Worth a Thousand Words

by Brigit Young

  “I know, I know, obviously it’s not that. But I’m talking on a smaller level. Okay, so one time my dad told me—it was probably a year or two ago—that there was a guy at work who would steal the office supplies sometimes. The guy got into a lot of trouble. Dad laughed it off at the time, but maybe that guy did something even worse recently. Stole something big. My dad saw it. The guy couldn’t stand to lose his job, maybe he’s a psycho or something, so he threatened Dad. Or our family. My dad had to cut off all ties for a while. Worst-case scenario, the guy hurt him or something.” Jake winced and then shook his head. “No, no, probably he’s not hurt, definitely not. But anyway, that’s one option.”

  “Hmm…” Tillie said. “That all sounds like a little bit of a stretch, don’t you think?”

  A squirrel leapt across the cold, dead grass on a lawn. Tillie lifted up her camera and captured its scramble to an oak tree.

  “You really love that camera, huh?” Jake’s eyes followed the squirrel, and his face tilted toward the high branches against the sky.

  Another squirrel came out of the bushes and ran in the exact same path that the first squirrel had, following it up the bark. Instead of answering him, Tillie took another picture.

  “I should get a pet squirrel.” Jake grinned. “Oh man, that would be so awesome. I’d be that guy. The pet-squirrel guy.”

  Tillie smirked, releasing her camera as the squirrels continued their chase in the treetops. “Is ‘awesome’ really the word for being a ‘pet-squirrel guy’?” she said. “Alright, so what’s your other theory?”

  “Huh?” he said, and Tillie saw that he had been glancing behind them, as if on the lookout for the maybe-imaginary blue car. “Oh, yeah. Well, if you think that one’s a stretch, you’re going to have a really tough time with this one … But stick with me here.”

  “Okay…”

  “What if my dad was”—he paused and inhaled a big breath, then let it out—“kidnapped?”

  Tillie cocked an eyebrow. “Kidnapped?”

  “Unlikely, I know, but there’s some circumstantial evidence to back up this theory, and it’s a doozy.”

  “‘It’s a doozy’?” Tillie couldn’t help but interject. “Why do you talk like my grandpa sometimes?”

  Jake shrugged. “Movie nights usually include some classics, ya know? They talked a lot better in the olden days. More colorful language.”

  Tillie shook her head and laughed quietly. He was absurd.

  “Look, we inherited some money last year when Zayde died.”

  “Oh,” Tillie gulped. “I’m sorry—”

  “It’s fine, it’s fine, it was really sad, but it’s fine,” Jake brushed her off. “Anyway, it wasn’t a lot, but a good amount. And I’m sure Dad told his buddies at work about it. No question. And maybe they thought it was a lot. Maybe someone was desperate, and needed Bubbe and Zayde’s cash. Maybe that’s why my mom’s lying, looking at bank statements, and why everyone’s got a different story for where he is.”

  “Okay,” Tillie said, feeling her backpack get much heavier as the walk continued, the familiar throb beginning in her hip and leg. “But isn’t it possible your dad is just having a midlife crisis or something?” Maybe his dad was one of those guys who bought Ferraris with money he didn’t have or went on long hikes in the wilderness out of nowhere. Her dad had written about politicians who did that kind of stuff. “Like maybe your mom and him were having money problems? Fighting about it?”

  She remembered her parents’ arguments over medical bills and cringed inwardly.

  “Oh, come on, but what parents don’t fight, right?” Jake said. His pace quickened, putting him a few steps ahead of her, so he raised his voice as he spoke.

  “Okay, but…” Tillie went on, badgering him a little, “it is the most reasonable explanation for someone not showing up at home. Or at work.”

  “Look, my parents are an opposites-attract situation, okay? Fire and ice. Gimli and Legolas. Artist and scientist.”

  “I get it.”

  “For the record, my dad’s Gimli. And plus, my dad and I talk about everything. Even if there were a big problem or something, he’d talk to me about it! Look, I know you don’t want to believe something really bad happened, and trust me, I don’t either.”

  Tillie threw him a skeptical look.

  “I don’t!” Jake had a bit of a gallop to his walk, Tillie noticed. Everything about him was hyper, excitable. Even his voice. When he got worked up, he chirped. “I just know something bad did happen! Does a fight or a midlife crisis explain the blocked number? The car? All the … weirdness? Just trust me, when we get to his office, you’ll see. You’ll see I’m not so crazy.”

  Jake wore his backpack with the straps so loose that it hung down to the top of his pants, and it bounced against him as he strolled.

  They left the brick houses and narrow sidewalks with the occasional car rolling by and arrived at Lake Avenue. The volume of the world turned up.

  Tillie felt her leg clench tight. All the cars made her nervous.

  “You okay?” she heard Jake say over the vrooms of motors, and she saw he had slowed down to walk beside her.

  Tillie turned to him, the light March wind blowing her hair out of her face, the chill adding a slight mist to her glasses, and she noticed his eyes once again: Round. Sincere. It was hard to look into them and see the boy who had made fun of her in sixth grade.

  “What is it?” Jake asked.

  She tilted her head toward her feet and let out a sigh. “I hope we’re almost there,” she said. “I have to do some stuff for Diana Farr and I have a million pictures to go through for that and a lot of homework. So let’s make this quick.” She tried to speed up, which always made her limp more pronounced, but she really needed to escape Jake’s stare.

  * * *

  Jake’s dad worked in a cubicle in the sales department of a company that sold commercial refrigerators and freezers. Jake said he used to have a job he liked better, back when they lived in their house on Maple Street, but he got laid off.

  “But it’s not so bad, my dad says,” Jake told her as they made their way into the building. Jake acted as if he’d been there a million times before, just hopping on the elevator and heading to the floor of his dad’s company’s offices like it was second nature. “He says his buddies make it kind of fun, actually. Although, for all we know, one of these ‘buddies’ is threatening my dad, or—”

  “Are we allowed up here?” Tillie interrupted as the elevator doors opened. In front of them stood a glass wall and two floor-to-ceiling glass doors leading to a few dozen cubicles filling a vast off-white space. Everyone looked extremely busy. And grumpy. As inconspicuously as possible, she took a couple of pictures of the general boredom before her.

  “Oh, yeah,” Jake said. “I come here a lot. Dad lets me stop by and we chat for a bit as he gets coffee or whatever. One time I went out on an on-site visit with him. Some grocery store thinking of upgrading their cooling systems. That was kinda boring, to be honest. Sometimes I come after school and he leaves early and we head home together. I know these guys.”

  Jake went right up to the door.

  “It’s always locked,” he said to Tillie as he began to wave to someone inside. “They’ll let us in.”

  Jake caught the eye of a man with a brown suit, a receding hairline, and a pained look on his face. The man waved back to Jake, looked side to side, and came their way.

  “This is the guy who told me my dad was on vacation,” Jake whispered through his teeth.

  When the man got to the door he opened it, but instead of letting them in, he came out and shut the door behind him.

  “Jim!” Jake put his hand up to give the guy a high five, and the man gave in as he glanced at Tillie, before turning back quickly to Jake.

  “Hey,” the man—Jim—said.

  Tillie couldn’t believe Jake knew the names of his dad’s coworkers. She’d never been to her dad’s or mom’s work. Well, she used to vis
it her mom, who was a secretary at the front desk of the English department at the local college, back when she was little. But not in a long time. Jake wasn’t exaggerating when he said he and his dad were so close.

  “Here to see Dad,” Jake announced, moving past the man to grab the door handle.

  Jim didn’t step aside to let him in.

  “Oh, hey, buddy, your dad’s still out using his vacation leave,” Jim said. He glanced toward the cubicles behind him and then back toward Jake and Tillie several times, shifting from one foot to the other. “Sorry,” he added.

  Jake threw Tillie a raised eyebrow.

  “Well, that’s weird,” Jake said. “He hasn’t been at home either, Jim, and my mom says he’s in Canada for work.”

  Tillie stood close to Jake’s side, holding her small range finder by her thigh and snapping pictures, angling the lens up toward the man and the office.

  Jim glanced back at the cubicles again. “Oh my gosh, you’re right,” he said, smacking his own forehead lightly. “I’m confusing everybody’s schedules over here. No, no, he’s in Canada, that’s right.”

  “Huh,” Jake said.

  “But I’ve got to get you away from the door, buddy,” Jim went on. “You better head out. Company policy. Can’t let you in during work hours.”

  “That’s not true,” Jake insisted, a touch of despair creeping into his voice. “I come here after school all the time.”

  Jim paused. “Well, your dad was with you then.”

  “Ah, okay, okay.” Jake nodded, pretending to let it all go. “Yeah, I guess I’ll just see him at home when he gets back from … from wherever. But hey, let me just go grab some stuff for him. He left some things at his desk my mom needs. I’ll bring the stuff home.”

  That was smart, Tillie thought. There could be clues there. And if Jim wouldn’t take his eyes off them, she could secretly take photos of his desk and they could decipher what they saw in detail later.

  Jim smacked his lips grimly. “Kid…” he said, trailing off.

  “Well, I mean…” Jake was not deterred. “Aren’t you his friend? Don’t you want us to have his stuff we need?”

  Jim looked back into the office once again. He ran his fingers through his meager amount of hair. He moved side to side slightly like he had to go to the bathroom. Then he shook his head and burst out, “Jake! Just let it go, okay?”

  Jake surrendered. “Okay, Jim. Okay. I don’t wanna cause any trouble.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” Jim said, lowering his voice again. “But … I just can’t let you in. So, well, I’ll see you.”

  Jim turned, opened the transparent door, and shut it behind him. Once the door was closed, he gave a sad, closed-mouth smile to Jake and Tillie and walked away, combing his fingers through his hair over and over again before he disappeared into a cubicle in the back of the room.

  * * *

  As they burst out of the building and back onto the sidewalk, Jake raced ahead of Tillie, stopping himself and heading back every few steps to speak to her.

  “Something was up,” he said, his voice strident. “Something was definitely up.”

  Tillie, tagging along behind, clicked through the pictures she had taken, and from the looks of them, she agreed. As the images progressed, Jim looked more and more uncomfortable, his anxiety documented by the small dent in his forehead, the tiny drop of sweat between his eyebrows, and the dozens of shots of him looking back toward the room behind him, as if checking on something.

  “He was lying, right? He was lying about something.” Jake hurried on, away from the building. “Right? You have to understand, Tillie. Jim is my dad’s good friend. They play poker together. If he truly thought my dad was out on ‘vacation time’ and I told him he wasn’t home or on vacation … he’d be worried about my dad. But he wasn’t. At all.”

  “Could he have actually been mistaken about where your dad was?” Tillie asked.

  “Yeah, sure!” Jake nearly yelled. “But then why would he act so weird?” Jake shook his head and said to himself, “He was scared of something. He seemed … angry or guilty or something.”

  Jake was right. Tillie kept one eye on Jake to make sure she didn’t fall too far behind him and one eye on the images on her tiny screen. As Jake turned the corner onto Maple Street, Tillie spotted her first real clue.

  “Hey, Jake, wait up!” she called out.

  He hustled back to her.

  “Look at this,” she said, still catching her breath from trying to keep up with him.

  Their heads bent close together toward the billions of colored pixels that made up the photo before them.

  “Look at the man back there.” Tillie zoomed in on his face.

  “That’s Dad’s work friend, too. I met him once,” Jake said.

  “He’s in all of the pictures.”

  Behind the glass door, in the middle of the cubicles, a man could be seen peeking his head out and over his cubicle and watching them. In each photo, he tilted his head this way and that, not taking his eyes off them for even a moment. In the shot Tillie had taken just before Jim walked away, the two men appeared to be looking directly at each other. Jim had his eyes shifted so far toward the back of the room that the picture only showed the whites of his eyes and a small sliver of brown, and the man in the back stared directly at him. No, he didn’t stare. He glared. His pointer finger pressed against his lips, demanding silence. Tillie could almost hear a “Shhh” hissing out of the picture.

  Jake looked from the camera to Tillie.

  “They’re hiding something,” he said.

  6

  The Blue Chevy

  Their phones rang at the same time.

  The camera dropped from Tillie’s hand and swung down against her chest.

  “Mom,” Tillie said, turning her body at an angle away from Jake. She hadn’t been paying close enough attention to the time.

  “Mom!” Jake hollered into his phone. “I told you! I’ll be home by— Oh.” His voice quieted a little. “Mom, if the Wi-Fi isn’t working, it’s probably the router again.”

  “Why on earth are you still at school?” her mom demanded.

  “Because it’s the first meeting, and so there’s, like, extra stuff to do,” Tillie said, hearing the lie come out easily. “I’ll be home soon.”

  As her mom began her list of health questions, Tillie mumbled, “I feel fine. I gotta go, though.”

  “Mom, I’ll be home in a little bit and fix it then,” Jake continued to his mom, scratching his head anxiously and releasing a bunch of dandruff. “Yeah, just finishing up at Art Club.” He looked over at Tillie and winked. When he winked, his whole face scrunched up except one stretched-out eye. “I’ll just walk home with some friends. I can stop and grab a sandwich for dinner or something. I’ll be home in a while.” Jake groaned. “I told you, I stopped with that graffiti stuff. It was stupid.” He paused. “But even you have to admit that a Stop sign looks better with a smiley face on it.”

  From Tillie’s free ear she heard what amounted to a squawk on the other end of the line.

  “Sorry!” Jake said. “Okay, fine, I’ll head home and fix the computer.”

  He hung up. Tillie was still listening to her mom go through the whole host of problems that could inflame her nerves if she overexerted herself and how it was terrible of the school to keep students so late, Art Club or not, and when would Tillie be home, and on and on.

  “She’s freaking out. Probably because my dad was always the guy who fixed the little stuff,” Jake said to Tillie as she gave him a “Be quiet!” look. But he was really talking to himself, like a stand-up comedian playing to an empty room. Jake kicked some pebbles with his toes, watching them scatter from the sidewalk onto the grass. “And also she probably needs the computer to help her figure out stuff about my dad … I’m thinking she definitely knows something, and is probably just doing what we’re doing. Trying to figure out how to help him, right? Not like I’d ever know what my mom rea
lly feels about anything. She’s, like, inscrutable.” He continued talking, mostly to his feet, ignoring that Tillie was still on the phone.

  The other end of the phone line shifted from a monologue to ominous silence. Her mom had heard Jake’s voice, and Tillie’s lateness had become the last of her priorities.

  “Mom, it’s just a kid in the club,” Tillie said quickly.

  “It’s the boy from the phone, isn’t it?” her mom grilled her.

  How did moms know everything?

  “No, I’m out in the hallway because you called and interrupted!” Tillie lied. She gave Jake a look of murder and put a finger to her lip, shushing him—just like the cubicle man had shushed Jim, she realized with a shiver.

  “Honey, are you really at Art Club? Are you being honest with me?”

  “Mom!” she answered a little too harshly, and immediately felt bad. She was lying, after all. “Mom, yes, I swear I’m at Art Club. With Ms. Martinez, remember?” she added. Her mom knew all about Ms. Martinez. “I’m just heading home now.”

  “Okay, I’ll come pick you up. Leaving now.”

  “You don’t have to pick me up. You don’t! I’m going to take the bus and take a few pictures on my way. Of … squirrels,” she said, her voice slowing and slipping to a wisp.

  “Come now, honey. Come right home. No excuses. You’ll tire yourself out,” her mom warned.

  “Okay. Bye.”

  “Oops,” Jake said when it was clear Tillie had gotten into some trouble. “I didn’t mean to be so loud. She’ll still buy it, right? We can keep looking now? Real quick?”

  “I’ve got to go,” Tillie grumbled. “Maple Street will have to wait. Besides, my leg…”—she almost stopped, but instead let the words spill out—“is probably going to start hurting really badly soon. It always does after a lot of walking. And my mom can always tell if it’s hurting by the sound of my voice. Then she tells Dad and he gets all … I can’t … do stuff. Like this.”

  Maybe that was why she never spoke to other kids, because people might hear everything in her voice. They might hear that she could only walk just so much farther, for just so much longer. They might hear the part of her that wanted to stand on chairs and decorate the classroom for Thanksgiving, but instead had to sit and staple the tail feathers to the paper turkeys; the part of her that wrote essays on personal health and the history of athletics during gym class and hated it; and the part of her that headed to the bus every single day after school instead of staying to watch a school basketball game or rehearse for the school play, because if she didn’t, the next day her body would be tired and so her muscles would get more tight and her leg would be even more feeble for a few days and her mom wouldn’t let her go out and take pictures.