Girl Last Seen

by Nina Laurin

  Not this too. Not my hotel room. Where will I go? How will I explain it to Sean? That thought scares me more than the idea of having no place to stay.

  There’s a creak behind the door, bedsprings, and soft steps growing closer and closer. I only have time to take a couple of shaky steps back when the door opens.

  At once, I recognize the broad-shouldered silhouette against the dimly lit room. It’s Sean.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I start to bleat something, but he mutely gestures for me to come inside, and I obey.

  “I just spoke with Jacqueline. She’s not angry at you, although her husband sure is. In fact, I’m not even going to repeat what he said to me, because I don’t think it’ll do anyone any good.”

  “Are you…”

  “Am I what?”

  “Angry at me.”

  He sighs. “Laine…”

  “Please,” I say. “Don’t. Whatever you’re about to say, don’t.”

  “What do you think I was about to say?”

  “Many things. The usual things. Just let me try to explain.”

  “What is there to explain?”

  “It’s Jacinta,” I say, stumbling over my own words. But I can tell his patience drains away with every second, and I have so much to tell him. “Jacinta, the sister. Olivia’s aunt.” I flinch at the phrase. “She’s not telling everything. I don’t know what it is, but…”

  He shakes his head. “Let me deal with Jacinta, okay?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Do you—”

  Do you know something, I almost say, but he cuts me off. “It’s supposed to mean it’s my job to figure these things out. And it’s a lot easier getting people to talk when someone doesn’t sneak behind my back to try to confront them.”

  I need to sit down, but there’s nowhere else to sit but the bed, so that’s what I do. Now he’s looming over me, and I don’t like it.

  “I know it’s because you care. And I didn’t want to say it, but your attempts at vigilantism, or whatever this is, they could actually harm Olivia instead of helping her. Do you understand me?”

  I feel like I’ve been punched. I screw my eyes shut, so I only feel the bed creak and tilt as he sits down next to me. Not right by my side; there’s a respectable two feet of distance between us, and I’m afraid to look again.

  “I didn’t mean to screw up,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  “When I first brought you here, remember, you said you weren’t a bad person?”

  Do I ever. “I don’t really blame you if you don’t believe that anymore.”

  “I think the person who doesn’t believe it is you. That’s the problem.”

  The pain coiled in my chest chokes off my air. How can he see through all my layers, all my defenses, right through my skull into the coils of my brain, see the things I can’t see myself? How can he know me better than I do?

  “My life ended in that basement, Sean. It’s just that my body forgot to die for some reason. And I’m walking around, a body without a soul, waiting for someone to come along and pull the plug on me.”

  He doesn’t speak. He reaches out and puts his hand on mine. I wish he didn’t because his touch makes me melt inside.

  “If you really didn’t have a soul, you wouldn’t have cared about Olivia. You wouldn’t have chosen to help me.”

  Wouldn’t I? Was it really for Olivia or just a selfish, deep-seated hope—hope for answers, for the real reason I’m still alive? Or was it all for Sean? Because I would have done anything he told me to.

  “You’re better than you think you are. You’re brave. You’re strong. You have a good heart.”

  “Much good it does me.”

  “You can’t live without a heart.”

  “Some people manage.” My smile feels like razors. He knows who I mean.

  “They’re the ones who aren’t really living. They think they are, but they’re dead inside. And every time they make you think like this, they win. Don’t let them.”

  I stare at the floor. “Maybe I’m just waiting to become one of them. I feel hollow. All the time. I—” I’m this close to telling him about the pills, but I stop myself.

  “That’s not true. You deserve good things. Beautiful things.” He reaches out and brushes away a stubborn corkscrew lock of hair that keeps tumbling into my eyes. “All the beautiful things in the world.”

  We kiss. In his defense, it’s all me, from the start. I’m the one who leans forward. It feels like I’m leaping off a cliff when I touch my lips to his, but when he puts his hands on my waist and kisses me back, suddenly I’m no longer leaping—I unfurl my wings and fly.

  I’m only half-aware of my hands tearing away his layers, first his coat then fumbling at the collar of his shirt, trembling as my fingers undo the buttons. I shrug out of my jacket, letting it drop to the floor. No need for the pills stashed in the pockets—a minute ago I was crashing but now I’m flying high all over again. Soaring. Maybe it’s the only thing that keeps my head above water right now, keeps me from plummeting back into reality and understanding. It’s the only way my hands and my lips can continue doing what they’re doing without questioning.

  I pull him down with me, down onto the mattress with its tangle of sheets while I finally pry his shirt off and let my palms roam his hot skin, the muscular expanse of his abs and his chest. My lips brush along his collarbone, and I feel him shudder.

  “Laine.” A hot whisper in my ear. I have to bite my lip to keep in a moan, I want him this bad. “Laine, please.”

  Anything you want. I’m yours. I was always yours.

  But his next words scorch me. “Not…not like this. Not here. Laine, stop.”

  He pulls away, and I slam back into my body. It’s like someone flipped a switch, turned off the heady buzz, and all that I have left is shame and bitterness and what feels like a bottomless smoking crater in the dead center of my chest.

  Sean kneels in front of me, a look of anguish on his face. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

  “I want to be doing this,” I say stubbornly, fighting the tears that build in the back of my throat.

  “You’re upset. You had a rough day.”

  “Are you saying I don’t have the capacity to decide what I do and don’t want? Is that it?”

  “I never said that.”

  “Then if you don’t want me, just say so. Make it quick. No need to let me down easy.”

  He collapses onto the mattress and rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands. “God, is that what you think? That I don’t want you? You think it’s the only possible reason?”

  “What other reason can there be?” Overcome with self-consciousness, I pull on the hem of my shirt, smoothing it down. The memory of his hands still burns on my skin.

  “Many. For one, I’m an authority figure. I’m more than ten years older than you. That doesn’t bother you?”

  “No. I’ve been in love with you since I first saw you, and I was thirteen.”

  This is probably the most honest thing that’s ever passed my lips. Seeing him flinch like I slapped him—like my one moment of truth was an insult—hurts on a level beyond the physical.

  “This is wrong. This is wrong in too many ways to count,” he says.

  “I don’t care. I want you. You’re the only man I ever wanted.”

  I reach to his belt buckle.

  He doesn’t stop me.

  So we collapse. We jump off the cliff into nothingness, and I can’t tell if we’re soaring or plummeting to our deaths.

  And right now it doesn’t matter.

  * * *

  I can’t look him in the eye afterward. I’m afraid of what I’ll see. I’m afraid we’ll have to have the conversation about how we shouldn’t have done that, how it can never happen again, and so on. And after that he’ll sit up, put his clothes back on, and leave.

  I can’t stand the thought of him leaving. So I just curl up next to him, basking in his warmth. He stretches out and throws
his arm over me.

  “I never even asked,” I murmur. “Is there anyone?”

  For a few seconds he doesn’t move, and I wonder if I’d actually dared say these words out loud. Then he stirs and rolls over to face me. His body is powerful; his presence fills the double bed, the room itself. It makes me feel like we’re inside a dollhouse, and we’re the only part that isn’t pretend. “No one,” he says. “Not like that, anyway.”

  I think of the female voice answering his phone, and my thoughts must be plain on my face, because he pulls me close. “There have been, in the past, but nothing has worked out.”

  So was that a one-night stand? One with a particularly lacking sense of boundaries? Is that what we are?

  But before any of my questions can slip out and ruin the moment, he speaks. “What about you?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Come on. There must have been someone. Some guy?”

  Shit. I remember the cramped office at the police station, me answering questions into the other officer’s phone recorder. And he knows all this; of course he does—he must have listened to that disaster of a conversation dozens of times.

  “No one,” I say flatly.

  He pulls me closer, but I don’t know if I can take any more. Instead of comforting, I find the heat of his body stifling, his weight on me too much. It squeezes my ribs so tightly that they seem to bend, like wishbones about to snap. I wiggle out of his grip. He makes a muffled sound of surprise but doesn’t hold me back. I lock myself in the bathroom and put the tap on full blast while I retrieve a tranquilizer from my stash. This should keep me down and dreamless for a couple of hours. I gulp it down then crouch against the side of the bathtub, knees pulled up to my chest, waiting for it to start kicking in.

  Resting my forehead on my knees, I close my eyes, the cold, hard porcelain against my back my only tie to reality, the lingering soreness between my legs the only indication that it was real. It was different in my daydreams. Isn’t it always?

  I turn off the water and peek out the door; I can see his form under the thin hotel blanket that only covers him from the waist down. The expanse of his back is stark against the pale-green sheets, and my heart starts to hammer. It really did happen.

  He seems to be asleep when I carefully slip under the blanket. In any event, he doesn’t try to cuddle me; he barely moves at all.

  My thought is that I’ll never be able to fall asleep next to him, but the pill is stronger. My eyes close, and my mind slows to a sluggish crawl before gently fading to black.

  Sometime during the night, I wake up, disoriented and confused, struggling to make sense of the unfamiliar surroundings. The hotel room’s electronic alarm clock reads three fifteen a.m., its red glow the only source of light in the room. I’m tucked comfortably under the bleach-stiff sheets, bundled up like a small child. Sean is still there, asleep next to me. His face looks smoother, softer in his sleep.

  That’s when another source of light flares up, and I realize what woke me. On the rickety hotel desk, I see the dark bundle of Sean’s coat, and next to it, his phone buzzes to life in a brief flash.

  Holding my breath, I sit up as carefully as I can, but I can’t keep the mattress from creaking as I swing my legs over the edge. It takes forever to extricate myself from the sheet and blanket, and in the meantime, the phone flashes and buzzes twice. Each time, I freeze and watch him, unblinking, expecting him to snap awake any moment and then the chance will be gone. But he doesn’t. He probably hasn’t slept in days, not for more than an hour or two at a time. Once the phone goes silent again, I hear his even, deep breathing and imagine what it would be like to fall asleep next to him every night.

  Finally, I walk barefoot from the bed to the desk. Thanks to the tacky wall-to-wall carpeting, my steps are muffled and soft. I pick up the phone, throwing a glance at Sean one last time, but he’s fast asleep.

  The dim light of the phone still makes me squint as I press the button on top and look at the lock screen. There they are, a string of texts, all from the same number, no name. Call me. Now. We need to talk. Call me! over and over, frantic.

  The last one says simply, Call me or I’ll call HER.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  In the morning, he’s gone. The only reminders are his scent, lingering in the bleachy smell of the hotel sheets, and the number I copied into my phone.

  I try to tell myself that Sean never noticed me looking, that he was asleep throughout. But something tells me otherwise.

  He doesn’t call once, and I can’t bring myself to call him.

  I don’t leave the room much at all. Or the bed. Except for a trip to the drugstore to get my last refill of sleeping pills, and I burn through the whole thing, a month’s supply gone in one week. The moment it wears off, I pop another one and drift back into the gray.

  It’s reliable stuff. You don’t feel rested, more like you’re waking up from a coma, but at least it means you can go right back to sleep. And at least the coma is dreamless.

  I know I need to get out of this room. I need to go back to my apartment. I need a new job or at least to beg Dom to give me back my old one.

  I might need to suck his dick for that. Another girl told me he has three piercings. I wonder how much Oxy I’d need to get through that.

  For now, it’s probably better that I haven’t touched the stuff in the last week. I have my checkup and shrink appointment on Monday, and I can’t afford to fail my pee-in-a-cup test right now—I can’t. Although being locked up in a place with padded walls doesn’t sound so bad anymore.

  The morning of, I can’t even pop an Adderall and have to content myself with awful coffee from the hotel room’s drip coffeemaker to power me through the day. I think of getting an energy drink from the vending machine downstairs, but I have to manage my money. How pathetic is that?

  I guzzle my coffee, trying not to taste it. Hoping it’ll keep me on my feet through the test and the hour-long talk with Dr. Rowland.

  By the time I get in my car and drive, it’s becoming doubtful.

  The hospital is a squat building that almost disappears in the flat, gray landscape, especially on a rainy day like today—or three hundred Seattle days a year, really. If I don’t pay attention, I could easily miss my lone exit in the middle of nowhere and end up in some deserted industrial district.

  From the outside, the building looks like there are no windows, but they’re just all facing inward—into a courtyard as gray as everything else. They keep sticking potted trees around the perimeter but the trees keep dying. Not enough light, or too many negative vibes or something. The lower-floor windows still have bars on them, even though the whole courtyard thing is designed so that we can see daylight but can’t escape.

  I walk to the second floor where a grim-looking nurse gives me my plastic container and points me to the bathroom. She follows me with a gaze that could burn a hole in my back—but she does that with everyone.

  She used to watch me pee: leave it to an addict to try and smuggle in someone else’s urine in a flask. But now they don’t bother anymore.

  I wish I could say it never crossed my mind, but something deep inside me just withers at the idea of disappointing Dr. Rowland. Maybe it’s a leftover child’s instinct since she’s the closest to a mother figure I’ve ever had. Whether I admit it or not, a part of me looks forward to seeing Dr. Rowland, so I just keep clean the week ahead. I can manage this much…for now.

  It’s this part of the bimonthly ritual that I hate, the cup, the scuffed bathroom stall reeking of sanitizer and piss. The humiliation of filling out the health questionnaire with questions about whether or not I used intravenous drugs or had unprotected sex in the last x weeks. The nurse’s porcine little eyes watching me from under her low brow bone with that look that plainly says don’t complain, you did this to yourself.

  I want to blow up in her face sometimes. Throw the fucking cup and the clipboard with the questions. Tell her that I didn’t do this to myse
lf, I wasn’t the one who stole me, who broke me. She probably doesn’t know, or give a fuck.

  I walk up to the third floor. Here, there are no big red signs reading NO ALCOHOL OR ILLICIT SUBSTANCES BEYOND THIS POINT, no methadone pickup schedules. There are prints of paintings on the walls. Potted plants, wilting, yellowing around the edges, but still.

  I knock on the office door and go in. Dr. Rowland gets up to greet me and shakes my hand without squeamishness, as if she’s not afraid I’ll give her some deadly junkie-whore disease just by looking at her. She gestures at the armchair across from her desk that creaks when I lower myself into it.

  Dr. Elise Rowland is a small, plump woman with light-brown skin and a mass of curls pulled into an eternal bun atop her head. She wears a white coat over her normal clothes as this place requires, but she has a thing for brooches—there’s always a new one, some kind of jeweled insect. Big ruby spider, butterfly in all colors of the rainbow, ladybug, bee. Today is a deviation: a tiny bluebird studded with rhinestones.

  “Lainey,” she says as she takes her place and opens my file where the results of my test are printed up. I carefully watch her expression for a frown or a twitch, something that might give away that the results are not what she hoped for. But her face is unreadable. She looks up, closes the folder. “How are you doing?”

  “Okay.” I’m always doing okay. Usually it’s a lie, and usually she lets me get away with it. But today, she heaves a sigh, and I know it’s not going to be so easy.

  “You know I’ve only been trying to help you,” she says. “This whole time. I hoped you might trust me a little by now.”

  I sit up in alarm, trying to figure out what she could possibly know and how. Shit. How long does it take for Adderall to leave your system?

  “I know what’s been going on, Lainey.” There’s no threat in her voice, no judgment, nothing. That alarms me above all. My inner child, what’s left of her, anxiously looks for notes of disappointment, but I don’t even find that.