The Stranger Game

by Cylin Busby

  “Remember when you had to pick something for your science project, and you wanted to do it on organic food?” Sarah asked me.

  I nodded, taking a sip of my soda.

  “And what did I say?” Sarah asked.

  “Um.” I thought back. “You said that I should do something that we had actually studied that year, something on earth science.”

  “Right.” Sarah studied the wrapper on her straw for a moment. “Because that’s what your teacher expected, even though he never said it. He wanted to know that he had taught you something. And you gave him that.”

  “Yeah, my homemade seismometer,” I said, laughing. I would have never come up with it on my own—entirely Sarah’s idea.

  “From the chapter on earthquakes that you had studied,” Sarah pointed out. “And you won second prize—would have been first if not for that little twerp.”

  She was talking about Walter Curtis, the kid in my grade who had been bumped up from ninth because he was so brilliant. His project, on solar power, was amazing and had taken first. But really, he deserved it.

  Sarah went on. “You gave Mr. Gardner what he wanted, what he expected—not what he asked for, but what he wanted, deep down. A pat on the back.” She smiled. “‘See what I learned, Mr. Gardner? You taught me this,’” she said in a high-pitched voice. “And you got an A and a red ribbon.”

  The waiter was back, hovering over us with the older man. “This is my manager, and he just wanted a word with you girls, if that’s okay,” he said, putting our sandwiches down in front of us.

  “I was so pleased to hear the news that you were back, Ms. Morris, and I wanted to shake your hand and let you know that you are always welcome here.” The older man looked flustered, shaking Sarah’s delicate hand in his large, meaty paw. “And lunch is on me today, dessert too—anything you girls want.”

  “That’s too kind.” Sarah shook her head. “Really . . .”

  “I insist. I’ll have the waiter bring the dessert menu by as soon as you’re ready, and again, it’s just so good to know that you’re home and safe. It really is.” He stood in front of us, as if waiting for something.

  “Well, I can’t thank you enough. I’ll be sure to let my parents know of your kindness, too,” Sarah said softly.

  The man nodded and smiled. “Enjoy your lunch,” he said before walking away.

  Sarah grinned and lifted a sandwich to her lips, taking a big bite. I still had no appetite, but picked up a fry and ate it slowly. Sarah had said to leave my confession at the park. This stays here. I watched her eat her sandwich as if nothing had happened, as if it were a regular day. She was able to do that, somehow. I had to do it too.

  “I want you to remember Mr. Gardner when that detective comes back tonight, okay?” Sarah wiped her mouth with a napkin. “Remember that you’re going to give them what they want, whatever that is. Even if they don’t know that they want it. Answers. The truth, even.” Sarah glanced over at the manager and gave him a little wave. “Just enough truth. Give them what they want, and it’s going to be okay.”

  SARAH

  IT WASN’T LONG AFTER Candy came to stay that I decided my time with Ma was up. “We’ll miss you, won’t we, Candy girl?” Ma said, but she didn’t beg me to stay or anything. I was over eighteen. I needed to be on my own anyhow.

  I moved in with another waitress, Sheila, who knew that I cribbed credit card numbers at the restaurant but wasn’t in that racket. She knew me as Melissa “Missy” Carter, and I never did tell her my real name. Melissa was some blond chick who had drunkenly dropped her ID at the last restaurant where I worked. I didn’t take anything else from her—not her credit cards or cash—so she never reported her ID stolen. She probably just got it replaced, which meant I could be her at the same time, which worked for me. I had a record in Gainesville. Not easy to get a job, even waiting tables, when they can look up your real name and get a list of your arrests in about five seconds. But Melissa Carter had a clean record. She also had light blond hair. That’s why I’d dyed my hair platinum—not my best decision, but Melissa Carter from Tampa was a bottle blonde, so I was too.

  Things were going okay for a few weeks, even a month. Tips were good, and Sheila was pretty cool, but her stepfather wasn’t. One too many times, he “accidentally” walked in on me in the shower and that was enough to send me packing. I grabbed my sleeping bag and my backpack and got on the bus that night, leaving Sheila a note and a few twenties for her troubles.

  I rode all the way to the beach, just wanting to feel the sand beneath my feet again. But when we rolled into West Palm, it was raining buckets. I hid under an awning at the bus station for hours, eating bags of chips and soda from the machine until it let up around dusk. It wasn’t the best time to walk the tourist traps, looking for a waitressing gig, so I decided to hit the beach and wait until the next morning. A dry bench and my sleeping bag would do just fine—with my hood pulled up, you could barely tell I was female. Or so I thought.

  That first night, there was a group of guys, maybe from a frat at the local university, who decided it would be fun to harass some homeless folks on their way out of the bar. They mistook me for an old lady or something. It didn’t go well, especially when they realized that, while I was a lady, I wasn’t exactly old. “Hey, blondie!” one of them yelled after me as I made a dash. “Come on, we aren’t going to hurt you.” They were so drunk and stupid, I lost them quick, but I left my sleeping bag and backpack behind, hiding in an alley where the smell of wet garbage, rotting in the humidity, made me gag up the Doritos I’d eaten for dinner. When I returned to the bench at dawn, my stuff was completely gone—of course.

  I tried to clean up in the public beach bathroom, but my hair hung dirty in knots. I finally managed to rake my fingers through it and twist it into a ponytail. Still, I looked shabby, and had no clothes to change into for my job hunt. I went into a few of the tourist joints, looking for waitressing gigs. No one was hiring—either they didn’t like my looks or they really didn’t have any openings.

  Finally, one place gave me a paper application and I sat down to fill it out with a borrowed pen. I still had Melissa Carter’s license, so I used all of her info, except for the social security number, which I just made up. When they got around to figuring out that it was wrong, I’d have a new one for them.

  When I was done, the manager, a large round woman with a hint of a dark mustache over her lip, told me to sit tight for a minute and she’d interview me after the lunch rush. The guy behind the counter handed me a paper container of salty fries and I took it with thanks and about ten packs of ketchup. After I inhaled the free snack, I looked up to see the mustached lady and the guy behind the counter sort of whispering and staring over at me. I wiped my face with a napkin and scuttled to the bathroom, thinking that I must look pretty terrible. But on my way to the ladies’, I saw through the big windows at the side of the place as a cop car pulled up not too discreetly right outside. I turned around to see mustache lady, her eyes as big as burger buns, watching while the cops came to the door. I guess ole “Missy” finally managed to report her license stolen—and everything I’d been up to in her name for the past couple of weeks had caught up with me.

  I didn’t wait around to find out. I ran into the bathroom and locked the door, sliding out the tiny window over the toilet before the cops could get back outside and around the building. I booked it down an alley and into an open screen door that led into the kitchen of another neighboring restaurant. But that was the end of my life as Melissa Carter. And I couldn’t be Liberty Helms anymore. I wasn’t really sure who to be, or what I was going to do.

  When the sun went down, I used the last twenty dollars I had in my jeans. I bought a cup of coffee and two doughnuts and a cheap touristy sweatshirt with a hood in a size extra large that would have to double as a blanket. I curled back into the same bench at the same bus stop when it got dark, with no idea of what to do the next day. Going back to Ma’s wasn’t really an option. Besi
des, I didn’t have the scratch for a bus ticket. Maybe I could call Sheila and see if she might come down to pick me up. I thought about Ms. Lay, my old math teacher. Even if there was a way to find her, I doubted she would remember me. Her most promising student, now sleeping, nameless, at a bus stop.

  They woke me up with a flashlight in the face, and I didn’t lie when I answered that I didn’t know who I was or where I was—that was the truth. For a moment anyway. Then it all clicked into place. Was I Liberty? Or was I Missy? No. I had no name. I had nowhere to stay. No one cared about me, or ever really had. I had about fifteen cents left in my pocket. I was no one now.

  “How old are you?” the lady cop asked. “You look like a minor. You a runaway?”

  “My name is . . . my name is Sarah,” I said, before I even knew what I was doing. The image of the girl’s happy family swam before my eyes. Her blond family, the huge reward, the handsome boyfriend. A family that loved her. People who missed her. Who wanted her back. “And I have a sister named Nico.”

  CHAPTER 27

  BY THE TIME WE got back to the house, it was late afternoon. As we rode our bikes down the streets, the sun cut through the leaves and trees in a flashing mosaic on the sidewalk. Somehow the heat had broken, the cool breeze lifting our hair.

  I felt drugged, as if someone had slipped something into my soda. But really all Sarah had done was listen. She hadn’t asked why—why I didn’t call for help. Why I didn’t tell the truth. Why I put the bike in the rack and rode home like it had never happened. Maybe she didn’t ask because she knew that I didn’t have the answers. Instead, she had listened to my truth and she hadn’t questioned me. She still loved me, she was still on my side. Just like a real sister.

  I watched her ride in front of me, on Mom’s bike, her blond hair blowing in the breeze. I tried not to think about what her life had been like before she came to us. Where she had been all those years, the things that had happened to her. Why she wanted, needed a family so badly. She was with us now, and I wanted her to stay.

  When we pulled our bikes into the driveway, Mom came out and stood on the front steps, a deep line between her eyebrows. “Detective Donally left a message—he said he came by earlier.”

  Sarah smiled, coming up the stairs. “Oh yeah, almost forgot, he came by just as we were going out. He didn’t say why though, right, Nico?” She turned to me, her face open and warm, as if she had nothing to hide.

  “I thought he was just checking in,” I said, going around Mom and into the house.

  “Let’s jump in the pool,” Sarah suggested. “It’s still hot out.”

  Mom came in behind us, closing the door. “He’s coming by tonight, after dinner.”

  “Who, the detective?” Sarah asked. She opened the fridge and took out an orange juice. “Nico, you want?” she asked, shaking the bottle.

  I shook my head. “I’m going to go put on my suit.” I went upstairs and sat on my bed for a minute, taking deep breaths. So he was coming back, just like Sarah said he would. But it would be okay. Just like Sarah said. I mechanically tied on my bikini and went into the bathroom, looking at my face in the mirror. Our hike had put color into my cheeks, my hair was blown by the wind of the bike ride into a summer-tousled look that suited me. I looked good. My eyes weren’t red.

  I noticed now, for the first time, that I’d gotten my hair cut at the exact length that Sarah’s had been when she went missing. I leaned in and blinked. “Hi, Detective, what can I help you with?” I whispered to the mirror. I bowed my head, just slightly, the way Sarah always used to do when she wanted to charm someone. “Oh, really, you’re too kind.” I repeated Sarah’s words at the restaurant to see how they felt on my tongue. I smiled at my reflection. Sarah was right, I could do it.

  We swam, Sarah in the shallow end while I practiced my dive. I did a jackknife off the edge of the pool and let myself drift aimlessly down, until my toes touched the rough plaster at the bottom. I floated there, eyes closed, feeling my hair swirl weightless around my face, until I couldn’t hold my breath any longer. Is this what it was like for her? Then I pushed my feet against the bottom and rose to the top, gasping for air when I surfaced, the sun on my face.

  “You okay over there?” Sarah asked, running her hands through the water on either side of her raft. She didn’t like to go in the deep end and I suspected it was because she didn’t know how to swim. There would be time for that, later in the summer. I could teach her.

  We lay in the afternoon sun, side by side, as if it were a normal summer day. I rolled over and looked at Sarah, her eyes closed, her thin body stretched out next to mine on the lounge. “Sarah, when Gram was here, and she wanted to talk to you on the porch that night—what did she say?”

  “Huh?” Sarah shielded her eyes and looked over at me. “What made you think of that?”

  I shrugged. “I just remember when you came in, you’d been crying.”

  Sarah closed her eyes again and tilted her face up to the setting sun. “Gram said, ‘If it’s not really you, please never tell me.’” Sarah paused, as if thinking for a moment. “She said she wanted to die knowing that her granddaughter was okay, that she was home and safe.”

  I swallowed hard and rolled over onto my stomach. We stayed together, quiet, until the sun dropped below the trees and it started to get chilly. By then, Mom had dinner on the table and Dad was on his way home. We sat down, taking our usual chairs—I now sat where Sarah always had, and she sat across from me. Before Mom served the pasta, I hadn’t been hungry at all, but somehow I found myself devouring every bite and taking seconds before Dad even had a chance to sit with us.

  “Where did you girls go today? You’re both eating like wild animals!” Mom laughed.

  “We just rode around, it was a great day for it,” Sarah answered. “You don’t mind that I borrowed your bike?”

  “Of course not. Actually, that’s something we should bring up with the detective tonight. You know, we never did get your bike back, it was ‘evidence’ or something.”

  “I bet it could use a tune-up, too,” Dad chimed in, taking the salad bowl from Sarah. “I can tinker with it this weekend if they can get it back to us.”

  Sarah caught my eye across the table, as if checking to be sure I was okay. I smiled at her and she quickly changed the subject: “We had lunch today at the best café—the manager was so crazy nice,” she started, telling the story of how they comped our lunch, and the amazing carrot cake we shared for dessert.

  As soon as Sarah and I started on the dishes, the doorbell rang and we knew exactly who it would be. I dried my hands slowly and closed the door to the dishwasher before turning to see Sarah, waiting for me in the doorway. Her gaze was calm and steady as she silently put an arm around my shoulders.

  “Nothing, not even a cup of coffee?” Mom was saying as we walked into the living room. Detective Donally had come alone this time, so maybe it wasn’t as big a deal as we thought.

  He took a seat opposite the couch and laid a large folder on the coffee table. “No, thank you,” he said, his mouth forming a grim line. He watched closely as Sarah and I sat together on the couch.

  “So there’s been some news on Sarah’s case, I gather,” Dad said, hiking up his pant leg and crossing one leg over the other.

  The detective took a deep breath. “Not exactly, just a new development.” He looked over at me and then opened the folder, pulling out one sheet of paper from the top. “You all know a Paula Abbot, is that correct?”

  At the sound of her name, I felt my body tighten. I had been right.

  “Yes, she’s a friend of Sarah’s,” Mom said quickly.

  I laid a decorative pillow across my lap and traced its swirly maze pattern with my finger.

  “She contacted us last week with some information, something she now says she forgot to tell us during the initial interviews, after Sarah’s disappearance,” the detective went on.

  I saw Dad tilt his head to one side, suddenly interested.
/>   “Paula says that she saw someone on that day, at the bike rack, near where Sarah’s bike was locked,” Detective Donally said.

  “Wait a minute—I thought Paula hadn’t seen Sarah for days—they were fighting, wasn’t that the story?” Dad interjected.

  “Yes, what was she doing at the park?” Mom asked. “Wasn’t her alibi all along that she was at home?”

  Detective Donally nodded. “She says that after she called Sarah that morning—the call that we have logged on both of their cell phones—she decided to go to the park to meet Sarah and talk more.”

  I watched Dad’s face as he squinted skeptically, a look he took on when he thought someone was feeding him a lie. “Oh really?”

  “That’s what Paula claims currently,” the detective went on. “And she saw someone there, acting suspicious.”

  “Who was it?” Mom leaned in and asked. “Someone we know?”

  “It was Nico,” Detective Donally said. He waited a beat, as if pausing for a reaction from us. I continued to trace the pattern on the pillow without looking up.

  “So?” Sarah said, looking from Mom to Dad for a reaction. “Nico goes to the park all the time. We were just there today on our bikes, right, Nico?”

  I nodded and glanced up for a moment.

  “I agree, I don’t see quite where this is going,” Dad said. “Does this help the investigation at all?”

  “Well, Nico told us she was home all afternoon on that day, so there is a discrepancy in her statement,” the detective pointed out.

  Dad let out a laugh. “There is a discrepancy with Paula’s statement. First she’s not at the park, now she is. And four years later she decides to share this information? This is nonsense.”

  “Paula is wrong. Nico wasn’t at the park that day. Isn’t that right, Nico?” Mom’s eyes were unreadable, the same way they had been when I asked her about Sarah, about the differences that I knew she had noticed. She didn’t blink under the watchful eye of the detective.