Girl Last Seen

by Nina Laurin

  The polite way of saying hurry the fuck up. “Yeah,” I yell. “Just a minute.”

  “Does everything fit?”

  I don’t know yet because I’m still pulling my jeans down my calves and only now realizing that I forgot to unlace my boots. With a sigh, I sit on the toilet lid and start to tug off the right one. I take out my knife, which had been sitting snug at my ankle, and tuck it in the waistband of my underwear. It’s warm from being close to my skin, and its smooth handle fits into the small of my lower back like a lover’s hand.

  Just in time, because the door opens and Jacqueline slips in. Without a trace of self-consciousness, she kneels next to me and helps me unlace my other boot so I can wiggle out of my jeans.

  She unzips the side of the skirt—naturally, she’s one of those women who wears skirts that zip up the side—and holds it out, as if dressing a small child. I have no choice but to step into it, one foot, then the other. When she pulls the skirt up to my waist and buttons the top button, I squirm a little, but she doesn’t notice the knife behind my waistband.

  “A bit loose,” she says. “But no one will see under the sweater.” She gives a soft laugh. “Enjoy it while you can. When you’re my age, you won’t be so effortlessly skinny.”

  I give her a look like she’s some kind of alien.

  She covers her awkwardness with an even more uneasy laugh. “Shoes,” she says, and holds out the beige low-heel pumps in an almost supplicating gesture.

  I take a look at them and slowly shake my head. My neck creaks like a wooden puppet’s. No way.

  “You can’t really wear boots with this,” she says.

  I force my mouth to form a syllable. No.

  “Come on,” she says and, to my horror, reaches for my right sock and starts to roll it down.

  I just about kick her in the face. Not exactly kick—but my leg twitches like she hit the nerve in my knee, an ingrained instinct that has become as close to a reflex as it gets. She shrieks in surprise and topples back, goes sprawling on her ass on the filthy floor. Her eyes are dark, shiny pools—filled with anger, pain, or tears, I can’t exactly tell. Her lips form my name but I don’t hear the sound over the rush of blood in my ears.

  “I—I’m sorry,” I choke out.

  Her gaze travels from my face down to my exposed ankle. The bluish overhead light tints her skin a shade closer to ash, but I don’t need to be able to see color to know her face drains of blood. She clasps her hand over her mouth—a gesture, I once read, of people who have a hard time expressing their feelings.

  I tug my sock back into place to cover the scar and reach for my boot, all without looking at her.

  “Lainey,” she says in a muffled voice, “oh my God.”

  I resume putting on my boots.

  “It’s—it’s okay,” she stammers. “No one will see your feet anyway. You can put your jeans back on…if you want to.”

  Her voice shakes, and when I look up, there are unmistakable wet trails down her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry,” she whimpers as she tries to cover her eyes without smearing her makeup. In an unprecedented moment of compassion, I grab a handful of toilet paper and press it into her hand. She dabs under her eyes, trying to hide the fact that she’s full-on crying now.

  I realize she’s not spilling those tears for me—she’s just terrified for Olivia, and with good reason. The very thought makes me queasy, and the hollow hum Natalia’s pill left in my veins isn’t helping.

  We come out minutes later, after she’s powdered under her eyes and I’ve finished lacing my boots. “Remember what we talked about,” Jacqueline says, her voice soft but intent, and before I have a chance to answer, she takes my hand and squeezes it.

  I keep sneaking glances at Sean, trying to see some spark of acknowledgment, but his gaze slips indifferently across my face and away. I notice Shaw side-eyeing my worn, grimy boots, which look even more worn and grimy in contrast with his wife’s neat, pretty things.

  The actual press conference is a bad acid trip. I try not to flinch at camera flashes while Jacqueline gives another shaky-voiced speech, all words I know by heart already from watching others in clips and on TV: I beg you to help us bring our girl back home safely. Overhead lights are too bright, and my eyes must disappear in my face, because I’m squinting the whole time. Sean isn’t in the crowd; he’s standing on the sidelines, grim faced. I’m aching to glance over, but it won’t look good. I have to look present. Invested, as they’d say.

  Jacqueline and Tom Shaw are done, and I’m silently praying for the whole thing to be over when some journalist chick pushes her way to the front of the crowd. Her aggressive red lipstick makes her mouth look like two slabs of raw meat someone slapped across her face.

  “Lainey.” She makes an ugly emphasis on my name. At least she doesn’t call me Ella, but I can hear it lurking under the syllables—like this is supposed to be some secret code only the two of us share. Wink-wink, nudge. “Lainey, do you believe this was the same man who held you captive? How did you feel when you found out?”

  All the downers in the world would be no help to me now. In the back of my mind, I already know this is taking a turn for absolute disaster but I can’t stop it—like a passenger in a car skidding across deadly, rain-slicked highway, I’m nothing but a passive observer, unable to make any difference, and all my pathetic attempts will only make the situation worse.

  Which doesn’t stop me from trying.

  At the edge of my vision, Jacqueline grows tense, her spine an arrow. Shaw draws a noisy breath, a bull ready for a fight, and Sean starts to move toward me.

  “I don’t know,” I hear myself say. “And to be honest, I don’t think it matters.”

  There’s a murmur in the crowd, and my heart starts to thunder against my sternum.

  “You’re saying you don’t care?” the red-mouthed woman asks. Her painted eyebrow arches. Behind her a photographer clicks away and away and away, and with every click, I feel myself sink. The last time I felt this raw, vulnerable, exposed, I was on a cold metal table with my feet in stirrups while a gray-haired woman curiously peered between my thirteen-year-old thighs.

  “I’m saying…” My voice thins and rises in pitch. It shatters in my throat and fills it with broken glass. “I’m remembering things. An awful lot of things.” My hand goes for my waistband. I don’t think—the blade thinks for me, jumping into my hand, still warm from my skin, and clicks open. “And when I find him, I’ll make him hurt in ways he can’t even imagine.”

  Photo flashes glance off it.

  And I have no regrets.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Sean erupts onto the narrow podium, physically blocking me from the reporters. He’s saying something in his loud, authoritative voice, something expected, We’re finished here, nothing to see, everybody please leave in an orderly fashion. He half turns and catches my wrist in his grasp—holy shit, he’s strong. I suspected that strength in him, but as he squeezes my wrist like a vise, I realize I had no clue. His grip is crushing and pitiless, and he twists my hand until I’m this close to screaming. My fingers unclench, and my knife clatters to the floor.

  He never lets go of my hand, pulling me after him off the podium, back into the waiting room. After all the camera flashes, the yellow glow of the overhead lightbulb might as well be pitch darkness. I blink as my eyes try to adjust, and as if someone flipped a switch, the rest of the world flickers back to normal. And I’m starting to realize what I’ve just done. It feels like something I heard about or saw on TV. I couldn’t have done it. I couldn’t have.

  Sean’s face is a mask of cold rage that makes me wilt inside. He looks like he’s going to slap me, and knowing that I deserve it doesn’t make it better.

  “What the hell was that? What were you thinking?”

  I swallow.

  “Are you out of your mind? Do you realize that I trusted you—a lot of people did, the Shaws did—and you just fucked up massively?”

  “I r
ealize,” I say softly. I put my hand on his arm, but it only seems to enrage him more. He throws it off, more aggressively than he had to, and I stumble back. “And every word is true.”

  He runs his hands over his face. “Jesus,” he exhales. “Laine…”

  “You should be happy,” I say, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice. “At least it proves that you were right all along. I do care.”

  He’s silent. It scares me in a way.

  “Good to know,” he says as he composes himself. “Good to know, and much use it is now.”

  Jacqueline and Tom come rushing through the door and stop, hovering on the periphery of my vision. Tom Shaw is fuming; Jacqueline looks nonexistent, faded.

  “I’ll see what I can do for damage control,” Sean says, bowing his head. It pains me to see him grovel in front of this rich asshole—because of me. “Something can be worked out, I’m sure.”

  “It’s okay,” Jacqueline says. “Lainey.”

  Isn’t that what you wanted me to do? I almost ask. And telling Sean the truth would probably save my ass, but I can’t bring myself to betray her. I’d rather face Sean’s anger on my own.

  She meets my gaze, and the corners of her lips turn up ever so slightly. “I completely understand. God knows I’ve felt like saying the same thing a couple of times.” I read it in her eyes: thank you.

  I follow Sean without another word of argument. Thankfully, there’s no one in the parking lot behind the station. No journalists or their vans. “Can I have my knife back?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  I’m not. Not that I thought he’d actually give me back my knife, but I felt like I should say something.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Thinking I heard wrong, I look up.

  “I’m sorry I got you dragged into this. It doesn’t mean I’m not angry, but for what it’s worth, I never should have let you do this in the first place.”

  I was ready to be yelled at, to be threatened with arrest or the psych ward. I wasn’t ready for his sympathy, and the worst part is that it seems real. That sets my teeth on edge more than anything else.

  “You realize you’ve put yourself in danger, right?”

  I suppose he’s right. But as long as it helps them get closer to Olivia, I really don’t care.

  “And you know you’ll have to revisit your testimony now. The sergeant detective will want to know all these new things you’ve remembered.” He measures me with a look. “There aren’t any. Are there?”

  Silently, I shake my head.

  “Jesus. What the hell were you thinking?”

  In any other situation, I’d backpedal, tell him all about that conversation back in Olivia’s room, blame everything on Jacqueline, embellish for all it’s worth. Tell him she cornered me, coerced me, make everyone look like the bad guy except for me. Make myself out to be just a pawn, a victim of circumstance—isn’t that what I am, what I’ve always been? The girl in the wrong place at the wrong time, the girl with the wrong memories who just wanted to do what’s right.

  Except right now, I need him to get angry with me. Furious. I want him to yell.

  “Are you doing this on purpose? Undermining what little credibility—” He cuts himself off, realizing what he just said.

  “Yeah. The little credibility I already have. I get it.” I grimace. “Not exactly your dream witness, I know.”

  “That’s not the point,” he snaps. “I’m worried about your safety in all this. You want to end up in protective custody? ’Cause I can make it happen.”

  I’m not even sure if he’s sarcastic.

  “I’ll see about setting you up someplace else. I don’t want you staying with some stripper in West Seattle, you hear me?”

  “She’s not a stripper,” I murmur. “And I’m fine where I am. I just want to—”

  I just want to go home. Not to my old apartment, although it would be a good start—I want to go back in time to the world I lived in before this week. When I had a life, just barely, but I was holding on. But then I found and lost Olivia at the same time, all in the span of one day. The moment I saw her on that poster, my whole sad, little existence turned out to be like I always suspected—borrowed time, unraveling right before my eyes.

  And now I’m in free fall, and I can’t tell how much longer before I hit the ground.

  Sean leaves me on the doorstep of Natalia’s with instructions to stay inside, not open the door to anyone, and for the love of God, not talk to the press. Oh, and not answer the phone unless it’s him. Well, he doesn’t have to worry about that. The battery is dying, and Natalia’s iPhone charger doesn’t fit my mastodon of a phone anyway.

  As soon as I’m inside, I watch through the blinds until his car disappears into the distance. Now the only cars on the street are a rusty pickup and a Toyota, both there since yesterday—and my own Neon, of course, with a blue-and-white parking ticket clinging to the windshield.

  As the afternoon wears on, I grow restless, as if the plaster walls are closing in on me, the house shrinking like something from a storybook. I try turning on the TV, stumble on a news program almost immediately, and can’t thumb the Off button quickly enough. The thought of going online makes me nauseous. I can only imagine what they must be saying about me.

  Only now I notice that I’m still wearing Jacqueline’s things and peel them off me like they’re poisoned, making a hollow promise to myself that I’ll give them back. If she even wants them back, after what I did—if she can bring herself to think about cashmere at a time like this in the first place. My own baggy clothes are still stuffed in my backpack, wrinkled, smelling of damp and sweat when I shake them out. I feel gross putting them on, but right now it’s what I need. Pristine sweaters will only attract undue attention.

  The sun is setting when I pull up to the curb a block from my building, and I almost miss it. I’m already backing into an empty spot between two cars when I notice the van across the street, inconspicuous at first glance, but only when you don’t know what to look for. It’s blank white except for the telltale antenna. At this distance, the windshield is like a black one-way mirror, and I can’t tell if there’s anyone in the driver’s seat, but I’d bet the last penny in my bank account that there is.

  Alarm prickles down my spine. I twist my hair and tuck it under my collar, shove my hands in my pockets, and slouch. Incognito, I slip into the alley between my building and the next one over.

  Behind the building is a small gravel lot blocked off by a rusted, bent chain-link fence. It’s broken in several places, so it’s not hard for someone my size to slip through without so much as snagging my sleeve on rusted metal. A fire escape spirals along the back, and it takes me a few seconds to scale it. As my hands grip the bars, I notice they’re starting to tremble. There’s a hollow feeling deep inside, a kind of anxious tremor at my very core. A void needing to be filled.

  And when the void makes its presence known, it doesn’t like to be ignored. My foot slips, and for a terrifying moment, I swing on my arms until my chest connects with the ladder. The clang is deafening. I cringe from it as much as from the pain echoing in my ribs. Rust and chipped paint scrape against my palms, burning, and more of it rains into my face and eyes.

  I feel around the emptiness with my foot until I steady it on one of the horizontal bars. My heart hammers, and now it’s not just my hands but my whole body that’s shaking as I cling to the ladder for dear life.

  The longer I hang here, the more likely I am to attract attention. Even if it’s only some well-intentioned jackass from the building who might mistake me for a thief and call the cops, which is just what I need right now. After another minute or two of silently pleading for my body to get its shit together and stop shaking, I climb the rest of the way, swing my legs one after another over the railing of the balcony, and hop down. The impact travels through my soles, making my teeth clack together.

  I crouch so no one can see me from the windows. Most people here
keep their curtains and blinds drawn tightly all day long. Either they’re hiding something or they just don’t want potential thugs to see their stuff, cheap flat-screen TVs, faux-leather armchairs, whatever their prized possessions happen to be.

  Still, in my state, I don’t trust myself not to make noise, so without wasting time, I creep forward. All the balconies are really one long one, separated by metal sheets or plywood panels. I climb over one, then another, clambering over all the crap people feel bad about throwing out so they leave it to soak up the oily Seattle rain.

  When I get to my window, I glance around, and having made sure I’m still alone, unobserved as far as I can see, I push the piece of cardboard inward. It falls to the floor on the other side. I freeze like a baby deer, listening, but there’s still no sound. My blanket is in place over the window, and it rustles softly in the damp breeze.

  I reach in through the hole in the glass—it’s big enough that I don’t risk cutting myself on the edges. Carefully, I find the latch and slide it aside without a shadow of resistance, without so much as a creak or a squeak. The window opens just as silently.

  This isn’t the work of some tween thug wannabes from the neighborhood. Unless they felt like oiling the hinges and the latch on my window out of sheer generosity.

  I throw one leg over the windowsill, then the other, and hop onto the floor. Broken glass crunches under my soles with every step, and I can’t shake the feeling I’m in enemy territory. In the dim light of the fading sunset, everything takes on a new, sinister quality. I step amidst my own things that, without warning, became dangerous relics. In a rush of paranoia, I examine everything, struggling to remember: Did I leave these clothes on my bed like that? Was the shapeless mound of dirty laundry overflowing from the plastic basket the same when I left yesterday? I kick a pair of dirty underwear under the bed, trying hard not to think of how it got there.

  Clothes. I need clothes. That’s what I came here for—right? Drawer after drawer of my rickety dresser flies open, and I rummage through my possessions. Jeans, shirts, a sequined top I bought with Natalia in a moment of craziness. Bras and panties are tangled together in one wash-faded ball. I feel a tide of nausea and drop everything I’m holding to the floor in a heap.