Authors: Tara Altebrando
“I’m keeping secrets from you,” Avery said. “Do good friends do that?”
There was no tracking information available on the book. There was no way to track the feelings she was having for Lucas now.
“Maybe I’m keeping some from you, too.” Emma shrugged.
“You know who wrote the note?”
“No, of course not. Not that.”
Her mother had started checking the mailbox like crazy, too.
“What am I going to do about my mom?” Had the woman even gone beyond the mailbox since this all started again?
“This may make me sound awful,” Emma said, “but that’s really your dad’s problem.”
“But he’s not dealing.”
“Then I don’t know. I guess you’re just there for her in whatever way you can be, without also losing your mind?”
“I feel like that’s my whole life story. If I ever write my biography, that’ll be the title.
I Was There
.”
There at the bus stop.
There at the police station.
There on the news.
And on his birthday.
And on Christmas.
When they pretended it wasn’t really Christmas.
And on the anniversary.
And then his next birthday.
The next anniversary.
And on and on, and in and out of breakdowns and misery for years.
Emma said, “You need a subtitle.”
“
I Was There
,” Avery said, “
The Story of the Girl Left Behind
.”
“Not bad.” Emma nodded. “Not bad at all.”
Avery stretched out her legs, brushed some sand off one foot with the other. “Do you remember last week?”
“What about it?” Emma giggled, not understanding.
“Last week, my biggest concern in life was buying new flip-flops and getting ready for auditions and planning the many ways in which I could do nothing this week.”
“Yeah.” Emma sighed. “I liked last week.”
A few dolphins were swimming past. People who’d apparently never seen dolphins were making a fuss. “Is it wrong that I don’t really have any hope that they’ll find him alive?”
“I don’t think so,” Emma said. “It would be wrong if you didn’t
want
them to find him alive.”
Avery sat with that thought.
Imagined a teenage brother in the house.
Imagined him damaged, annoying.
Because what if it went that way?
What if his coming home had the potential to actually make things
worse
?
Emma said, “Now is when you’re supposed to say ‘
Of course
I want them to.’”
“Right,” Avery said. “Of course.”
S
c
a
r
l
et
t
Walking up a lit pathway to an adobe-style house, Scarlett hoped that aliens might
actually
come and snatch her and spare her this experience.
Trish and Ted lived on a golf course, basically, in a community with clones of houses and fake lakes with fountains, and a pool and clubhouse where people probably played bingo or had a trivia night, maybe a book club. The couple had, they claimed, been abducted together. Which made sense. It was hard to believe that someone who hadn’t been abducted would stay married to someone who thought they had.
Six people were gathered in the living room, where cheese cubes in a variety of yellow-orange hues sat on a round glass platter. The couches were floral, stiff. The AC was on too high and Scarlett goose-bumped instantly.
Tammy greeted some of the people with small waves, and one man got up to hug her. Then she presented Scarlett with a bit of fanfare. “This”—she clasped her hands together, like to thank God or
someone
up there—“is my daughter.”
“Welcome to our home,” Ted said, and Trish, by his side, took Scarlett’s right hand in her two hands and squeezed.
Something about the look in her eyes—
so deep and meaningful in intent—
made Scarlett go
/ /
/
/
and say, “I’m not sure I really belong here.”
Trish smiled. “Everyone feels that way the first time.”
Scarlett was about to explain that she
really
didn’t belong.
But it was too late.
Trish took her by the elbow and guided her to a seat by the cheese cubes.
Chatter kicked up as Scarlett busied herself with a too-soft, essentially flavorless piece of possibly cheddar, and soon her mother’s voice rose about the others: “She doesn’t remember. I thought maybe if she heard your stories . . .”
One by one, they went around the room and shared.
Lost hours.
Lost days.
No memories of how they got to the kitchen floor, let alone naked.
Being levitated on light beams.
Small creatures with big eyes.
Glowing hearts.
Spacecraft large enough to shadow entire city blocks.
Each of them seemed to tell their story as if reciting, like they’d told it a million times before.
Scarlett wondered whether she’d have her script down by the time she reached adulthood, whenever that was.
I was one of the six victims of The Leaving
.
Yes, we were gone for eleven years
.
No, we don’t remember
.
No, they never figured it out
.
Would she, too, eventually become bored by her own narrative?
If she did end up writing a book, would it be one she even wanted to read?
The room got quiet. She felt the soft pressure of their gazes, like feathers.
“Could you point me toward the restroom?”
Trish stood and pointed. “Just this way.”
In the powder room, she checked the time on her phone and saw she had a message from Sarah.
Listened.
“
It’s me, Sarah. I think I’m remembering more things. I remembered someone else there with us. But not Max. Another girl, I think. But I don’t know. It’s like I can only see her as a police sketch in my head or something
.”
Then voices through the line, then Sarah saying, “
I gotta go
.”
Hanging up.
Putting her phone back into her purse, Scarlett examined herself in the mirror—another outfit that felt wrong on every level—and fixed her hair.
Another girl?
/
/ /
/
/
Was Sarah becoming unhinged?
I’m going on a trip.
To the leaving.
Going on a trip.
Tomorrow.
Or was it Scarlett who was losing purchase on reality?
Nothing about the novel had felt familiar at all.
But she’d said it.
I’m going on a trip
.
To the leaving
.
She felt the urge to go to the bathroom, but not here.
She shut it down.
And realized she could.
So maybe had.
But it wouldn’t last.
Couldn’t.
“Anything?” Tammy said when she returned to the living room.
“No.”
“What are you
waiting
for?” she snapped.
Their feather gazes felt heavier this time around, dead birds on her lap.
Scarlett cast an apologetic look at Tammy. “I really don’t think we were abducted.”
Ted said, “Maybe the hot air balloon is a trick of the mind. Maybe it was a craft of another kind.”
“I didn’t remember at first, either,” Trish said. “Give it time.”
“Tell us something.” Ted leaned forward. “Was there something special about Max? Why do you think they would keep him?”
“I don’t remember Max,” Scarlett said. “Everybody knows that by now, don’t they? I mean, it’s all over the news, right?”
The walls all seemed to inch just a tiny bit closer.
“Some of us have had good experiences with hypnosis,” another woman said. “I saw that one of the others has consulted a hypnotist.”
Yes, the room was definitely shrinking.
Scarlett needed space to breathe.
She said, “Do any of you know of any group abductions? Like when six people were taken?”
This sparked a lively conversation that Scarlett didn’t pay attention to, except to occasionally nod. Mostly, she was watching the walls—which were back where they’d started—and Tammy, who seemed at ease here. So maybe she and her mother were and always would be aliens; maybe the only goal that made sense was peaceful cohabitation on their shared planet until Scarlett was old enough to leave.
Maybe most teenagers felt that way.
“So what did you think?” Tammy asked as they walked to the car after the meeting wound down.
All Scarlett could think to say was, “They seemed nice.”
Maybe some of them had been part of Sashor’s study.
“Why were we chosen?” Scarlett asked when they got into the car. “Why do you think we, specifically, were chosen?”
“Because I was a terrible mother.” Tammy started the car and lit a cigarette. “Because I didn’t deserve you. Because I was screwed up and I was going to screw you up, too.”
Scarlett opened her window. “A lot of people are bad parents, if you even are.”
“Not
as
bad as me.” Her mother sniffled and ashed out her window.
“Well, I’m sure you were doing the best you could. And anyway, you changed. You’re better now.” From the driveway, through the living room bay window, the people inside looked so normal. Scarlett willed her mother to put the car into Drive.
“Am I?” Exhaling smoke through her nose. “Or is it just that I mostly stopped having to be a parent so I couldn’t be a bad one? You’re here and I’m still your mother, but you don’t need me the way you did when you were little.” More ash out the window; the cigarette seemed like it wasn’t getting any shorter. “I swear, there were days, like when you were throwing some kind of tantrum, like about getting dressed, and I’d just say to myself,
You just have to make it one more hour with her and then she’ll go to preschool and you can have a drink
. And I’d have a drink after I dropped you off. At nine in the morning. I used to tell the others moms I walked to pick-up to get the exercise, but it was because I’d be too drunk to drive by noon.”
/
/
/
“That’s why we were chosen. To teach me a lesson.”
“Did you learn it? What was the lesson?”
“Bad people don’t deserve to have children.”
“But they gave me back to you,” Scarlett said, trying not to breathe in smoke. “And also, it’s not like I was the only one taken.”
“The others were no prizes, either,” Tammy said. “And yes, I’ve been given a second chance and I sure as hell won’t blow it. But you’re practically grown anyway. I could hardly mess you up now.”
/
/
“No,” Scarlett said. “Somebody else already did that.”
/
/
“That’s the thing,” her mother said. “You don’t actually
seem
that screwed up.”
She finally started to drive.
At home, the urgency was impossible to ignore.
Something glinting.
Chopsticks.
Tupperware.
Rubber gloves.
Soap.
Paper towels.
Hand sanitizer.
More soap.
More paper towels.
So gross.
Not a locket.
Not a religious medal.
A stretched penny.
“Manatee Viewing Center: Anchor Beach.”
“I Love You.”
/ /
/
/
/
/
Just . . .
/
/
/
/
/
/
She washed it again.
Could not wash it enough.
Then put it in a clear disposable glove she took from a box under the sink and tucked it into her skirt pocket.
“Anything?” her mom asked.
Scarlett walked toward her room. “Nope,” she called down the hall. “Good night!”
I love you
.
I love who?
Who loves me?
She looked up “Anchor Beach” on her phone.
A power plant.
Where manatees go to stay warm in the runoff.
Smokestacks on the water.
White steam mimicking clouds.
A long stretch of beach.
Piers of wonky wooden planks.
She’d been there?
I’m going on a trip
.