Never Missing, Never Found (11 page)

“Nothing.” Pixie’s voice was a gasp. “I was just…just trying to look out the window.”

Stepmother trained her eyes on me. They were ice blue, so pale they almost glowed in the dark. “Jane, what was the other girl doing?”

Stepmother at least called me a name, even if it wasn’t mine. Pixie didn’t even get that.

My heart felt as cold as Stepmother’s eyes.

“Jane,” Stepmother prompted. I stared at her. “Jane, tell me what she was doing, or you won’t like what’s going to happen.”

I couldn’t look back at Pixie. I couldn’t look into Stepmother’s eyes, either. I could only look at the floor. The cold, cold floor. “She was trying to escape, ma’am.”

I could hear Pixie gasp. It was drowned out, though, by the palpable sense of satisfaction oozing from Stepmother. “As I suspected,” she said. “Jane, would you like to sleep upstairs tonight?”

My mouth dropped open. I couldn’t look back at Pixie, but I could look into Stepmother’s eyes now. “Upstairs? Ma’am?”

“Candy is gone for the night,” Stepmother said. “There’s a spare bedroom upstairs. Would you like to sleep there tonight, Jane?”

I still couldn’t look back at Pixie. “Yes, ma’am.” It felt like a choice, but really, this wasn’t a choice. It was all Stepmother.

I didn’t look back at Pixie as I climbed the stairs, or as Stepmother ushered me through the door, or as Stepmother closed the door behind me. Stepmother stayed behind on the staircase, but I could hear her through the door. “You and Jane are close, girl, are you not?” she said. I would have nodded, but I pictured Pixie staring back defiantly, her chin thrust into the air. “If you try to escape, if you let her help you, I will kill her. I will kill her and it will be your fault.”

Pixie said nothing, but I didn’t think she would. A splinter of resentment pushed its way into my heart. She had to stop trying to escape now, now that she knew my life was in her hands. Not that Stepmother would actually kill me; I didn’t think she would, anyway. I was a good worker, a quiet worker, and I’d stopped trying to escape. She’d told me before how hard it was to find someone like me.

Once Stepmother came through the door, I let her lead me to Candy’s room, at the end of the main hallway. The house felt big when we were cleaning it, but, looking back, it really wasn’t a large house: a hall lined with rooms that were divided with false walls to make more rooms, but there were only two and a half baths for everybody. One floor and a basement. Maybe there was an attic, too, but we never saw it.

I waited for her to nod at the bed before I sat down. I cast my eyes down, looking at the floor and expecting her to leave, but she took a step inside and closed the door behind her. I blinked hard, focusing on the floor like it was the most fascinating thing in the world.

“Jane, look at me.”

She didn’t have to tell me twice. She was staring down at me, her lips ruby red, her cheekbones slicing the air. Her eyes narrowed as she studied my face. As she studied
me.
My skin prickled, and I had to fight the urge to look away.

She did a strange sort of shimmy with her shoulders. Back then I assumed that she’d been bitten by a bug or something—really, I didn’t give it too much thought. But it has stuck with me all these years, and now the leading hypothesis? She was fighting an urge herself.

Of course, it’s only a hypothesis. It’s entirely possible that she was cruel all the way through, her heart a shriveled black fist.

“You remind me of someone, Jane,” she said finally. “She had the same black hair, that same olive skin, those big, dark eyes.” Her throat worked. “Of course, you are eight now, are you not? Or nine? She was never eight. Or nine.”

I knew better than to respond; that had earned me the back of her hand striking across my cheeks enough times now. So I sat there primly, hands folded in my lap and back as straight as I could make it, until she nodded crisply at me and walked away.

I slept in a real bed that night, a real bed that still smelled a little bit like passion fruit, Candy’s favorite perfume. It was the most comfortable bed I’d ever slept in.

I didn’t dream of Pixie. I dreamed of another girl, a girl with black hair, olive skin, big, dark eyes.

Soon after our fudge-eating adventure, Connor has to leave and go do actual work, so I spend most of the afternoon planning my interrogation of Melody. Also wondering if the amaretto fudge is as lethal as the peanut butter fudge, but you know what they say: once bitten, twice burned. Or something like that.

Mostly I occupy myself with the Melody thing. I’m not at all surprised or suspicious that she and Katharina are such fast friends; Melody makes friends the way most people order hamburgers, and Katharina is beautiful and popular enough to be a worthy addition to her harem. No, what I’m most surprised and suspicious about is that they want to spend time with
me.

I started seeing Dr. Martinez mere hours after I was found. She’d spoken with my parents, and Melody, too. I only found out years later what they’d talked about. Apparently, my rescue was just the beginning: a happy beginning, sure, but just the beginning of a very long and difficult road. I’d been in that basement for a span of time approaching four years: nearly a third of my entire life, more if you don’t count the baby years, which really you shouldn’t. They shouldn’t be surprised, she cautioned, if I didn’t remember basic things, like how to use a real toilet or interact with old friends, or if I woke screaming every night from one nightmare or another.

I never woke screaming. There had been enough nights where I’d woken whimpering or crying only to have my half-asleep bedmate kick me in the stomach to make me stop.

I did, however, forget basic things. My parents had kept my bedroom exactly the way I’d left it, dirty clothes in the hamper and hidden stash of (now rotten and crumbling) candy in the back of my sock drawer, but I didn’t remember which door off the upstairs hallway led into it. I remembered my best friends, Maddy and Nicole, and could point to their grinning, gap-toothed faces in my old pictures, but I’d totally forgotten the face of my cousin Ella, who lived way out in California. I could put together my favorite sandwich, peanut butter and honey and banana, with one hand, but I’d forgotten where the toaster was.

And so on.

At first I tried to ask Melody for help. Ask her how to manipulate the shower handle so that the water wasn’t scorching hot
or
freezing cold, or where the apples were stored in the garage. Sometimes she’d answer, pointing wordlessly to a spot or showing me which dial to turn, but she never spared one more word than necessary, and those words she did spare were always accompanied by a stone-cold stare. One of those stares that looked right through me, like I wasn’t there at all.

I remember one Sunday morning, not long after I came home. I woke up early and determined that today would be the day I’d get my sister back. I knew Melody’s favorite breakfast was almond french toast (at the time—now, of course, she’d never touch it), so I gathered all the ingredients together and set to cooking. It took me a while, but I’d figured out most of the pantry and how the stove worked, so I was feeling very pleased with myself when Melody came plodding down the stairs, rubbing her eyes, and I was just taking the first delicious slice out of the pan.

“Breakfast is served,” I announced. She stood in the doorway staring, as usual, and then our dad came up behind her and stared too. I licked my lips and held the plate before me. “It’s not poisoned, I swear.”

Out of nowhere, Melody let out a laugh. This startled me more than a hug would have; I hadn’t heard her laugh at all since I came home. Not at our dad or the TV. Certainly not at me. “Do you remember,” she said, looking back at our dad, “for my sixth birthday, Scarlett woke up at, like, four in the morning and came downstairs to make me breakfast? She came in to get me and I screamed so loud I woke you and Mom up.”

A smile twitched at the corners of our dad’s lips too. “She was covered in so much flour and sugar you thought she was a ghost.”

Neither of them looked at me, and the pain cut me in a flash through my core. “Yeah, I remember that,” I said, way too loudly. “That was so funny.”

They both hushed midlaugh and exchanged another glance, one I couldn’t quite read. “I miss…,” Melody started, then stopped.

“What?” I said. My heart was beating fast.

“Nothing,” she said, and looked away. Our dad had already turned and was beating it to the living room. “Thanks for breakfast, but I’m not actually hungry. I think I’m going to go back to bed.”

I cooked every single piece of french toast and piled them, glistening with syrup and snowy with powdered sugar, on a plate, then tipped them all, one by one, into the garbage can.

That wasn’t the last time I tried to win Melody over, but it was the most emotion I ever got out of her. She made it very clear she wanted nothing to do with me. Which is why I’m so confused about why she wants to spend time with me tomorrow night. Voluntarily. Without any ulterior motive I can gather.

I don’t figure it out by the end of the workday, and I’m no closer to figuring out a way to confront her without the possibility of her canceling tomorrow. Whatever happens, I don’t want that.

On my way home, I stop at my favorite place. I used to call it my thinking spot. Is it entirely wise for me, a teenage girl, to be wandering around alone in the woods when a teenage girl is missing in the area? Probably not. But I can’t bring myself to be afraid of the woods. The dark? Sure. Basements? Obviously. Dark, lonely secret passages? Uh-huh. But the woods are wide and open. Nobody can sneak up on me over the carpet of crunchy leaves and pine needles, and there’s endless space for me to run. And the air is clean. Every breath purifies me.

Soon after I came home, I spent a lot of time in the woods. I’d ride my bike down the road, get off, and walk for miles, wandering, sometimes hoping, I think, somewhere deep down, that I’d get lost and wander forever. It was the only place I found peace; I certainly didn’t have it at home, where my mom was gone and toddler Matthew was always crying and Melody’s cold stare followed me around like a pet I didn’t want.

During one of my wanderings I found the cabin. It was located way deep in the woods, off any sort of track, and the smells of rot and mildew made it clear that nobody had been inside in years. My best guess was that it had once been located off a hunting trail, maybe twenty years ago, built and maintained by a pair of hunters, and then one of the hunters accidentally shot the other one and then went insane from guilt and spent the rest of his days wandering the woods, cackling madly. Just like me, except for the cackling thing.

I made the cabin my own, cleared out the rot and mildew, fixed the windows, lugged in a few old cushions to sit on, and used it to think. It was easier to think there, to think over what I’d done, than it was anywhere else. I haven’t been there in a while, months probably, but I can’t imagine anyone else has found it.

I’m right. Well, mostly right—one of the windows is broken, and a squirrel or raccoon seems to have made a nest out of one of my cushions. Still, I sit down and close my eyes and let myself think. Melody. Melody. How to talk to Melody.

An hour later, I’ve come up with a big fat nothing.

She’s not home when I get there anyway; she’s out, presumably at a bake sale or helping orphaned children cross the street. I tickle Matthew and make him dinner, rice with broccoli and edamame, which he moans about but then downs when I promise him a cookie for dessert. Okay, two cookies, but only if I get a bite.

Work the next day passes in the most boring way possible. The only Connor I get is a glimpse as I’m leaving for the day and he’s coming back from lunch; the grin he gives me from fifty feet away is enough to make me glow inside. Certainly, my day spent working under Randall, a prematurely balding teenager with a kind smile and a head for sports (if not hair), hadn’t done much to put it there.

And so evening rolls around. I shower, perfuming myself with some of Melody’s bath oils I pilfer in hopes that unconsciously associating my scent with hers will make her warm to me, and then change clothes a good seven times. Eventually I decide on jeans, a flowered top with a low neck, and some chunky necklaces: an outfit not too nice (so Melody won’t think I’m trying too hard) but not too underdone, either (so Melody won’t think I’m dressing like a slob in order to intentionally embarrass her).

At seven, I knock on Melody’s door. She opens it—actually opens it, doesn’t grunt at me or yell that she’s busy. I’m enveloped in a cloud of perfume, negating any effects left over from her bath oils. Maybe it’s for the best. Come to think of it, Melody probably wouldn’t look upon my pilfering all that kindly, no matter the motivation. “What?” she says in her usual monotone.

Maybe I’ve gotten the date wrong. Maybe I’ve gotten this all wrong. Maybe Katharina didn’t talk to Melody at all. “Nothing,” I say, backing away.

“Wait,” she says, her voice softening. “Are you still coming out tonight? We’re meeting Katharina at nine.”

A glow fills me, one not entirely unlike the one infused by Connor’s smile. “Of course I’m still coming,” I say. “If you want me to.”

I immediately regret that, because even if, by some crazy chance, Melody does want me there, there’s no way in all the hells in the world, from the coldest of the cold to the hottest of the hot, that she’d ever admit it to my face.

I’m right. But she doesn’t deny it either. She just smiles enigmatically. “You look nice,” she says, and closes the door.

Matthew looks up to me with round eyes. “You’re going somewhere with Melly?”

“Yes,” I say. It’s 8:47. I’m waiting by the door. Lurking, really, more than waiting; I’m hovering just out of sight in the kitchen so that I can casually sidle out into the hall when I hear Melody coming downstairs. “Don’t look so surprised.”

“I can’t help it,” Matthew says. “It’s just so weird.”

“It’s not so weird,” I say. “When we were little, you know, we used to be good friends.”

His eyes don’t flatten out. “What if she takes you somewhere and kills you?”