The Missing Girl (17 page)

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TIMES STAR

Established 1899

Monday morning edition

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

MAN FALLS FROM WATER

STREET RAILROAD BRIDGE

MALLORY—An unidentified man was seen

falling from the Water Street Railroad Bridge on Saturday evening at approximately 6:10 P.M.

Miss Heather Gardenia, 88, who lives in a third-floor apartment overlooking the bridge, called police to report seeing a man fall or jump into the North Branch of the Niskcogee River from the pedestrian walkway on the Water Street Railroad Bridge.

Miss Gardenia was watering her plants, which she keeps in the south-facing window, when she observed the man standing on the bridge. “I thought he was just enjoying the look of the water,” she said. “I look at it all the time.

It’s raging with all that rain we’ve had.” When
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she glanced up, she said, “not more than a minute later,” according to her report to police, she observed the man pitching off the bridge and falling into the river.

Divers from the state police were in the water all day Sunday, but no body was recovered. “It’s possible, but unlikely, that someone could survive that fall,” Mallory Police Chief Mark Cleveland said. “If there is a body, it will turn up downstream at some point.” The level of the Niskcogee is considerably higher than usual, due to the unusual amount of rain that has fallen this month. According to the weather station, April was the rainiest month in the past 40

years.

Mallory Town Manager William Defrost said the town would close access to the bridge walkway, which has been in need of repair for some time. He added that the mayor and town council would probably request that the state contribute to the cost, as the town does not have the neces-sary funds.

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The man remains unidentified, and no one has been reported missing. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Mallory Police Department (555-3166).

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THE FAIRLY HAPPY

HUDDLE FAMILY

SIT TIGHT

THE POLICE OFFICERS who show up at the house are Detective Brantley, who has a round, kind face, and Sergeant Gomez, who is round all over and impatient.

All week they pick you and Beauty up at the end of the day and drive you around Mallory looking for the house.

You find it on Thursday. It’s on Woods Street, which isn’t even on the city map.

“So this is the place? Are you sure?” Sergeant Gomez asks. You nod. You’re all sitting in the patrol car, staring at the house. “Are you sure?” she says. She asks everything twice.

“Yes,” you say. You’re shivering. Of course you’re sure.

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Everything is just like you described it to them. The empty street, the waste fields on either side of the house, and the woods beyond the fields and behind the house.

And the house, just like you said, is tall and narrow and unpainted.

“Okay. Sit tight, kid,” Detective Brantley says. The two of them get out of the car and, just like on television, they have their hands on their guns, and they pound on the front door and yell, “Police! Open up!”

You sit in the car, and now your teeth are chattering.

Beauty takes your hand, and that’s good, but your teeth still chatter. If he’s in there, will they shoot him? No, they’ll take him prisoner and bring him out, and they’ll put him right in this car. A rash breaks out all over your body. You’re burning up. When he sees you, he’ll go crazy, you know he will.

“Police! Open up!” they’re yelling again. They try the door, but it’s locked. They look in the windows, and up to the second floor, and then they come back to the car and Sergeant Gomez leans into the car and says, “I don’t see any broken window.”

“It’s in . . . there,” you say, pointing.

“Okay, let’s check it out.”

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You and Beauty get out of the car, and you all walk around to the back of the house. “Oh my God,” Beauty says. Up there is the gaping window and the metal roof you went flying off. And down there, just a few steps away, is the ravine you fell into, so deeply wooded you can’t see to the bottom.

You all go around to the front of the building. “Get in the car,” Detective Brantley says to you and Beauty. Then he and Sergeant Gomez use their clubs to break a window. They take out their guns and a flashlight and climb into the house and disappear.

The sun is going down, and you can’t get rid of the thought that any moment now he’s going to appear. “Lock the doors,” you say to Beauty. You hear a noise, and your throat goes dry, and you slide down in the seat.

“It’s okay, honey,” Beauty says.

She’s got her arm around you when they come out of the house. Just the two of them. Sergeant Gomez gets behind the wheel. “He’s gone,” Detective Brantley says as he stuffs himself into the patrol car. “Flew the coop,” he says. “Not a sign.”

You want to ask if they looked
everywhere
, in the clos-ets and the bathroom, and under the bed. Maybe
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Detective Brantley knows what you’re thinking. He turns around to you and repeats, “Not a sign of him, Autumn.

He’s gone, clean as a whistle.”

You say those words to yourself . . .
he’s gone.
. . . You watch out the window until Sergeant Gomez turns the corner and you can’t see the house anymore, and then you say those words to yourself again—
he’s gone—
and, oh, how you want to believe them.

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HISS LIKE A SNAKE

“JUST TAKE YOUR time making up your work, Autumn,” Mr. Spiegleman says the day you go back to school. He’s matter-of-fact and ordinary with you, but most everyone else sort of tiptoes around you, as if you’ve had a horrible sickness or something. Some kids don’t talk to you at all, just stare at you as if they’ve never seen you before. This one girl, Bethany, comes right up to you and blurts, “You look normal,” as if she expected to see you all deformed and hideous looking.

Your cuts and bruises are mostly healed up, but your ribs still hurt, especially at night. You’re not sleeping that well anyway, waking up at every little noise, with your
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heart racing and your hands sweaty. You look sort of pale, and you’re walking a little hunched over because of your ribs. Maybe that’s why these three upper-grade boys who see you going into school one morning act scared of you.

The tall one with long hair hisses like a snake, and then they all make the snake sound, with their mouths tight and mean, and they put up their hands and say, “Keep away!

Keep away from us.” And they jump back, as if they don’t dare let you even get near them. And then they laugh.

You pretend not to care and just walk on up the steps, but for the rest of the day you think about it. How they hissed. What they said. And how they knew who you were.

Can everybody tell what happened, just by looking at you?

That night, after you’re sure that Fancy is asleep, you climb up to Stevie’s bunk and tell her about the snake sounds. She snorts and says, “Honestly, boys can be such jerks,” and she pats your shoulder. “Just forget them,” she advises.

She’s so nice, and you like that, but the next day when you eat lunch with Mrs. Kalman, you’re still thinking about the hissing and all the rest of it. After you tell her, she says, “How did it make you feel, Autumn?”

You answer that in one word:
weird.
She asks if you can
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say anything else about it, and you shrug and take a drink of your soda. She goes on nibbling potato chips and waiting for you to speak, like she does. And finally, you say that word again. “It’s just
weird
that people act as if I’m all different now, as if I’m not me anymore.”

Mrs. Kalman nods and says, “I know that must be really frustrating to you.”

“Yes!” you say. That’s
it
. You wouldn’t have thought to say that word, but she knows just how to put things.

“Maybe you should write about this in your journal,”

she says. “You know how helpful that is.”

You shrug again, because you haven’t written in the journal since, well, since
before
, and even though that’s only a couple of weeks, it seems way longer, like maybe a year.

“So will you do that, Autumn?” Mrs. Kalman says, and you say, “Okay,” and that night you try to do it, because you said you would, but all you write are two sentences.

Why do people treat me as if I’m all of a sudden someone else? I’m just the same person I always was.

After that you have nothing else to write, because the fact is—and you know this—you aren’t the same as you were before you walked into that house. You’re still Autumn Huddle, but you’re definitely not the same. You’ve changed.

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POSITIVE ID

SATURDAY THE DOORBELL rings. “Who

is it?” you scream.
Has he come back . . . looking for you
?

Your face flushes sickeningly hot.

Stevie goes to the door. You hover behind her. The two police officers are standing there. What are they doing here? You found the house, and it was empty, and the man was gone.

“We have some good news,” Detective Brantley says.

He takes off his cap and twirls it on his thumb. “We found out who owns the house, and we got some good information about our man.”

Our man?
You hate hearing that.

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Then Mommy comes to the door and says, “What’s going on here?”

“Hello, Mrs. Herbert,” Detective Brantley says, “We think we have an ID on the man who kidnapped Autumn.”

Mommy takes you by the shoulders and holds on to you.

“Mrs. Herbert,” Sergeant Gomez says, “we need Autumn to look at some pictures. We’re parked right over there, and we’ll have her back in no time.”

Mommy holds your shoulders even tighter, and she says, “I ain’t letting her look at all those perverts. Anyway, if you know who he is, why do you need her?”

“We need Autumn to make the positive identification,”

Detective Brantley says. “She’s the only one who can con-firm the ID.”

Mommy starts to object again, but you say, “Mommy, it’s okay, I’ll go.”

“Not without me,” Mommy says.

At the police station they sit you down at a table and Mommy sits right down next to you. Sergeant Gomez puts a notebook in front of you and says, “Look at the pictures and tell us if you recognize anybody. We don’t say anything; it’s all up to you. I’ll turn the pages for you. You just give me the sign when you’re ready.”

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You nod. Your hand is over your stomach, ’cause it’s doing that clock ticking thing again.

“Take your time, Autumn,” Detective Brantley says. “If you see a face you recognize, you tell us, but if you don’t see anybody, that’s okay. This is not a test or anything.”

Sergeant Gomez opens the notebook, and you look at the faces on the first page and shake your head. She flips the page over. Mommy looks at you. You shake your head.

Sergeant Gomez turns the page. Look. Shake. Another page. Look. Shake. Another page, and another. Nobody says anything. Face after face after face, mostly men.

What’s weird is that a lot of the faces resemble his. You can’t figure it out, and then you do. They’re ordinary looking. They don’t look like monsters or perverts. They don’t look like bad people.

The pages turn, the faces blur, your stomach ticks.

You’re hating this. It’s making you remember.

“Hello? Autumn, you still with us?” Sergeant Gomez says. She turns the page.

You look, you shake your head. Another page. No.

Another. No. Another—
yes
.

You see him. No mustache, but that’s him. You will never forget his face.

“There,” you say, and you point.

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CORKSCREW SMILES

ARE YOU OKAY, Autumn? How are you feeling?

Are you sure you’re okay? Everybody says it. First the questions and then the weird smile, sort of like a corkscrew twisting inside itself. Mrs. Kalman is the only one who never gives you that corkscrew smile. Stevie tells you it’s a scared smile. “People are pissin’ afraid of what you’ll say.”

Not Mrs. Kalman. She’s told you she knows you’ve got things you need to unload. That’s her word. “Whenever you’re ready to unload, Autumn,” she says. “I’m listening.”

You’ve told her a little, but not much. Today is one of your lunch days together and you’ve been staring at her long, shining gold hair, sort of mesmerized. She’s wearing
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her hair loose today, just tucked behind her ears.

“What are you thinking about?” she says.

“Your hair.”

“Why my hair?”

You kind of wave your hands around, and you start to say, “Oh, just because,” but she’s looking at you and waiting, like she’s been waiting for weeks now, and you know that eventually you’re going to tell her all the things you haven’t said yet. So you might as well tell her this bit.

“He liked my hair, and, you know.” You stop. That’s all you want to say right now. Next time maybe you won’t say anything and maybe you’ll say everything.

Maybe you’ll tell her the whole thing, how you went up to him, thinking he was just another person, like one of your neighbors or one of Poppy’s friends, and how he locked the door and slapped you, and how he tied your hands and put you in the room and made you sit on his lap and all the rest. All the stuff you haven’t told. Maybe next time you’ll tell her all that.

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TELL US EVERYTHING

“AUTUMN. AUTUMN Herbert. Over here.”

Krystal Langlois, who’s the most popular girl in sixth grade and who never paid any attention to you for a single moment before this, is calling to you across the lunchroom. What does she want? You stand there for a moment, holding your lunch bag, and then you shrug and walk toward Krystal’s table, and it seems as if the whole lunchroom is watching.

There’s no room on either bench for you. You shrug again, ready to leave, but the other girls in Krystal’s posse squeeze together and make room for you. You sit down and say, “What do you want?”