by Shaun Plair
“Right in here,” he said as we reached the door to his office. He held the door open for me to enter before him.
Two middle-aged men wearing long-sleeved blue shirts and black pants stood inside, their hands on clunky belts that wrapped their waists. Catching sight of the silver badges and patches that decorated their shirts, my sight blurred with tears and I lost my breath. My feet stopped where they were, and my hands rose to my temples.
“Whoa, what’s going on?”
“Ana,” Mr. Ludlowe announced, “these gentlemen are here to take you home.”
The barely comprehendible words fell through my teeth. “What do you mean, home?”
“It’s all right, Ana. Dr. Gomez called us, and she told us you came to her, and what’s been going on. We’re going to get in touch with your father and get you home. We need you to call him now.” Mr. Ludlowe delivered the tray of words, too hot for me to take from him.
“I can’t …”
“Ana, you’re just going to need to cooperate with us now.”
“No!” I screamed a more passionate scream than I’d ever screamed. “You don’t understand!”
“Ana, calm down now,” Mr. Ludlowe called out. I was backed up toward the door, holding the straps of my book bag.
“Please,” I shouted, “just give me more time.”
One of the officers grabbed hold of my arm, and it stung.
“No!” I slapped the man’s arm from mine. “I’m not leaving, I can’t!”
He reached for me again as I tried to turn to leave, catching me by a strap on my bag. I fought to get away from him. I flailed my arms, and shouted and cried. I slid out of my backpack to get loose from the officer’s hold, only for him to grab me on my shoulder and grip my wrist.
“Find her phone,” he ordered the other officer.
“We’ve got ‘Dad’ and ‘home,’” the second officer said a moment later.
“That’s all we need,” his partner blurted over my yelling. “Call him.”
The officer was now holding both my arms. I tried violently to wring my arms loose, shaking my head in protest. “No, please!”
“Hello sir, is this the parent of Ana Smith?”
I stopped struggling. I watched Mr. Ludlowe’s face wrinkle as my father responded. My way out. A simple name change, and Dad wouldn’t be able to identify me.
“Check her legal ID just in case,” said the officer restricting me.
The other officer still had my wallet in his hand from when he’d searched my book bag for the phone. He opened it, turned it sideways, and I knew he was reading my driver’s license. He looked at me, grinning in triumph, then looked at Mr. Ludlowe. “Try Sydney Collins.”
“Sorry for the confusion, sir, but are you related to a Sydney Collins?”
“No,” I cried, but it was almost a whisper. I hung my head as far down as it would go because there was nothing left in me to help me keep it up. Mr. Ludlowe nodded to the officers.
“Yes, Mr. Collins, we have some information regarding your daughter.…”
I flung out my arms and tried to plunge past the officer, was rewarded with my hands being cuffed, and all I could do was watch the second, heavier officer pack my things back into my bag. Within the minute, Mr. Ludlowe had told Dad about everything I’d done, the lies I’d told them. He told the officers to take me to the police station, where my father would meet us before nightfall.
The second, heavier officer left first through the door, my bag in hand. The second pulled me through ahead of him, guiding me from behind.
“I’m sorry about all this,” Mr. Ludlowe called from behind. His voice shook, yet I didn’t know if he spoke to the officers, or to me. I was choking on tears as I was brought through the door. Seeing the roaring waves of students swarming the hallway, I knew they would all finally get to meet Sydney.
Everything was over: the new hair, the new place, none of it would let me escape the miserable fate of Sydney Collins. I would be thrown back to a dad who didn’t want me and couldn’t father me. I’d be taken from the only people I’d actually learned to have fun with since Mom. From the only feeling that could make me forget the dark ones.
“Oh my God, Ana?” I heard from the mass of students who’d gathered in the hallway. Kylie was watching me, wide-eyed and open-jawed. I shook my head at her, coughed on another sob, and let my head fall so I wasn’t facing her. “What happened?” I heard her call from behind me.
“Come on,” the officer that held me called out, and he sped to pass the officer that held my bag. We were almost out of the one-way hallway of witnesses that now watched and gasped at the spectacle I’d created. I could see the door to leave the school.
We were almost out of it; it was almost over.
“Ana!” The last and only voice I wanted to hear.
Eric pushed through the flooding students and marched toward me, not slowing until he collided with an English teacher who caught him and held him, grasping him at his chest.
“What are they doing? Stop!” Eric roared in a deep, infuriated roar at the sight of the officers leading me from the building.
“Calm down,” I heard the teacher say, “get back with your class, now!”
“Ana!” Eric called once more. The officers had almost gotten me through the front doors, and I couldn’t speak. So I bit my lip, shook my head through blistering tears.
“Wait. No, Ana!” he called, blinking at the gloss that covered his eyes. The first officer opened the door to leave.
“Ana!”
Chapter 18
“You put yourself in a very dangerous situation.”
Officer Sams was an older, plump man, and he spouted his words through a black goatee sprinkled gray. “You’re lucky to be alive, and to have someone who cares about you. And you better feel lucky there was no one to press trespassing charges for squatting in that old house.” He stood with his hands on his hips, “I’m glad we found you when we did.”
I nodded, and sniffed.
“Your father called again. He’ll be here within the hour.”
I looked around the misery I sat in, solidifying that the departure of Ana would mean a departure from this life—the girls, the school, privacy. Eric. Even Eric, the one person who made me be Sydney when no one else knew she existed, would disappear just as soon as Ana did.
And with that I knew Ana, along with everything I loved about her, was gone forever.
I looked at the floor. I had failed myself. I didn’t think it through, didn’t plan enough. And worse, I had gotten attached to something, hard. Eric was the single person I couldn’t keep at a distance. And now, sure enough, he and everything that made me happy were being removed from my life.
Feeling the emptiness surround me and enter me, another strike of the failure shook me like lightning. Regret and pain, remorse and embarrassment, couldn’t I have found a way out? So much for strong as stone. I was a failed runaway sitting in a room at a police station with a plump Officer Sams who thought he knew me, waiting for Daddy to come pick me up. Daddy whose phone calls I had avoided. Daddy whose money wouldn’t come. Daddy who didn’t care enough to send the police for me himself.
Dad was there at the door, struggling to push it open.
“She’s right in here, sir,” the wrinkled woman that let him in assured him. I watched my father’s sad image stumble in, ripped t-shirt too big, painting boots untied, faded jeans sporting the same ketchup stain they sported when I left him sitting on the living room couch two weeks ago. I hid my face in my hands, and the blackness they covered me with gave the best feeling I’d felt all day.
“For Christ’s sake, Sydney,” rolled out of him. He let the words take all of his breath with them.
Then Officer Sams spoke. “All of her belongings were collected and brought to the station, we’ll have someone bring them out for you.”
“What on earth got into you? Since when do you pull something like this? And now?”
I crossed my arms in
to my chest and looked away from my father as the officer pulled the room’s door open, and held it wide. “Ah, Mr. Collins … if you all can head outside we’ll get you your things.”
I walked behind Dad through a short hallway and past the front desk until we exited the police station. His pants slid down his waist, and he reached to pull them up, only for them to fall again. The thought of going back to live with him brought tears to my eyes and I choked on a gag that rose in my throat.
Outside, a younger, less plump officer met us in the front of the station by Dad’s taxicab. The officer carried two trash bags that held most of my things in one hand, and the other hand rolled my suitcase violently over the pavement. We stood in front of the mac-and-cheese yellow cab in which a brown-skinned driver sat impatiently in the front.
“Here you are,” the officer said, dropping my bags off at Dad’s and my feet.
“I cannot believe this, Sydney,” I heard Dad mumble. He kept mumbling while he threw the bags in the trunk of the cab and shut the door hard.
After I watched him blame me and scold me and slam the trunk’s door in front of me, I stood outside holding one of my elbows, tears fumbling through my eyelids.
Dad opened the backseat door, just slightly, to demand, “Get in, Sydney!”
I wanted to protest but there was nothing to do but get in. So I pulled the door open wider and sat inside, giving up on keeping my sobs silent. Dad shut the door hard behind me before charging to the passenger seat door and thrusting himself inside.
“It’s 2200 Hampton Avenue,” he coughed at the cab driver. The driver glanced back at me, but he was eager to leave and quick to crank the ignition. I watched the police station leave our sight as we drove away, left Ana in her grave.
Once my sobs quieted, the rest of the brisk ride to the hotel was silent. Nothing to say. The cab driver must have felt too awkward for small talk. Soon after we left the few streets of Greensboro I knew behind, we went a little farther before the driver pulled in front of the Marriot. Before, I would have been excited to stay in such a nice place with my parents. But this time I cringed with every rotation the car’s slowing tires took toward the front entrance.
Dad paid the driver and stepped out of the cab. His pants slipped from his waist, so one of his hands had to hold them up in the back.
Silence. The cab driver stepped out to open the trunk. He and my father unloaded our bags, quickly, and the driver nodded to us before getting back in the car.
More silence.
“You will be in room 203,” the concierge said with a smile to Dad after we’d entered the hotel and checked in. Dad didn’t say thank you. He picked up the bags he had dropped by his sides. Onto and off the elevator, then down an empty hallway.
Silent still.
And then, he opened the door to our room. One bedroom and a pullout couch. A few steps into the room, and I could see a microwave and a miniature fridge to our right, and nice marble counters to complement them, as well as the large flat screen in front of the couch.
It was the typical type of hotel we’d have stayed in while on one of our various vacations. To Orlando, or Daytona Beach, or Savannah. Except Dad wasn’t hopping on the couch and tossing his feet onto the coffee table, patting the seat cushion beside him for me to join him. Instead he thrust my bags to the floor, slammed the hotel key onto a table and kept his back to me.
“Goddammit, Sydney. What were you thinking?”
The first words out of him, and they were sour. I hadn’t seen him this animated in months.
“How many times did I call? How many times did you ignore me? Huh? I trusted you to go, I—I talked to the woman!”
“Don’t act like you even care, Dad!” I couldn’t believe how he accused me, yelled at me. “I had to get away from you!”
“Sydney, I know this time is hard. I know. But that is no excuse to go running away, living in an old abandoned home on the side of the street? Jesus, Sydney.”
“Oh but this hard time excuses neglecting me? Quitting your job, quitting life?”
“I’m human, Sydney, I grieve.”
“So do I, Dad, but I’m sixteen! And being in that abandoned house, when I didn’t know a single person, draining all my savings because you refused to take care of me, I felt more secure than I ever have since Mom died.”
“What?”
“Yeah, Dad. You screwed up, not me.”
“Sydney, don’t talk to me like that.”
“Give me a reason to respect you, and I will.”
“Close your mouth, Sydney!”
It didn’t matter. I was hushed by my own anger. I moved to the couch to the left of me and sat, knees curled into my chest on the stiff couch in the corner. My shoulders shook as my tired eyes pushed out the last tears they had left. I heard Dad sighing from behind me. Crying.
“How can you say these things to me, I always take care of you.”
“I can’t live with you, Dad, I can’t.”
A long silence. “I know it won’t be the same without your mom.…”
“It could be okay if you tried.”
“Syd, it’s so …” The last word wouldn’t come out of him, and I turned to see him watching me watch him. I knew he was ashamed, but nowhere near as ashamed as I. So we sat in the moment, tears and ice and shame.
He walked into the bedroom then and shut its door behind him, leaving me to turn my face into the crease of the bottom sofa cushion. But after a few minutes, maybe, he appeared in the doorway again.
“The bedroom’s yours.”
I shook my head, but he swung the door open and waited. So I slid my feet to the floor, walked past him and into the bedroom, when he closed the door.
The king bed inside was too big and too neat, but I laid on it anyway, clenching my stomach. I could hear my father sob in the next room. I curled into the same position I’d had on the couch and let the tears drain out of me until my eyes ran out of them. I hugged the sores in my stomach, until eventually their pain weakened. Before I drifted into sleep, my phone buzzed from inside the back right pocket of my jeans. And when I opened to check, I had five messages.
From Kylie:
Omg, are you okay Ana?
From Brit:
Call when you can!
From Eric:
Is there anything I can do?
I feel sick
Ana, please call me
But what would I tell them? I wasn’t Ana anymore; the person they would miss was gone. Except Eric. He might miss Sydney, even though he didn’t know her real name. But I couldn’t speak to him yet. I couldn’t face that I might never see him again.
* * *
Dad entered the bedroom at the same time as a thick ray of sunlight slid through the tan curtains covering the bedroom window. He held a brown paper bag in his hand.
I stretched, and blinked myself awake to watch him set the bag on the nightstand. He wore the same t-shirt and pants from the night before.
“Morning, Syd,” he said.
I lay still on the bed, and he sat too close to me.
“I got you a croissant, from Dunkin,” he informed me, moving the bag from the nightstand to a spot beside me on the bed. I looked at the clock: 6:30 a.m.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he added.
“Thanks.”
He bit into a plain bagel with butter before flushing it through him with a two-sugar two-cream sip of coffee. I watched him chewing, trying to feel distaste. But I was too tired. I sat up and let my feet fall to the floor next to him, and reached into the thin brown bag to pull out my favorite breakfast.
“Sydney, I need you to know,” he paused to swallow, “that I hear you.”
I bit into my croissant and chewed, not moving, not responding.
“I know I messed up. And I should’ve been there for you, and I never wanted to make you feel so …” His lips quivered and he wiped a hand over his face. “I didn’t realize things got so bad for you.” The last words he spoke cracked, and when I
turned to watch him he was shaking tears from his eyes. He exhaled abruptly, and his eyes followed a line of ceiling tiles to the corner of the room. Finally, with a nod, he said, “This whole thing has really shaken me up Syd. But I hear you now.”
“I am sorry, Dad.” I said, and for the first time, I was. Watching him crumble, he looked too much like what I felt like. I dropped my head at the reminder, and a few moments went by like that. Until Dad sniffed, wiped his nose.
“We must need some change then, right?” he said.
“I … guess.”
“How do you feel about Virginia?”
“What do you mean?”
“ADL is opening up a branch in Richmond. They’re taking anybody qualified and willing to relocate, and seeing as I’d taken so much time off, my manager thought this might be a good way for me to get back into things … with a new start, of sorts.”
I stiffened my back and neck and planted my feet on the carpet, thinking of the beautiful, tainted memories of the house I grew up in, in Georgia. Moving away, leaving, would mean never walking up the steps to my room, never seeing Mom’s fridge, never dirtying the white carpets again. And this time, it’d be with Dad.
And running water and electricity.
I looked at my sore-eyed and beaten father sitting next to me, struggling to keep his posture from slumping while he sipped his coffee.
“Virginia could be nice.”
“You’d have to do some catching up at school.”
“I can do that. When do you want to move?”
“Well, I’m ready when you are. There’s a pretty nice place, a co-worker suggested it to me. We can afford it. It’d be much smaller, but, it’s in a good area, with a good school.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
“All right, well. You ready to head out?” Dad wiped his coffee-browned lips with a tan napkin, standing from where he sat next to me. I looked up to him.
“Can we make a stop on the way?”
Chapter 19
