The Missing Girl (11 page)

He was glowing, raising his arms and dancing tri-umphantly. “I had me a run. Five miles, folks.”

Beauty’s father, who was sitting at the table repairing a toaster, made a barking sound. “You’re too skinny.”

Their first amiable meeting had not let down deep roots. Although Huddle had called this whole scenario
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into being, he seemed to resent Nathan’s presence, but Nathan either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Or, Beauty thought, he was one damn good actor, but didn’t care was her guess.

“When are you going to start running, Beauty?” Nathan said.

“Oh, I don’t know.” She turned back to the stove and flipped a pancake onto the stack she intended to keep warm in the oven. “Maybe pretty soon I’ll start,” she added untruthfully.

“How about tomorrow morning?”

She shook her head. “Tomorrow morning won’t be good. I have to go, uh, somewhere.” She didn’t want to say
school
, didn’t want him to think of her that way, as a schoolgirl. She stirred the pancake mix furiously. Stupid of her.

“Where’d you get that toaster, Poppy?” Nathan bent over Huddle’s shoulder. Within the first hour of arriving, Nathan had taken up Autumn and Fancy’s names for their parents as if he were one of the kids. Beauty glanced at him. He was almost the same age as her mother.

“That toaster is a little beauty,” he said admiringly, and gave Beauty a quick look.

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“It’s the old-fashioned kind,” Beauty said, flushing.

“That’s right,” he said, “two slots for bread and no other functions.”

“Got it in a thrift shop,” Beauty’s father said without looking up. His tools were scattered all over the table—

the screwdrivers, a utility knife, a roll of colored tape, and a loop of copper wire. “Three bucks,” he said, “and it works like a charm. I just have to replace the cord. Then I can sell it for seven, eight dollars.”

Nathan nodded. “Nice, very nice. You’re a thinking man. It’s great to have your own business, isn’t it? I’m still working for someone else.”

“Something’s burning,” her mother yelled from the back shed, where she was hanging laundry on the clothes rack. “Beauty. What’s burning?”

“Nothing, Mom. It’s all right.” She turned the fire down under the pancake grill. In fact, the pancake in the middle of the grill was singed around the edges. Nathan reached around Beauty and took one off the stack. “Wait. I’m going to warm them,” she said.

“I know that, cousin, darlin’,” he said, “but I’m so hungry, I could take a bite out of you.”

She blushed again, but said, briskly, as if she couldn’t
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feel the heat of him behind her, “Get yourself a slice of bread.”

“Will do,” he said, and moved away.

She grabbed her stirring hand by the wrist to keep it from shaking and stirred the remainder of the pancake batter long past the moment when she could have stopped.

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RUNNING AWAY TO FLORIDA

LYING ON YOUR bed, you’re reading a comic book, waiting for the pancakes to be ready, and trying as hard as you can to ignore Stevie, who’s on her bunk bed above you, being really noisy, making all kinds of grunts and groans and weird sounds, bouncing around from one side of the bed to the other. You could get out your bike and take a ride, but you’re
chillin’
, like Stevie says when she’s in a good mood, which is definitely not today, because she’s so freaked about going away tomorrow morning.

You
totally
understand. You’re not in a good mood, either, sort of for the same reason. Last night the loud
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voices downstairs, where your parents were arguing and talking and going on about Stevie and money and jobs and other stuff like that, kept you awake for
hours
. When you couldn’t stand it anymore, you went downstairs and stood in the kitchen doorway, where they could see you, and said, “Hey.” But no one even noticed you were there.

“Hey,” you said again, and they still didn’t notice you, so you went back to bed, but you didn’t fall asleep right away, and that’s why you’re a little cranky right now.

Stevie is kicking her legs so hard on the mattress, you think she’s going to kick right through it and land on top of you. “Hey,” you say. You don’t say it in a mean, mad way, like you said last night to the grown-ups, you say it just nice, but she doesn’t answer. So you say it again, louder.

“Hey, Stevie?” You know she heard you, because she kicks even harder, but she still doesn’t answer. Kicking is so ridiculous! She’s fourteen years old, she shouldn’t be kicking like a baby. Still, you’d be mad, too, if Mommy and Poppy were lending you to someone. You don’t think they ever would do that, because you’re the youngest and, like your sisters are always saying, sort of spoiled and Mommy’s favorite.

But then something occurs to you. How can you be
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positive
that they would never lend you away? Maybe they would do it. Poppy said it, didn’t he? He said—and now you think for a moment, and then you’ve got it. He said he’d lend
all
of you, if he got half a chance. He didn’t say he’d lend all of you
except Autumn
.

Thinking about this gives your stomach that cold, nasty feeling, like the times in the car when you think you’re going to throw up, but you don’t, and then it’s even worse than if you did throw up and got it over with. You sit up and, all at once, your eyes are wet and your throat is tight, and you think you’re going to start crying right then and there. “Stevie,” you say, but before you can get another word out, Stevie yells, “Don’t say my name. I didn’t give you permission.”

You feel like yelling at her that she’s mean and selfish, but then you see the duffle bag on the floor, stuffed with all her clothes and earrings and her elephant with one ear that she sleeps with, and you think how this is going to be the last night for a long, long time that she’ll be sleeping in the bunk bed over you. And that makes you be like Stevie and hate them all. You wish you could wash out their mouths with soap, like Mommy is always saying she’ll do to you if you say the F-word or the A-word.

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“Hey, Stevie,” you say, “I don’t want you to go away with Cousin Nathan. I’ll miss you too much.”

For a moment she stops thrashing, like she’s thinking about what you said. Then she leans over the side of the bed and says, as mean as mean can be, “Shut up, and don’t talk to me.”

“It’s not me,” you say. “I’m not sending you away, I’m not lending you.”

“I told you,
shut up
,” she says in a weird voice, “I hate you all,” and you wonder if she’s going to cry. She never cries.

She’s always calling you a crybaby, snivel-snot nose, and other names like that. You thump your legs. She doesn’t even care that you said something nice to her. You’re mad!

And sort of mixed up, too, sort of crazy feeling. It makes you want to scratch your face all over, but if you do that, Mommy will yell at you that you’re ruining your beautiful skin.

You don’t know what to do, so you get up and go outside, and you
still
don’t know what to do. You think about going back in and eating pancakes, which should be ready pretty soon, but you’re just too mad at everybody, so you start walking, and you think about running away from home. Maybe you and Stevie could run away to Florida or
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someplace nice like that, and she wouldn’t have to go to New Hampshire, and she’d probably love you a lot for saving her.

You walk for a long time, making up the story about going to Florida with Stevie, and after a while you look around, and you’re on a street you don’t know. It’s called Elm Street, and it’s mostly just houses like your street, but not as many, and you keep walking, and then you’re on another street, you didn’t notice the name or maybe there isn’t even a street sign. There’re only a couple of houses way down on the other end of the street, and everything else is mostly bushes and trash and junk. Well, not really junk—
weeds
, which aren’t really bad things, like some people think. Poppy taught you the names of a lot of weeds, not just dandelions, which everyone knows. He taught you mustard and wild onion and that tall one with the reddish kind of leaves called dock, and Japanese knotweed, and he said you could eat a lot of that stuff in the springtime, including dandelion leaves.

You decide to spell
dandelion.
Mim told you to try spelling all the hard words. She said if you do that, after a while, it gets lots easier. So you stop walking to concentrate, and you say, “Dandelion.
D-A-N-D-A-L-I-O-N.
”

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Wait. Is it an
A
or an
E
after the dand part? You try again.

“Dandelion.
D-A-N-D-E-L-I-O-N.
” Both ways sound right to you. Rats! You don’t want to think about it anymore.

You squat down in the empty field and you hug your knees and look at the things that are growing right along with all the trash, the beer bottles and the sticky papers and some awful reddish gloop, which you don’t even want to know what it is. You squat there for a while, watching a bunch of ants rushing around, and thinking that when Poppy is feeling good again, he’ll show you more stuff about nature and plants. He could spell
dandelion
for you, too.

It’s getting sort of windy, though, and a little bit dark in the sky, like it might rain, and now you notice that you’re hungry, really hungry. It must be way past Sunday brunch time. You missed the pancakes, and now you’re sorry, and you’re ready to go home, but you’ve lost track of the streets. You’re not exactly lost, but you’re not exactly sure how to get home, either. You need to ask somebody.

You stand up and brush off your jeans and look around.

You better go to one of those houses down on the other end of the street. Oh, lucky you! Someone is out in front
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of the first house, raking. You walk toward the house, humming to yourself, because you don’t want the man to think you’re scared of being lost or anything like that. He’s raking old dried leaves into a big pile, and you think about jumping in leaves and how much fun that is, but you usually do that in the fall, not in the spring. The man doesn’t seem to notice that you’re coming along, so you walk right up to him and say in your politest voice, “Hello. Could you tell me something, please?”

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BURNED PANCAKES

EVEN THOUGH THE sky had darkened, and it looked like it might rain, Beauty opened a window to clear out the smoke from the burned pancakes, which were Nathan’s fault. Well, not really. She’d been distracted by him, the way he wiped his face with his sweatshirt, showing his belly, small, hard, smooth, like an orange.

What would it be like to touch that belly, to put her hand over it?

Fancy brought her sewing into the kitchen and sat down. “Stinks in here,” she said cheerfully, laying her head on their father’s shoulder. He patted her and went on sort-ing nails and screws into separate piles. Nathan was sitting
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next to him, watching and occasionally picking up a nail and putting it in the right box. A wave of pity for her father went through Beauty. He looked so old and white, so thin shouldered, next to Nathan, whose skin almost glowed with health.

Her mother came into the kitchen and sat down at the table, but immediately jumped up, saying, “I should change this shirt. It smells like a cafeteria.”

“Smells like a cafeteria?” Fancy repeated in her fast, high voice. “That is a funny joke, Mommy! Smells like a cafeteria,” she said again, her voice parading over the words.

Nathan leaned and sniffed her mother’s neck. “Smells good to me.”

What a jerk, Beauty thought unwillingly. Flirting with her mother? Her father was watching, too. Beauty thought she might just strangle her so-called
object of
desire
. She leaned over the table toward her father. “Dad, we really need to clean up here. Can I help you do that?”

“I’m good,” he said, and gathered up his tools and the thin strands of copper wire.

Beauty closed the window again and went to the staircase. “Mim,” she called, “are you going to set the table, or
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do you want me to do it?” She waited, her hand on the banister. This was usually Stevie’s job, but Beauty wasn’t about to ask her for anything today. Poor kid, being sent away. No matter how much Stevie raged or how much people bickered with each other, they were family—that was the bottom line.

“I’ll do it, Beauty,” Mim answered.

In the kitchen her father cleared away his tools and his toolbox. Mim set the table. Her mother appeared in a fresh blouse. Stevie came in, looking at no one and, the only one who didn’t like pancakes, poured herself a bowl of cold cereal. So they were all there, all except Autumn, who was probably outside, playing somewhere. Beauty dropped more batter on the pan, then sat down. The sausages were passed around, then the pancakes.

“Hey, terrific,” Nathan said, chewing. “Your daughter’s a good cook, Poppy.”

The pancake platter went around again. Nathan asked for more coffee, and Beauty poured for him and for her father.

“Where is that girl, anyway?” her mother said. She put the clean knife and fork on Autumn’s plate and looked at Beauty. “Save your sister some pancakes. I don’t think she
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ate anything this morning.” Her mother put her hands to her face and pushed at her cheeks. She always did that when she was anxious or worried.

“Now don’t get yourself all fretted up,” Beauty’s father said. He clanked down his coffee cup. “You hear me, Blossom? A few hours without food ain’t going to hurt her.

She’ll show up when she gets hungry.”

Beauty’s mother nodded. “I know. I just can’t help worrying.”

“Worry bug,” Fancy said brightly. “You’re a big worry bug, Mommy.”

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MAPS

THE MAN STOPS raking the leaves and looks up, sort of startled. “Hello,” he says, and that’s when you recognize him. It’s that nice man from the duck pond, the one who gave you the gum, which of course you shouldn’t have taken from a stranger, but he was all right, he just gave you the gum and then when Fancy came back from peeing in the woods, he said good-bye and left.