Splintered (14 page)

Maddy felt it was bad enough to have to suffer the indignity of having a lower locker, where she routinely felt the sting of a book falling on her head, but it was also located right next to the bathroom. So not only did its opening door routinely slam into her elbow, she also had to endure the stench.

Maddy crouched down to spin the combination dial. The odor intensified.

My lock’s missing!

She opened her locker door. The sight made her fall to her knees. She covered her nose with the crook of her arm. A note was hanging on the hook bolted to the top of the locker: YOU’RE A LYING SACK OF SHIT! Attached to the note was a clear plastic sandwich bag full of runny dog crap. The bag had been left unsealed to ensure maximum smell.

Behind Maddy, the hallway filled with laughter. A boy walked by and pushed Maddy flat to the floor. “Get on the ground where you belong, bitch.”

Maddy looked over her shoulder and saw Sabrina, Malik, and their friends crowding around her. She sat up and turned toward them.

“Sabrina, I tried to—

Sabrina put a hand up, stopping Maddy from speaking. “You are so pathetic, Eastin. Making up a story about some guy grabbing you off the street. What—don’t you get enough attention at home? Ohh, I know.”

“Don’t, Sabrina.” Maddy tried to will the tears collecting in the corner of her eyes from falling. But she knew Sabrina wanted to humiliate her and would love to see her cry. The girl felt duped and wouldn’t stop until she got her pound of flesh.

“Did Daddy leave poor wittle Maddy? Did he walk out on her and now she needs some attention?”

“He probably left because he couldn’t stand the smell,” another girl added.

Laughter rang out. More insults flew.

Sabrina ignored them all and walked up to Maddy. She pinched Maddy’s chin between her two fingers. “Poor, pitiful, wittle girl. She wants us to feel sorry for her, making up stories to play on our sympathies. I should’ve known she was a lying sack of shit.”

Sabrina reached over Maddy’s shoulder and tore the baggie off the hook. She held it high over Maddy’s head and emptied it.

Emma Parker walked into the craft store at around noon, having decided to spend her lunch break in Temple Terrace. She hesitantly picked up a green basket only to set it down again, shaking her head.

Why even pretend I’m here for anything other than information?

Scanning the crowd, Emma found Lily helping a shopper trying to choose between two canvases. Emma thought of the oil painting hanging on her bedroom wall, a portrait Lily had painted of her. She’d always felt funny about it, like some self-absorbed foreign dictator, so she’d kept it in her bedroom. Yet even when Emma and Lily had parted ways, she had left the painting hanging up.

Lily had painted it shortly after Emma got her long locks cut off in college, opting for the type of pixie cut that was all the rage. Emma had hated her new look and wouldn’t believe any of her friends who kept raving about it. So Lily sat Emma down and sketched her, then spent over a week painting. When Emma saw the portrait, she was awestruck by the way her best friend had captured her essence. The smirk like there was a secret joke, the intense eyes that displayed a depth of knowledge about life learned the hard way.

The other sketches and paintings Lily had given her since childhood stayed in a plastic tub at the bottom of her closet. Topping the stack was one of Emma’s mom, Rose Parker. That was one picture Emma couldn’t have handled walking by every day. By stuffing it away, she was hoping to bury all the unhappy memories of the woman with it, but it hadn’t worked. The night Rose Parker stormed out of house for the last time always stuck with her. Emma knew her mother was furious that evening, had heard the nasty fight between her parents while she hovered at the top of the stairs. This wasn’t the first time her mother had walked out, but she’d always come back. Only that time, she didn’t.

“Emma, this is a surprise.” Lily stood in front of her, a questioning smile on her face.

Emma’s mind had been so entrenched in the past she hadn’t noticed the customer walking off and Lily moving toward her. Emma coughed, trying to hide her surprise at being caught off-guard. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

Lily’s smile faltered. “Sure, follow me.”

Lily led them through the back of the store and into a stock area. They weaved around shelving units and headed out a back door. When the bright sun smacked Emma in the face, she moved the sunglasses resting on her head down over her eyes.

A woman was already there, leaning against the building and looking down at her phone.

“Can you give us a minute, Holly?” Lily asked.

“Sure, boss.” Holly threw her cigarette on the ground and snuffed it out with the toe of her shoe. She turned toward the door, but then stopped. She flashed a sheepish smile, bent over to pick up the butt, and scooted back inside.

“It’s good to see you, Emma. You’ve hardly changed a bit.”

“Neither have you.”

Lily brought a hand up to her hair and blushed. They both knew Emma’s comment was a lie. Lily, the one who’d always prided herself on looking perfectly put together, now stood in front of Emma a complete mess. Her once-bouncy curls hung limp, in need of a new perm. Their reddish color seemed somehow muted. However, it was all insignificant compared to the aging that had transformed Lily’s face. Deep wrinkles were etched into her dry skin. Her neck lied, portraying an older age. If Emma hadn’t known better, she would have bet money Lily was almost ten years older than her true age of forty.

“What brings you by?” Lily asked.

“I wanted to find out what’s going on with Maddy. She won’t return any of my calls.”

Lily sighed, seemingly crestfallen to hear the only reason Emma had shown up was because of Maddy. “She’s going through a rough patch right now, that’s all.”

“What do you think I am, some moron? Christ Lily, I’m a detective. I may not be stationed in Temple Terrace, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what’s going on in the surrounding precincts. This is no little white lie about skipping school. We’re talking about a crime here. What’s going on with her? There has to be more to it than
a rough patch.
”

Lily ignored Emma’s question and decided to ask one of her own. “Have you heard whether the State Attorney will file charges?”

Emma shook her head. “I’m not privy to that kind of information. What does the Temple Terrace police force have to say?”

“That Maddy could be charged with filing a false police report.”

Emma hit her fist up against the door. “Dammit, what was she thinking? When you called and told me Maddy was the girl who was almost abducted, I did a little digging of my own. I wanted to make sure the case was being handled right. Terrance Wallace will give you a fair shake. Back in the day, we went to the academy together. We still run into each other once in a while. I can’t see him pressuring the state to file.”

Lily let out a loud exhale.

“I only heard from you that one time,” Emma said. “Why hasn’t anyone called me? I left messages for Maddy, but she’s ignoring me.”

“Welcome to the club.”

“I had to read that the police discovered the abduction was a hoax in the newspaper.”

“It’s not like you’ve been super-involved in our lives.”

“That’s not fair, Lily.”

“Fair? You want fair? Tom walked out on us, Emma. He left me holding the bag while he up and started a new life. Do you think that’s fair? I’m doing the best I can to keep it all together, to help Maddy. What can I do if she won’t listen to me?”

Emma gritted her teeth.

Why does Lily always make every situation about her? Obviously, Maddy is in so much pain she resorted to making a false allegation to get her parents’ attention. Can’t she see that Maddy only wants to know she matters? Lily is so blinded by her own pain, she can’t see past it to the daughter standing right in front of her falling to pieces.

Emma took a deep breath. “I haven’t been there for Maddy. I own that, but I want to do better. Please ask her to answer my calls?”

“You can come over anytime, you know.”

“If Maddy keeps avoiding me, I will.”

“She might open up to you.”

Emma nodded. “Sometimes it’s easier for teenagers to talk to someone else. Anyone other than their own mother.”

Lily looked past Emma. Her eyes seemed to be watching a different scene play out in front of her. Maybe she was looking back to a time when they were both kids. When they were best friends, like their moms had been. Rose Parker and Jackie Gordon would get together most afternoons, have an early bottle of wine, and feed off each other’s negativity. Jackie was a drunk. Rose was just plain angry—about every break that hadn’t come her way, every slight shown to her, that fact that she was stuck in a loveless marriage with a kid she never wanted.

Emma pushed the old memories aside. “I’ll keep calling Maddy. Maybe I’ll discover something to help you break through to her.”

Emma didn’t think Lily was listening anymore. “Lily?” Emma put her hand on her shoulder.

Startled, Lily shook her head. “What?”

“I have to head back to work. I’ll keep in touch. Call me if anything else happens.”

Lily nodded and smiled. Emma knew that look, had seen it on Lily’s face enough times to easily recognize it. It was the plastered-on smile of someone sinking but unable to find a life preserver. Emma ignored the waves of guilt splashing over her; she knew she could throw Lily a line, but she was still unwilling to do so.

Maddy walked the two miles home from school, preferring the intense heat of the Florida sun to the searing heat of stares from bus riders. Each step forward seemed harder than the last, as if the flip-flops the school nurse gave her were made of weights rather than cheap plastic. She’d already ditched the large bags holding her ruined clothes. She’d kept the shoes though. Since she didn’t have the luxury of buying a replacement pair, she’d have to figure out a way to salvage them.

Once she reached home, she got a scrub brush out from underneath the sink. Dish soap would have to do; a couple of squirts of the blue liquid, and Maddy started rubbing the soap over the canvas material. Even the shoelaces were filthy. She scrubbed and scrubbed.

Eventually Maddy gave in and threw the shoes down in disgust. “Screw it!” She stormed over to the couch and collapsed onto it. Remote in hand, she escaped through the shiny box until her mom walked through the door.

“How was your day?” Lily asked.

“My day?” Maddy knew she should stand up and head straight to her room, but rage had been building inside her all afternoon. Her body yearned to release the mounting pressure. So she turned her focus on the one target foolish enough to enter her sites.

Lily set her purse on the table. “School was that bad, huh?”

“The ultimate shitty day on top of a mountain of shitty days.”

“Watch the language, young lady.”

Maddy sprung up from the couch. “Do you have any idea what I’ve been through?”

“Actually, no, I don’t. You won’t talk to me, Maddy. How do you expect me to help if I don’t know the challenges you’re facing?”

“Challenges? You make it sound like I got a
D
on my biology exam. That if I only put more effort into my studies, I’d pull up my grade. You have no clue.”

Lily walked over to her daughter. “Then tell me. You can’t bitch and moan about your life yet refuse to do anything about it. Tell me what it’s like to be you, Maddy. I used to know, but frankly, these days I’m baffled.”

“That’s the problem. When you look at me, you still see that little five-year-old begging to play hide-and-seek. I’m not that girl anymore.”

“Then who are you?”

Maddy shook her head, trying to stop her mom’s voice from penetrating her armor.

Lily grabbed her by the shoulders. “Who are you?”

“I’m nobody!” Maddy yelled. She shrugged her mom off. “Don’t you understand? I’m worthless.” She let out a sob, but tried to stifle the sound with her fist.

“Don’t say that, honey.”

“Then tell me this, Mom: if I’m so worthy, how could my father find it so easy to leave? If I’m so worthy, why don’t I have at least one friend? Every kid at school thinks I’m a reject. You have no clue what happened to me once everyone found out I lied about the kidnapping.”

“If you’d talk to me, maybe I could help.”

Maddy brought her hand up to her hair, remembering the scene at the locker. The humiliation had been more than she could bear.

No way will I relive it again by telling her.

She could deal with the confused looks her mom gave her, but not pity. Maddy remained silent, a look of defeat on her face. She shook her head.

“We have options,” Lily said. “If you’re
that
unhappy, you can switch schools or even take the rest of the year off and enroll in online classes.”

“You’re not hearing me. Yes, school sucks, but what am I going to do somewhere else? The same thing will happen eventually. The kids will know I’m no good. It’s as if a stink flows out from my pores. They’ll smell my rankness.”

“Maddy, you have got to stop speaking about yourself that way. You’re not some leper to be shunned. You’re a smart, beautiful girl who’s extremely talented. You have so much to offer. You’re just going through a rough patch right now. Your father, this place—everything’s been a tough adjustment.” Lily sighed. “I guess I haven’t been much help either. I’m sorry for what I said last night. About your father dumping you and refusing to return your phone calls. The last thing you need is your own mother throwing something like that in your face. All I want to do is help, but I can’t seem to figure out how. You’ve probably noticed that I’m not doing such a good job of helping myself. I don’t know . . . maybe we should talk to a professional. Get help for the both of us.”

Mom has no clue. She can’t help me. Maybe it’s an age thing, or it could be that the pile of shit she has to deal with is so high she can’t see over it. Either way, if she thinks some quack head doctor can fix everything, she should start seeing one. But there’s no way I’m spilling my guts to some stranger.