by Cat Clarke
So that was Laurel’s only experience of the outside world—for thirteen years. Just walking down the street was a huge achievement for her. We took it slowly and tried to ignore the journalists and photographers shadowing our every move. The police made sure the press kept their distance.
I walked with Laurel, a little way behind Mom and Dad. Maggie was behind us, not really dressed for the weather, her shoulders hunched against the cold wind. Laurel couldn’t stop staring at everything—the cars, the shops, the people. She grabbed my hand when an ambulance screamed past, siren blaring. I murmured words of reassurance and squeezed her hand. I tried to imagine what this must be like for her, but of course I could never know. She didn’t let go of my hand until we were safely inside the restaurant, which was empty. Maggie must have called ahead to make sure.
Laurel was baffled by the menu—confused by being able to choose what to eat. “Can I have anything I want?”
“Anything,” Mom and Dad said in unison.
Mom suggested spaghetti. “It used to be your favorite.”
Laurel loved it. She made a complete mess of eating it, and I did the same with mine so she wouldn’t feel self-conscious.
It didn’t really feel like a counseling session, but maybe Maggie is just really good at her job. Sometimes she’d throw out a question and we’d remember why we were there. She asked if we were worried about anything. I shook my head, even though there were lots of things I was worried about.
We talked about how things would work when Laurel came home. Mom and Dad had obviously talked about this beforehand. They’d decided that Laurel and I would stay at his place on the weekends. I wondered if Mom had put up a fight about that. Laurel and I would have to share a room.
“You don’t mind, do you, love?” asked Dad as he snapped a breadstick in half.
I shook my head.
Laurel cleared her throat. “I don’t mind sleeping on the sofa.” She looked down at her empty plate.
“No, really, it’s fine. It’ll be fun.” I smiled at Laurel; I wanted her to believe me.
Maggie seemed pleased with how things were going, but she warned us that there might be “bumps in the road ahead,” and we shouldn’t put pressure on ourselves for things to be normal right away. “The important thing is that you keep talking—and listening—to each other. Communication is the key.” She said that any one of us could call her if we had anything we needed to talk through, and that we would keep going for sessions with one of her colleagues who lives locally.
Laurel tried Dad’s wine and grimaced at the taste of it; she’s never tried alcohol before. Then she asked if she could order a glass of her own. Mom had to explain that you’re not officially allowed to drink alcohol until you’re twenty-one. At first I thought Laurel was going to argue, but she just nodded and took another sip of water. She didn’t talk much for the rest of the meal.
—
I had to go back to school on Thursday, even though Dad was taking the whole week off work. It wasn’t fair. Mom and Laurel were going shopping for clothes, then on to the hairdresser. It seemed like something the three of us might have done together—if you ignore the fact that I hate shopping.
Thomas and Martha had been keeping me up to speed about how things were going at school. I’d talked to Thomas most days and texted Martha whenever I had the chance, but I hadn’t actually seen either of them since the day Laurel was found. I hadn’t wanted to leave the house, and I didn’t feel quite ready to invite them over yet. I felt like I needed time to myself—to get used to how life was going to be from now on. Martha was a little more understanding about it than Thomas, or at least she pretended to be more understanding.
School was just as insane as Thomas and Martha had warned me it would be. Thomas was already in the cafeteria when I arrived half an hour before homeroom. He was sitting on the floor with his back against a radiator dappled with peeling paint. He was reading a book and eating an apple. Thomas always eats the whole apple—seeds, core, everything except the stem. The first time he did it in front of me, I told him it was disgusting; he lectured me about the “frankly appalling” levels of food wastage in the world.
I sat down next to him, sliding my back down the radiator, probably peeling off some more paint in the process. I started to speak, but he held up a finger to silence me. I was used to this: Thomas never stops reading until he’s reached the end of a paragraph. Still, I thought that today might warrant some kind of exemption from the rule. I was about to say as much when he finally put his book down and kissed me. Unsurprisingly, he tasted like apples.
He put his arm around me, and I leaned my head against his. “Crazy week, huh?” he whispered.
“The craziest.” I closed my eyes. For the first time in days, I felt like myself again.
“I’m here if you want to talk about things, okay? But it’s fine if you don’t. Whatever you need.” He kissed my forehead, and I remembered why I liked him so much.
The door opened and a group of girls piled in. They spotted me immediately. I knew what was going to happen, and I wanted to avoid it at all costs. I stood up and turned my back to them, pretending to look for something in my bag. “Thomas, let’s go,” I whispered.
Thomas was too slow getting his stuff together.
“Faith! Oh my god, Faith! Oh. My. God!”
I could stay facing the wall, but it wouldn’t do any good. Laney Finch would wait all day if she had to. I turned around slowly, as if facing a firing squad.
Before I knew what was happening, Laney Finch had flung herself at me. I stumbled back against the radiator, hitting my elbow on the corner. Her arms were around me, and it felt like she had too many of them—I was being hugged by a Laney squid. My arms stayed rigidly by my sides.
The hug went on far too long. Over Laney’s shoulder, I could see her friends hanging back, whispering and staring. At least two of them looked like they might want to hug me, too. There were tears in their eyes, and they held their hands to their chests as if the emotion was just too much for them.
Laney pulled back but still had my arms firmly in her grip. She was crying, of course. “I can’t believe it, Faith. It’s just too amazing for words. It’s a miracle, isn’t it? I totally think this qualifies as a miracle, don’t you? I prayed, you know. Every night. I told you that, didn’t I?”
Laney had indeed told me that she prayed every night for my sister. It was her opening line the day she decided we should be best friends. That was five years ago. Laney Finch likes to think that she feels things more deeply than the average person. Of course, this is total bullshit. She has no more empathy than anyone else—it’s all talk. She’s the type of person who sees a natural disaster in some faraway country on the news and cries about it. (Oh, those poor people…Imagine what they must be going through….It breaks my heart.) Five minutes later she’s on the phone to one of her pathetic friends, moaning about how unfair it is that her parents won’t buy her a new MacBook Air for her birthday.
From the day she arrived at school, Laney Finch tried to latch on to me; I was determined to be unlatchable. She never seemed to get the message, though. Every time there was a story about Laurel in the papers, Laney Finch popped up, shooting sympathetic looks across the room or asking intrusive questions. I only lost my temper with her once: when she said she knew exactly how I felt because her cat had gone missing and hadn’t been seen for a week. I didn’t punch her in the face, which was what she deserved. I did tell her to fuck off, which seemed to shock her just as much.
I was determined to at least try to be nice this time, so I mumbled, “Thanks,” and tried to extricate myself from her grip. Thomas was no help at all—he was busy putting his book back in his bag oh so carefully so that he didn’t damage the cover.
Laney let go of my arms and daintily dabbed at her eyes. I wondered if she wore waterproof mascara every day so that she was fully prepared for her regular crying stints. “It’s such wonderful news, Faith. I haven’t stopped sm
iling since I heard, so I can’t even begin to imagine how you must be feeling.” She shook her head and smiled, as if that proved that she had literally not stopped smiling for the past five days. I waited. She smiled some more. I said I’d better get going, even though there was nowhere I had to be for at least twenty minutes. I turned to take Thomas’s hand, but Laney somehow managed to maneuver herself between us. “So…what’s Laurel like? I bet she’s really…God, I don’t even know…”
Laney likes to know things—especially things that other people don’t know. Gossip is oxygen to her—without it, she’ll, like, literally, you know, die or something.
“She’s fine. Thank you.” I gave Thomas a look that very obviously said, Get me out of here! but for some reason he didn’t seem to understand it.
Laney leaned close to me, and I could smell toothpaste on her breath. “Why do you think he let her go? It’s weird, isn’t it?” she whispered, eyes wide.
“Fuck off, Laney.” Martha’s timing was impeccable.
Laney flinched and turned to face Martha. “Excuse me, but this is a private conversation.”
Martha stood next to me and smiled sweetly. “I don’t think so. In fact, I don’t think it counts as a conversation at all when you just talk at someone. So why don’t you leave Faith alone and go and cry over some Cambodian orphans or endangered pygmy elephants? Or endangered Cambodian pygmy elephants who also happen to be orphans.”
Laney was too shocked to speak. Her mouth opened and closed again.
Martha crossed her arms, looking like a burly bouncer. Martha is tall. Sturdy. Intimidating if you look at her in the right light. “Go. Away.”
Laney looked to me for help, eyes pleading. “I was just trying to…I really do care, you know.”
I nodded.
Laney fled, her gaggle of friends enveloping her, sweeping her away, and shooting us dirty looks at the same time.
Martha waved at them before turning to me. “You’re welcome.”
“Thank you.”
We hugged. It’s quite nice having your own personal bodyguard.
—
Martha and Thomas stuck to me like superglue for the rest of the week. If one of them wasn’t with me, the other one was. Laney wasn’t the only one who wanted to talk to me; the teachers were at it, too. At least I’d missed the special assembly they held on Monday.
It should have been nice, and I shouldn’t have minded the attention. But it wasn’t nice, and I did mind. I just want to be left alone. It’s bad enough having photographers and camera crews stationed outside our house night and day—and a police car down the street—without being scrutinized at school, too. Hopefully things will get back to normal soon. Whatever normal is.
“Laurel! Laurel! How does it feel to be coming home? Laurel! Can you tell us…?”
The front door closes, muffling the shouts from the yard. The curtains are already closed, but you can still see the flashes from the cameras. I wonder why they’re still snapping away—there’s nothing to see now that she’s safely inside.
Dad locks the door and leans against it. “So much for them giving us some privacy,” he says. He was interviewed on the news last night—on the eve of Laurel’s homecoming—and he’d asked for exactly that: privacy. Unfortunately, it seems that’s the one thing the media is unable (unwilling) to give.
Mom’s clasping her hands together and looking anxiously at Laurel, who is standing rooted to the spot, looking around the room, taking it all in. A teddy bear is nestled in the crook of her arm. It’s battered and worn, and I can smell it from here. It also seems to be missing one arm. Barnaby has been through more than your average bear.
I bet the photographers got a shot of Laurel clutching the bear. That will be the photo—the one that will be on the Internet in a matter of minutes, on the news in a few hours, on the front page of the papers tomorrow morning. Maybe they’ll print the old photo of Barnaby the Bear next to the new one. Maybe they’ll use the word poignant a lot and draw ridiculous parallels between the bear and Laurel.
The noise from outside dies down. Laurel (and Barnaby) and I sit on the sofa and Dad takes the chair next to the fire. Mom makes tea. I notice Laurel staring at the mantelpiece—there’s a picture of her, aged five, right in the middle. There’s a picture of me around the same age, just off to one side. There are no pictures of my parents. In the old house, we used to have a photo of the two of them on their wedding day on the mantelpiece. They looked young and kind of drunk, both of them raising glasses of champagne to the camera. I wonder what happened to that picture.
Mom wanted to put up a “welcome home” banner, but I managed to convince her it would be tacky. It’s the kind of thing you do when your daughter’s come back from her gap year in Nicaragua or from a stay in the hospital, not when she’s been kidnapped and repeatedly raped by a psychopath.
Laurel likes tea. Smith brought her tea when she was feeling sad. He said, The world always looks brighter when you’ve got a mug of tea in your hand. Mom was horrified when she heard that; she says almost exactly the same thing. When she was with him, Laurel always drank out of the same bright yellow mug with a smiley face on it, until she dropped it one day. It smashed on the concrete floor. Smith slapped her so hard she fell and cut her hand on one of the broken shards of mug. He stitched up the wound himself, doing such a good job that you can barely even see the scar on her palm. The police wondered if that meant that Smith might have been medically trained, but Laurel said she didn’t think so. He had several huge medical books that he used to refer to whenever she was ill.
Mom comes back in with the tray and hands around the mugs. Laurel’s is red, with her name on it. Her face lights up when she sees it, then she looks to Mom for an explanation. Mom nods in my direction.
“I…I thought you should have your own mug. It’s the same as mine.” I hold mine up as proof. My mug has a chip on it, and the i in my name is starting to wear off.
Laurel looks at her mug as if it’s something precious and miraculous. Then she looks at me in pretty much the same way. “Thank you, Faith. That’s”—her voice catches—“really kind of you.”
I shrug. “It’s no big deal.” But I’m really pleased she likes it. Everyone should have their own mug; it makes tea taste so much better.
After tea, we all head upstairs to show Laurel her room. Mom clears her throat as she steps back to let Laurel go first. “I’m so sorry we moved, Laurel….I always wanted you to come home to your own bedroom….That’s how it was supposed to be.” She doesn’t look at Dad, and he doesn’t look at her.
Laurel doesn’t seem to notice the awkwardness, though. “I don’t mind at all. This is home. Wherever you are.” She couldn’t have said anything more perfect. Mom’s eyes glisten with tears.
“Well, what do you think?” I wish Mom didn’t sound so needy. The room is nothing compared to the presidential suite—for one thing it has a single bed instead of a king-size one—but it’s a whole lot better than where she was before. With him. A camp bed and a dirty sleeping bag. A bare lightbulb. Mice. Cockroaches.
Laurel spots him immediately. “You found him!”
I shrug again. I seem to be doing a lot of shrugging these days. “I thought you might like to have him.”
“I can’t believe it! He looks exactly like…He looks the same!” She shakes her head and kneels down to inspect the night-light; she touches his head with a certain reverence. She looks up at me, eyes shining with unshed tears. “Is it really okay if I keep him? I don’t like the dark.”
I nod. “Of course it’s okay!”
Mom crouches down next to Laurel. “You can leave your door open at night, if you like. That way you’ll get the light from the landing, too.”
Dad says, “Why don’t we leave the girls to it? Faith can show Laurel everything she needs. I’ll bring up the bags in a bit.”
Laurel sits on the bed, moving her hand back and forth across the duvet cover. Her other hand still clutches Barnaby. “
It’s nice. This room, I mean.”
I sit down next to her. “Mom was worried you’d hate it. She says we can redecorate anytime you want.”
“Why would I hate it? It’s perfect….A room of my own.”
She sets Barnaby the Bear down on the chair in the corner. I want to tell her that he could really use a bath, but it doesn’t seem like the right thing to say.
Mom’s thought of everything. Toiletries and pajamas and a hairbrush. There’s even some brand-new makeup on the dressing table. Laurel touches everything, as if to make sure it’s all solid and real and isn’t going to be taken away from her at any second. She spends a long time looking at a tube of foundation, and it hits me: she won’t know how to use makeup. I explain what everything is and tell her I’ll show her how to use it all. “Not that you need makeup. You’re beautiful without it.” I feel my cheeks flush.
“I’m not beautiful,” she says flatly.
“You are.”
Laurel shakes her head and moves from the dressing table to the bedside table. There’s a cell phone—an old one of mine, with a new SIM card. “Is this for me?” I nod, and she picks it up. I show her how it works and scroll through the numbers I’ve already added to her contacts: me, Mom, Dad. I probably should have added Maggie Dimmock, too.
“See? You can call me anytime.”
Laurel presses a button, and my phone buzzes in my jeans pocket. I take out my phone and say hello. She says hello into her phone, and we both laugh.
“Where’s your bedroom?” she asks.
“Right next door. Want to see?”
My room has a lot of stuff in it. More stuff than a room this size should probably have. Mom’s always trying to get me to throw things out or give them to charity, but I like it this way. There’s something comforting about it. I don’t like getting rid of stuff; I don’t like throwing memories away.
