MISSING
The dribbling of the basketball got louder as I made my way through the yard. The shoes made it more difficult to walk through the grass and soft earth. The heels wanted to sink in.
As I approached the boys, Jimmy and Nathan were sitting a good distance away from the basketball goal, each with bottles of water. They were sweating, legs stretched out in front of them, watching.
Derrick and Kota were taking turns at what seemed like a game of HORSE.
I once again wondered if Derrick being here was a good idea. He might know what had happened here with my stepmother. Would he volunteer the information to Jimmy?
Kota had the ball and was the first one to notice me as I got closer. I’d intended to skip the back door and walk in through the one inside the garage. I wanted Kota and the others to be aware I was home.
Kota paused in his move to aim the ball and then threw it toward the basket above the garage quickly.
It bounced against the rim, dropping back down to the concrete without going into the hoop.
“Missed!” Derrick shouted. His bowl-cut dark hair was a little longer, hanging in front of his eyes. Like the others, he was shirtless, sweating. His shorts hung a little lower, revealing the line of his boxers. “Oh my God, I never win against you.”
Kota grimaced and shrugged. He combed the back of his hair a little to straighten it. “I’m a little rusty.”
I wasn’t sure that was true. I hoped he wasn’t too interested in winning. I had a feeling I might have distracted him.
“Back from work?” Jimmy called from across the yard.
Before I could answer, he jumped up and sprinted in my direction. His sport shorts were hanging low as well, low enough to see the butt of his boxers. He hiked everything up on his hips. He skidded to a halt, enough that I braced myself for collision, but he stopped just short.
He scanned my outfit and then shook his head. “Don’t tell me you have to wear this to work.”
“Your mom wanted me to,” I said quietly. Heat radiated over my cheeks that I’d paused long enough to feel like a spectacle in front of the others. I’d meant to dash inside without staying too long. “She thought it looked good.” I looked to the others, hoping to make him sympathetic toward me, I leaned in to whisper to Jimmy. “The dress got a little dirty. Do you think I should wash it before she sees it? I don’t want her to be mad.”
“No, don’t worry about it,” he said. “Actually, she’ll probably find it a good excuse to show you how to treat stains. She loves to lecture me on that.” He waved to the other guys. “I’m going to go in with her for a second. Stick around. I’ll be right back.”
The others nodded. Nathan got up, adjusting the sport shorts he wore. He had the broadest chest and arms out of them all. He reached for the basketball from Derrick, but his gaze went to me a little too often, a little noticeable. “Let’s go again. I want to try the trick shot.”
The trick shot, apparently, was bouncing the ball so hard against the driveway that it bounced back up again, hit the backboard and went into the hoop.
Nathan and Derrick took turns with this while Kota stood by watching, checking his phone.
Jimmy and I headed to the door.
“You should change and come play with us,” Jimmy said.
“Me?” I asked, standing at the door, holding the handle. Not that I wouldn’t normally, but his mother was the one saying to clean up all the time. “Do you think she’ll let me?”
He laughed. “She’s not a jail warden. You’ve been working all day. Come play a bit.” He motioned for me to open the door. “I’ll come in and ask her.”
We entered together. My father had left the computer in the living room. The screen was black.
Carol was in the kitchen alone. She had a clipboard in her hand. The pantry was open. She peered into it, lifted a can of beans out of it, examined the label, and then tossed the thing into a trash can. She spotted us and then narrowed her eyes at my face. “Oh dear,” she said. “Did things go okay at work? You look like a mess.”
I relayed what I’d practiced telling her. “I’m so sorry,” I said quietly. “The diner is hectic, and…” I paused and motioned to the dress. “I couldn’t stop to clean it as I went.”
“A diner isn’t exactly the place to get dressed up,” Jimmy said. “She’s tired. Can she come out to play basketball for a little while?”
Carol bobbed her head in a sympathetic way. “Sang, go take that dress off and put on some play clothes. Bring the dress down to me. I’ll show you how to soak it to get rid of those stains.”
Play clothes? I hadn’t heard that since I was young. “Thank you,” I said quickly and then realized it was weird to say. She made me feel so awkward, and I was trying to be overly polite to her.
I rushed away as she spoke to Jimmy. “I’d invite your new friends to dinner, but there won’t be room at the table here.”
“I don’t think they can stay long,” he said.
I wasn’t sure how often Kota and Nathan would come over to hang out. Derrick would perhaps show up more often.
And what if Jimmy went to the school?
What if he made friends?
With someone like Rocky?
I shuddered at the thought. What a mess.
I left them to get changed. I climbed the front stairs, wondering how the others were so focused. Mr. Blackbourne didn’t seem concerned about Jimmy going to school yet.
Perhaps because they needed to think of now, and school wouldn’t start up again until next week.
I wanted to trust them and focus, but the questions kept piling up.
Upstairs, I hesitated just outside of Marie’s room. The door was closed. There was a little music playing inside.
I didn’t want to disturb her, but she was alone, too. We were sort of in this mess together.
I knocked gently at the door.
I was met with silence at first. I waited. I didn’t want to bug her if she wanted to be alone right now.
It was too quiet. Too still.
If I walked in on her, she might yell at me, but I had to check.
I used a hidden pin that remained on top of the door frame, something we both used to enter bedrooms as needed.
Marie’s room was clean, more than I’d seen it in a while. The floor was vacuumed. The closet was orderly. Textbooks were stacked neatly on the floor by her book bag.
The bed was the only thing that showed any disorder, with a lump in the middle.
At first, I assumed it was her just ignoring me. Perhaps she was asleep.
I approached it, but as I got closer, it was clear that it was pillows, not a person.
I frowned. How long did she think Carol wouldn’t notice?
Where was she?
I went to the bathroom quickly, and with the door closed, I thought of who was available at the moment and typed a message to North.
Sang: Where’s Marie?
I waited and then realized I needed to get myself cleaned up. I left quickly to grab some clothes.
I didn’t receive a reply until I got back to the bathroom.
North: Found her at Danielle’s.
Uh-oh. Would she stay out? I couldn’t imagine she had permission to go out if she’d left pillows in the bed. How had she gotten out of the house?
North sent another message a few minutes later.
North: Having Kota speak with Derrick to hopefully coax her into going back.
Sang: Can someone help her get inside without getting caught?
North: If she’ll let us.
Luckily the house had back doors and rear stairs. She didn’t have to get upstairs, necessarily. Just inside the door without getting caught coming in the door.
Or did she even have to do that? Couldn’t she pretend she had gone out to see the guys? We were supposed to stay here, as Carol had said last night, but did that mean we couldn’t be in the yard?
I waited, wondering if I’d hear more.
I ran a bath quickly, getting clothes arranged so I could simply rinse myself and wash out the hairspray. I scrubbed my hair a couple of times but it still felt there was residue remaining.
I was getting dressed when I heard footsteps in the hallway. Too soft to be Jimmy, more like Marie.
The footsteps moved to Marie’s room. Her door shut.
I breathed out slowly. They’d convinced her.
Was she angry?
I quietly finished up and went to her room.
I knocked quietly.
No answer.
I knocked again once more before I used the pin again to open the door.
Marie sat cross-legged on her bed. She had her dark hair in a ponytail and wore jeans and a T-shirt.
She turned just enough to look at me with a glare of annoyance.
I felt I knew similar unhappiness. While I hoped the guys would listen, we couldn’t risk talking loud enough for Carol to hear us.
Before Carol and our father had arrived, she’d wanted to remain in the house alone, to wait for her mother to return from the hospital. Plans were changing for both of us.
“We need to talk quietly,” I said.
She frowned but nodded. “We need to get her out.”
I sat on the floor, on my knees, more out of habit than anything.
She got onto the carpet too, sitting cross-legged.
“We could get out,” I said quietly.
She smirked. “You want to bail? I’m not going to live with one of your boyfriends.”
“I don’t want to just up and leave. If she calls the police on us, it might be more trouble than it’s worth.”
“She’s trying to get Dad to give my mom nothing,” she said, her voice wavering. “She wants to put her in a home.”
Her eyes were watery. She was afraid. More than I’d seen her before.
I sighed.
The Academy made a promise to those who worked with them that their families would be taken care of. There was no way for Marie to know this, of course. Marie might need far more help than she would ever admit, and for a long time.
Despite us not getting along, she’d had as hard a life as I had, watching her mother get sick and her mind deteriorate and being practically forgotten about.
“We have a few options,” I said.
“I want them out of the house,” she said. “They don’t belong here.”
“That won’t be easy,” I said. “She wants to sell the house and move to Savannah.”
Her lips twitched. She was thinking.
“They can keep the house and take the money,” I said, encouraged that she was at least considering this.
“They shouldn’t get to keep it,” she said.
Her logic was irrational to me, as I didn’t feel I had a right to anything here. Did she feel this house and the money was hers? “Do you want to see if they’ll send us to a private school?”
“Like the boys go to?” She snorted. “No, thanks.”
“It will get us a place to live until—”
“Mom won’t have a place to live if they sell this. She won’t go to a facility.”
I pressed my lips together and suddenly understood.
She was holding out for her. She was protecting what was her mother’s house.
In my mind, I went through options. Was this house worth fighting for? Or could I find her and her mother a place to live where they would be happy?
How much could I promise to do for them? I didn’t know what the Academy would do to help if I even asked them.
I was already asking a lot, and I had barely done anything for them yet.
But if I was going to trust in family, I had to assume the guys would help me provide what was needed.
“We can find a new place,” I said. “Not this. We’ll let Carol think she got what she wanted. I can arrange another house.”
She raised an eyebrow. “With what? The few dollars you make at the diner?”
“The guys will help.”
“I don’t want them to help,” she said in a very bitter tone.
“We don’t have a choice,” I said, not meaning to be short with her, but she either needed to be on board or…what else was there? “But I can make sure you have a place to live once we leave. The tricky part is getting out without getting the police called on us or creating any more problems.”
“How?”
“Play along for now,” I said. “We get on her good side.”
“And then what?”
I hesitated. I went over what I should admit to her.
She’d know what I was up to the moment I mentioned anything to Carol. If I said I wanted to go to a private school, she’d be able to connect that to the fact that the guys went to one too.
Who knew what she might have heard about the Academy? And while she was wrong about it, I couldn’t risk Carol looking into it.
“I’m going to go to private school, but we can fast-track you to get into college,” I said. “But you don’t really have to go.”
Marie raised an eyebrow. “That’s stupid.”
“It can be done,” I said. “She doesn’t want either of us here. Tell her you’re going to college, and she probably won’t care.”
“I don’t want any more school.”
“Just pretend to go,” I said. “This just stops Carol from calling around about you. Where do you want to go?”
She was quiet for a long moment as she gazed at the beige carpet.
She didn’t know. Where else was there for her?
“What about my mom?” she asked.
“She’s still in the hospital, but wherever you go, we can make sure she goes with you.”
She continued to look at the carpet, keeping her head down.
This wasn’t going to work. She wasn’t sure what to do. “Do you want to ask her where she wants to go?”
“She’ll want the house,” Marie said. “You heard her last time.”
I needed her to focus on reality more than whatever her mother said. “Convince her otherwise,” I said. “Don’t leave it up to Carol. We’ll get away from Dad and his mistakes. There’s no reason for us to stay and deal with it.”
She nodded, seeming more interested in that. “What are we doing?”
“Carol is going to try to drum up divorce papers,” I said, thinking ahead. “We’ll go see your mom ourselves to get them signed, though. Don’t let them get together. It’ll be a disaster. If we say another woman moved in, you know…”
Marie sat up more. “Maybe in the papers, it will say I can stay with her?”
Could that be arranged? I was more worried the paperwork would have my name on it if Carol managed to find another lawyer. “We can find out. You know Dad won’t care where we go as long as everything is squared away. We can arrange something we’re both happy with. Carol shouldn’t be in the middle.”
“She’s been going through Mom’s things.”
That could be a problem if there was anything about me in any of them. “Do you know of anything that we don’t want seen?”
“I don’t want her to touch any of it.”
“We should probably find your birth certificate,” I said. “And whatever other records you have. Make sure she doesn’t take them. We’ll have to wait until she’s out of the house.” I thought about it. “Tomorrow, I was supposed to go to Jessica’s to study, but Carol was going to come with me to talk to her mom. I could convince Jimmy to come along. Dad should be at work. It’ll give you a chance to go through and find anything you don’t want her to have.”
“I don’t have a spot to store it.”
“Will you trust Nathan enough to keep it at his house?” I asked. “For now?”
She paused and scratched at her elbow. “I guess.”
“Once you’re out, he can give it back,” I said. “We just have to check in with each other about what we say. You can’t tell her about my background, because if she calls anyone about it, or threatens him, we may not get what we want.”
“I was going to,” she said in a softer voice. “But when I told her she didn’t know anything about what he’s really like, to try to convince her to go away, she said she knew everything already.”
Did she? Or had he fed her lies?
Everything that went on between our father and Carol was a mystery. When had he met her, anyway? Was every business trip to see her?
Marie agreed to keep her head down and do whatever Carol said tonight at dinner. Later, when tensions were low, I’d mention to Carol that she was thinking about community college.
Marie was ready to play the same game as I was. Appeal to Carol. Convince her to let us go.
I left Marie so she could straighten her bed and tidy up as much as possible.
When I went to my bedroom, I stood just inside the door.
I breathed in slowly, and then out through my mouth. I had a fragile alliance with my sister.
If it took us a month to get out, could she last that long?