Girls on Film

by Gregg Olsen

  “Maybe Dad wasn’t really dead,” Hayden says, the first of many stupid things that will pass from his lips as we sit there under a darkening sky.

  Even though it might seem fake to him, I truly mean it when I pat him on the knee to offer some comfort.

  “We’ll be fine,” I say, again nearly choking on the lie. I’ve counted the money in Dad’s wallet. Yes, there are credit cards. But I know better than to use them. Credit cards can be traced. There is also a duplicate of Mom’s latest driver’s license—which seems weird, but I think I know why it’s there.

  An elderly woman with candy-corn orange and yellow hair approaches with a bag of stale bread and starts to feed the seabirds. The commotion seems to distract my brother and once again I’m grateful for the diversion. Ever since we left the woods behind our house on Salmonberry, he’s offered up a mix of tears, sobs, and questions. None of which I really want to deal with.

  I watch the woman and remember when Mom and I did that very thing, not far from here. I remember how the number of birds grew, one by one, until they encircled us. I remember how we worried they’d attack us like some old horror movie I’d seen and couldn’t quite forget.

  Hayden tugs at me and I’m snapped out of the memory. “Are we going to call the police so they can get Dad? We can’t leave him there like he’s garbage”

  I am about to answer but then the woman smiles at us and I nod in her direction as though my little brother and I are just sitting watching the birds. I don’t know why anyone would want to feed those nasty birds.

  “We can’t,” I whisper loudly into my brother’s ear. “You know the rules”

  “We’re alone,” he says. “We can have new rules”

  Hayden is young. Dumb. Homeschooled. He can’t know what he’s saying. I have to remember that in order for us to survive we have to remember my mother’s number one rule: “Trust no one”

  “We need to go to the drug store,” I say, getting up and leading Hayden past the woman with the bag of stale bread. In a day or two, we might be eating that bread ourselves. Eighty-eight dollars won’t last long.

  “Can I get some gum?” he says.

  I nod. “Sure. But only one package. We’re on a budget”

  Port Orchard isn’t really such a bad town. The waterfront is pretty and the boats tucked into the marina make it resemble what I imagine New England might look like. That’s one part of the country we’ve never visited or lived in. Visited seems like a better word. Our family never stayed anywhere very long. We walk past the library and I eye it as a place that we might be able to stay for the night, but I let it pass. It is small and the librarian there is one of those command-and-control types that lets nothing slip by her. She’d never close up for the night with two bookworm stowaways inside.

  The drugstore clerk at Rite Aid watches me and my brother as we go inside. I’m going nowhere near the birth control section— the place where kids my age do most of their shoplifting. I’m heading toward the cosmetics section.

  “You go pick out your gum and meet me at the counter,” I say loudly to Hayden. I want the clerk to hear. I don’t know why exactly, but when you feel you are being watched you almost want to give in to it instead of fighting it. I saw someone on the news the other day say something about how she now assumes she’s being filmed by some hidden camera and acts accordingly. She said something about how she’s not paranoid, just resigned. That’s kind of how I feel right now.

  Hayden allows a tiny smile to cross his face. I wonder for a second if he’s a good mimic or he really is happy to get that gum. Our dad was just gutted like a deer and Hayden’s getting Bubble Yum as though nothing happened. At least, he’s acting that way. The members of our family have always been pretty good at acting, so I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised.

  The cosmetic section is all pink and purple. I haven’t put on much make-up at South Kitsap, my high school. I was going for a more natural look. Besides, I liked the idea of at least looking like myself, instead of a cartoon version of what a teenage girl would look like. I don’t have any real close girlfriends to trade make-up tips. Sure, I can watch them on YouTube, but it isn’t the same as being told what shade works best for you by someone who actually knows you.

  I pick out a box of Nice ’n Easy hair dye, Summer Blonde. I feel the weight of it and compare it to other boxes. It seems the heaviest. That’s good. It means there is more product inside. I’ve never had to do it myself, so I might need extra. I pick up another box, a darker color for Hayden. When reaching for a pair of scissors—I’ll need those too—I notice blood droplets still on my hand. I don’t care if I’m being watched on camera. I spit on my hand and rub the red off onto my jeans. My jeans. I realize right now that I have no other clothes. No underwear. Nothing. Everything I have is on my body now. I am an idiot. I should have grabbed more clothes for myself when I took that clean T-shirt for Hayden.

  The scissors are twelve dollars and the two boxes of hair dye come to twenty-two dollars. That’s thirty-four dollars. Add Hayden’s treat and I’ve depleted my cash by nearly half.

  I take the scissors and the hair dye to the counter and set them next to a box of hard-as-rocks Swedish Fish candy— reduced for quick sale. Right now it feels like I’m reduced for quick sale. I mean, I don’t know how much time I have. Or if I’m even right about what happened to our father or where our mother is. I take a breath. Hayden’s still deciding on gum. I know that he’ll buy the sour green apple because he always does, but I say nothing to hurry him.

  “Do you have any scissors on sale?” I ask the clerk.

  She’s a pretty woman about my mother’s age. She has dark hair and the whitest skin that I’ve ever seen. Living in Washington, that’s saying a lot. Her eyes are so blue I’m almost certain she’s wearing colored contacts. I even tilt my head to see if I can get to see the edge of the lens against her iris for that telltale ring. They really are that blue.

  “Over in crafts we have some that are on special,” she says in a fluting voice. “Not as good as those Fiskars, but how much cutting do you have to do anyway? School project?.

  “Yeah,” I say. Another lie. I lie to everyone all the time. I have since I can remember.

  “Here,” the clerk chirps. Her name tag indicates she’s called Christy. “Follow me”

  We walk down the aisle past Hayden and I give him a little nudge. “We need to get going soon”

  “Hard to decide”

  Christy winks at Hayden. “The watermelon is our best seller,” she says.

  He nods.

  “These are on special,” she continues, pointing to some scissors, “practically a door-buster price”

  “Practically,” I say.

  They aren’t as nice as the Fiskars, that’s for sure. But they are the right price—$4.95. I know I’ll regret it later, but when you only have $88, you have to make the tough call.

  Hayden meets me by the counter with his sour green apple gum and an Almond Joy candy bar.

  “I got something for you,” he says. His eyes meet mine and I see something in him that I haven’t since I pulled that knife out of our father’s chest. It’s a kind of anxiousness. A kind of dependency, a neediness, to just go along with me. He’s got no one else and he doesn’t want to lose me.

  Almond Joys are my favorite candy bar and he knows it. I don’t think we can afford it, but our father is dead, our mother is missing, and I could use a little joy.

  Even if it is only a candy bar.

  We pay and head back toward the marina. The steady drumbeat in my head: Dad murdered, Mom gone, killer gone.

  “Where are we going to sleep tonight?” Hayden asks.

  The answer comes to me then and I point over at the ferry.

  “On the boat, Hayden. That’s where we’re going to sleep”

  My father left us the code word. I have his wallet, cellphone, and a little cash. Very little. I know better than to use the phone. I feel a little stupid that I thought of it just th
en. I fish the phone out of my backpack as Hayden and I make our way to take a seat on the foot ferry from Port Orchard, across the inlet to Bremerton and the ferry landing. I look around to make sure no one is watching. I take out the cellphone battery just to be sure. I know about GPS and I know that if anyone is trying to find us, they will probably see if the phone pings any cell towers. On my dad’s key ring is a small brass key. I know that the next morning will be our only chance to use it.

  Hayden whimpers about something, but I don’t listen to him. At least he isn’t crying. I can’t deal with tears right now. We have to figure out how we’re going to survive and find our mother.

  If the man we’ve been running from all our lives hasn’t killed her.

  I chose the ferry for our first night for no real good reason. Just because I saw it and it seemed like we could hide there. Also, because we’re traveling eastbound to Seattle there is no ticket needed. Nothing to deplete our cash. We barely have enough money for the worst motel in Bremerton for one night. The worst motel. Again, that’s saying a lot.

  I close my eyes to shut out the undulating noise of the foot ferry’s old motor, my brother’s whining, and the two other passengers, who seem to be planning their date night in Seattle. I hope that if I live long enough to have a real boyfriend we don’t have to be so stupid as to look at a newspaper for ideas on what to do on a date. I concentrate on what I saw at the house, our kitchen. Dad’s dead eyes stare at me. He was on his back. A chair had been moved from the round table. A struggle? But not much of one. The knife was not one of ours. It was a hunting knife. We don’t hunt. We’re the hunted. Whoever came to our house threatened Dad. There were papers spread on the kitchen table. Why hadn’t I taken a moment to see what they were? I answer my own question. Because I was scared. That’s why. Mom’s purse was on the counter. Why didn’t I grab that.

  And, really, why didn’t she take it with her.

  I THINK OF HER JUST THEN. She is sitting in the kitchen looking at something, some papers. She looks upset, but I breeze past her to get something from the refrigerator. I’m late for school and I don’t want to miss the bus, no matter how lame taking it to school is. Dad is already gone for the day. Mom says my name, but I don’t even turn to say goodbye. I just don’t want to be late for that stupid bus.

  Mom has blond hair. Her eyes are blue, the one constant in her appearance. Her name is Candace. A dumb name, I think. She goes by the nickname Candy. At the time we selected our new names, I didn’t like what she’d picked. Candy seemed like the name of a trailer-park mom. My mother isn’t trailer park. Not at all. She is strong and beautiful. She is pretty—no matter what color hair she has. I never looked like her, even when we wore Mommy and Me outfits. I don’t hate her because she is beautiful. I only wish that I had more of her in me.

  We had traditions that were unlike those of any of the other kids that I knew at school, my only window to what real people did. If I didn’t go to school, I would have had a completely warped view on family life. Maybe everyone was like the Kardashians in one way or another and I just didn’t know it? I could almost see the look on Dad’s face when it was time to leave whenever we were on the run. His anxiety.

  The way his eyes narrowed and sweat collected at his temples and he’d withdraw a little. I knew that he was worried that we’d be found. We called the nights we left a place to move on “the switch”. We always had pizza while we did it. The person who ate the last slice got to hold the glass bowl with a bunch of names of towns that were written by Mom on small, fortune-cookie-sized pieces of paper.

  “Why do we go to so much trouble?” I once asked.

  Dad looked at me quizzically. “How do you mean?.

  “We could just pick a town. We don’t have to make a game of it”

  “There’s security in randomness,” he said.

  My mother nodded. I think her name was Caroline that time. She always took a C name.

  “If we are thinking of a place, making plans for a place, then it can be found out. If we are random, no one can know where we’re going, honey. You know, because even we don’t know until we make the run”

  It sort of made sense, in the way that parents sometimes can make the most ridiculous things seem normal. Like Santa Claus. Like the fact that only old people die. That all dogs go to heaven. Speaking with authority is something practiced over time. I need some of that strength right now. I have a little brother and a missing mother to worry about.

  Dad’s face comes to me just then. I remember the first time I saw it. He’d lived in the apartment next door. We’d never talked to anyone. Mom wouldn’t. But he was always there in the hall, smiling. Waving. Being nice. I was too young to know that he was interested in Mom. I didn’t know that when she let him inside her life she was taking a huge risk. Not the same kind of a risk that came with the man we’d been running from. But a risk of the heart. I think I loved him as much as she did. He was our lifeline to the outside world. Never judgemental at the craziness that Mom created out of a dark necessity.

  THE FOOT FERRY’S ENGINE RUMBLES. A woman with glossy black hair and blusher laid down in stripes sits next to me and sets down her bag. It is one of those oversized quilted bags with the delicate print of nautical emblems forming a border—fishermen’s knots, seahorses, life preservers. Nantucket, grandma-style. The bag is unzipped and its opening is like a gaping mouth of a bass with a fat wallet between its jaws. She’s exaggerating her interest in a man, a few years older with a splash of silver on his sideburns, who’s sitting next to her in the way that suggests they really don’t know each other. At least not yet. I watch Nantucket carefully from the corner of my eye. I turn to Hayden and pretend to talk to him, but with the rumble of the boat, I don’t need to use real words. I know what I’m about to do is wrong, but in the scheme of things of what I will come to do to survive, it is small. Tiny. A puff of air. I reach down and in one sweeping motion I take her wallet. Still pretending to talk to my little brother, I put the wallet between my legs and open it, fishing for the folded paper of money.

  Success! I pull five bills from the wallet. I don’t even look to see if they are larger than ones, though inside, I’m praying that they are. Nantucket looks over at me and my heart sinks like a deep-sea diver’s weights. I’m in trouble. She must have seen me do it. I don’t know what I’ll say to wriggle out of it. My heart starts racing and I prepare my excuse, my professed sorrow. I’m on drugs. I’m a klepto. My brother made me do it. Not the true reason—that I need the money because my dad is dead and Mom is probably being held captive by some monster.

  Her look, thankfully, is only a glance in my direction.

  She turns to the man and I drop the wallet back into her purse. My brow is soaking and I try to shake off my anxiety. I did it. I got the money. The boat docks and Hayden and I are fifty-five dollars richer.

  But our dad is still dead.

  And Mom is missing.

  I can’t stop thinking of her and him. I can’t let go of the images of what happened to him and what might be happening to her. I want to go somewhere and scream at the top of my lungs. Words that would indicate how unfair things are. How broken I feel. Words that could convey how my being born into this life was unjust, unwarranted. Mean. I want to be the girl who laughs. The girl who has a boyfriend. I want to be the girl who tells others that she hates her mother even though she doesn’t. But I am none of those things. I don’t think I ever will be. I am trapped by circumstances, but I vow that I will never be a victim.

  I’ll leave victim status to him.

  Chapter Three

  Cash: $114.05.

  Food: Green apple bubble gum, Almond Joy.

  Shelter: None.

  Weapons: Crappy scissors.

  Plan: Still thinking.

  IT IS A LITTLE AFTER eight p.m. when we get on the Bremerton to Seattle run, a crossing that takes about an hour. The boat is the Walla Walla, a name that I think fits the circumstances of my life right now. Walla Walla
is also the city where the state’s toughest prison is located. Hayden always thought the name was funny, but he’s not laughing now. Neither am I. After making a stop in the women’s bathroom, I give Hayden some quarters for a Kit Kat from one of the vending machines. I don’t care that he hasn’t eaten a decent meal since lunch. I have other things to think about. The ferry will cross back to Bremerton and then back to Seattle, then back to Bremerton, with a final return to Seattle well past midnight. I study the routine of the ferry’s crew. I know they won’t kick us off, because we’re behaving. We take a seat next to a sepia-toned photograph of Princess Angeline, Chief Seattle’s daughter: born in 1820, died in 1896. She has skin weathered like silver driftwood and her eyes are wide and light in color—like amber beach glass, I think. She’s watching me as I plot my way to the end of the night. I know some people believe that her spirit still walks the Seattle waterfront, her ancestral home taken over by white settlers more than a hundred and fifty years ago. Those who see her wandering the streets closest to Elliott Bay insist that she always smiles knowingly at them, then shakes her head and disappears into thin air. I don’t know if I believe any of that, but I have no doubt that if she were on the ferry, I’d ask her how she does it.

  I want nothing more than to disappear right now.

  My brother and I are seated in a booth near the bathrooms. These are farther away from the snack bar and don’t get as much foot traffic as those next to the areas where the majority of ferry passengers congregate. I watch a crewman go into the men’s room with a bucket in one hand and cleaning supplies in the other. I know that inside the door is a sheet of paper that indicates when the restroom was last cleaned.

  “Say something, Rylee,” Hayden says. Chocolate marks his upper lip, but I say nothing about it. I don’t point. I don’t kid him for looking like a pig.