Girls on Film

by Gregg Olsen

  My stepfather was a good guy. Decent. Yet still a mystery. Why would he take us on? There had to be something wrong with a man who would carry such a burden as to live on the run with my mother, me, and later, Hayden. I loved him in the way that one loves a trusted pet, one who might bite you, so you never get too close. He was solid. Caring. But he wasn’t my dad. He was Hayden’s dad. My stomach roils as I think of him nearly pinned to the floor of the kitchen with a knife, like some moth specimen in Biology class at South Kitsap. I want to cry for him right now. He deserves that much, but I can’t.

  I can’t think of anything but my bio dad and who he was. He was not dog-tag material. He was not the hero. Far, far from that. He was the villain, the worst, most despicable kind ever. The feeling that overtakes me right now as Hayden sleeps in the seat next to me is a mix of sadness, anger, and confusion. If I’m not the daughter of a hero, but the daughter of a killer, then what kind of person am I? Hayden stirs and I feel the gun once more and look out the window as the forest blurs into one big smear of green.

  Chapter Six

  Cash: $30.00.

  Food: Sandwiches (stale) on the train.

  Shelter: The train, I guess.

  Weapons: Gun, cheap scissors.

  Plan: Find Mom and kill Dad.

  A LITTLE MORE THAN AN hour later the bus from Spokane drops us in downtown Wallace, a historic mining town that looks movie-set ready. In fact, it had been the location of a movie about a volcano that decimated the town. Mom likes disaster movies. My life right now is a disaster, so it’s fitting. It’s late in the morning, about ten a.m. and I feel grungy from wearing the same clothes for more than two days. My stomach grumbles and I press the heel of my palm into my belly to quiet things down. I wait for Hayden outside the bus station’s bathroom, making sure that no one goes in and no one comes out. I need to keep track of my brother.

  A woman with kind brown eyes working at the snack bar gives directions to our aunt’s place from an address provided by my thinking-ahead mother. We only have to make two lefts and a right. It can’t be that bad. I thank the woman and try t.

  commit the directions to memory.

  “It’s quite a ways,” she says. “You need a ride?.

  I see the look on her face and I know that she’s wary and concerned. She watched me linger by the bathroom and she knows my brother and I are traveling alone. I don’t want to stand out, but with my overly blond, slept-in hair, I imagine that blending in isn’t something that is even remotely possible. As far as Idaho goes, I bet I look pretty edgy.

  “We’ll manage,” I say, dodging her direct gaze as I peel a Historic Mining Town map from the rack by the bathroom. Her simple directions are now eluding me. I have too much to think about right now.

  “Hey,” Hayden says, coming out of the bathroom, his zipper in need of a pull, “I want a ride”

  I give him a look. “No. No we don’t. We’re fine.” I point to his zipper and his face turns a scary shade of crimson. It shuts him up, and that’s good.

  “Can I call someone for you?” the concerned woman asks.

  I shake my head. “Ah, no. Our dad’s friend is supposed to pick us up.” I say friend because I think it’ll stop her from asking who our father is. We don’t have one. Hayden doesn’t for sure. And I do, but I intend to kill him.

  “I see,” she says.

  Now I know by the tone in her voice that what she really sees are two strangers, young strangers, in town. She sees trouble.

  And so do I. My guard is up. Way up. I feel like I’m an armadillo and I’ve rolled up into a little ball and I’m not going to let anyone inside. Not even a crack.

  “Hey,” I say, looking out in front at a rusted white Bronco parked across the street. “Dad’s friend is here”

  I pull Hayden for the door, because I’m pretty sure he’s stupid enough to say that Dad—his dad—is in the Port Orchard morgue on a table with a forensic pathologist wielding a bone saw.

  But he isn’t as stupid as I think.

  “That was close,” he says. “Is there a Starbucks?.

  I sigh. “You’re seven and you don’t drink coffee. And no there isn’t. Look around you. We’re in Idaho, for God’s sake, Hayden”

  He doesn’t care. “I’m hungry”

  “You’re always hungry.” I fish a granola bar from the bottom of the purse and hand it to him. I take another for myself. As we crunch away on the sidewalk in front of the station, I am reminded of the small town where we lived when I first had the feeling, finally caught on that Mom and I weren’t like others in the neighborhood.

  I think I was three, maybe four. A neighbor lady came to our door. Behind her was a pretty little girl with green eyes and red hair. She was shy, sweet. Although I was drawn to her, I hung back behind my mother’s legs.

  The woman said something about her daughter wanting to play with me. Just the words made me feel excited. I was always alone. Me and Mom.

  “I’m sorry,” Mom said, “but my little girl is sick. She’s got the chicken pox. Very contagious”

  I didn’t know I was sick.

  After the lady and the girl left, Mom must have noticed my confusion.

  “We can’t trust anyone, honey. No one. Do you understand?.

  I didn’t understand of course. All I knew was that I wanted to play with that girl, but Mom said I couldn’t. Later, not long after, I’d learn that we were never to get close to anyone. I never did. Not until I was named Rylee. I met a boy at South Kitsap. If I’d been a normal girl, with a normal family, I think things might have gone further. We never really went out. I couldn’t do that. We talked in the cafeteria or on the track. He was a runner too. He has the most beautiful eyes and a way of making me feel special. Just with a look.

  I know that I can never call Caleb. I can never see him again. I wonder what he’s thinking right now. If I’m on his mind the same way he’s on mine.

  I think about that time we really talked for the first time.

  The time his hand touched mine.

  CALEB HUNTER WAS WEARING A T-shirt with a mangled cross that stretched across his chest. I wondered if he was being ironic or if I should say I was a Christian too. I’ve been Catholic and even Jewish, but only in name. I’m not sure what I am when it comes to the category of faith. But I was sure that I liked Caleb Hunter.

  “This school sucks,” he said, his eyes looking right into mine. It was a searing look, and for some reason, I turned away.

  Even with the most innocuous statements or questions, Caleb seemed to have that kind of effect on me. Like he was reading me. I allow myself the fantasy that he liked what he was reading, but I’m not a good judge of what others really think. I assume most are as deceptive as I’ve been.

  “Yeah,” I said, agreeing with him. Actually, I was glad to be there. It beat my prison sentence of sitting at the kitchen table-classroom with Mom and Hayden.

  It was the first time we had really talked. It started with the trivial, about how we didn’t like someone—the poseurs that make up most of the upper class—and how we couldn’t wait to get a driver’s license. He said he was getting his any time now.

  “I’m jealous,” I said.

  “Yeah. I can get out of here and leave this town and my dad and his girlfriend and never, ever come back”

  I know that his mother had died that summer. I could see the despair in the way he hung his shoulders as he sat in front of me in Washington State History.

  “I’m sorry about your mom,” I said, allowing my eyes to look into his for as long as I could manage, without being weird.

  “Thanks. Dad doesn’t want to talk about it and, of course, that bitch he’s about to marry doesn’t either”

  I didn’t know what else to say, so his words hung in the air.

  “Rylee, have you ever just wanted to disappear?” he finally asked.

  I had to lie again. The truth is that I’ve been disappearing all of my life. I was finally beginning to feel like I had a home
. Part of that was the boy I was sitting with now.

  “Totally,” I said.

  He looked toward the window and out to the parking lot. “Sometimes I just want to fill up my backpack and leave. For good.” He hesitated a little, looking at me. Measuring my response to his words.

  I merely nodded.

  “If you could go anywhere,” he said, “do you know where it would be?.

  I’ve been a lot of places, but nowhere that I wanted to be.

  “Paris,” I said. “But not the one in Texas. The one in France”

  He broke out in a big smile. “I figured that out”

  The bell rang and we both got up. As we parted in the direction of our classes—he was in Algebra, I was in Computer Science—his hand touched mine.

  It sent a volt of energy through me. I didn’t know if it was on purpose or if it had been an accident.

  As my little brother and I make our way through the streets of Wallace, I can still feel Caleb’s touch on the back of my hand.

  GINGER RHODES, OUR NEWFOUND AUNT, lives at 244 Moon Gulch Road. The sun shines in our faces and Hayden and I squint in the direction we must go. I still don’t know what I’ll say to Aunt Ginger, or if I can even call her that with a straight face. Or without bursting out in tears. I wonder if she knows about me and Hayden. After all, we didn’t know about her.

  We stand outside like garden statues looking at her house, a gray and blue two-story tucked into the base of a ridge that runs down from the mountains. Old. But in decent repair. I’m grateful that it isn’t a leaky old mobile home. I’d seen an episode of Dr. Phil in which some kids went looking for their birth parents only to find out they were living in a rusted out trailer on some riverbank somewhere. The kids on the show had decided that their adoptive parents weren’t so bad after all. Sometimes you have to be grateful for what you have. I have nothing but Hayden, and I know that I should continue to find more good things about that.

  I take a deep breath and knock on the bright, yield-signyellow door. I feel scared and nervous.

  The yellow door opens and a face that looks like mine, one that looks like my mother, appears through the wire mesh of the screen door.

  “Yes?” the woman behind the door says. She is about my height. Her hair is long, not Mormon-sister-wife long, but close to that. A thick strand hangs over her shoulder. She is wearing jeans and a Wallace High School T-shirt.

  “Are you Ginger Rhodes?.

  She nods, looking us over. “Yes. Are you here about the daffodil bulbs?.

  I swallow hard. “No. I think you’re my aunt.” I pull Hayden closer. “Our aunt”

  Her light blue eyes narrow and I watch her eyelids flutter. She looks around the street, her yard, the driveway, and opens the screen door, tentatively. She licks her lips nervously before she says anything.

  “Hurry inside,” she says as the screen door slams, and the yellow front door shuts behind us.

  We’re not there to deliver daffodil bulbs, but rather some very bad news. Aunt Ginger, if this is her, knows it. Aunt Ginger knows us.

  The hallway is dark, a bright light from the windows on the other side of the house pools at our feet.

  “Where is Courtney?” she asks, her voice spiking with emotion.

  “He’s got her,” I say, testing her, this new aunt of mine.

  And then she does something that I couldn’t have imagined, something that no one other than my parents has ever done. Aunt Ginger hugs me. I don’t know why for sure, but tears start streaming down my face. I don’t know who this lady is, not really. But I melt into her arms and I cry harder than I ever have since the ordeal began. I can cry loudly because I feel that someone cares and that even though I’m in a stranger’s place, I’m with family. I drop my purse to the floor. Hayden awkwardly puts his arms around me too and he cries. She cries. It is not a reunion of joy, but something completely different. We are a sobbing mass of pain, loss and fear.

  “He took your mother,” Aunt Ginger says. “Didn’t he?.

  I can barely speak. My throat feels as if someone is squeezing it shut. “Yes, and he killed our father,” I finally say, the words making me cry even harder.

  I don’t say Hayden’s father, because my little brother has enough to deal with. He doesn’t need to know that his world has been shifted on its axis and is never going to spin the way it did before we found that hunting knife in our father’s chest. Hayden’s father’s chest.

  Aunt Ginger pulls away a little. She doesn’t let go completely, but just enough so that she can see our faces.

  “Is Courtney dead too?.

  It is weird to hear her say my mother’s name. Her real name. Not the one engraved on the dog tags around my neck. My mother’s name wasn’t Ginger. Ginger is my aunt.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t think so”

  “The creep took her,” Hayden adds.

  Aunt Ginger runs her hand over her weeping eyes and leads us away from the door, but not without turning the deadbolt first, and hooking up a brass-colored chain. She’s taking no chances. She directs us into the living room, but not without first shutting the curtains that run along the entire expanse of windows. Like a floodlight burned out, the pool of sunlight on the floor is gone. We sit on the sofa, the TV on mute. A coffee cup is on the table. Aunt Ginger was living her life, doing what she always did, and we just walked in and took it over. While she is obviously distressed, she didn’t react as I would have expected.

  She wasn’t shocked.

  She fumbles around, trying to think of the right thing to say. I expect that there is no right thing. We’ve been kept away from her for our entire lives and she went along with it. I want to be kind. I want to think that all of this has been for our own good, but I’m not sure. The betrayal is deep, and apparently, shared.

  “The last time I saw your mother . . . last Labor Day . . . she told me that she thought you’d have to move again soon. She thought he was closing in on her. I told her that she was paranoid, you know, more paranoid than cautious. I told her to stay put. I told her that his threats would never evolve into reality. I . . . .

  Aunt Ginger is shaking as she speaks. She’s falling apart. I don’t want to confront her right now, but really? Really? Did she see our mother last Labor Day? Did this aunt who we never knew existed up until twenty-four hours ago stay in touch with our mother, and nobody bothered to tell us.

  “Are you really our mom’s sister?” says Hayden, whose mind is obviously going to the same place as mine.

  She manages a smile and directs it at him. “Older sister. Yes, I am”

  “Do we have any other aunts and uncles?” he asks. “Do we have cousins?.

  Aunt Ginger wipes her eyes again, leaving a trail of mascara on her sleeve. “No other aunts and uncles. But yes, I have a son and daughter,” she says. “I don’t see them . . . often”

  Again, I’m stunned. At this point, however, I wonder why I should be? My mother lied about her sister. She lied about my real father, for years. Why not lie about everyone else in the family.

  Aunt Ginger offers us food and drink. Hayden takes her up on the offer, but I don’t.

  “Aunt Ginger,” I say, “do you know where my . . . where he took Mom?.

  She shakes her head no.

  “Do you know where he lives?.

  Again, no.

  “Are you going to help us find Mom?.

  Aunt Ginger hesitates. “Let’s figure it out later”

  “There is no later,” I say in the most direct way that I can.

  She bites down on her lower lip before speaking. “I mean, after you eat and rest”

  I don’t understand her peculiar reluctance. Her sister has been abducted by a serial killer. Why is she being so weird.

  Hayden’s eyes have landed on a cheese sandwich and a stack of Pringles potato chips that Aunt Ginger has set on two denim-blue plates that she’s placed on an enormous table in the kitchen. On the wall adjacent to the table are some photogr
aphs. Lots of them. My heart skips a beat and I feel a surge of bewilderment. My school photo is among a bunch of images of complete strangers. There’s an old picture of Hayden, too. We were part of a family. We just didn’t know it.

  Aunt Ginger turns to me and mouths some words.

  “After he’s in bed, we’ll talk then”

  I sit down across from my brother while our aunt pours milk from a carton. I don’t even like milk, but I say nothing. I sit there thinking of how the forces have collided to make my life worse than it has ever been.

  And how my mother has less than six days to stay alive if I don’t do something about it.

  Chapter Seven

  Cash: $24.50.

  Food: Not an issue.

  Shelter: A spare bedroom in our aunt’s house in Idaho.

  Weapons: Gun, crapola scissors, ice pick from kitchen.

  Plan: The same. Find Mom. Kill Dad.

  HAYDEN IS ASLEEP IN A bedroom across the hall from mine. The house on Moon Gulch Road is so quiet I can actually hear the clock in the foyer ticking away the time. If it has a loud chime, I will creep downstairs after midnight and stop it. I am a light sleeper and I think that tonight will be one for the record books. My mind has been racing, looping, spinning, since we arrived in Idaho. I don’t know what I’m going to find out, but I know that whatever it is, it will change me. I peek in on my brother, but I don’t go inside his room. His cheeks are pink and he’s sleeping hard, which makes me feel just a little bit lighter. I hope that his dreams take him far away from what we’ve been through since everything happened.

  I pad downstairs and find Aunt Ginger in the darkened living room, the curtains still drawn. The TV is still on mute.

  The light flickering over her face alters her appearance a little. She doesn’t look like my mother at all. Her eyes are darker, her hair is long and lifeless, without even the faintest trace of a shimmer. By the time I take a seat next to her, I had learned everything I could about her by studying all the photographs in the hallway, and yes, digging through every drawer that I could when she was getting our rooms ready. I know that she is single. She loves the scent of lavender. I know that she is estranged from her son and daughter. I don’t exactly know why, and when it gets right down to it, I really don’t care. What I do care about is the truth. What I care about is finding my mother.