Authors: Susan Vaught
The FBI probably never even heard of where we live until they got the call from some uppity-muck friend of the colonel’s at Fort Able, pulling in favors and asking for help. The colonel tells us the team is already in the air and on the way. They’ll have lodging at Fort Able, but we’ll need to find a good hub of operations for them to set up their equipment. Chief Smith talked to local folks and veterans, and the largest building in town not counting the schools—the old brown brick-and-stone VFW hall on the hill—got the nod. It’s close to the school and where we all live, and it’s halfway between the police station and the fire station, overlooking the town like some run-down sentinel that can’t keep us safe anymore. It’s strong but it’s old and it’s dirty and I’m sweeping and three hours turns into four hours.
Four hours.
And four hours, that turns into five hours.
And the clocks keep ticking and I’m thinking I should go look in Sunshine’s room or on the bus or all along where the bus drove or maybe at the school but the police have already done that and Sunshine’s brother, Eli, has done that and they’re probably doing it all over again so I can’t help there and I can help here with the sweeping but it’s been five hours, and it’s more than five hours now.
With the half-moon hanging like a broken Christmas ornament in the night sky, Dad and Drip and Chief Smith and I finish sweeping the VFW. We’ve got the windows open to air everything out, and we’ve set up tables and chairs in all the rooms like the colonel ordered. There’s the big main area where the VFW does dinners and stuff, a kitchen, two bathrooms (one for each gender), then twelve smaller rooms—offices, storage, empty—each one has a table and at least four chairs now. The whole place smells like Pine-Sol, and everything’s too quiet because nobody’s talking. From the other rooms off the main area, the scuff and clatter of shoes and brooms on brown tile and ancient concrete sounds like demented Morse code.
S-O-S
.
When I was little, I thought that meant
Save Our Sh
—well, you know, because I heard the colonel say it once. The FBI is coming to do that, only it’s
Save Our Sunshine
. I’m glad, but I’m also scared—not because I have anything to worry about, but because the colonel was scared. I
could tell when she told me to watch what I say. The colonel gets freaked out by my crazy voices sometimes, but she’d protect me to her last drop of blood if anything came after me.
Why would she think she has to protect me from the FBI agents? If they’re really coming here to find Sunshine, I’ll do whatever I can to help them.
She thinks you did it because you’re a freak. Idiot. I can’t believe you’re such an idiot. Fool on the hill, fool on the hill, fool on the hill. Did what? Did who? Did where?
I realize I’m standing in front of the closet in the main area, broom in my hand, frozen as I listen to the voices. I hate it when I do that.
“Maybe nobody did anything,” I mutter back to the noises in my head. I hate it when I do that, too.
But Sunshine could have run away or gotten lost. Everybody’s saying that and it might be true. Maybe nobody snatched her. Maybe nobody hurt her.
Somebody was hurting her. She told me that, didn’t she? Last Saturday—
The swirly clouds clot across my eyes and pain jabs into both sides of my head. My fingers curl into fists, and there’s a roar and it’s all my voices at once and they’re all saying
promised promised promised
but this is bad, it’s an emergency and I need to know but I can’t know because I promised and if I break a promise to her I’ll die because that’s what should happen.
Do I know something I should be telling people?
You’re just a freak. You’re just a stupid freak. Freaks don’t speak. Freaks shouldn’t speak. Don’t talk out of your head or the swirly clouds will eat you because sometimes clouds have teeth.
I don’t know for sure.
Keeping your mouth closed is rarely a bad idea
, according to another Dad-ism. I might be remembering alphabet voices and alphabet pictures and that’s not something I need to tell Chief Smith or the FBI. Please don’t let anybody be hurting Sunshine. Please don’t let anybody hurt her ever. Does the colonel think something happened to Sunshine? Does she think I had something to do with it?
How could she think that?
“Because you’re a freak,” I say with my voices, and I really,
really
hate it when I do that.
The clouds go away and the pain in my head eases and I put my broom back in the closet. None of this feels real to me, and I can’t believe it’s dark and the stars and moon are out, glowing and twinkling through the dark-paned windows, but Sunshine isn’t home. Her mom and Ms. Taylor are still at Sunshine’s place, waiting for Mr. Franks to get home and hanging by the telephone because Chief Smith told them to stay there in case Sunshine tries to call or comes home. Drip’s brothers are out driving the roads. Sunshine’s brother, Eli, is walking the neighborhoods around Sunshine’s town house again, even though the police have done it three times now. I can imagine his
hands balled into fists,
PAIN
and
HOPE
flashing from his fingers with each step he takes.
Stupid, stupid ass. This is all your fault. You’re a coward. Yellow, yellow, yellow. You’re yellow. Everything’s yellow.
The voices are so loud my fingers dig into the closet door. My regular pills are due, but if I send Dad for them or ask the colonel to go get them when she gets back with the FBI team, I’ll go to sleep. There’s no choice about that. Take fuzzy pills and zonk goes the Freak boy. I can’t help find Sunshine if I’m in dreamland, so I’m waiting, and it’s not that big of a deal. I can miss a day, or even two or three. The medicine stays in my blood a long time. Things get hard, but not too awful, at least when it’s not stressful.
Drip comes charging into the main area carrying his broom. His movements are jerky and twitchy and way too clumsy and fast, and I know his meds have worn off, too. His meds aren’t like mine—he takes anti-fuzzy pills to help him focus, but they’re only good for part of the day. Toward bedtime, he burns out and gets wild, then all of a sudden—boom—just goes to sleep wherever he is, whatever he’s doing.
“You think we should go to our spot?” Drip bangs into me as he tosses his broom into the closet and shuts the door. “I know it’s dark, but we could get flashlights and she might be there. What if she’s there?”
Drip’s talking too fast just like he’s moving too fast,
and he’s sweating, and his eyes keep going left and right as his fingers twitch and jump. He can’t help it. It’s his alphabet, and the effects of his meds.
“Keep your voice down,” I tell him, glancing at the double glass doors leading into the VFW hall like the FBI might be right outside listening. They aren’t, but Chief Smith and Dad could hear him without a lot of trying.
Drip nods. His big round eyes study me.
“I don’t have a flashlight,” I tell him. Then I sigh. “Maybe we should tell Chief Smith and let him go with us—or send one of his officers.”
“To
our
spot?” Drip doesn’t like the idea. I can tell from the monumental frown. “If she’s there, she’ll be pissed and upset. That’s our place, Freak. It’s our secret place.”
“It’s a spot on the river. It’s not exactly secret.”
“But it’s ours.”
And what he means is, it’s hers and she shared it with us and—
Promise you’ll never show anybody else because this is where I come when I can’t take people and faces and voices anymore she says and we’re eleven the three of us and she’s kept this secret for years about her place and it’s quiet and beautiful and out of the way and we swear we won’t tell anyone and we thank her because it’s the perfect place for people like us and Drip goes in the water and she looks at me with those sad sad serious eyes and she holds her locket tight and she asks me do people ever get to be
too much for you Jason and yes I tell her yes because they do they really do but I’m thinking that she won’t ever be too much for me because she’s as perfect as this place and she smiles and that just makes her more perfect and
—“We can’t tell anybody,” Drip mutters, but it doesn’t matter because right that second the double glass doors swing open and the colonel marches in with Captain Evans and behind them come a bunch of soldiers in casual fatigues lugging boxes and folding tables and chairs and some video screens and bulletin boards and chalkboards and behind them come five more people, three women and two men. They have on rumpled-looking suits, all of them, and they fan out, pointing and directing the soldiers.
I feel like Drip and I are shrinking, becoming less and less a part of this world as the VFW hall starts to turn into something else, some other place, and I hear the colonel barking orders and Captain Evans saying, “No, not here, Private. Over there.”
Then Chief Smith and Dad come into the main area and start shaking hands with people and introducing themselves, and the guy standing in the middle of the room seems to be in charge of the FBI team. I take him for around fifty years old. He’s about six feet tall, in decent shape, and he’s got short, buzzed gray hair like he might have been military a long time ago. When he thrusts out his
hand to Dad and says, “Special Agent Robert Mercer,” his voice is deep and authoritative.
After he and Chief Smith exchange names, Agent Mercer gets right to it with, “Sunshine Patton is seventeen years old, and as with any adolescent, it’s possible that she left on her own, that she ran away. However, because of her mental illness, she’s considered a vulnerable child, and we’re treating this as a mysterious disappearance. You made a wise choice, involving us as quickly as possible. These first twenty-four hours are absolutely critical because after that, outcomes in situations like this aren’t good. My people will help coordinate with your department and state resources, and we’ll organize the investigation, searches, and technical aspects. If necessary, we’ll consult with the Behavioral Analysis Unit.”
“Don’t they do serial killers?” Drip whispers, only it’s not so much a whisper since his meds wore off and he’s bouncing on the balls of his feet and swinging his arms back and forth even though he’s sort of hiding behind me at the same time.
Special Agent Mercer’s attention shifts to us, and for a long moment, he regards Drip. Then he focuses on me. Even from halfway across the room, I feel the ice of his merciless gray eyes. He’s got this straight-line mouth that isn’t made to smile, and—
He knows it’s your fault. He knows you’re an idiot. Fool on the hill. Fool on the hill. He’s got cold eyes. Why does he have cold eyes? He’s probably a serial killer.
—“We can also access resources at the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime Coordinators,” Agent Mercer continues, never taking those chilly eyes off my face, “and Crimes Against Children investigators. All operations will run through this command post—and the first thing we’ll do is set up a map of registered sex offenders in this area.” He turns to Chief Smith. “Your officers can start with canvassing those individuals, and we’ll call in state police if you don’t have enough manpower.”
He stops. I wonder if he’s taking a breath. Do men like him have to breathe? At least he finally stopped looking at me. I think I need to go to the bathroom.
Chief Smith seems stunned. So does Dad. The colonel and Captain Evans have gone silent, but their squadron of privates keeps worker-beeing in every direction, setting up the… command post. Jeez. This seems more military than the colonel’s job, and my stomach gets tight, then tighter and Chief Smith’s stun passes over to me, and all I can think on top of the never-shutting-up voices is:
She’s gone. Sunshine’s really gone
.
“Registered sex offenders,” Chief Smith says, like it’s finally all sinking in and his brain’s starting to fire a few neurons. “What kind of radius are we talking about? Because we don’t have too many of those folks around here.”
“We’ll do a thirty-mile grid to begin with,” Agent Mercer says, frowning at a soldier who almost dropped a computer screen. “If that touches Fort Able, I trust that
Colonel Milwaukee will assist in gathering pertinent information and setting up interviews.”
“Absolutely,” comes the answer, but it’s from Captain Evans, not the colonel. Weird. The colonel never lets anybody speak for her.
Dad notices this, too, because I see his eyebrows pinch and his eyes say,
Who is this woman?
And I really need to go to the bathroom and I’m wondering,
Why is she here?
Agent Mercer isn’t finished. “We’ll need to conduct our interviews as quickly as possible. Colonel Milwaukee tells me you’ve made an initial list of persons who might have key information, Chief Smith?”
Chief Smith stands motionless for a few long seconds, like he’s still having trouble processing all the hustle and bustle and this man’s firm, almost demanding tone, but then he clicks into gear and pulls his notebook out of his waistband. He holds it out to Agent Mercer, and the second the FBI man touches the paper, my heart thumps and pitches because it’s
that
notebook, the one Chief Smith had at Sunshine’s place, where he was writing down names and on his list, on the list of people to be interviewed, I remember what’s first on that list.
My name.
The room’s low fluorescent lighting suddenly seems too bright, and I swear I can hear the whine of the bulbs right through—
He’s gonna know you’re a lying, stupid little shit. You’ve got no hope. Give up now. Quit now. Give it up, give it up, give it up. Give up what? There’s nothing to give up. Is there?
—“Oh man, oh man, oh man,” Drip says over and over and over again in his not-really-a-whisper. “This is like a television show but it’s real and where is she, Freak? Where is Sunshine?”
My own voices are bad enough. If I had duct tape, I’d keep Drip from adding to them, but I know he can’t help it, and Agent Mercer is gathering two of his people, one man and one woman, and he’s asking Chief Smith to get them to Sunshine’s house to talk to Eli and her parents and Ms. Taylor.