The Missing Girl (16 page)

You said no, you didn’t like the name Wayne better, because you knew that was what he wanted you to say, so you don’t call him Wayne, but you don’t call him Nelson, either. You don’t call him anything.

You roll out from under the cot and suddenly you’re shoving it around the room, scraping the wooden legs on the floor, shoving it and kicking at it, and then picking it up and dropping it. You didn’t even know you could pick it up, that you were strong enough. You do it again, pick it up and drop it, and then you try to throw it, but you can’t, it’s way too bulky and awkward.

You clench your fists and spin around and scream and scream. You want to throw something. You
have
to throw something. You grab your sneakers and throw them at the wall and then you throw them at the window.

And that’s when you get the idea.

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FRIDAY, 7:30 A.M.

“BE GOOD,” HE says. “I’m going to work now.”

“Okay,” you say. It’s raining outside again. You hear it on the tin roof. He’s still standing in the doorway, waiting for something else from you. You probably didn’t say enough.

“I’ll be good,” you say. You say it meekly, the way he likes.

He nods, but he still doesn’t leave. What’s he waiting for now? You know. A smile. You produce a smile. He doesn’t know it’s fake, fake,
fake
. Mommy always knows, and she says that funny old-fashioned thing: “You’re giving me the phony baloney.” But it’s better not to think about Mommy or anybody.

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“Eat all your food,” he says.

You nod. He waits. You say, “I will. I’ll eat it all.” You want him to leave. You give him another big fake smile.

“Do you want anything else?” He twirls his key chain, and you’re almost hypnotized. The key to this room is on that chain. “Well?” he says.

You pull your eyes away from the key chain and give him the same answer as you did yesterday and the day before yesterday. “Could I watch TV? Could you bring the TV in here?”

“I told you—no TV.” He uses the Dad Voice. “It’s a bad influence. I meant—” He pauses to make sure you’re listening. “—do you want anything else to eat?”

Despite his turndown on the TV, he likes it when you ask for something, so you say, “Cookies?” You know he’s going to ask you what kind, so you say perkily, “Chocolate chip cookies are my favorite.”

He makes an approving murmur, as if you just said something clever. He’s happy. You can tell from the way his eyes change, and he has that little half smile on his face. “I’ll bring you chocolate chip cookies tonight,” he says. Now he has the Cozy Voice, the Just-You-and-Me Voice. “I’ll bring them home and we’ll share them.”

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You hate the way he says “share” and “home,” but you know it’s a good thing. It means he’s not suspicious. He looks at his watch, then beckons you over to him. Your stomach clenches. You walk over slowly. “What?” you say, but you know.

He bends and kisses you on the mouth. “Good-bye,” he says. “Be good.”

“Yes,” you say, and you give him one more fake smile.

The last one,
you think.

233

FRIDAY, 8:15 A.M.

YOU KNOW that he left. You know that he’s not in the house, but you stand near the door and listen. What if he guessed what you’re going to do and sneaked back in to catch you at it? You hear creaks and thumps. Your heart thumps, too.

You put your mouth against the door and yell, “Hello?

Hello?” If he’s in the house, he’ll hear you, and he’ll come to see what you want. “Hello! Hello! Hello!”

You listen. Nothing. You’re alone. Your stomach is ticking like a clock.

You throw the blanket off the cot and go to work on freeing the wooden bar at the end. The bar is joined to the
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wooden side pieces, and it resists you. You push and tug and pull, and after a while your hands are raw, your eyes sting from sweat, and you just want to sit down and cry.

You do the sitting down part, but you don’t do the crying part. You look out the rain-splattered window at the dark sky. Is it better for you that it’s raining?

You get up and go back to the cot and try again. You get one hand on the bar and one hand on the side piece. You take a huge breath and pull with all your might, and the bar comes free. You take the wooden bar in both your sweaty hands like a baseball bat and smash it into the wall, and that feels
great
. You go into a frenzy of smashing. This wall. That wall. All the walls. Time is passing.

You shouldn’t be doing this. It’s the window you want to break, not the walls.
The window.
You stop yourself, pant-ing, and wipe the sweat from your eyes.

You raise the bat over your head and swing. Not hard enough. You raise it again, scream, and swing. And the window explodes. Glass is everywhere, splinters of glass on the floor and in your hair and stuck in your skin. Tiny pools of blood appear on your hands and arms, and wet air rushes in on you, and you want to whoop and shout, but you hear a noise, and you freeze.

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He’s come back.
You stand there, not daring to move.

Your legs tremble, your heart is going to leap right out of your chest. Minutes pass. Maybe hours.

You start talking to yourself, telling yourself it’s okay, that every day he only comes back after dark. “Every day it’s the same thing,” you whisper to yourself. You tell yourself that’s a fact, and you can depend on facts. Poppy says so. How many times have you heard him say, “Facts are what I want, not stories.”

You take a deep breath and you don’t whisper when you say, “He’s not in the house, and he’s not coming back until it’s dark.” You say it out loud, and you say it
loud
, so you can hear yourself. And you go to the window.

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FRIDAY, 9:44 A.M.

YOU TURN THE pail over, try not to step in the pee that spills out, and put the pail upside down under the window. You step up onto it, and now you can really see out.

The fresh rain splashes your face, and for a few moments it’s enough just to be breathing the air. Below you is the steep metal roof, shiny in the rain, and below that a tangle of bushes and trees, and somewhere below them is the ground.

Shards of glass, jagged as teeth, are still stuck in the window frame. You’re afraid to touch them. You wrap the blanket around your hand and loosen one piece after another. They fall to the roof and slide down, the way
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you’re going to slide down. When you do that, when you slide down the roof and then jump to the ground, will you break your bones? Will you die?

That’s when you think about not doing this, about staying in the room. You’ll have to confess, but at least it’s safe here. You can keep hoping that he’ll let you go. He tells you he loves you. He feeds you. He’s bringing you cookies tonight.

The wind blows across your face, and now the high, living buzz of the town comes to you, and you think of your family. Two crows fly overhead and call to you. They’re saying your name.
Autumn, Autumn
, they shout hoarsely.

“I’m coming,” you answer the crows. “I’m coming!”

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FRIDAY, 9:56 A.M.

YOU THROW THE blanket across the window frame and climb up onto the sill. You crouch there for a moment, holding on to the window frame. Then you stick out your legs, close your eyes, and then you let go.

You go down so fast you almost fly off the roof. It’s as if the roof’s a living thing and it grabs you and flings you down its slick, wet, slippery surface. Your hands scrabble frantically to hold on to something, but there’s nothing, you’re just
going
, and when there’s no more roof, the ground comes up to meet you. But instead of the ground stopping you, you’re still falling.

You scream something—“what . . . wait . . .”
—
and your
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mouth is full of dirt, and you’re falling and tumbling and falling down a rocky slope. You come to a stop with your face buried in wet leaves. You lie there, breathing, and every breath you take hurts. But you’re alive, and you’re out. You’re free.

240

FRIDAY, 10:16 A.M.

YOU CRAWL TO YOUR hands and knees.

Every part of you aches. You wish you never had to move again. You listen. You hear wind. You hear water. You hear your own raspy breaths. You hear rustling noises, like soft footsteps. Is it him? Is he coming? You want to cover yourself in leaves and stay that way forever, but you get to your feet and look around. You’re in a ravine with a creek winding through it. Poppy told you that if you’re ever lost, stay by the water. You limp along next to the creek, holding your ribs. You crawl over fallen trees and stumble over rocks. Once, you fall and just lie there for a while, moan-ing. Then you get up and keep going.

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After a while you hear road sounds above you, and you start pulling yourself back up the ravine. You go step by step, crawling and hanging onto trees and bushes.

When you get to the top, the road is right there, and you start walking. You just pick a direction and hobble along. It’s still raining, and you’re soaked. Your jeans and T-shirt are plastered to your body. When you hear a car in the distance, you crouch and roll into the bushes, curling yourself into a muddy ball and praying that if it’s him in the car he won’t see you, he won’t hear your heart thudding. You know he’s out there looking for you. You know he wants you back. He said he wants to keep you forever.

For a while there are no cars. The trees drip water, the wind blows, and something rustles in the underbrush.

Footsteps?
You choke back a scream just as a chipmunk scurries across the road in front of you. You walk again, shivering, your arms wrapped around yourself. Every time you hear the sound of a motor, you scuttle into the woods and hide and pray.

Somewhere you lose a sneaker, so you take the other one off and limp along, telling yourself that soon you’ll find a house or see someone you can trust. A boy on a bicycle comes up on you. He’s wearing a helmet and tight
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black cycling pants, and he’s bent over the handlebars. He looks at you, cycles past, then swings around and comes back. “What’s the matter with you?” he calls.

You turn and hobble the other way. “Hey,” he calls, but you just keep going, and when you look again, he’s no longer in sight. But now another car is coming, and you try to hide, but you’re hurting and tired and not quick enough. The car stops.

A voice says, “Get in.”

243

FRIDAY, 12:33 P.M.

“GET IN,” THE woman behind the wheel says again.

You peer in the passenger side window at her. Is it a trick? What if she’s a friend of the man?

“Where are you going?” she says. “I’ll take you there.

I’m on my way to Haverhill.”

Haverhill? That’s miles away from Mallory. You back away. You’re shivering.

She leans over and opens the passenger door and exclaims,”My Lord, child! What happened to you? Get in this car right now. I’m not leaving you out here like this.”

You look at her and remember how you followed the man into his house, and you don’t budge.

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“What?” she says. “You don’t trust me? I have a daughter your age. Here—you want to see her picture?” She fumbles in her pocketbook on the seat next to her and pulls out her wallet. She flips it open and shows you a picture of a smiling girl.

You slide into the car, but you sit close to the door, ready to grab the handle, in case you have to get out fast.

“Where do you live?” the woman says.

You can’t speak. You’re so cold your teeth are chattering.

The woman turns on the heat in the car. “You don’t have to tell me anything,” she says. “Just nod yes and no.

Do you live in Kent?” You shake your head. “Where I’m going, Haverhill?” You shake your head. “East Mallory?

No? Mallory? Ah, that’s it,” she says, and she turns the car around.

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FRIDAY, 1:03 P.M.

YOU OPEN THE front door and limp into the house. You look around like you can’t believe everything is here, just the way you left it. You hear Mommy calling from the kitchen, “Hello? Is someone there?”

You say, “It’s me, Mommy. Autumn.”

You hear screams, and then Mommy comes running in, and behind her are your sisters and Poppy, and they’re all saying your name.

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TIMES STAR

Established 1899

Sunday morning edition

“I may not agree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”

MALLORY FAMILY REUNITED:

QUESTIONS REMAIN

Mallory—On Friday the family of Blossom and Huddle Herbert of Mallory was reunited with their youngest daughter, Autumn Huddle, 11, who had been missing since last Sunday.

She was returned to the family by Connie Rappaport, 46, of Haverhill. Rappaport was coming back from a visit to her grandmother, Arla Allen, who resides in the Five Birches Retirement Home in East Forge. Rappaport spotted Huddle walking on County Road at approximately 12:30 Friday afternoon and offered her a ride. “Poor little thing,” Rappaport said, “she was all bent over and just soaked. I didn’t realize at first that she was the child I read about in the newspaper. You don’t expect to
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find her that way, you just don’t, but when I took a good look at her, I knew.”

The Huddle girl was examined at the

Wertheimer Health Clinic on River Road and treated for cuts, bruises, and two broken ribs.

Beauty Herbert, 17, said, “We felt in our hearts that Autumn would never run away, which some people were thinking, but we knew she wouldn’t do that. We are so happy to have her back home.” Blossom Herbert, the child’s mother, also spoke to reporters and said, “I knew I would get her back, I never had a moment’s doubt. I guess it’s a mother’s instincts.”

Police are not answering questions about the cause of Autumn’s disappearance. Mallory Police Chief Mark Cleveland said the matter is under investigation and police still want to talk further to Autumn and her family members.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Mallory Police Department (555-3166).