Everything You Want Me to Be

by Mindy Mejia

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  For Myron, Blanche, Vic, and Hilma, who farmed the hills of southern Minnesota and cultivated a legacy of hard work, forbearance, laughter, and love. All my stories start with you.

  HATTIE / Saturday, March 22, 2008

  RUNNING AWAY sucked.

  Here I was, standing in the exact place I’d daydreamed about in math class so many times, right in front of the departures board at the Minneapolis airport, and every detail was just like I’d pictured. I was wearing my travel outfit—black leggings, ballet flats, and an oversize cream sweater that swallowed my hands and made my neck look even longer and skinnier than usual. I had my beautiful leather suitcase and enough money in my purse to fly anyplace I’d ever imagined. I could go anywhere. Do anything. So why did I feel so trapped?

  I’d snuck out of the house at three o’clock this morning and left a note on the kitchen table that said only, “Back later. Love, Hattie.” Later, of course, meant anytime after now. Ten years later, maybe. I didn’t know. Maybe it would never stop hurting. Maybe I could never get far enough away. The “Love, Hattie” part was pushing it a little. My family wasn’t the kind to leave love notes lying around the house, but even if they suspected something fishy, they were never in a million years going to think I was flying across the country.

  I could practically hear Mom’s voice. That’s not like Hattie. For Pete’s sake, she’s got less than two months of school before graduation and she’s playing Lady Macbeth in the school play. I know how excited she’s been about that.

  I shoved the imaginary voice aside and read the destinations again, hoping to feel any of the exhilaration I’d thought I would feel when I finally escaped Pine Valley. I’d only been on a plane once before, when we’d visited some relatives in Phoenix. I remembered there were a lot of buttons and lights on my seat and that the bathroom looked like a spaceship. I wanted to order something off the snack cart, but Mom had fruit roll-ups in her purse and that’s all we got to eat except peanuts and I didn’t even get those. Greg knew I didn’t like nuts and took mine. I was mad for the rest of the trip, though, because I was pretty sure I would have liked airplane peanuts. That was eight years ago.

  Today was going to be my second flight, to my second life.

  And I wouldn’t be standing here, feeling paralyzed and miserable, if there had been a seat open on any of the flights to La Guardia or JFK. That was the problem with impulsively deciding to run away from home the day before Easter. The airport looked like Black Friday and the security lines stretched out to the drop-off curb. The earliest available flight to New York was at 6:00 a.m. on Monday and that was too long to wait. I had to get out of this state today.

  I could fly to Chicago, but that seemed too close. Too Midwestern. God, why couldn’t there be a seat to New York? I knew exactly what shuttle to take from either airport, exactly what hostel I would stay at and how much it cost and how to get to the closest subway station. I’d spent hours on the internet memorizing New York City, so long that it felt like I’d already moved there and I’d assumed that’s where I was going when I left the house this morning. Now I was stuck looking at this stupid departure board for some second-choice destination. If I couldn’t go directly to New York, I needed to at least get closer to it. There was a 2:20 to Boston. How far was Boston from New York?

  Even though I knew it was dumb, I kept glancing at the doors, watching people pour into the airport with their mountains of luggage and their keys and wallets and tickets all jumbled up in their hands. No one was coming to stop me. No one even knew I was here. And even if they did know, would anyone really care? Except for my parents, nobody in the world loved me enough to bother bursting through those doors, yelling my name, desperate to find me before I was gone.

  I tried not to cry as I went to the counter for the Boston flight. A tanned, overly perky lady told me there was one seat in coach left.

  “I’ll take it.”

  It was $760.00, which was more than I’d spent on anything besides my computer. I handed her my driver’s license and eight crisp one-hundred-dollar bills from the horrible envelope that started all this in the first place. There were two bills left. I stared at them, looking so small and alone in that big white space. I couldn’t put them in my wallet. I’d earned every penny in my wallet and I didn’t want my money to even touch the contents of this envelope. Lost in another wave of depression, I must not have heard what the woman said next.

  “Miss?” She was leaning toward me, obviously trying to get my attention.

  There was a man with her now and both of them stared at me like that dream where the teacher’s asking you questions and you didn’t even know there was a homework assignment.

  “Why are you going to Boston today?” the man asked. He looked at my small suitcase.

  “To have a tea party.” I thought that was pretty witty, but neither of them laughed.

  “Do you have a secondary form of ID?”

  I dug around in my purse and pulled out my school ID. He looked at it and then the computer.

  “Do your parents know where you are?”

  That made me a little panicky, even though I knew I was a legal adult. A few stories popped into my head. I could say my parents were already in Boston waiting for me, or maybe just my dad. He’d separated from my mom and sent me the money at the last minute to spend Easter with him. Or I could go the straight-up orphan route. The tears stopped me, though. Emotion clogged my throat and I knew I couldn’t pull it off. Not when they were already suspicious. So I let the emotion take over instead.

  “Why don’t you mind your own business?” Outraged customer. The airport seemed like a good stage for that.

  The people behind me stopped grumbling and started to watch the show.

  “Look, Miss Hoffman, there are certain protocols we have to follow for a cash purchase of a same-day ticket, especially a one-way ticket. I’m going to have to ask you to come with me while we check this out.”

  There was no way I was going to get locked in some Homeland Security office while he called my parents and made this day ten thousand times worse. What if he could figure out who withdrew the envelope money? Did they have ways to do that? I reached over the counter and grabbed the bills and my IDs.

  “Then I’m going to have to ask you to shove your ticket up your ass.”

  “Should I call security?” The woman—who had totally dropped her perky act—picked up the phone and started dialing without waiting for an answer.

  “Don’t bother; I’m leaving. See me leaving?” I grabbed my bag and wiped my eyes with the back of the fist that had crumpled all the money into a sweaty ball.

  “Why don’t you calm down, Miss Hoffman, and we’ll—”

  “Why don’t you calm down?” I cut the guy off with a glare. “I’m not a terrorist. I’m sorry you don’t want my eight hundred dollars for your crappy seat to Boston.”

  Someone in line shouted out a cheer, but most of the crowd just stared as I wheeled my bag away, probably trying to decide what kind of bomb I was going to smuggle on the plane. Takes all kinds, Velma. Nudge, nudge. You wouldn’t suspect her of anything, would you?

  I ran to the parking garage and had no idea how I got to my truck or paid the attendant, it was such a blur. My heart was pounding. I checked behind me every second, paranoid that some security guard was going to chase
me down. And then once I got on the freeway, the sobbing started. I almost hit a minivan, my hands were shaking so bad. It wasn’t until a half an hour later that I realized I was headed back to Pine Valley. The Twin Cities had already disappeared and unplanted fields stretched as far as I could see.

  This was what happened when you let yourself need someone.

  This crap heap was what you turned into when you fell in love.

  I was so happy—so free and above it all—when I started senior year last fall. That Hattie was ready to take on the world and she would have, damn it, she could have done anything. And now I was a pathetic, sobbing mess. I had become the girl I’d always hated.

  Suddenly the radio cut out and the lights on the dash started flickering. Shit. I panicked as other cars flew past me. Spotting a turnoff up ahead, I swerved onto a gravel road that bisected two fields, eased off the gas, and let the truck coast to a stop. When I put it into park the engine coughed and then died completely. I tried the key. Nothing. I was stranded in the middle of nowhere.

  Falling across the seat, I sobbed into the scratchy fabric until I had to puke and then stumbled out of the truck into the ditch, heaving up only coffee and stomach acid.

  A cool wind whipped across the fields. It dried the sweat that had broken out on my forehead and helped the sickness to pass. I crawled away from the vomit and sat on the side of the ditch, letting the soggy ground turn my pants and underwear cold.

  I stayed there for a long time, long enough that I didn’t feel the chill anymore. Long enough that the tears stopped and something else started.

  I was totally alone except for the cars passing on the freeway and I realized that—for the first time I could remember—I didn’t want to be anywhere else on earth. I didn’t want to be trapped in a cramped airplane seat, flying to a strange city with nowhere to go after the plane landed. I didn’t want to be onstage with the lights up and a full audience watching my every move. I didn’t want to be lying in my bed alone while Mom cooked some dinner I didn’t have the stomach to eat. There was something so comforting about the blankness of the land around me, the empty fields edged with naked trees and patches of stubborn snow.

  No one knew I was here. Suddenly that fact was wonderful. I could have said it my whole life to everyone I’d ever met—No one knows I’m here—and they would have laughed and rolled their eyes and patted me on the back. Oh brother, they’d say, but it was true. I’d spent my entire life playing parts, being whatever they wanted me to be, focused on everyone around me while inside I’d always felt like I was sitting in this exact spot: curled up in the middle of a dead, endless prairie, without a soul in the world for company. Now that I was here it all made sense. Everything clicked, just like it does in the movies when the heroine realizes she’s in love with the stupid guy, or she can achieve her All-American, underdog dreams, and the music amps up and she walks, like, determinedly out of some random room. It was just like that, except without the sound track. I was still sitting in a ditch in the middle of nowhere, but everything on the inside suddenly changed.

  I heard my mother’s voice again. I remembered what she said last night when I was too busy sobbing on her shoulder to listen or understand.

  Get off the stage, sweetheart, she said. You can’t live your life acting for other people. Other people will just use you up. You have to know yourself and figure out what you want. I can’t do that for you. Nobody can.

  I knew exactly who I was—for maybe the first time ever—and exactly what I wanted and what I had to do to get it. It was clarity. Like waking up from a dream where you thought things were real and then feeling the actual world come into focus all around you. I stood up—ready to ditch this pathetic, crying girl forever. Good effing riddance.

  Gerald’s old camcorder was tucked in the top of my suitcase. I pulled it out and set it up on the back of the pickup, hitting the record button on a brand-new tape and centering myself in front of the lens.

  “Okay, hi.” I wiped my eyes, breathing deep into my diaphragm the way Gerald taught me. “This is me now. My name is Henrietta Sue Hoffman.”

  And by the time I was done with Pine Valley, no one would ever forget who I was.

  DEL / Saturday, April 12, 2008

  THE DEAD girl lay faceup in a corner of the abandoned Erickson barn, half floating in the lake water that flooded the lowest part of the sinking floor. Her hands rested on her torso over some frilly, bloodstained cloth that must have been a dress, and below the hem her legs stretched bare and shocking into the water, each swollen to the size of her waist and floating like manatees in the dirty lagoon. The upper half of her body had no relation to those legs. I’d seen slashed-up bodies before and a share of floaters, too, but never both nightmares lying side by side in the same corpse. Even though her face was too mutilated to ID, there was only one report of a missing girl in the entire county.

  “Must be Hattie.” That from Jake, my chief deputy.

  Dispatch had gotten the call from the youngest Sanders boy, who’d found her when he and some girl snuck out here. There was a fresh spot of puke, just inside the crooked door, where one of them had lost it before they’d made their escape. I didn’t know if it was that or the dead stink that made Jake gag a little when we first came in. Normally I would’ve made a point to rib him about it, but not now. Not staring down at this.

  I unhooked the camera from my belt and started snapping pictures, angling out and then in, trying to get her from every side without slipping into the water next to her.

  “We don’t know it’s Hattie yet.” The sudden stone in my gut aside, we had to do this by the book.

  As soon as we’d walked in the door I’d called the crime lab up in the cities and requested a forensics team to tag and bag every last scrap of evidence. We had maybe an hour alone with her before they got here.

  “Who else could it be?” Jake moved around her head, watching his step as the boards groaned underneath his ex–defensive tackle weight. He leaned in closer and I could see the lawman had clicked on in his brain.

  “Can’t make a positive ID with her face like that, especially since she’s already bloating. No rings or jewelry. No visible tattoos.”

  “Where’s her purse? I’ve never met a girl that didn’t keep one glued to her hip.”

  “Taken, maybe.”

  “Hell of a place for a robbery/murder.”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself. ID first.” I crouched down next to her. With a gloved finger, I nudged her lip open and saw her teeth were intact. “Looks like we can go dental.”

  Jake checked the dress for pockets, didn’t find any.

  “Cause of death, stabbing, most likely.” I pulled up one of her hands and saw the knife wound either right at or just above her heart.

  “Most likely?” Jake snorted.

  I ignored him and lifted her arm up a little farther to reveal where the white skin on top met the red skin underneath.

  “See that?” I pointed to the line separating the colors. “That’s liver mortis. When the blood stops pumping it gets sucked down by gravity and pools at the lowest spots. That’s how you can tell if a body’s been moved, if the red isn’t on the bottom like it should be.”

  We checked a few other places on her. “Looks right. This is probably our murder scene.”

  I kept at the teaching line and focused on the body as just another set of remains. I’d seen hundreds, mostly in Vietnam, of course, and right now I would’ve even gone back there rather than think about who belonged to this wrecked corpse.

  I showed Jake the poke test.

  “If you poke the pale part of the skin and it flushes red, it’s been less than half a day.”

  “So the blood settles within twelve hours.”

  “Mm-hmm.” The skin under my gloved finger stayed white. There wasn’t any blood to show beneath it. So she’d been here since at least the early morning.

  The barn floor croaked a warning and we both eased back.

  “T
his place is going to fall in on our heads.”

  “I doubt it. It’s been like this for the last ten years at least.”

  I’d seen this barn almost every weekend during the summertime, from fishing opener to frost, leaning into the east bank of Lake Crosby like it was watching the sunnies dart under the surface. Seen was probably saying too much, though. Sure, I knew it was there, as good a landmark for fishing as the public beach on the exact opposite bank, but I’d never stopped to look at the old Erickson barn for who knew how long. That’s how it always was with things right next to you. Lars Erickson abandoned the building twenty years ago when he sold most of the lakeshore to the city and put up new barns next to his prefab house on the other side of the property, a good mile away. The only visitors this old girl had, besides the lake itself that lapped up during flood years, were teenage kids like the Sanders boy who wanted somewhere private to have sex and smoke joints.

  Just about all the place boasted was privacy. It was one big room, a twenty- by thirty-footer, with empty rafters except for the remains of a hay loft on the end that dipped into the lake. The double-wide doors opened on the opposite side and there was a hole in the wall where a window used to be.

  With the heavy rains and unseasonably early snowmelt this spring, the water had come up to cover a fourth of the floor and it was full of cigarette butts and empty rolling paper packets, along with something that might have been a ziplock bag or a condom.

  Jake followed my gaze.

  “Think our murder weapon is in there?”

  “The team will find it if it is. They’re thorough.” Some counties had their own crime labs, whole departments of analysts and investigators, but not us. This was misdemeanor country and most of our felonies were the usual drugs and domestic violence, nothing that justified the extra payroll. It had been over a year since I’d called the boys from Minneapolis out for anything.

  “If this isn’t Hattie, it’s a transient for sure. There’s no one else reported missing in five counties.”