Never Missing, Never Found (4 page)

The inside looks much like I would’ve expected from the outside. The one long room is scattered with picnic tables that I can just tell are splintery. Against the wall are two vending machines that sell soda and sugary snacks. The smell of old grease is thick in the air. A cafeteria-style hot bar on the far side of the room dispenses food, all of which seems to be slathered in glimmering orange fat. Oil glistens on the mozzarella sticks, on the soggy fries, on the fried chicken. My stomach lurches.

It’s not even free. We don’t get paid for our lunch break, and we are not allowed to bring our own lunches, so basically Five Banners is forcing us to hand them back an hour or so of our day while they cackle and flip the minutes through their fingers like a stack of dollar bills.

“Grab some food and we’ll meet over there.” Connor points at a table in the corner. The table is covered with a blue plastic tablecloth, and the blue plastic tablecloth is covered with crumbs and smears of grease. “It’s my usual spot.”

“Okay,” I say, and I begin roaming the displays of food, eventually selecting a wilted salad (the dressing is gleaming and orange) and mozzarella sticks for the calcium, for my bones. Connor is already sitting at his table, staring intently at the burger before him, when I finish paying, so I weave my way through the tables and green shirts toward him. I have a headache by the time I get there and sit down; the noise of everybody’s chatter bouncing off the metal ceiling is deafening, not to mention the coaster’s roar overhead. The second I sit down, he shoves his burger in his mouth.
He waited for me,
I think, touched, and somehow that makes the glaring lights overhead feel softer, the splintery wood feel like…well, less splintery wood.

“A salad?” Connor says between bites. “Mistake. The cooks backstage aren’t known for their skills with vegetables. I’d recommend the burger. In fact, the only thing I would recommend is the burger.”

“I’m a vegetarian,” I say. I’m not a vegetarian. I don’t know why I said that. I stuff my mouth with a forkful of warm lettuce before I can lie to him again.

“Nice,” Connor says. “I could never be a vegetarian. I grew up on a farm.”

I swallow; the half-chewed lettuce slides down my throat in one solid lump. “I’d think that would make you more likely to be a vegetarian, not less.”

“We farm vegetables,” he says. “And horses. Not that we eat the horses, just the vegetables. But you know what they say about seeing how your food gets made….”

“Do you still farm?”

“Yeah,” Connor says. The burger lies half-eaten on his plate as he gestures around him. “When I’m not here, I spend most of my summer driving a tractor and baling hay.” I don’t even know what that means. “That’s how I get my tremendous muscles.”

I open my mouth to ask what baling hay is, but before I can get the words out, a whirlwind descends upon our table, a whirlwind of shiny hair and chiming jewelry and flowery smells. I’m immediately thrown back to Stepmother’s house, sitting at the feet of one of the girls—Violetta—as she braided my hair with hands so limp she kept dropping the strands. She wore the same perfume, the same arrangement of necklaces and bracelets that chimed against each other with every movement.

When the dust clears, neo-Violetta is sitting across from me, her chin propped in her hands. “Who’s this?” she asks.

I blink. I can’t tell if she’s talking to me, or to Connor, or to the wall. “I’m Scarlett,” I say. “It’s my first day.”

“She’s a star,” Connor says to neo-Violetta, a mouthful of half-chewed french fries garbling his words. “You’d better get in on the ground floor now so you can say you knew her when.”

Neo-Violetta laughs. Her laugh is strong and clear, warm and friendly, with the feel of something familiar. “Scarlett, hello. Nice to meet you.” She extends her hand. I meet it above the table at an awkward angle; as we shake, my elbow hits the table’s surface and skids in a spot of orange oil. “I’m Katharina. I’m in Merch too.”

Her name tag marks her as a regular peon, like me, not a manager or assistant manager. “Nice to meet you,” I say.

Katharina is beautiful, far more beautiful than the original Violetta. Her proximity to Connor makes my stomach curdle, though that might just be an effect of the grease. Her hair ripples to her waist in purplish-black waves, and her eyes are huge and liquid. Her olive skin shimmers—actually shimmers—against the neon green of her polo. Nobody looks good in the polo. Nobody except Katharina, apparently. It’s so unfair—my skin is practically the same color as hers is, yet the polo washes me out.

“So, Scarlett, I knew this was your first day before I even sat down,” she says.

“Was it the salad?” I ask. “Connor already told me nobody gets the salad.”

“Well, yes,” Katharina says. “That salad’s probably been sitting on the counter for a week. But, no. It wasn’t that.”

Connor clears his throat. “We should get back, Scarlett,” he says. “Especially if we’re going to walk through the park again.”

I stand to go, leaving most of my food untouched. I’m not sure why Connor is so eager to get out of here—we still have a good few minutes—but I’m happy to play along. Something about Katharina, perhaps her mental proximity to Violetta, makes me itch. “It was good to meet you, Katharina,” I say. “I hope I’ll see you around.”

“I knew you were new because I know everyone.” She twists one long, silky lock of hair around her finger and lets it go; it falls right back into place. “If I don’t know you, it basically means you don’t exist.”

I’m not sure exactly what to say to that. She’s staring at me with an expression of utter seriousness, like someone’s just died. Or gone missing. “Okay, then,” I say. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

She looks at me for a moment longer, then bursts into that familiar laugh again. “I was joking, obvi,” she says. “So you’re training today, huh? Who with?”

I can’t remember her name. “She doesn’t have any eyebrows, and she’s not very nice,” I say.

Katharina’s eyebrows go up in shock, as if they’re mourning the loss of their fallen comrades. “You gave her to Lizzy?” she says to Connor. “How could you? She doesn’t even have
eyebrows.
” Like it’s a character trait.

“I don’t have any say in staff assignments,” Connor says defensively. It’s the first time I’ve seen him today that he doesn’t have a smile on his face. “Cynthia does them, and I can get fired if I don’t listen. It’s not my fault.”

Katharina shakes her head at him. “Shame, shame on you,” she says, then turns back to me. “Don’t worry, Scarlett. I’ll help you.”

“Aren’t you on the north side today?” Connor piles his fries atop the remains of his hamburger, then smashes it all down with a napkin. Ketchup oozes onto his tray.

“Randall’s managing the north today,” she says. “Randall loves me. I’ll swap with Lizzy.”

“I can’t approve that, you know.” Connor is staring down at the mess he made of his lunch. “You’ll have to talk to Cynthia.” To me, he says, “Cynthia’s the south-side Merch supervisor. My and Rob’s boss.”

“Cynthia loves me too.” It might be my imagination, but I think there’s a hint of challenge in Katharina’s tone. “Don’t you worry, Scarlett. I’ll save the day.”

“You do have very nice eyebrows.” And she does: thick (but not too thick,
obvi
), black, and perfectly arched. I don’t think I’ve ever really noticed somebody’s eyebrows before today.

“We need to get back,” Connor says, abandoning his lunch and standing. “Scarlett, or we’ll be late.”

“Don’t want to be late on my first day,” I say.

“See you soon,” Katharina says. Somehow, I just now notice, she’s obtained a salad, a real salad, with dark, fresh greens and tomatoes that are more red than pink and carrot shavings and ranch dressing, and a bowl of soup.

As we walk back and answer more park guests’ stupid questions, I can’t get the smell of grease out of my nose.

When Connor and I reach headquarters, we hit the cash registers only to discover that No Eyebrows is gone. I feel a rush of relief, but Connor’s brows furrow in confusion. “Where’d she go?” he mutters. “If she’s on a smoke break and left the register unattended, I swear to God…”

“Hey, Connor.” I look over to see Rob falling out of the wall. “Cynthia had me send Lizzy to the arctic north.”

“Godspeed, Lizzy,” Connor says. “Did she say who—”

“Hey, hey.” It’s Katharina. “Miss me?”

I force a smile, though I know it probably comes out more like a grimace. It’s not Katharina’s fault that she reminds me of Stepmother’s house. Of the basement. Of the lost years. “Hey,” I say.

“She swapped Lizzy for Katharina,” Rob says. “God knows why.”

“Shut it, jerk face,” Katharina says, smiling that enigmatic smile. “I bet Scarlett knows nothing about using the register, does she?”

“She’s been training with Lizzy all morning,” Connor interjects. “She’s not stupid, Katharina. I’m sure she’s picked it up by now.”

They both look at me. I want to sink down, down, down into Wonderman’s underground garage and ride away in the Wondermobile. “Lizzy wasn’t a very good teacher,” I say. “But I’ve picked something up, sure.”

“What do you do if you have a return?” Katharina says, folding her arms across her chest.

I look at the floor. Unfortunately, the answer is not written there. “I don’t know.”

“See?” Katharina shoots Connor a triumphant look. “You leave her to me. I’ll take good care of her.”

Connor’s mouth twists, but he punches Katharina’s information into the register. “Wish I could help, but Cynthia has me doing inventory for the next few hours. Give me a shout if you need anything,” he directs to me. I nod, and then he and Rob are gone.

Whatever other impression I might have of her, I have to admit that Katharina is a good teacher. And I’m a quick learner, of course—you learn to listen carefully when doing the wrong thing will earn you a beating. By the time an hour or so has passed, I know how to check someone out, how to input discounts, how to process a return or an exchange, and what to do if I can’t find a price on something and it’s the last one in the store or I’m really busy (pick an item you think looks like it might be the same price and scan that instead; this rule is not in the Five Banners Merch handbook, for some reason). “I feel like a cash register god,” I say.

“You’re welcome,” Katharina says. She leans up against the counter, breaking another rule in the Five Banners handbook. We are supposed to be flagpoles, stiff and upright at all times. “How’s your first day been so far?”

“Slow,” I say. “I haven’t really done anything yet. I thought there would be more…people.”

Katharina nods. “It’s still early in the season, even if it is a weekend,” she says. “Wait till all the schools let out. We’ll have all four registers at this station full and lines out the door.”

“Can’t wait,” I say. I’m not sure if I’m lying. “How long have you worked here?”

“I just started this year.” Katharina stretches, reaching her arms toward the ceiling. Her fingertips nearly brush one of the
CHECK OUT HERE
signs dangling above. “I moved here a few months ago.” She relaxes and clasps her hands before her, a surprisingly demure gesture. “Do you like it here so far?”

“I like the people,” I say, and by “people” I mean “person,” and by “person” I mean Connor.

“The people here are great,” Katharina says. “Of course, everyone’s been all mopey over Monica, so it’s hard to really get a handle on them, I bet.”

I blink. “She’s missing,” I say. “I think it’s understandable people would feel a little ‘mopey.’ ”

“She probably just ran away.” Katharina’s eyes gleam. “Don’t you think?”

My stomach swims with uneasiness. “I don’t think anything,” I say. “I barely knew her.”

“So you did know her,” Katharina says.

“I interviewed with her,” I say. “Other than that, no.”

“So you did know her,” Katharina says again. “What do you think happened? Do you think she ran away? Or do you think, maybe, she was kidnapped?”

“I don’t think anything!” My voice comes out louder than I meant it to; a guest browsing the racks of key chains jumps and sends a bunch of them cascading to the floor. “I should go clean that up.”

Katharina grabs me by the shoulder. I twist, but her fingers dig in, so I go limp. I’m used to being manhandled, tossed around like I’m inanimate. If you don’t struggle, it’s over faster. “I knew her,” she says. “I worked under her sometimes. She was lazy. She wasn’t a very good manager.”

I try twisting again, but her fingers only dig in deeper. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go; she’s supposed to see that I’m no threat and release me. “Let me go,” I say. My heart is battering my ribs.

“We just all have to stay positive.” I don’t know if she’s talking to me or to herself. She stares off into the distance, her eyes unfocused. “She’ll turn up. You know what they say: never missing, never found.”

I turn to ice and slip from her fingers. The muscles of my shoulder throb. “Who says that?”

“Everyone,” Katharina says. “Haven’t you heard it before?” She sighs. “You’re right,” she continues. “We should clean up those key chains before somebody slips on them and sues.”

Everyone. Everyone. No, that’s not something
everyone
says. That’s something I’ve only ever heard one person say. And that person is long gone.

Katharina and I finish the rest of my first day in near silence. She attempts small talk every so often, but I can’t respond with anything but wooden, one-word answers. No matter how many times I look around, no matter how many times I breathe in deep and tell myself it’s all in my head, I can’t shake the creepy-crawly feeling that somebody is watching me.

At some point between the man opening the basement door and him depositing me downstairs, I drifted off again. I didn’t know it then, but I should’ve stayed asleep. I should’ve slept for years and years, to be woken only by the touch of a police officer, rather than a kiss of true love.

I dreamed of my sister, Melody. Melly. More specifically, I dreamed of the time a year or so back when Melody had wet the bed. I’d woken to her pulling on my arm, her eyes bright and shiny with tears. “Can you help?” she said, wiping at her nose with the back of her hand.

I’d been sound asleep and dreaming of my third-grade crush, Gunnar, who was shy and had dimples and had once brushed my arm with his arm as we walked past each other in the hallway, which translated, obviously, into true love. But I blinked Gunnar away and forced myself out of bed. “What about Mom?” Our dad was away on a business trip, but our mom was home. “Did you wake her up?”

Melody’s lip wobbled. “I shook her and shook her and she wouldn’t wake up,” she said. “Can you please help?”

I sighed. The first time we hadn’t been able to wake up our mom, Melody and I had panicked, thinking our mom was dead, and called 911. After that, our mom had sat us down and told us that sometimes it was normal, not being able to wake up, and that as long as she was breathing, we should just let her be. She taught us how to listen for her heartbeat and take a spoon and hold it up to her nose to see if it fogged.

“Okay,” I said to Melody. “I think there are clean sheets in the hall closet. I’ll change them for you.”

Melody grabbed my hand as she followed me down the hall. It was sticky, but I didn’t pull away. She was my sister. “Thank you, Scarlett.”

This time, in the basement, I woke up to the drip, drip, drip of water and immediately had to pee myself. I hoped that meant the drugs were wearing off.

God, but I had to pee. I had to pee so bad it hurt; my bladder was pulsing jagged little lightning bolts of pain through my abdomen. I sat up, lifting my shoulders from what felt like a mattress, with a creak that was only in my head.

The next thing I noticed was the dark, and the third thing I noticed was the cold. My eyes were beginning to adjust to the gloom of the basement, helped along by the pale light filtering in through the one high, barred window. The slowly appearing shapes shook as I shivered. I was joined by a small table, two plastic chairs that might have come from a classroom, and a dresser in the corner. I stood up, stepping off my bare mattress and onto a thin, rough rug that protected me, at least, from the concrete floor.

I took a step toward the stairs. If I could make it to the door at the top, surely I would be free. “Hello?” I called, just in case. Maybe this was a mistake. This had to be a mistake.

I was halfway up the stairs when the door creaked open, and there
she
was.

In another life, she could have been my teacher or my pediatrician or the nice mail lady who gave me lollipops whenever she saw me come to collect the mail. Because she didn’t look like a monster. For years after, I thought of her as a monster, and she
was
a monster, and it scared me to think of how well she wore her human disguise. It made me wonder if everybody in the world was like that, if that’s just what happened when you became an adult: you grew horns and claws and slipped on human skin like a bathrobe.

“What’s your name?” she asked me. Silver hair, tied back into a low ponytail, glittered in the light behind her. Her lips were a bright, bright red, her skin as white as the belly of a fish. Snow White all grown up and turned into Cinderella’s evil stepmother.

“Scarlett,” I said. My voice trembled only once.

The woman looked down at me over the bridge of her nose. “Scarlett is a ridiculous name for a child,” she said. “You’ll be Jane. Jane is a good, simple, elegant name.”

“But that’s not my name.”

Quick as a flash, the woman was halfway down the stairs and I was reeling backward, my cheek stinging with a blow. “You won’t ever talk back to me,” she said, and it was the calmness in her tone that scared me more than anything. “You’ll only speak when spoken to, and you’ll only call me ma’am. Do you understand, Jane?”

My mind raced, unable to catch up to what was going on.

“Do you understand, Jane?” she said again, taking a step toward me.

I shrank back, cringing against the wall. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good.” And she was back at the top of the stairs, moving gracefully, as if she were a dancer. “You’ll start work tomorrow. And you best behave, or you’ll end up like the last girl.”

I couldn’t stop the words from bursting out. “What happened to the last girl? Ma’am?”

A small, cold smile split her cheeks. “Trust me, Jane. You don’t want to end up like the last girl.”

And then I was alone, and I was back on my mattress, and it was warm and wet beneath me.

When I woke up the next morning, I stank like pee and I could hardly breathe for the fear. I would have been shaking, only I was as petrified as an old piece of wood and didn’t think I could move.

I scrambled to my feet when the woman opened the door at the top of the stairs. “Come, Jane,” she said. “I’ll show you your duties.”

I swallowed hard and forced myself up, step by step. The woman made a tsking noise deep in her throat when I got within smelling distance. “First you’ll need to wash, of course.” Her voice was measured, and each word ended abruptly. I didn’t realize it then, but she was trying to suppress an accent. “I’ll give you some of the girls’ old clothes. They’re clean and warm, though I expect they will be large on you.”

I was silent, which was apparently the wrong move. The woman loomed overhead. “Are you not going to thank me, Jane?”

After that, the thanks couldn’t come fast enough. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, ma’am.”

“Good.” She sounded, if not pleased, at least not angry. “Come.”

I let her clothe me—sure enough, the clothes were too big, but they were clean and warm—and pour me a bowl of cereal. “Do not get used to me feeding you,” she warned me, then shook her head as I tried to take a seat at the table. “Sitting is for guests. You are a worker now. You stand.”

I stood and shoveled the cereal (dry) into my mouth as quickly as I could. It stuck to the inside of my mouth and my throat; every crunch echoed inside my head.

“Do you like your cereal?” the woman asked.

I knew enough by now, even after one night, to know that there was only one answer. “Yes, ma’am,” I said between bites. Not with my mouth full—I knew she wouldn’t like that.

She gave me an appraising look. “You seem smarter than the last girl,” she said. “Maybe you won’t come to a bad end.”

I took another bite of cereal.

“I almost came to a bad end,” she said. “When I had to leave my country. And I had to leave my country. There was nothing there for me but bombs and sad men.

“There was only one way for me to get over here, to this country, where I would be safe. The government did not want me, so I had to depend on bad men. Do you understand? No, you don’t. You are too young. But you will understand one day.”

I watched her through narrowed eyes as I ate. She was gazing out the window, eyes misty, but I suspected they’d snap back on me if I so much as moved a muscle toward the exit.

“Slowly I became more than that girl. I am who I am because I am hard. Do you understand me, Jane?”

I didn’t, but I nodded anyway. Her lips stretched into an approximation of a smile. “I will make you hard. Neither of our families wanted us, did they, Jane?” Her laugh was a bark. “No matter. I will show you how we girls survive in such a world, Jane.”

When I pull into the driveway, tired from my first day at Adventure World, Matthew is waiting for me on the front stoop. His face lights up as I turn off my ignition, and he races to my car as I get out. His smile is a beam of sunshine. If it wouldn’t kill him, I’d stuff him and embalm him and keep him safe in my closet so he could be sweet and loving and seven forever. “Did you get my free tickets?” he says. “Can we go to Adventure World now?”

I ruffle his hair. “I just spent eight hours at Adventure World,” I say. “I’m not going back now. Maybe next week.” I could wear a cute sundress and cute sunglasses and parade my cute brother around in front of Connor. Connor would tumble immediately into love and we’d run off and get married and raise Matthew as our own. “Who’s watching you? Is Dad home?”

“He’s still at work.” Matthew runs back to the stoop, disappointed, apparently, in me and my lack of free tickets. Little user. Maybe it’s best he grows up after all.

“So Melody’s home? Or the babysitter?”

Matthew disappears inside before he can answer me. I’m not a huge fan of his babysitter, a flat-eyed girl from the other end of the street who never laughs at any of his jokes, but I’d much rather shove twenty bucks at her and usher her out the door than have to put up with Melody and her stupid cookies and her distaste for my very existence.

So naturally, when I get inside and dump my clear fanny pack on the front table, a dramatic gesture meant to signify to the zero people watching that I’m simply too exhausted to cart it one more step, I hear the dulcet tones of Melody’s DVD aerobics wafting from the living room: “One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Work that body, girl, work it!”

I stop in the doorway. Today is my first day as a working woman. Or at least, one where I’m working for pay. Time to grow up, maybe. “Hi, Melody,” I say. “What’s going on?”

Her movements are sleek, like a snake’s, and sweat shimmers over her face. “What does it look like?” she puffs, squatting and stretching her arms over her head.

On days Melody doesn’t have field hockey practice, she likes to work out anyway, just in case a pinch of fat was considering taking up residence on one of her hips. Sometimes she runs; sometimes she lifts weights on the machine in the basement. When she’s stuck in the house watching Matthew, she digs up one of our mom’s old aerobics DVDs from a million years ago and gets to sweating. “Nice seeing you, too,” I say, going to move away. I’m dying for some celery with peanut butter.

Who am I trying to kid? I’m dying for a cookie. Two cookies. Three cookies.

“Wait,” Melody says. I swivel back to face her. Maybe this is it: a meeting of the hearts. A change of the minds. A day that will go down in Contreras family history.

She spreads her legs wide, almost into a split, and leans over to balance on her arms. “How was work?” she asks.

“It was good,” I say. “It wasn’t too busy today, but everyone said it would get busy once all the schools get out. Everyone seems nice.” I don’t want to play it up too much, though, make it seem like I’m trying to make her jealous. She’s never asked about my day before, never. “The work itself kind of sucks, though. It’s just grunt work, you know, ringing people up at the register, stocking shelves, that kind of thing.”

“That’s not so bad,” she says. She lunges, then stands back up, then lunges again. I hover in the doorway, waiting to see if she has anything else to say. Maybe we can be like the sisters I read about in books or see on TV, cuddling close and whispering our secrets into each other’s ears. Like I used to have at Stepmother’s. It’s the only thing I miss.

“So. Did you hear about the missing girl?” she asks.

I flex my fingers to keep the blood moving. They’re suddenly as cold as the floor of the basement. “Of course I did. She worked at Adventure World.”

Lunge, squat, stand. Lunge, squat, stand. Melody turns her head to look at me as she twists and thrusts. “I heard she went missing while she was there,” she says, panting. Her eyes are shining with interest, with excitement. My stomach turns. This is all a game to her. It’s entertainment. “Did you hear anything today? Does anyone have any theories?”

“She’s missing,” I say icily. “That’s all anyone knows.” My fantasies of closeness fizzle and disappear with a pop, as they always do. And yet they always come back.

“Scarlett!” Matthew calls from the kitchen. “I’m hungry.”

I back away, relieved for the excuse to escape. “Matthew’s hungry,” I say unnecessarily. “Have a good workout.”