The Year of Disappearances

She set down her pen. “Why don’t you look at the student jobs listed in the catalog? One of them might inspire you.”



I took her advice, and I ended up writing an essay about joining the stables crew, since I knew how to listen to horses as well as talk to them.



With the application sent off, I found myself daydreaming about the future. My father sent me a letter in which he discussed college in the most general terms. He made no mention of me becoming a doctor or a scientist. He quoted W. B. Yeats: “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”



The quotation struck me as a peculiar choice, considering that earlier that summer we’d nearly burned to death.



Then he wrote: “Speaking of fire, you and your mother had better burn my letters. With so many police around, it’s better that I stay dead.”



I wrote back a long description of Hillhouse and a summary of my essays. I told him I’d asked to live in one of the “quiet” dorms, where loud noise was prohibited after 10 P.M. Finally, I wrote, “We miss you.”



But after I sealed the letter, I thought twice. If I sent it, he’d feel reassured that all was well in Sassa. And it wasn’t.



I destroyed the first letter and wrote a new one. It began: “Dear Father, I have been learning how to smoke cigarettes.” It went on to talk about my persistent sense that someone was watching me, about my vertigo, and about my dreams of the fire. I mentioned hypnotizing a local boy being questioned in the disappearance of a friend. I thought of adding that Mãe was flirting with bartenders, but that seemed cruel, so I simply said, “Mãe and Dashay are prone to crying lately.” I ended with: “Yes, we will burn your letters. It’s really a blessing that you’re not here.”



Then I went to Mãe’s office to find a stamp.



November faded into December—for many, the holiday season. When I was growing up, we celebrated Christmas in a most restrained, secular way: useful gifts for me from my father and his assistants, Root and Dennis. Dennis had made us observe the holiday.



My mother and Dashay told me they celebrated the winter solstice with a Yule feast.



“No presents?” I asked.



Plenty of presents, they told me. They knew I hadn’t received many when I was growing up. And we’d even have our own Yule tree—something I’d only glimpsed through other people’s windows, back in Saratoga Springs.



One mid-December day I decided to use my allowance to buy presents for them. December weather was much cooler (high temperatures in the seventies), and the ride into town went quickly. The streets were busier, now that the search for Mysty had been called off. According to the newspaper, the police said they had no leads.



Sassa didn’t offer many shopping opportunities. I decided that the pharmacy was my best bet.



For Dashay, I found copper-colored eye shadow with glitter in it, two red candles, and a lemon-colored T-shirt captioned SASSY in silver. Mãe was more complicated. I finally settled on crystal-studded hair ornaments: two shaped like dragonflies, two like stars, one like a crescent moon, and one like a honeybee. Having decided the honeybee might depress her, I was sliding it back onto the display pin when someone said my name.



Autumn leaned against a cosmetics display as if she’d been there awhile, watching me. “I need to talk to you,” she said.



I paid for my presents, and she followed me into the parking lot.



“I wanted to come to your house, but I think the cops might be trailing me.” She beckoned me toward a bench under a live oak tree. “If we talk here, it’s like we ran into each other, no big deal.”



She looked thinner than she’d been the last time I’d seen her. Her jeans weren’t so tight now, and her sweater sagged around her waist and hips. Her eyes had shadows under them, but no demon light gleamed from her irises. I checked.



“Listen, you got to help Jesse.” She nodded, as if agreeing with herself. “He’s in a bad way. He’s using something, I don’t know what.”



“Drugs?” I said.



“Yeah, but not like X or crack.” She bent her head, then looked up at me. “You know about that stuff?”



I’d read about it online. I nodded.



“So he’s doing some drug that makes him really stupid. He can’t remember anything. And I figured, since you got him off alcohol, maybe you could help him kick this stuff.” Autumn rubbed her face hard, beneath her eyes, leaving reddish crescents along her cheekbones. “Ari, he screwed up the lie detector tests. And they found some of Mysty’s blood and hair in his car. He respects you. Won’t you help?” Her voice cracked, and that’s when I knew that I would try.



Autumn and Jesse lived in a trailer park. The sign called it HARMONY HOMES MANOR, but it was a trailer park: row after row of mobile homes, some well maintained, with fake shutters on the windows and small gardens near the entrances, others looking as if they’d been abandoned—or should be. As we walked our bikes into the place (the road was too pitted with holes to ride), Autumn told me about the case against Jesse. “All they have is a tiny spot of blood and a few hairs, but they definitely belong to her.”



“She rode in the car quite a bit, didn’t she?”



“That’s what I told them.”



“And that day we came back from the mall, she picked at her arm until it bled.” I had a vivid image of the blood welling on her arm.



Autumn stopped walking. “I’d forgotten all about that. That’s where the bloodstain on the seat must have come from.”



I wasn’t as convinced as she was. For all I knew, Jesse might be guilty.



But when I saw him, I was sure he wasn’t. He was sitting at the kitchen table inside the trailer, his head supported by his hands, elbows braced against the oilcloth table cover patterned with small pink pigs. Pig-shaped salt and pepper shakers stood next to a large bottle of ketchup on the table, and the place smelled like years of fried food.



Jesse looked up when we came in. “Hey,” he said. “Hey…”



I realized he was trying to think of my name. His eyes were bloodshot, and he’d grown a beard. “I’m Ari,” I said.



“Ari.” He smiled.



“I like the beard,” I said. I sat at the table opposite him. “Autumn, leave us alone to talk, would you?”



When she went outside, I bent forward and looked into Jesse’s eyes. The irises were dark brown with hazel flecks. No sign of inner demons, as far as I could see.



He didn’t mind my scrutiny—in fact, he liked it. He batted his long eyelashes and tried to decide if I wanted him to kiss me.



Yes, I was listening to his thoughts. I felt the situation warranted it. But they were jumbled; as soon as one formed, it fell apart and became half of something else.



I said, “Tell me what happened the night Mysty disappeared.”



He stopped smiling and slid his chin into the cup of his palm again. “I don’t remember.” He said it without expression. But he did remember; he was thinking of a car’s headlights approaching out of darkness, while he watched, and Mysty was sitting next to him—no, she went back to his car for cigarettes—no, she stayed where she was. Maybe there weren’t any car headlights.



“Jesse, look at me.” He looked up, his eyes full of confusion. “I want to help you. Do you trust me?”



He nodded. “Ari,” he said.



“Then I want you to look at me, look into my eyes, and I want you to relax…”



Before I’d figured out what to say next, he was in a deep trance.



The night Mysty disappeared, she showed up at the river dock carrying an old plaid wool blanket. “I said, ‘Why’d you bring a blanket? It ain’t cold.’” Jesse’s voice was soft and slow. “And she said, ‘Who wants to sit on the cold hard ground?’



“I knew what she was thinking.” His eyes were shut, but his eyelids twitched. “She wanted to make out. Whatever. But I like this other girl. Her name’s Ari. She’s got class.”



I should not be hearing this, I thought.



“So you and Mysty sat on the blanket?” I said.



“Yeah, until she went back to my car. Autumn keeps a pack of cigarettes in the glove compartment. I was parked on the shoulder of the road—you know Maythorn Street? That’s where we were, at the end of Maythorn. I sat there and watched her go. She was in my car when I saw the headlights—another car coming down the street. It stopped next to mine. I heard voices, but I couldn’t hear the words, you know? I figured it was somebody she knew. So I was laying back, half asleep for I don’t know how long. Maybe ten minutes? I don’t wear a watch. I try to tell the cops, why wear a watch? It only gets in the way.”



“So ten minutes went by,” I said.



“I guess.” His hands lay limp on his knees. The only things moving were the muscles in his eyelids. He didn’t speak.



“And—?”



“And that’s all I know.” His breathing was smooth and regular. “She must have got into that car. Or maybe she went back home. She always liked to change her mind.”



“You didn’t see her again?”



“No, I didn’t. People keep asking me that. I don’t know why they don’t believe me.”



“What kind of car was it? The one that came down the street.”



“It was too dark to tell. All I saw was headlights, set kind of high off the ground. Maybe it was a truck or an SUV.”



Somewhere in the trailer, a telephone rang. I told him to ignore the sound. After six rings, it stopped.



“Jesse,” I said, my voice reminding me of my mother’s when she tried to calm me. “What kind of drugs are you taking?”



He smiled. “You want some?”



“Show me.”



He lifted his right hand, moved it to the pocket of his flannel shirt. He managed to unbutton it, his eyes still shut, and pulled out a prescription bottle. He handed it to me.



The prescription label was in the name of his sister, for amoxicillin, which I knew was a common antibiotic. I opened the bottle and shook out a few pills into my hand. They were dark red capsules, each bearing a small black V.



“Where’d you get these, Jesse?”



“My buddy bought them in Crystal River. They’re sweet. A good mellow high.”



I thought of Root’s e-mail: Sugar pill. I put the cap on the bottle and slid it into my backpack.



“You don’t need to take these. You don’t want to take them. Are you hearing me?”



He nodded, docile as ever.



“You want your mind clear. You will remember that night clearly, next time you talk to the police.”



With his eyes shut he looked younger, despite the beard. I repeated my spiel, telling him not to take any more of these pills, telling him he didn’t need them. But I wondered why he did need them. I’d got him free of alcohol. Why do humans think they need drugs? Are they in perpetual pain?



This time I remembered to tell him to forget that he’d been hypnotized, and while I was at it I told him to forget that I’d even been there. I could have gone further, told him to stop having a crush on a girl named Ari. But I didn’t. I don’t like to think why.



As I was finishing with Jesse, I looked outside the kitchen window and saw Autumn’s shoulder. She was pressed against the lower window, listening.