The Things We Didn't Say Page 9

  “What did you mean by ‘doesn’t feel right’?”

  He raises his face to look at me. “I don’t think he’s meeting a girl at all.”

  Chapter 11

  Angel

  Stupid Casey and her stupid questions.

  I get a text from Hannah.

  Dylan OK?

  I hate how all these kids are making my drama into theirs to get attention. Like, if he totally disappeared for real, by next week they’d be on to the next thing, like that kid whose brother died of cancer and everyone was acting like their own brother died and then within a week it was all, whatever.

  I don’t even think Hannah likes me. Last week, I came up to her and the girls at play practice, and the minute I walked up, everyone stopped talking and they all stared at me, and I swear Emma was smirking. So it’s not like she really cares. It’s not like any of them do.

  I shut my phone off and put in my earbuds, cranking it up so loud that Dad would say I’m ruining my hearing.

  Who gave Casey the right to come into my house and start acting like she knows so much? And getting on me for having secrets when she’s the one writing about Tony. Calling Tony. Tony said this, Tony said that.

  And she used to drink herself stupid all the time, too. Bet Dad doesn’t know that. He thinks she doesn’t drink because she doesn’t like the taste.

  For a reporter he can be pretty stupid sometimes.

  My stomach rumbles, and I grab a bottled water that’s sitting on my dresser and take a swig. It helps a little. I couldn’t eat that greasy, nasty pizza for dinner. And I didn’t eat much for lunch today. Later, I’ll go back down and get an apple or something.

  I pick up my script for The Miracle Worker. I should practice some of my lines, especially because I skipped rehearsal and we’re supposed to be off-book by next week, but they’d hear me and someone would stick their face in here and try to “help.” Like Casey, putting on a supportive, sweet act when I know what she really thinks of me.

  I can’t remember the exact words, but it was something like, can be such a bitch.

  I wanted to rip her journal in half and in fact I gave it a try, but that’s harder than it looks, so instead I found this red marker and let her know that her secrets aren’t so secret anymore.

  “Why were you even in my desk?” she asked, like she’s the poor victim here. I just needed a piece of paper. I didn’t expect to find out my dad’s girlfriend secretly hates me. I mean, I knew we didn’t always get along, but “bitch”?

  How many other people hate me in secret? Hannah, Emma, their friends, and now Casey, too?

  I know that Eleanor hates me out loud, already. Everyone thought she’d get the part of Anne Sullivan in The Miracle Worker. She’s pretty much the best actress in school and she’s always in community theater, too, and I heard she even has head shots and almost got an agent once when she went out to L.A. She’s so beautiful the guys all cling to her like they’re metal and she’s a magnet.

  But then I got it, and Eleanor is my understudy, which means she’s loving today because she did the part at rehearsal. She’s probably already off-book for my part, too. She’s got a freaky ability to memorize lines.

  I was so shocked when I saw the cast list, I thought Mrs. Nelson made a misprint, so I asked her. But she said no, she thought my audition had been “earnest and soulful” and she knew I had it in me.

  So she might as well have put a target on my back. I mean, some people think that Eleanor is overrated and a ham and that she waves her arms like she’s a cheerleader every time she reads a line.

  But mostly they’re all waiting for me to fuck it up.

  Maybe if Dylan stays gone I can quit the play.

  Oh, that’s terrible. I curl up on my bed and scrunch my eyes. I didn’t mean it I didn’t mean it I didn’t mean it, I say in my head, in case I somehow jinxed him.

  I don’t know what to do with myself now. I don’t feel like reading lines. I have permission to blow off homework.

  My big plan for the evening had been to tell my dad all about the diary, and then he could promise not to marry her and I’d know at least I wouldn’t be having a stepmother who hated me. But I can’t really do that now.

  I sent Dylan a text earlier that said “WTF? Where r u?” And then I sent some more that were nicer and more concerned, but now I find out he didn’t even take his phone.

  I should probably tell my dad what Dylan told me last week about hating his new school, but he swore me to secrecy. And that’s different than reading Casey’s diary, because I didn’t mean to do that, I just stumbled on it.

  But Dylan’s my brother, and I promised.

  Anyway, it’s probably not related. It sounds like my brother thinks he’s in love, the idiot.

  My door opens and it’s my dad, and he’s got this big frown. I can’t hear him, but I can read his lips. I sigh and take out my earbuds and sit up cross-legged. He sits on the edge of my bed.

  “Angel, I’ve got to ask you something.”

  “What?”

  “You know something’s up with Dylan. Casey said you were looking really guilty when I was talking, and you were evasive just now.”

  “I didn’t realize I was being interrogated.”

  “You need to tell us what’s going on.”

  “I don’t know. Anyway, you guys know that he’s going to New York by bus. The cops will find him, right?”

  “ Look . . .” My dad runs his fingers over his hair and pulls at his tie. He’s never gotten out of his work clothes. “You can’t tell Jewel this, okay?”

  “Tell her what?”

  “Promise me.”

  “Okay, fine, I promise. What?”

  “I’m worried that he’s not really meeting a girl.”

  “Who else could he be meeting?”

  While my dad tries to figure out what to say, suddenly it hits me. He thinks it’s like the Dateline NBC show where they catch perverts trying to meet up with young kids.

  “No, it’s not like that,” I say. “He’s not that dumb to fall for some sweaty pervert pretending to be a girl.”

  Without saying anything else, my dad pulls out a printed photograph. I take it in my hand, and it looks like a fashion model. The girl’s hair is windswept, and she’s gazing off to the side. There’s a beach behind her.

  “This girl doesn’t look fourteen, and she doesn’t look like an ordinary girl. This looks like the kind of picture you’d download off the Internet if you wanted to impress a teenage boy. If you wanted to lure him somewhere.”

  Now I start to feel kinda light-headed.

  “Angel, please.”

  “I don’t know anything about the girl.”

  “What do you know about?”

  “Nothing. Honest.”

  My dad looks like he might cry. I’ve only seen him cry once before, when Mom and Jewel had that wreck.

  “Dad?”

  He swallows hard before he answers me. “Yeah.”

  “Do you really think it might be a . . . guy?”

  “I know it’s a Gmail address, which could be from anywhere. And this picture doesn’t look right. And in the e-mails it sounds like she’s the one trying to convince him to run away. He had to be talked into it.”

  “Did you tell the cops this?”

  My dad nods and sighs hard. “It’s after hours. They said they’d check the bus station, and Casey is e-mailing a photo. They think he’s just a lovesick runaway.”

  “Isn’t that bad enough?”

  My dad stands up and kneads his neck with his hand. “They had fifteen runaway reports last week. And running away is not against the law. Honey, I told you the whole story because you’re the oldest. But you can’t tell Jewel. I don’t want her to know anything about what we suspect unless—”

  Dad can’t finish what he’s saying, but he doesn’t have to. He bends over for a hug. It’s an awkward angle, but I let him do it, and in fact I hug him back, hard.

  Chapter 12


  Michael

  I come into the kitchen to see my ex-wife at the stove popping popcorn with Jewel, both of them laughing, Jewel on a chair with her arm around her mother’s waist. It’s like a peek into a parallel dimension where we never got divorced and she got the help she needed and straightened herself out.

  We could still have been married, which I guess would be good for the kids.

  But then I wouldn’t have met Casey.

  Mallory turns from the stove to see me, and her laughter falters a little over our common concern.

  Mallory is having one of her pretty good days, back like she used to after each child was born. Something about pregnancy and newborns seemed to level her out—maybe the intensive work that a young child requires would crowd out whatever else was going on in there. But eventually they get older, they play alone, they don’t want to be rocked and coddled, they’re in school all day. If we’d stayed married, I would have had to get a vasectomy or I might have ended up parenting a litter.

  I walk back upstairs into the bathroom to splash cold water on my face. In the sharp glare of the light in here, my scar stands out quite a bit. I remember the young nurse practitioner at the after-hours clinic slipping me a little card with a number for domestic violence victims to call.

  I actually laughed. I was dizzy with the dissipated adrenaline from the fight and disbelief that I was actually there at all. Then I apologized. The young man had looked so earnest. He was actually biting his lip, his face creased with concern.

  Oh, I’m sure the domestic violence people would have taken me very seriously, probably advised me to leave. But men don’t get to run away and keep their kids.

  I suppose I could have made a case for her unpredictable and volatile nature and taken the children with me, but the truth is, she had never hurt the children. Not physically, at least. And she could have plausibly argued that my injury was an accident.

  Mallory’s ability to persuade goes far beyond simple charm. I think that’s why Angel has a talent for acting, because she sinks into a part and lives in a character’s skin. Fiction becomes truth while she’s onstage.

  Mallory has always had interesting notions of fiction and truth.

  In that tiny clinic room, an image came to mind as the nurse adjusted the bandage: Mallory in a doctor’s office, a bruise on her arm, tearfully clutching the card and nodding, yes, yes, she should call.

  Not that I ever touched her in anger—if I didn’t trust myself, I would walk out to the porch—but I realized then I’d have to be twice as careful. Even if that meant she clawed my face to ribbons with her nails, I would have to let her without raising a finger in my own physical defense, or risk losing everything.

  I scrub my face dry on a crusty towel, and then I hear something in the kitchen. The phone?

  Mallory grabs it before I can get there, clutching it with both hands. She shoots me a look that I can read as It’s the police, and she’s nodding.

  “Okay. Yes, thank you. Yes, please.”

  She hangs up. “Dylan got on a bus to Cleveland.”

  “What?”

  Casey had come down the stairs behind me at the ring of the phone. She hovers, mute, in the bend of the open staircase. Angel rushes past her and all the way down the steps, her iPod in her hand. “I heard the phone,” she says. “Cleveland?”

  “That’s what the cop said,” Mallory continues. “That they showed his picture at the bus station and the staff remembered him. Because of his stammer. But they said he must have ordered the tickets online and had them mailed because he already had them. He was confused about which bus, though, so he asked for help.”

  That solves the mystery of him always getting the mail. “Was he alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, the girl did write that they were meeting up in Cleveland and going together from there.”

  “So they’re going to have the Cleveland police check the station there,” Mallory says.

  Jewel had been munching on the finished popcorn. “Good! Then they’ll bring him home, right?”

  I teeter on the brink between protective lying and gentle truth. “He’s been gone a while, hon. He’s probably not in Cleveland anymore. He’s probably on another bus.”

  “They said his ticket was only to Cleveland,” Mallory says.

  “Why wouldn’t he go straight through if he’s supposed to be going to New York?”

  Mallory and I lock our eyes. If “Tiffany” is really a pervert from Cleveland, there’s no reason to buy a ticket all the way through.

  In the silence, Jewel gobbles more popcorn, then yawns.

  “Babe, you need some sleep,” I say, as much to dispel the frightening quiet as anything.

  Jewel shovels in another handful, then nods.

  I start to step forward, but Mallory waves me off. “Let me tuck her in. I don’t get to every night.”

  “Make sure she flosses,” I say. “The popcorn.”

  I walk over to where Casey still stands as if she’s afraid to come into the room. I speak quietly, so Angel won’t hear.

  “I can try to get her to go home . . .”

  Casey shakes her head. “She’d just blow up. We don’t need that. Anyway, I can see why she’d want to stay.”

  “Thank you.”

  Casey flinches away as if I’ve said something wrong.

  “You’ve really been a champ about this.”

  She gulps hard and still won’t meet my eyes. I venture, “I said I was sorry about before. Why don’t you get some rest, it’s been a long day.”

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m one of the kids.”

  I open my mouth to argue then realize she’s right, of course, that’s exactly what I’d been doing. Right down to my soothing voice.

  Casey then says, “Maybe I should go. Give you guys some space.”

  “No!”

  I glance back over my shoulder, and Angel is staring at us. I nudge Casey back up the stairs to our room.

  “I don’t want Mallory to feel like she’s replacing you.”

  She closes her eyes and sags in the shoulders. “I’m tired of everything we do viewed as how it affects Mallory. That’s why you don’t want me to leave? Some strategic gambit?”

  I pull her in for a hug. “I need you.”

  I hugged Mallory so recently that my animal mind compares before I can tell it to shut up. Casey is shorter, more slight. Her head rests on my chest, not my shoulder.

  But she doesn’t cling as tight.

  “Please stay here.”

  “I don’t think the kids want me here,” she says, her voice muffled by my chest.

  “It’s just a bad day.”

  “I’m not talking about just today.”

  I take her shoulders and gently push back to look at her face. “The kids love you.”

  “Jewel puts up with me. Dylan . . . He’s been acting like I’m invisible now for weeks. And you’re not blind. You know how Angel feels.”

  “She’s a teenage girl. If she behaved perfectly, there’d be something wrong with her. And she’s been through hell with her mom, she’s really sensitive. Every time I say anything even lightly critical, Angel flips out.”

  Casey rubs her face under her eyes, then asks me, her stare hard, “What if Mallory tries to get the kids back?”

  “She won’t.”

  “Why are you so sure? What if she goes after me as unfit to be in the house?”

  “That’s ludicrous, plus the biggest case of pot calling the kettle black, my God. She’s steady tonight but believe me, she’s all kinds of crazy. And manipulative. You’ve been . . . I can’t think of a wrong step you’ve made. And believe me, after what I went through with Mallory . . .” I try a smile.

  “Not a wrong step, huh?” she says, but she’s not looking at me, and has the strangest expression on her face. “I need to step outside.”

  Oh, she’s feeling guilty about the smoking. “Case, smoking doesn’t make you an unfit stepmom. It just makes y
ou stink.”

  “Ha,” she says weakly, and heads out the door.

  I bump into Mallory coming out of Jewel’s bedroom. “Put on your pajamas, sweetie, I’ll be right back up,” she calls over her shoulder. “I think we should call the police back,” she whispers to me as we descend the stairs.

  “They said a detective would call in the morning. I tried, but they think he’s just another runaway.”

  We’re in the kitchen now, and Mallory puts her hands on her hips. Angel is back in the front room, watching TV. I can hear canned laughter and see the flickering light. Out of reflex I wonder what Dylan is doing in his room, and this is like a punch.

  “I will call him back,” Mallory continues. “And I will convince them that my son is not some hoodlum runaway, and that we think he’s meeting a sexual predator.”

  “We don’t know that for sure—”

  “Goddamn you and your calm! You think you’re so great because you keep it together for everyone, but guess what, sometimes you need to panic, and this is one of those times. Our son is out there, at night, meeting someone with a fake picture, a disconnected phone, and an e-mail address that could be anywhere. Where do you suppose he’s staying the night if his ticket was only to Cleveland?”

  I have no answer. Possibilities flash through my mind from a bus station bench to highway overpass to . . .

  I did a story about a missing girl once, on a weekend cop shift. They found her weeks later, strangled and naked in the woods.

  But Dylan is a boy, a young man in fact. He’s smart, too.

  Apparently, he’s also easily led.

  Mallory is not waiting for my answer, because she never waited for my blessing to do anything, even when we were married.

  “Yes. Yes, this is Mallory Turner, I talked to you a few minutes ago about Dylan. We have significant reason to believe this is not just a simple runaway . . . Well, first of all, he’s never done this before. He’s a good kid, plays in the band, very respectful. This is very odd behavior. The picture that this supposed girl sent, it’s obviously some model head shot. And it’s a Gmail address—anyone can sign up for those with any kind of name. But here’s the thing, in the actual message? Whoever this is had to talk him into this. Lure him, you might say . . . He’s a good kid, but he’s naive. Trusting. I’m really afraid, and now we know he’s left the state . . . Please, you’ve got to help me!”