Songs for the Missing (23 page)

Harder to deal with were classmates who were almost but not quite friends—people she sat next to or whose lockers were beside hers, old lab partners and fellow flutists from the wind ensemble, kids from middle or even grade school. She knew them and they knew her enough to say hey as they passed in the halls, but now out of pity they felt obliged to stop and say they were sorry, and to prove it, that they’d volunteered at their church or been at the softball game or raised money in the fun run. She thanked them, aware that, like her parents, they were all trying to read her face for the slightest hint of a crack.

In the morning she drove the Subaru, her mother encouraging her from the passenger seat, but after school she took the bus, waiting in line and then sharing a bench with Dana. They got off at the same stop just before Thornwood and walked back toward her house. It wasn’t until the bus pulled around the corner that she felt free, and then only for the minute they were alone together, unobserved, kicking the rotten crabapples into the middle of the street and making fun of the Bonners’ new mailbox shaped like a goose (“That won’t last long,” Dana said). She wanted to hang out with Dana in her basement, watching Maury Povich and avoiding doing their homework while above them Mrs. Hedrick watched her soaps and talked on the phone, except her parents were both at home, waiting for her. If she was a minute late, they’d call out the National Guard.

“You gonna be online later?” Dana asked, peeling off.

“Probably,” she said, and kept walking.

From the street her house looked uninhabited, the sun picking out individual shingles, underlining the white siding. The porch was shadowed, the windows dark. In the drive by itself sat the Subaru, meaning her father was out somewhere. She crossed the lawn at a diagonal so only someone standing at the living room window could see her, then tiptoed up the side of the porch stairs as if she might sneak in undetected.

The screen door squeaked, setting off Cooper. He came charging through the front hall and stopped short, mussing the Oriental rug. He looked right at her, legs braced, and barked a warning.

“Who is it, Goober?” she asked, letting herself in. “Oh, that’s right—it’s
me.
”

“Hey,” her mother called from the rear of the house, then intercepted her as she dumped her backpack on the couch. “I hope you know that’s not staying there. So? How did it go?”

“Okay.”

“Is Micah in your French class?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s good, right? C’est bon, n’est-ce pas?”

“Oui,” Lindsay said, deadpan.

“Any homework?”

“Just my driving stuff.”

“Want something to eat?”

“No, we had these disgusting quesadillas for lunch.”

“Maybe we can go driving later, if you’re up for it.”

She wasn’t used to her mother being home this time of day. Normally these lazy hours were hers to waste in peace. Even before she disappeared, Kim was never around, though after what the paper said about the drugs, those absences, like the money in her puzzle box, had taken on new meaning. All by herself Lindsay might sing nonsense songs to Cooper the way her father did, or mutter over her homework, or heckle whatever dumb show was on TV, but the demands of actual two-way conversation were too much after dealing with the world, and she was relieved when her mother went back to whatever she was doing.

She dragged her backpack into the den, broke out her driver’s manual and spent a half-hour not watching an awful
Deep Space Nine
and memorizing the chart of stopping distances. The written test was supposed to be easy, twelve multiple-guess questions. You could get three wrong and still pass. Kim had missed one, and Lindsay wanted to be perfect—or had before everything happened. Now it didn’t matter.

There was no car for her to drive anyway. When Kim left for college the Chevette was supposed to be hers. Now it sat in the garage gathering dust. Whenever she thought of it, she remembered going to the Dairy Queen with her that last day, eating their burgers in the shade of the cemetery and wondering if Kim would really miss her. It seemed so long ago, not just this summer. Even if she could get past the memory, she couldn’t ask her parents. She felt guilty just thinking about it.

She had the couch to herself, and spread out, lying longways with her arms crossed above her head and the clicker balanced on her stomach. After
Deep Space Nine
Spike showed three straight episodes of
The Next Generation.
She was in the middle of the second, a holo-deck adventure with Data as Sherlock Holmes, when her mother came in and asked if she was ready to drive.

“Come on, you need the practice.”

Her road test was scheduled for Friday, so there was no excuse. She was planning on using the Subaru since it was smaller than the Taurus, easier to park and make three-point turns.

“Can we leave Cooper out?” she asked.

“Oh please,” her mother said. “He loves his cage.”

As she drove, her mother quizzed her from the manual, trying to trip her up with stopping distances. Lindsay could still picture the chart and rattled them off.

“Okay,” her mother said, “here’s one that’s relevant: What do you do if your vehicle stalls on a railroad track?”

It was one of her favorites. “Get out, get off the tracks and run as far as you can in the direction of the train—
because
, if you run the other way, you could get hit with debris from your car when the train hits it.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that happening. What if your hood pops up while you’re driving?”

“Roll down your window and use it to look out of, put on your flashers and pull off as soon as you can.”

As long as her mother was asking her questions, she was safe, but the car was a trap. Eventually her mother would ask how she was feeling—a different kind of test—and she’d say she was okay, just worried about Kim, and her mother would say she was too. Lindsay wished they could stop there, the two of them balanced in agreement, but since the police had found Kim’s car, her mother had changed. Instead of keeping up a front like her father, she would reach over and hold Lindsay and cry, which would make her cry, which wouldn’t help anyone.

For some reason, her mother needed her tears. Sometimes she apologized afterwards, and sometimes, dabbing at her face with a tissue, she said she felt better, but Lindsay always felt used. She never cried by herself, only when her mother provoked her, as if she wanted her to be sad. Lindsay already was. She was sad for Kim and for J.P., for her mother and father, and for herself, but in her own way, unconnected to everyone else. Her sadness was hers, an inner temple where she worshipped alone, untouchable. She did her best to protect it, but each time she fended off one of her mother’s break-in attempts, she felt contaminated and ungrateful.

They drove down through the park to the inlet and the far end of the marina where there was an empty stretch of curb. The only part of the road test she was worried about was parallel parking. She was okay with the Chevette, not great, and the Subaru was almost four feet longer. She had a habit of cutting the wheel too early when she was backing up, leaving the car a yard from the curb. The minimum to pass was eighteen inches.

“Okay,” her mother said, “give me five good ones and we’re done,” as if it was that easy.

Her first two tries she didn’t come close, and then she was up on the curb.

“Crud.”

“It’s okay,” her mother said, pointing for her to go forward.

“I’m never going to get this.”

“Yes you will. It’s just a matter of practice.”

“I only have three more days.”

“Then we’ll be out here for the next three days. Come on—five good ones. So far you’ve got zero.”

She had two—and one sucked—when, offhand, her mother said, “I bet school was tough today, huh?”

She was concentrating on tucking the front of the car in and didn’t respond.

“That’s three,” her mother said. “So, how bad was it? I can’t go anywhere without people looking at me like I have three heads, and you have to deal with the whole school.”

“It wasn’t too bad.”

“What does that mean?”

“It was okay. Everyone was trying to be nice.”

“Don’t you hate that?” her mother said. “You’re angry and confused and everyone wants to be nice.”

Lindsay sensed that she was fishing and just shrugged. “They don’t know what to say. I mean, what do you say?”

“I’m sorry,” her mother said, which was what Lindsay hated the most, since it wasn’t her fault and she didn’t know anything about it anyway, but on the way home, and later, watching TV with her father, Lindsay wondered if her mother was right, and if so, how she knew.

She might be angry. She wasn’t confused.

It was a guess, she decided, another stab at cracking her open. From now on she’d have to be more careful.

She no longer had to worry about deleting her e-mails. Since J.P. had left for college, she’d written him every day. He hadn’t written back. Dana said she could probably find his new address through the school directory, but Lindsay didn’t want him to think she was stalking him. If he wanted to write her, he knew where she was.

Every night, syncing songs onto her iPod, she made herself invisible and IMd with Dana and Micah. Sometimes after they signed off she stayed on, seeing who else on her buddy list was still up. In the beginning, she used to end the day by checking Kim’s website to see how many hits it had gotten. Now with the counter creeping toward a quarter million, she went to bed and imagined the site floating in space like an asteroid.

School didn’t get any better, but her mother and father alternated days taking her out. Her father stood in the marina lot, in her blind spot, pretending to be a parked car, calling “Cut it,” while Lindsay twisted her neck and curled the Subaru around him. “Don’t think,” he said. “See it and be it.” It was the same advice he gave about hitting, yet here it seemed to work. She forgot about having to turn the wheel the opposite direction from the one she was looking and just followed the rear of the car as it slid into place. At dinner—because the test had become their main topic of conversation—he took credit for her improvement, making her shake her head. Thursday she went out with her mother after her flute lesson and was five-for-seven—so good that there was no time for prying questions.

“I’m impressed,” her mother said.

“So am I,” Lindsay said.

Friday at breakfast they asked if she was nervous. “I’ll be taking you,” her mother announced, as if they’d drawn lots. Her father had a meeting to go to, so Lindsay couldn’t protest.

“You’ll do great,” he said, and squeezed her shoulder like she was up next.

At school she got ten-out-of-ten on her vocabulary in French, and then in Algebra 2 a hundred on her first quiz. She was used to doing well, but still took a neatnik’s satisfaction in getting everything right. She loved the little puzzles her math teachers gave for extra credit, and the chance that they were trick questions. She wasn’t a grub, though Dana was partly right when she called her a show-off. She liked being smart, and for people to think she was. It was her one superpower. When Kim was messing up, Lindsay would leave her homeworks and tests on the kitchen table. Now she stuck them in her folder, but as the day passed, a notion took hold—crazy, maybe impossible, but one that appealed to the crossword lover in her.

So far, through her first week, she hadn’t missed a single question. The written test was a cinch—she knew the manual by heart. If she could just nail the parking she’d be fine. Still she balked at issuing the challenge to herself. A year was a long time, and as her mother said once to soothe her, an A- was a very respectable grade.

It didn’t have to be the whole year. It could be a week, or a month. It could just be tomorrow. All she had to do was work hard every day—and that was what finally convinced her. Until they found Kim, she would be perfect.

“Hey, Rex Racer,” Dana said as she split off for home. “Don’t fuck up.”

“I won’t,” Lindsay said. “Not that they’ll ever let me drive anywhere by myself.”

Inside, her mother was ready. As they crossed the back walk to the Subaru she tossed Lindsay the keys. “Last practice, babe. From now on it all counts.”

The DMV was in a failing strip mall on Route 20, next to a carpet outlet that used to be a supermarket. The lot was dotted with potholes and loose patches. She turned in her forms and then waited among the short rows of attached fiberglass chairs, assessing the two guys her age as if they were her competition. Her mother had thought to bring a book. All Lindsay had was her manual.

Eventually an older woman with bronze hair and cat’s-eye glasses on a chain called them into the next room.

“Break a leg,” her mother said.

The written test was a single sheet. She assumed it would be standardized, with little footballs to fill in. Instead it was a spotty, cockeyed photocopy; they were supposed to just circle the letter. They could take as long as they wanted. When they were done they should bring their papers up to her desk. It was all insultingly casual.

The questions were right out of the manual—so easy that she doubted herself and had to retrace her steps, mentally flipping pages. Legally you could park within 15 feet of a fire hydrant, 20 of a crosswalk and 30 of a stop sign. She went over her answers three times and still she was the first one done. The woman looked up from her magazine and gestured to a chair beside the desk. Lindsay watched her grade her test, the tip of her pen zigzagging as it followed the answers down the page. When she reached the bottom she went back up to the top and wrote a zero.

“Have a seat,” the woman said.

It was another half hour before a round, red-faced man in a polo shirt and khakis came in and took her paperwork from the woman, clipped it to his clipboard and called her name. He was shorter than her, with a buzzcut that didn’t hide the island of his bald spot, and he was visibly sweating, as if he’d run there. He walked her through the waiting room past her mother, who gave her a thumbs-up.

He held the door open for her with the clipboard, then followed her out.