Things We Didn't Say (17 page)

“Great. Need a lift back?”

I shake my head, hard. Tony doesn’t know that Angel read my journal, that a sighting of him now would be almost the worst possible thing.

“Stay warm, kiddo,” he tells me as I get out of the car, before I shut the door. “They say there’s a blizzard coming.” He squeezes my hand before I step back into the cold.

I wonder if the blizzard will hit Ohio. I don’t think Dylan has his warm coat.

I hurry back to the house, because I’ve been gone too long for a walk around the block. No one seems to have noticed my absence.

Michael is at the computer, the Web site of the National Center for the Missing open in front of him.

Three small pictures on the screen have the mottled blue backgrounds and strained smiles of school photos. They have “missing” dates and cities attached.

One day these kids were posing for a photographer, having greasy school lunch pizza, getting scraped knees on the playground. Now they’re gone.

How would we know where to find a girl from Greeley, Colorado?

And how would anyone else know how to find Dylan?

“Time to call the hotline,” Michael murmurs, and picks up his phone.

From my end of the conversation, it’s clear the person on the other end is well trained in reassurance and warmth. Michael repeats, “Yes, exactly,” and “We’re very worried,” and keeps pinching the bridge of his nose.

He lets go of his nose long enough to grab a narrow spiral notebook out of his desk drawer and starts writing in pencil. But he shoots me a look, shaking his head slowly. I walk around him to look at what he’s writing. There are things that we’ve already done, like break into his computer, search his room, call his friends. There are things the police already said they cannot do for us. We can’t use GPS to track down his cell, because he didn’t take it.

Michael has written,
Missing poster—(like for lost cat?!).

Now Michael is nodding as if the other person can see him. He seems to be holding his breath.

He drops the pencil and crumples down to the desk, putting his head on his arms. He lets the phone receiver roll out of his hand.

I wrap my arms around him, feeling his body heave with the effort of holding everything in. This close I can hear the woman on the phone saying, “Hello? Mr. Turner? Are you there? Hello?”

Chapter 20
Michael

C
asey doesn’t understand that her attempt at soothing me is making this worse. I don’t want soothing, I want answers. Action. Results.

I swallow hard, exhale, shake off Casey like a dog shaking off the rain and pick up the phone again, finishing up my conversation with the well-meaning woman on the other end who won’t stop expressing sympathy.

The phone rings again. It’s not a hopeful sound anymore.

“Hello.”

“Are you the father of Dylan Turner?”

“Yes.” I sit up straight at this, my ears pricked, my hand reaching by rote for the notebook.

“Your goddamn son has run off with my daughter. I’m pressing charges on him when they find that sonofabitch.”

“My son did not coerce your daughter anywhere. In fact, we have e-mails that show this whole stunt was her idea.”

“I’ll just bet. I know what horny boys are like. He just wanted to get her alone and vulnerable, away from her parents and their strong moral values!”

My hand grips the phone so hard I might break it.

“We need to help each other. Two families looking betters the odds. And last I heard they were in Cleveland. Are you in Cleveland?”

There’s a beat of silence. I can feel the anger wafting from him and I feel it, too, both of us hurt and furious.

“Yeah.”

“Then you can put up posters. Let me send you a picture of Dylan, and you can put your daughter on the poster, too.”

He huffs into the phone. “Fine. But this isn’t done. When we find them, it sure isn’t done.”

This guy is an asshole, but I appreciate that confident “when” in that sentence.

It takes me a moment to identify that rumbling in my gut as hunger. I haven’t eaten breakfast and only picked at last night’s pizza. Not that I feel like eating—can’t help but wonder, Is Dylan eating?—but it’s something to do, once I send the picture of Dylan to Tiffany’s father.

Angel comes down the stairs with her damp hair making dark circles on her purple T-shirt. The shirt’s neck scoops low, and her collarbone juts sharply from her upper chest. As she walks into the kitchen, I notice her grab a belt loop and hike up her pants.

“Angel, have you eaten today?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“A bagel.” She scowls as she pours more coffee.

“We’re out of bagels.”

“I don’t know, whatever. I don’t remember.”

She’s not yet gaunt, but there’s less of her than I remember.

I grit my teeth, considering. I could let it go, today. But how many times in the last weeks have I wondered about Dylan—when his stammer showed up again, when he quit inviting Casey to hear him practice—but something else came up, swept me along in the tide of everyday busywork, and I never asked? And now he’s gone.

“You have to eat something.”

Angel sighs, tosses her head. “I’m not hungry.”

“Eat something small.”

“I don’t feel well.”

“Then don’t drink that coffee. It’s acidic.”

She pours out the coffee and slams the mug down on the counter. For a moment I remember her mother, hurling another mug from that same set. They look so very much alike, and I recognize the expression on Angel’s face now, as Mallory Furious.

“I don’t want to see you starving yourself.”

“God.” She leans hard on the kitchen counter, folds her arms. “Is this what it’s going to be like now? Dylan acts like an idiot and runs away and I’m under surveillance?”

“Can’t you see that I love you? And I don’t want you making yourself sick?”

She looks at me sideways now, a wet strand of hair hanging over one eye. In the silence there’s a sad awareness of how rarely I’ve said out loud, “I love you.”

“I’m fine,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “Don’t take Dylan’s problems out on me.”

Mallory approaches from behind me. I’d almost forgotten she was here, she’d been so quiet with Jewel in the living room, no sound but the racket of commercials and dopey Nickelodeon shows.

“What’s your problem now, Mike?”

“I’m worried. She’s not eating.”

“Of course she’s not! I’m not eating today, either.”

Mallory walks to Angel and folds her in a hug, and together they walk out, arm in arm, looking even more alike from the back, as they retreat from me.

Does she think I don’t love her? How could she think that? I stayed with their mother years longer than I should have, because I couldn’t bear to be apart from my children. I kept them with me after the split instead of surrendering them to Mallory’s unpredictability, I have given up any life outside of work, home, and one hour at the gym . . .

Not true, I correct myself, sinking down into a kitchen chair, my bones so tired they have a will of their own. Not true because I dated Casey, fell in love, and moved her in.

And now Casey and Angel spark up against each other like flint and tinder, have been for weeks, and it’s only been worse of late. And yet still Casey is here. Maybe Angel thinks I’m choosing Casey over her.

Why should I have to choose? I tighten my fist and clench my jaw until my molars hurt.

“Should” is meaningless. Reality is all I’ve got.

Chapter 21
Dylan

T
iffany’s head is in my lap.

This is not really so great.

Because we’re in a mall and she’s asleep and my leg is going to sleep and we’ve been up all night and we’re not in New York City but Cleveland. I’m tired of dragging my sax case around, which is heavy enough even when I haven’t stuffed clothes in it, like it’s a suitcase.

Also? I’m hungry.

I wonder if this is how my dad felt when he married my mom, realizing he’d just made a huge mistake but it’s not like he can just erase it and start over.

My dad would never say it like that; even when they split up, he was always careful to not say anything bad about her, and to say that he never regretted a thing because he’s glad to have us. I bet some days he wishes he could wave a magic wand and have us, and Casey, too, but not our mom. I see what his face looks like when he talks to Mom, like he’s fifteen years older.

I look down at Tiffany and her hair has fallen over her face, so I brush it back. A security guard from the mall walks by, and he glares at us. He’s been by here, like, three times. I should wake her up.

I jiggle my leg a little, but she doesn’t move.

She started out kinda mad at me because I didn’t run into her arms and swing her around like something in a movie when I first saw her, but it wasn’t my fault I was surprised. She didn’t look anything like her picture, and I can’t be blamed for that because it isn’t her, and she admitted it right away. She didn’t think I’d like the real her.

I’m not gonna lie, the picture she sent was prettier. She’s a little heavy, for one thing, and she’s got some pimples that she covers up with this orangey makeup. But that’s not her fault, and anyway, I like her because we talk and the things we say, and that’s what I told her. And I hugged her and it was nice.

It was just a shock, you know? I can’t help being shocked. You get an idea in your head of somebody . . . Lucky for me I’ve learned to tell people just what they want to hear, so it’s mostly okay now.

Well, obviously it would be perfect if she looked super-hot in addition to being witty and funny and nice.

Trouble is, in person? In real time? She’s not as funny as she was over the computer.

Or maybe I’m just being an asshat because she doesn’t look like her picture.

I shake her awake by the shoulder before the security guard comes back to ask why we’re not in school. She sits back up, and I tell her we should walk like we have somewhere to go or we’re going to get hassled.

She nods, and we stand up and start walking, having to swing around the moms pushing kids in strollers and the old people walking with their white sneakers. I’m starting to feel like a neon sign is over our heads going,
TEENAGERS NOT IN SCHOOL! RUNAWAYS
!

“We should go somewhere else,” I say to her.

She slips her hand into mine. It feels clammy. I resist the urge to pull my hand away and wipe my palm off on my jeans.

“Where are we going to go? We’re out of money.” She pouts, like it’s my fault or something.

The bus station people wouldn’t sell us tickets, being underage, and I remember feeling annoyed with Tiffany because I thought she was going to plan ahead and buy them through the mail, like I did, where they can’t check ID.

We hung around until the bus station people started to look at us weird, and then we just started walking. We walked until we were so tired we couldn’t stand up and it got really cold and started snowing so we found a sheltered bus station bench and snuggled up as best we could, using my sax case as kind of a pillow, mostly so it wouldn’t get stolen. We had loads of time to study the bus lines and enough change for bus fare, so in the morning, we took a bus to the mall so we could eat at the food court and have somewhere warm to be.

But then we found out her wallet was missing, probably stolen on the bus, and I was going to ask her why she had it in her backpack where it was really easy to get into, instead of, say, in her front pocket.

But then I saw her lip was puckered out and her eyes were all teary.

I don’t think she’s actually sixteen, either. That’s what she said on Facebook, that she just turned sixteen. But she seems pretty young.

I spent my own cash already—I never had much, but Tiffany made it sound like she had tons. Now we have no money and no ride and it’s snowing really hard out there, too.

After the wallet got stolen I decided to call home with a calling card I bought for emergencies, since I wasn’t taking my phone. Tiffany was in the bathroom, and I called the first number that came to mind, Casey’s cell, the number I call if I need something during the day when Dad’s at work. But somehow my mom grabbed the phone and started screaming and then Tiffany came out of the bathroom and I didn’t want her to think I was chickening out so I hung up.

“I think we should hitch,” Tiffany says, now swinging my hand in hers, which annoys me. I stiffen my arm so she has to stop and she gives me this little hurt look through her hair.

“Yeah, and then we get hacked up into bits by some maniac. Good plan.”

“C’mon, there are two of us. We won’t get in someone’s car if they look crazy.”

“Not all psychopaths wander around drooling and rolling their eyes.”

“Okay, no droolers. That will narrow the choices.”

I allow a smile at this. “No, serious, Tiffany, we can’t. Have you seen the weather out there? W-w-w-we didn’t dress for standing by the side of the road sticking out a thumb. Someone would probably call the cops on us, an-n-n-yway.”

We walk a few more steps, and I test the waters with something. “You know, we could call your parents.”

She stops dead, forcing me to stop, too, by yanking on my hand.

“We can’t do that! It’s horrible, I can never go anywhere or do anything, I’m like a prisoner in that house. I had to escape.”

I look around to see if anyone heard that. A mother wheeling a stroller by gives us a long look.

“S-s-someone will hear you.”

Tiffany had told me all kinds of stories about how she was never allowed to go anywhere but school, the library, and church, and couldn’t even use the phone unless her dad was in the same room listening, and her only Internet access was taken away when he found out she was talking to me. She had to change her e-mail address and send me messages through Facebook and Gmail at the library when she was supposed to be studying. He took away her phone, too, when he found out she’d been sneaking calls to me.

She said she had actual bars on the windows, and a lock on the outside of her room that he threatened to use if she disobeyed.