Never Missing, Never Found (9 page)

I still wonder if that was true.

Melody looks like her.

Speaking of Melody, I head upstairs and crack open Melody’s bedroom door. She lies on her back, sprawled across the bed like she has all the room in the world. I’ve never really thought about it before, but suddenly I wish I could sleep like that too. Even after all these years, I still sleep curled up like a comma, like there’s another little girl beside me.

I hover in the doorway, wondering whether I should wake her up, when she lets out a great gasp of a snore and jolts into a sitting position. “You,” she says. “What are you doing? Why are you watching me sleep? That’s so creepy. You’re so creepy.”

“I’ve been here for, like, a second,” I say. “I wasn’t watching you sleep. I swear.”

“Whatever,” she says. “Go away, creeper.”

I stand my ground. “I waited up for you last night.” I realize how pathetic I sound and switch tacks. “What were you and Katharina doing at the vigil?”

“We were just hanging out. She’s new to the area and wanted to talk to someone who was actually involved in her school. God, will you go away already?” She plops her pillow over her head.

I wish I could plop a pillow over my head too, so I’d never have to see her looking at me like that again. “Whatever,” I say, and go, making sure to slam the door behind me as hard as I can.

For the next couple of weeks, Five Banners Adventure World cycles me through all five of its sections a few times over. My best days are in the south side under Connor and Rob; my worst are easily under Cady in the north side, where I work in another kids’ store and have to deal with hordes of screaming kids and, worse, with Cady, whom I discover (to my absolute displeasure) to be a normal and totally lovely person. In central I become pals with Wonderman and Slugworth; underneath their costumes they stink of cigarette smoke and have raspy, rattling coughs. The east and west sides are largely unremarkable—I learn the ways of Games one day when they’re shorthanded, and on another day fill in in Foods, a day that leaves me soaked in sweat, stinking of french-fry grease, and swearing never to step foot in a kitchen again.

Interestingly enough, I don’t run into Katharina. After the first few days, I think there must be some sort of backroom juggling going on, and that Cynthia must be involved. I’m afraid to speak Katharina’s name for several days, like saying her name will make her burst through the closest mirror, but I finally get up the courage to say something to Rob one slow morning in headquarters. “Hey,” I say. “Does Katharina still work here?”

Rob looks at me, then at the floor, then at the door, then at the counter. He clears his throat. “Yeah,” he says. “Why?”

“Just curious,” I say as airily as I can manage. “Just haven’t seen her in a while.”

“Yeah,” he says. It’s more about what he doesn’t say here:
That’s weird. Huh. I’m sure you’ll see her soon.

Soon enough I’m seeing her everywhere—in the face of a guest with long, dark hair; in the shrieking smear of people riding a roller coaster over my head; in the strong chin of a Skywoman action figure, for God’s sake. I think I might be going crazy.

Crazier.

A few weeks into my Katharinaless period, Connor’s and my lunch schedules line up again. My heart skips a beat, but I sternly flash it with a mental picture of Cady—painfully normal, painfully lovely Cady—and it calms down. Stupid, stubborn thing; it just won’t let up.

Connor and I walk together in companionable silence, our hands in our pockets, stopping every few minutes to answer someone’s inane question. Just as we’re passing the entrance to the secret passage he tried to lure me down on my first day, I stop. Melody would never be afraid of something so silly as a secret passage in the park.

“Let’s do it,” I say.

He looks over his shoulder and arches an eyebrow in a surprisingly elegant fashion; I expect him to shake a monocle out of his sleeve. “Excuse me?”

I roll my eyes. “Get your ginger head out of the gutter,” I say. “I mean, let’s do the secret passage.”

“You sure?” he says, and the skeptical way he says it, like he doesn’t think I can do it, makes me sure.

“Sure as sure can be,” I say. My feet don’t seem to want to move, but I grit my teeth and yank them from the cobblestones; I feel like I’m leaving bits of blood and skin behind. “Let’s get this over with.”

Connor pushes open the door, and I breathe in and step through. It clangs shut behind me, locking automatically, and there’s a moment of scrabbling panic in my chest before I exhale it out and I’m okay again.
One breath at a time,
I tell myself.
You’re with Connor; he won’t let somebody grab you.
You
won’t let somebody grab you. Not again.

The secret passage is surprisingly underwhelming. We’re not the only people taking it; it seems to stretch around this whole side of the park, encompassing multiple entrances that lead outside the fence, and so there are lots of other groups of Day-Glo workers chattering and laughing as they stroll along to the Canteen or to a staff smoking area, or to make quick stops at stores or stands or restaurants throughout the park. The ground is packed dirt, and the wooden fence separating us from the park rises up above on our right; to the left are series of long, low buildings interspersed with long alleyways and rusting trailers and piles of God knows what. I tense every time I pass an alleyway, but it helps that the sun is shining and birds are twittering overhead; I can see the other ends of the alleys sparkling like they’re pathways straight to heaven, and soon my shoulders give up and relax.

“What’s in there?” I ask, gesturing to the low buildings we keep passing.

Connor shrugs. “Lots of stuff,” he says. He points toward one behind us. “That’s full of all sorts of retail crap.”

“Like stuff that’s out of season?”

“Some of it,” Connor says. “Mostly it’s stuff we can’t have in the stores anymore but we feel too bad throwing out. You can barely move in there.”

I shudder. It sounds awful. “What about that one?”

“That one, Grasshopper, is the changing studio for the costumed characters on this side of the park,” he says. “If you’ve ever wanted to see Wonderman’s junk, we can stop by.”

“No thanks,” I say, and he laughs. “That one?”

“Where more merch goes to die. Rest in peace,” he says. A roller coaster roars overhead; its wind rushes through my hair.

“That one?”

Somehow Connor knows what every single building and trailer holds. “It’s amazing,” I tell him.

“You’re amazing,” he says back. A smile spreads across my face, a flower poking its head out from the dirt, until I stomp on it hard with my mental picture of Cady and it shrivels back into the hole it came from.

We slow as we approach the Canteen. There are two cops posted outside, balding guys sweating in their navy garb; both have pit stains the size of the sun. “What’s going on?” I say. Connor seems to know everything—maybe he’ll know this, too.

He shakes his head, though, and bites his lower lip. “I hope nobody else is…” He doesn’t have to finish.
Missing.

He doesn’t even have to say he hopes they haven’t found a body.

I trail behind him as we approach; both the cops eye us up and down as we climb the steps leading into the Canteen. “Afternoon, officers,” Connor says affably. If there’s one thing I wish I had, it’s this: Connor’s remarkable ability to talk to anyone, anywhere, exactly how that person would like to be talked to. I could have friends, then, maybe. Instead of worrying that I’d blurt out the truth at any moment, I could twist my words around, make people think I’d answered them when really I’d told them nothing at all.

Connor continues. “Mind if I ask what’s going on?”

One of the officers clears his throat. “They found Monica Jackson’s”—my stomach lurches into my throat—“shirt. They found a piece of her work shirt in the woods out behind the park.”

I swallow air and heave. Connor’s hand finds my elbow and squeezes firmly, but not too firmly. “But they didn’t find her?” he confirms.

The officer looks back at him soberly. “No, they didn’t find her.”

The mood inside the Canteen is subdued; people are huddled together over tables, whispering, their arms wrapped around each other, the occasional shoulders shuddering with muffled sobs. Connor and I grab our grease-laden food and make our way to our—I think I can call it ours now—usual table. Cynthia is there, along with a few other green shirts I vaguely recognize, but they all shove over to make room for Connor and me.

“Did you hear?” Cynthia says. She isn’t talking to me or Connor. She’s talking to the table. “They found her shirt.”

“It doesn’t mean anything, Cyn,” Connor says, but his voice is rough and even I can tell he doesn’t mean what he says.

Cynthia throws her arms on the table, rattling all our trays. One of the girls across from me jumps and her eyes fill with tears, but Cynthia doesn’t seem to notice. “It doesn’t mean anything?” she says. “Tell me, then, oh wise one, how finding Monica’s shirt after she’s been missing over three weeks can possibly be anything but bad.”

“She could have…” Connor’s mouth hangs open. I can practically see the cogs in his head turning. “She could have…”

“She could have been running and had to slip out of her shirt to escape.” I swoop in like the roller coaster overhead, which roars in agreement as it shakes the floor beneath our feet. “Someone grabbed her, but she broke free and ran. These shirts practically glow in the dark; she knew she’d never be able to outrun him or hide in it, so she ripped it off and ran.”

Connor is looking down at me with something like awe. My cheeks burn, but I don’t look away from Cynthia. “So finding her shirt doesn’t mean anything,” I finish. “She could still turn up. You can’t lose hope.” The words feel tacky and wrong in my mouth, but I let them go anyway.

“I just don’t think you’re being realistic,” Cynthia grumbles, but her fingers curl out of their fists, and she shoves a fry into her mouth. She chews hard, like the french fry’s done her some great personal affront.

“I just don’t think you should assume things,” I say. “You know what they say: it’s better to be missing than dead.”

“People keep telling me that,” Cynthia says. That fills me with relief. “People” is more than one. “People” means others besides Katharina.

“Imagine what Monica will say when she turns up again and she hears what you’ve been saying.” Connor reaches across the table and grabs one of Cynthia’s fries, earning a swat. I don’t know why he needs to steal hers; he has plenty of his own. “She’ll be so insulted.”

“I hope so,” Cynthia says fervently. Her eyes are shiny.

She’s able to sit with us for only a few more minutes before she’s called back to work by a crackly “Code eight” over the radio clipped to her belt. She quickly excuses herself as Connor mutters in my ear. “ ‘Code eight’ means attempted burglary,” he says. “Probably some kid caught pocketing an action figure.”

The other green shirts have to leave not long after, and soon enough it’s just me and Connor at the table. Our table. “That was great, Scarlett,” he says. “Way to go.”

“What are you talking about?” I snatch one of his fries. He deserves it.

“That story you spun for Cynthia,” he says. “I thought she was going to have a meltdown, but you pulled her back up and saved the day.”

“Saved the day,” I say. “You make me sound like Skywoman.”

“Trust me, if the other kids on the south side knew what you just did, they’d be worshipping you like that weird cult of cheerleader boys who always seem to pop up when Skywoman does something heroic,” he says. I know what he’s talking about. Whenever Skywoman vanquishes the Blade or rescues an innocent civilian from a pit of sharks or encroaching spikes or a stampede of rampaging wildebeests (or, on one memorable occasion, all three), there’s this crowd of devoted fans, all male, who pop up and swoon, hearts exploding from their anime eyes. I think it’s supposed to be a play on girl groupies, but honestly, it creeps me out. I mean, they all look the same.

Connor continues, “An upset Cynthia makes everybody miserable.”

It’s kind of exciting, warming almost, to be the source of something helpful. Maybe this would happen more if I talked to people more often. “Well, I’m glad I could help her, I guess,” I say.

“You didn’t just help Cynthia,” Connor says. He’s staring intently at his fries, and I wonder if he’s afraid I’m going to try to steal more. “You helped me, too. I’ve…I guess I’ve kind of been losing hope too.”

“Did you know her well?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Pretty well, I guess,” he says, and peeks at me through a coppery fringe. “We weren’t friends, really, but we worked together for two years. And she and Cady were practically best friends. Besties?”

I don’t want to talk about Cady. I want to talk about anything other than Cady, actually. I’d rather talk about Pixie.

No, self. Don’t go that far.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “If she was best friends with your girlfriend, you must have known her pretty well anyway.”

“Cady’s not my girlfriend,” he says immediately. “She…no, forget it.”

“No, what?” I say, too quickly. I am failing at casualness. I am the opposite of casual. Fancy. No, I’m not that, either. But seriously, I saw them kissing. Katharina said they’d been together for two years.
Something
isn’t right.

He sighs. “I loved Cady, and some part of me will always love her, but I fell out of
love
with her a while ago,” he says. He’s barely even moving his lips. “I knew we’d have to break up, but I put it off because I still care about her, a lot, and I’d really miss her.”

“I get it,” I say. My whole body thumps in tune with my heart. “Plus, you work together.”

“Exactly,” he says. “But I finally got up the courage to do it a few weeks ago, right before Monica went missing, and we went for a walk and I…broke up with her, and we both cried and it was as awful as I thought it would be, but I was still relieved.” He pauses and licks his lips. “I knew it had to be done. And then we got back to Cady’s house, and we found out about Monica. That she’d gone missing. And so I stayed there with Cady for a while and let her cry on me, and then I left, and she was texting me and calling me and everything like usual. And it doesn’t feel like anything has changed. I’m not sure if it has, for her.” He’s squinting at the table like it’s a treasure map.