7:25 AM Saturday, the gang
Tim’s red truck is speeding toward us. It’s a raging beast of a vehicle, a grizzly bear bellowing through the quiet of the morning.
Tamara and Becky are sitting in the front. No idea where the rest of the guys are. The truck lurches to a stop and Tim jumps out. Tamara and Becky follow him. Josh pushes his bike down the driveway toward them.
“What’s up?” Tim says to Josh, then lifts his chin at me. “Hey, Jessie.” He’s real serious, for once, instead of goofing around, speaking a mile a minute. His dark eyes hold mine.
“She hasn’t heard anything,” Josh says.
“I just found out,” I explain.
“I’ve been calling everyone, waking them up. No one’s seen him yet,” Tim says, “but they want to help.”
I feel a tiny swell of relief. People listen to Tim. Maybe it’s something he learned from watching his grandpa, when he was the chief of the Lummi Nation tribe. But it’s no coincidence that Tim’s the captain of the basketball team and the valedictorian. I always wonder how he does it all.
Tamara and Becky walk up slowly. They stop next to Tim. Becky slouches over Tamara, like a willow tree giving her shade. They stare at my old house with its peeling paint, the big tire in the front yard, the long patchy grass we never mow. The curtain stirs. Mom is there, watching. Tamara glances at Becky and smirks, which makes me feel like crap, even though I know it shouldn’t. Who gives a rat’s ass what Tamara thinks, right?
At least she isn’t wearing her little workout shorts, wiggling her butt in everyone’s faces like normal. Today she has this huge black hoodie on; the sleeves are so long, the fabric curls around her hands. Her hair is pulled into a messy ponytail, and she’s not wearing makeup. Looks pretty harsh. Just saying.
“I told you this is a waste of time.” Tamara jams out her hip. “They’re broken up.”
“No, we’re not,” I say. “We’re on a break, for a week. We just needed some—” Perspective. Yes, I was going to say that word again. You laughed when I said it to you.
She cuts me off. “Whatever. Did he come by your house in the middle of the night or not?”
Like I’m your booty call. “No,” I say. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
Tamara glares at me and I glare right back.
Josh turns to me. “Chris stopped by Tim’s house last night before his run.”
I look at Tim. “Yeah?”
“Around nine thirty. I was having a barbecue.” Tim lifts his Seahawks cap and pulls it back down over his straight black hair, the brim curled up tight like a small n. “It was almost dark. We should have made him stay.”
“We tried, remember?” Tamara wraps her arms around herself, tucks her fingers under her armpits. “He looked over your fence at me and said he’d see me later.”
It bugs me how she takes possession of you with those words, like you were coming back for her. Did you really say that?
“He even gave me his hoodie,” she says. “He asked me to hold it for him.”
What the hell? That’s your hoodie?
Breathe. I got to pretend it doesn’t bug me.
Tim shakes his head. “I don’t know where he could have gone.”
“Chris likes to go for long walks in the middle of the night.” I hold up my knowledge of you like a trophy. “Sometimes he can’t sleep. Maybe he went somewhere in town, like the doughnut shop or something.”
“We just checked there,” Becky says. “They didn’t see him.”
“We looked everywhere,” Tamara adds. “He’s not in town.”
“Maybe he went for a drive, like to Seattle or Portland.”
“He left his truck and his wallet,” Josh tells me.
“What about his phone?” I say, thinking how maybe it’s in your room and that’s why it’s going to voicemail.
“It’s not at his house.”
“That’s weird,” I say. It can’t be dead. You’re so good about charging your phone. You even plug in my phone so you can reach me.
“He didn’t go home to shower or anything,” Josh says.
“He would’ve showered,” I say.
Tim nods. “Even when we go for burgers after a ball game, he always has to stop by home to change first.”
“Has his mom called the cops?” I ask.
Josh heaves out a frustrated sigh. “Nope, she thinks he went somewhere for the night.”
“Where the hell’s he going to go with no truck and no money?”
“Exactly.”
“Something could have happened,” I say.
“Like what?” Tim asks.
“Maybe he got jumped.”
“Who would jump him?” Becky says with a little laugh.
“He’s a huge black guy,” Tamara adds, rolling her eyes. I want to punch her.
“There are plenty of people who would jump him.” The words whistle out of me. Before I can say more, Josh opens his eyes a little, warning me, and I stop talking. I don’t get why it has to be a big secret. If you told your friends not to get revenge, they would have listened.
“Like who?” Tamara asks.
I kick at some grass sprouting out of a crack in the driveway. “I don’t know. Some drunk assholes.”
They’re quiet for a moment.
“Nobody would do anything to him.” Tim pauses, looks worried. “If they did, they’re going to regret it.” He pulls his keys out of his pocket and they jangle in his hand, a strangely happy sound, considering what he’s just said. Even though Tim’s normally a pretty easy-going guy, if he says someone’s going to regret it, you don’t want to be that someone.
“Why do you have a tire on your lawn?” Tamara says.
Everyone looks at it now, like it matters. That tire’s been there forever. Dad changed it off his rig when I was little and I liked it so much, I begged him to leave it. We had so much fun on this tire, me and Steph. She’d come over, we’d climb on it and dance around, play queen of the tire, and then, when I got older, I’d take a blanket and read here in the streetlight, my butt in the hole, breathing in the night air, just to escape my hoarder house for a while.
How do you tell people that there’s a good reason you look like white trash? I just shrug and look toward Steph’s house across the street. “It’s been there forever.”
Tim looks down the street. “We should check out the bus station and Amtrak. Just in case.”
“Good idea,” Josh says.
“A bunch more people are out looking,” Tim says. “We’ll find him.”
Josh presses one finger to the edge of his eye. “Yeah we will.”
“It’s going to be okay, Joshy.” Tamara gives him a hug. The hoodie’s sleeve falls down. She’s got a splotch of blue on her forearm, which seems strange. Never pegged her as the type to help with painting her house. Man, I really want that hoodie.
“Text us if you hear anything,” Tim says.
Then they all climb in the truck and it roars down the street. Josh and I gaze down the street after them.
He sighs. “I’m going to keep riding the trails.”
I follow him down the driveway. “Do you think he ran into those guys from the Heights again?”
“They were from the Heights?”
“You didn’t know?”
“He didn’t tell me who.”
“Man.”
He swallows. Never seen him look so worried before. That’s what freaks me out more than anything. If you were just taking off like last time, you would’ve told him.
He jams on his helmet. “I’ll let you know if I see anything.” Then he rides off down the road.
He’s already searched for hours, and now he’s going back out—it’s pretty amazing to have a friend like that. I can see you guys living next door to each other when you’re eighty. Isn’t that funny? The two of you on your separate porches in your rocking chairs. You wouldn’t need to sit beside each other. You barely talk anyway. (I just heard you answering me in my brain. “Of course we’d sit next to each other.” Okay. Whatever.)
At this point, I’m not sure what to do. I’m thinking this would be a good joke. Maybe you’re trying to show me how bummed I’ll be if you’re gone. (I am! Come back! I’m bummed, seriously bummed!)
For a full minute, I stare down the empty street, toward the river, thinking you’re going to show up, as if the powerful force of my mind could make it happen. I wait for you to run toward me, that dimple of yours diving into your cheek, your smile so wide it’s like you’ve opened the cloudy Northwest sky and let the sun come in. You’ll say you were joking. You’ll pick me up and swing me around. Then, your lips will rest on mine, and we’ll sway back and forth, and you’ll dip me back, like in some old movie. I wait, hoping, but you don’t come running down the street, and it’s not a joke.