

Past the twenty-four hour mark, missing people were rarely found alive. I knew that. But the girl who’d gotten me into Disney movies and helped me through volleyball and drank more lemonade slush during the summer than anyone else I knew couldn’t be dead. “Tell me if they find anything else, okay?” I whispered.

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Kate Brauning

Mom squeezed my arm. “I’m sorry, honey.”

I nodded and slipped off the arm of the couch. I stumbled outside and sat down on the porch step. Our German shepherd, Heidi, whined as she trotted around the corner, ears pricked. She sniffed my hand and beat her tail against the side of the steps.

I ran my hand over her fur. If she was okay, there would be no reason for her backpack to be abandoned in a field.

Whatever happened to Ellie, whatever horrible thing it was, no one knew. I should have been the one who knew. If I’d been more consistent about calling her, if I’d emailed her more, if I’d found a way to drive to St. Joseph for a Saturday more often after she’d moved, maybe I would have known what happened.

But getting away was such a hassle. I didn’t have my own car, Marcus’s truck got really low gas mileage so we didn’t drive it that far, and two of the four parents were always using the family cars. Plus, with Marcus and me perpetually on child-watching duty, even just getting the time to see Kelsey and Hannah one evening a week was a headache.

Still, I should have tried harder.

Heidi licked my hand. I rubbed her ears absentmindedly.

The day was cooling down; the breeze lifted wisps of my hair, my bangs. The early evening sunlight made the silver on my bracelet glow. I held up my wrist and touched the wings of the bird. It swung back and forth.

Ellie and I had called and emailed each other fairly frequent-ly those first several months. Maybe there was something in her emails I hadn’t noticed. Some mention of a guy. A hint I’d missed because I hadn’t expected her to run away or disappear.

I stood up and went back inside, leaving Heidi whining at the door. I could only let her inside when the parents were gone.

I hurried back to my room and logged on to my computer.

Searching my inbox for “elliebelle,” pulled up every email from her for the past two years.

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How we Fall

She’d been a bit like Belle herself—quiet, smart, bookish—

but she wasn’t shy. It didn’t surprise me that she’d found friends in St. Joseph so fast.

Belle wasn’t the reason for her relentless love for the movie, though; it was the Beast. Of course, we both preferred him pre-transformation, but she’d actually get mad about it. She’d always turned off the movie before the Beast turned human, even though it left Belle crying over him while he died on the balcony. Turning him into a nicely manicured, flowing-haired human so he and Belle could have a socially acceptable relationship had ruined it for her. Using “belle” in her email address was less about her identifying with the main character and more about her wanting to be the girl who got the Beast.

Still, she’d never dated the bad boy types; she knew they were losers and hadn’t bothered with them. The one guy she’d dated had turned out to be the kind of ass who smacks girls when he got angry, and she’d told him what she thought of that, and dumped him.

I clicked open the first email from after she’d moved to St.

Joseph. She’d been emailing me from class—summer classes to help her get ahead so she could spend more time on volleyball during the school year. This had been right about the time Marcus and I had started our thing. Details about her new room, a reference to photos she’d texted me of it, excitement about the volleyball team. Lots of “I miss you” and a promise to call that evening.

She probably had called. We’d spent hours on the phone last summer.

I moved on to the next email from a few weeks later. Asking how Marcus was doing, saying to tell him and the parents hello.

A fantastically boring rundown of her new workout routine.

Ellie had always loved the gym, but the only kind of exercise I tolerated was running. I skipped to the next one—a giant rant 54

Kate Brauning

about her parents setting a curfew for her since they were in the city now.

Reading her words made my eyes burn and my throat close up.I skimmed the rest of the summer emails. Once the dates hit September, the emails thinned out. She was worried she wouldn’t be good enough for the team, but she liked the girls so far. They had team sleepovers and it was her turn to host in two weeks.

At least this was something I could do. Being this helpless, worrying constantly about what happened and why, made me want to tear my hair out. Rolling over on my stomach on the bed, I started reading the emails more thoroughly.

The sleepover was awesome. Wish you could have been there.

The house was trashed, though. Mom made me clean the whole
thing but I don’t care. I feel like I’m actually getting to know the
girls now, and this sounds bad, but I do think I’m a better player
than some of them. I didn’t want to be the worst player on the
team, you know? Anyway, obviously Coach Stevenson didn’t come
because he’s a guy, but several of the girls were teasing him about
not being there. He got all mad and said they couldn’t tease a
teacher about that, but it came out kinda harsh and he made Sylvia cry. I mean, I get it, but they were just having fun.

I stopped. Sylvia had moved from St. Joseph, but it couldn’t be the same Sylvia. Right? I opened a new tab and typed in a few keywords.

St. Joseph had nine high schools, it looked like. What were the chances they’d both gone to Edison?

None of her other emails mentioned Sylvia. She just talked about “the girls” and how Coach Stevenson had gotten a mo-hawk and freaked out the whole team.

Her emails became shorter and less frequent, and then stopped altogether. When she’d come to visit over Christmas, 55

How we Fall

mostly because her parents had family out here, it had been awkward. My secret relationship with Marcus had been taking up most of my attention, and she’d seemed distracted, too. We hadn’t talked about much.

I’d always thought we could pick back up where we’d left off if we called each other more often, but then one day last semester she was gone, and I was out of chances to fix things.

I wasn’t going to let that happen again. No more regrets.

56

My relief at having gotten things figured out with Marcus was completely drowned out by Ellie’s backpack. Somehow, though, that made me all the more determined to spend the afternoon with him. I waited until the next morning when Mom was the only one around before I told her I wanted to go to the pool again.

She frowned. “Didn’t you just go? I have to go to the library to help out with the summer reading program. I won’t be here either.”

“Well, can someone else watch the kids?” Seriously. I shouldn’t have to be permanently on call as a babysitter.

“I’m sure Marcus can watch them.”

I turned around from loading the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher. “Um, Uncle Ward has him going to town for something. Please?” Marcus definitely couldn’t babysit, and her automatically going to him wasn’t fair. “They’re not our kids.

They’re not even my siblings. And Marcus never, like never, gets time to do what he wants.”

Mom sighed. “Okay. I’ll tell Ward and Shelly, and they can figure it out.”

I had to work to not look too excited. My bag was already packed, including sunscreen and a towel to make it convincing.

At two o’clock, I put my swimsuit on under my clothes; I didn’t want anyone getting suspicious. Marcus had left twenty minutes earlier, telling Chris he had to go to town to get chicken feed. We did need chicken feed, but he’d gotten it early that morning and left the bags in the back of his truck.

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How we Fall

If I hadn’t been so excited, I would have been depressed that it took this much planning for us to get a few hours to ourselves. I ran across the backyard and up the road; Marcus would be waiting around the corner.

My sandals slapped the gravel and my loose white shirt swished as I ran. Even though I wasn’t fast enough for track, I loved running. To me, running meant summer. It wasn’t really summer until I could pound down our gravel road and feel sweat prick my skin, feel my ponytail flicking my shoulders.

I wasn’t going far this time, so I was barely breathing hard by the time I reached his truck. He hadn’t seen me come up behind it. He was connecting his iPod to the stereo. I smacked the driver’s window with my palm. He jumped. I grinned up at him, then ran around the truck to get to the passenger door before he could open it for me. The less this seemed like a date, the better.

“Hey.” I scooted into the middle seat and pulled the seatbelt around me.

Daft Punk beat from the speakers. “Hey.” He watched me, one hand resting on the steering wheel. “How long ’til they’ll expect you back?”

“Three hours? I said I was going to the pool.”

“Good.” He put the truck in gear and we pulled off the shoulder onto the road.

“Did you hear they found Ellie’s backpack?” He’d spent a lot of time with me and Ellie. The three of us had gone swimming in the creek and done homework in my room and hung out while Marcus and I watched the kids.

“Yeah.” He shook his head. “Are you okay?”

I shrugged. “I’m more worried about her than me.”

He downshifted for the hill. “Do you think—it’s so strange.

Do you think she’s okay?” His phone vibrated, but he only glanced at it.

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My gut told me she was very much not okay. “I think she might be dead.” My voice sounded expressionless.

Marcus reached over and rested his hand on my knee.

I threaded my fingers through his and gripped his hand. “I read through all my emails from her yesterday.”

He turned toward me. “Yeah? Why?”

I looked out the window at the fields and trees traveling past. “I thought there might be something, you know? She mentioned someone named Sylvia.”

His eyebrows went up. “Huh. Sylvia could have gone to her school, I guess.”

When I didn’t say anything, he squeezed my hand a little and we didn’t say much for the rest of the drive. With him, I didn’t need to fill the silence. Eventually we talked about college and how Chris was looking less like a kid and more like a teenager and how we had no idea what the parents were going to do when we went to college next year.

We drove nearly thirty miles before Marcus pulled off the road and into a field that was growing wild.

“What are we doing?” I’d never been out here. We always went south to Harris or further to St. Joseph for shopping and pretty much anything else. We almost never went north.

“We’re getting out.” He pulled into the field.

“Whose place is this?” We didn’t know anyone out this way.

“No idea. That’s the point.” He reached behind his seat and grabbed a small cooler and a blanket, then opened his door and jumped out.

I pushed open my door and watched him walk around in the long grass and pick a spot. A soft breeze carrying the smell of drying grass and dust filtered through the cab of the truck.

I grabbed my book and jumped down.

Only a few wisps of clouds were scattered through the sky, leaving the day bright and hot. Marcus shook out the blanket 59

How we Fall

in the shade. His phone beeped again, so he replied to the text then shoved the phone in his pocket.

He sat down on the blanket and motioned to me. “Come sit.”

“Is this some kind of picnic?” We’d already eaten lunch.

“Well.” He opened the cooler. “I thought we could hang out here. And I brought you something.”

I sat down and tucked my legs under me. “What is it?”

He opened the cooler. “Vanilla or chocolate?”

“Chocolate. What is it?”

His mouth tilted up and those lines around his eyes came back when he smiled. “Ice cream sundaes.”

No way. I laughed. “Really?”

“We have nuts, hot fudge, cherries, marshmallows, and either chocolate or vanilla ice cream.”

“Definitely chocolate.” This was perfect. No screaming children, he’d brought me ice cream, and we had almost no risk of being caught.

He handed me the small container of chocolate ice cream.

“Do you want fudge sauce?”

I carved a trench in my ice cream. “Um, yes. Where is it?”

He held up a thermos. “I made it.”

“You what?”

“I made it. I put it in a thermos to keep it hot. Mom thought I was making hot chocolate.”

I grinned and reached for the thermos. “This is awesome.”

He held the thermos away from me, close to his chest.

“Come get it.”

I rolled my eyes. “Give it to me.”

“No.”

“Yes. Give it.” I lunged and snagged the bottom of it with my fingers. He let me have it. “You give up too easily,” I said.

A vague sort of smile crossed his face. “I suppose I’ll have to try harder, then.”

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Kate Brauning

I unscrewed the top and tipped the container. A thick ribbon of still-warm fudge drizzled onto my ice cream and filled the trench I’d made.

We could make this work. We’d be just friends at home, and then find time to get away.

I handed him the fudge, then sprinkled in nuts and added two maraschino cherries. He put everything on his. I lay down on my stomach and swirled my spoon through my ice cream.

The sun warmed my bare legs and my back, the thin white shirt a cool barrier to the heat. I knew he could see through it because he kept glancing at me, his eyes flicking from my back to my shoulders and then away.

“Nice touch, wearing the swimsuit.” He opened the bag of marshmallows.