by Brigit Young
Tillie walked back to the bus, still unsure of her next move. Her leg and hip were starting to tingle, perhaps from the overuse but maybe from the stress.
She’d go downtown. Since there was no Art Club, there was no way he was at school. Maybe he’d met up with his friends on Main Street. She cursed herself for not getting Abby’s number. After she checked Main Street, she’d go to his dad’s office, see if he’d gone there. But what if Cubicle Man was there? What if he’d returned to work, pretending to have just been out on one of those “on-site visits” Jake told her about? She couldn’t be seen there. Neither could Jake! She had to find him.
When she stepped off the bus onto Main Street, she peered into the café where she knew kids hung out after school. Inside, she saw several groups of her classmates, including Diana Farr. Instinctively, Tillie took a picture. Cara Dale, a new recruit into Diana Farr’s clique, saw her and giggled. Tillie wasn’t positive the giggling was about her, but she thought it probably was. Pushing it out of her head, she went to the front of the store to get a hot chocolate.
Now all she could do was sit there and wait for a while to see if maybe Jake showed up. Tillie pulled out her camera and absentmindedly clicked through some of her favorite shots. The images drowned out the chatter in the café. Tillie came upon the portrait of Ms. Martinez. It wasn’t a great picture, but she’d kept it on her camera because it brought her back to that day in the car, to Ms. Martinez telling her that her pictures were beautiful.
Ms. Martinez lived only a few blocks away, actually, Tillie remembered, clicking back to the previous picture of Ms. Martinez’s house. Clareview Street.
What if, instead of getting Jake to tell his mom, she just told Ms. Martinez everything? She would know what to do. She wouldn’t let anything happen to them. Jake might be mad at Tillie for it at first, but he would forgive her. He’d forgive her when he learned about the duffel bag and understood how real things were getting, and how it wasn’t just a theory anymore. Now there was a bag full of … something, and a scary guy, and too many secrets, and she had to do something right then and there.
Tillie left her still-full hot chocolate, and headed out of the café toward Ms. Martinez’s street.
Tillie texted her mom: Running super late! Feeling fine, took some meds, pain not bad.
Her mom texted back: Hurry home, honey.
A couple of blocks before Clareview, Tillie saw Ms. Martinez’s Main Street deli and made a detour to go in. If she could grab Ms. Martinez’s glasses, she figured, it could only help. It would give Tillie an opening, and since Ms. Martinez would be happy to get them, maybe she’d be more likely to listen to Tillie as she told her this outrageous-sounding story of the missing dad.
The deli was fairly empty. It had a handful of small tables to sit at, but no one was there. Black marks from customers’ shoes covered the tile floor, and in the corner Tillie noticed some spilled ketchup. The place smelled like pickles. The man behind the register didn’t seem to notice her come in, or perhaps he just didn’t care. He leaned against the counter on his elbows, sighing every now and then, flipping the pages of a magazine. The boy behind the sandwich counter sat on a chair against the wall, asleep. A fly buzzed under his nose and Tillie took a picture of him sniffing in his sleep as it circled him.
Tillie hobbled toward the man behind the register. Her leg was starting to really bother her. Her lower back, too.
“Help you?” he said, looking up from his magazine.
“I—” Tillie started to answer.
“Oh, hey, what happened to your leg?” he asked.
People asked this a lot, as if it were their business. Usually she answered, “Oh, nothing, just recovering from a broken foot,” which was a lie that made people comfortable. She’d long fantasized about making up something exciting, like “I was attacked by a mountain lion,” or “I’m part pirate—there’s an old-fashioned peg leg under my pants.”
“Broken foot,” she answered.
“Ah, I’m sorry. I broke my foot once.” He leaned toward her and proceeded to tell her all the details of his baseball injury.
“So, um,” she interrupted him, “I’m sorry, but I’m looking for some glasses?” She felt herself blush like she usually did when she asked someone for something.
“Everyone’s losing their glasses, huh?” he asked, and shook his head.
“Huh?” Tillie said. “They’re brown? With polka dots.”
As she said “dots,” the man spoke over her. “Ah, same pair. Some guy got those already.”
A part of Tillie felt a little pleasure that she had been right—the glasses had been at the deli, just as she’d deduced from her photos. But this information also confused her. Some guy?
“Yeah,” the man continued, “wrapped ’em up in some of our napkins here and stuffed ’em in a bag. Didn’t say ‘thank you’ to me when I handed them over, but whatever. He was a Cubs fan, so I guess that’s to be expected.” The guy laughed. “Go Sox, right, kid?”
“Wait,” Tillie said. “How’d you know he was a Cubs fan?”
“Cubs bag. Smug face.”
Tillie took a breath. Just because it was a Cubs bag didn’t mean it was the same guy. Maybe Ms. Martinez just had a boyfriend with a Cubs bag.
But maybe, for some reason, Cubicle Man was a step ahead of her. Maybe he was sending her a message. Maybe he knew she’d seen him at the house and wanted to remind her not to “ask questions.” Maybe he was watching her right then.
Her stomach tightened and her bad leg began to quake. “Um,” Tillie squeaked. “Did this guy have glasses, by any chance? Beady little eyes? Wearing a suit?”
“Ha! Descriptive.” He smiled at her. “Glasses, yeah. Didn’t exactly gaze into his eyes.”
Tillie swallowed. “Was he bald?”
“Couldn’t tell. He was wearing a baseball cap. Wait, are you the real live Nancy Drew? Right here in this deli?” The man cackled. “What’s the mystery? The Case of the Missing Glasses? The Secret of the Empty Suit?”
Tillie felt the world swirling around her. “Thank you!”
She hurried out.
“Good luck, Nancy!” the man yelled, still belly-laughing, and she could hear his howls even as the door dinged and closed behind her.
* * *
Jake, Tillie texted, Cubicle Man is up to something. Sure of it. Seriously, where are you???
Should she be even more worried about him than she already was? Cubicle Man might know all about them. He might have been following them around this whole time. He must have been the one driving the blue Chevy—he’d followed Jake to school and tailed them to the bus stop; who was to say he hadn’t tracked them everywhere? Maybe he knew Ms. Martinez was their favorite teacher, that Tillie was the Lost and Found, that she was supposed to find the glasses. Was he watching her right then? Would he hurt Ms. Martinez to send some kind of awful message to stay away?
Tillie tried to move quickly, her backpack and camera clunking against her back and chest, her hair flying around her face in a whirlwind with each step. It wasn’t far, she could make it, she told herself. Tillie tried to ignore that her leg hurt more than usual. It remained tender from the karaoke fall two nights before, and from the tension her body felt as it pushed itself faster than normal.
She passed a few kids from her school at one point and kept her head down. If they had any requests for the Lost and Found she just didn’t have the time to spare.
When Tillie arrived at the corner of Main Street and Ms. Martinez’s block, where she could see the little house, a man bounded out from behind her, nearly knocking into her with his shoulder, and walked right on ahead of her.
“’Scuse me,” the voice said cheerily, but the kindness in his tone didn’t stop Tillie from feeling like she’d been punched in the gut.
Tillie stopped in her tracks for a moment. She could see from the back side of him that he wore a baseball cap. Over his shoulder he carried an overstuffed duffel bag with the Cubs logo on it.
It was him. She hadn’t seen his face, but it had to be him.
Had he recognized her? Maybe he hadn’t really looked at her. He’d already moved several yards ahead.
Tillie kept going, but slowed down. If he turned around, if it was really him, she couldn’t let him see her. She went into her incognito mode—a method she’d perfected by the end of elementary school—head down, hands on her backpack straps, turtle-like movements. She stayed far enough behind him that she had plausible deniability if he accused her of following him, but if he turned around and recognized her it was all over, anyway. She hid her face with her hair.
Tillie was a ways behind him when she saw him slow down right in front of what she recognized as Ms. Martinez’s house.
She could hardly breathe. The man stopped at Ms. Martinez’s mailbox and began to open it.
Was Ms. Martinez in danger? Tillie wondered if she should give her a warning of some kind. Should she yell out? But then he might come for her. Maybe that’s exactly what he wanted. With his back still toward Tillie, he opened the mailbox and took out some envelopes. Wasn’t it a federal crime to open someone else’s mail? Her mom had told her that once, when she’d opened up something meant for her dad. He’d better not open Ms. Martinez’s mail, Tillie thought. She’d report him.
… And then what?
Tillie felt helpless. Entirely and utterly helpless. There was only one thing she could do. Tillie lifted up her camera and began to document all of it. Keeping her distance, she took two shots and readied herself to drop her camera at a moment’s notice if he saw her. But he was still looking down at the mail. He flipped through it as if he had all the time in the world, which helped Tillie, because she was stuck either standing there, or eventually moving forward and having to confront him, or hiding behind a tree or a car.
As he began to turn and head toward the house, Tillie chose the car. She took three steps to hide behind the vehicle parked in front of Ms. Martinez’s neighbor’s house, and she crouched down, perching her camera’s lens above the hood. For the second time that day, she hid like a spy.
Ducking down low, Tillie came face-to-face with the car window. And when she saw a bar-coded sticker, she felt all the breath go out of her. Tillie was hiding behind a rented blue Chevy, parked mere yards from Ms. Martinez’s home. She held on tight to her camera and told herself to focus.
Tillie took some shots of the man’s back as he walked up the little concrete path that led to the house’s front door. The man pulled some keys from his pocket and began to put them in the lock. He fumbled a bit.
Why did he have her keys?
Tillie had to do something. She had to scream.
Then the door opened. Ms. Martinez, out of her work clothes and in sweatpants and a hoodie, stood there smiling. She said something to the man and they both laughed. The man leaned down, opened the duffel bag, and pulled something out: the glasses, wrapped in deli napkins. Ms. Martinez laughed in delight. She gazed at him adoringly as he slid the glasses onto her face.
Tillie felt so stupid. This was all a coincidence. It wasn’t Cubicle Man. No one was after Tillie or Ms. Martinez. It was just a boyfriend. The obvious answer. He happened to have a Cubs bag and a baseball cap because this was Templeton, Illinois, and everyone loved the Cubs and that was that. Ms. Martinez simply had a doting boyfriend running errands for her, because of course she did.
Ms. Martinez took a step out of the doorway and fell into the man’s arms. He held her, and they kissed. A long, lingering kiss. And then she put her head on his shoulder, and the man, taller than her, rested his head on top of hers, with his face tilted so that Tillie made out his smiling profile.
And she knew that face.
It was the face of the happy man, the hilarious man, the man who put his loving arms around his wife and son in front of a lovely white house made for a perfect family.
It was Jake’s dad.
14
This New You
“Where have you been?” Tillie’s mom scolded when she arrived home. “You look exhausted. What happened?”
Tillie went toward her bedroom, silent. She dragged her limp foot and felt it fill up with pain with each graze upon the floor.
Her mom grabbed her shoulders and turned her around. They were in the doorway to the hall that separated their bedrooms from the kitchen and living room, and Tillie thought of Ms. Martinez standing in the doorway. She felt sick.
“Mom, let me go.”
Her mom did.
“Excuse me, Miss Tillie, you are going to tell me where you were.”
Her mom’s arms formed perfect triangles on each side of her torso. She looked so angry it almost made Tillie laugh.
“What’s that smirk about?” her mom said, close to yelling.
Tillie moved past her mom and made it to her room, her mom right behind her, speaking into the back of her head the whole way.
“Tillie, there is no Art Club, is there? Okay, fine, I’ll tell you the truth, even though you never tell it to me. I know there’s no Art Club. I know there isn’t. I was trying to let you lie. To let you be … normal. Not that I mean you’re not normal. I mean that I was letting you get away with this one. With your boyfriend. Which, yes, I know I need to learn is okay, because, of course, there will be more of them. Of course there will. But I check on these things, Tillie; I call. I call the school and find out when to pick you up and—guess what?—there’s no Art Club. But I didn’t say anything last night, did I? Did I? But this is several times in a row and I don’t accept this anymore.”
Tillie threw her backpack on the floor. She removed her camera from where it hung around her neck and gently placed it on her shelf. She pulled the small camera out of her coat pocket and put it next to the other one. She threw her coat on the floor. And she collapsed on the bed.
Her mother took in a sharp breath.
“Are you okay? Okay, I’ll stop being angry. Just tell me you’re okay.”
Her mom leaned down to touch her leg, as if by placing her hand on it she could somehow tell how much pain Tillie was in. But Tillie kicked her mom away with her good leg, almost hitting her in the shoulder.
Her mom stood up, moved away from the bed, and choked out, “I hate this, Tillie. Whatever this is, these last couple weeks. This new you who is always gone. I’m so afraid for you. You struggle with movement, we know that. And all of a sudden you’re out there somewhere, probably running all around, and I see you’re in more pain than usual.” Tillie’s mom’s voice broke for a moment. She dabbed under her eyes with the end of her sleeve. “And there’s a cause and effect, honey. And you know, I leave work at four so I can come home for you. Do you realize that? And then you’re not here. Do you know how much that hurts me, Tillie? Let alone worries me?”
Tillie rolled onto her side so that all she could see was the wall. “Go away, Mom,” she said. “Please.”
“Honey—”
“Go away!” Tillie yelled.
Her mom must have obliged, because Tillie felt herself fall asleep. She hadn’t taken a nap since she was a little kid, but it felt warm and sweet.
When she woke up, her mom and dad were sitting in the kitchen with half-eaten suppers before them. Tillie wandered in looking for some kind of wake-up snack. She didn’t even know what time it was.
As she made her way to the fridge, they were both staring at her.
“Tillie,” her mom said. “We would like to talk to you.”
Tillie grabbed a ginger ale and some cheese and sat down across from them at the kitchen table.
“Where were you, sweetie? Is something wrong?”
Tillie shook her head. “I was out taking pictures,” she answered truthfully.
Her mom nodded, watching Tillie cut a huge slice of cheese and chomp it down. She was starving.
“Look, you know you can’t be running around,” Tillie’s dad said. “If you get hurt more, we just won’t be able to…” He trailed off. “To … I won’t be able�
�” And then he didn’t say anything. He was mute, as usual. He couldn’t finish, though Tillie was dying for him to do just that.
“Yes?” she made herself say, still not looking at either of them. “Won’t be able to…?”
Her dad shook his head.
“I’m fine.” She took a couple more bites, stuffing her mouth, and then got up from the table. Her parents were still silent, and she hated that she had to stagger back in front of them, in front of her dad, especially. She hated that she couldn’t just walk straight.
When she got back to her room she saw she finally had a text from Jake. A long one.
hey. sorry. u ok? somehow last night mom found out about the bowling alley?? very very weird. do i have a microchip implanted in me or something? kidding kidding. obvs. phone got ‘confiscated.’ snuck into her room to write to abby and ian this am while she worked from home. now shes watching tv so i can check it. what’s up w cubicle man? have new theory? i call u 2morrow. now i delete this and live a life of solitude ps even tho mom thought i was sick she still let me go to art club cuz i said i was super invested in the subject matter. hilarious. but guess where i was? that’s right—a rental place. got stuff to tell you tomorrow. k c ya soon matilda green
She put the memory card from her camera into her laptop, imported the photos, and pressed print.
The pictures of Ms. Martinez and Jake’s dad flew out of the printer in a fountain of nauseating images. As Tillie texted Jake back to tell him everything was fine and she’d see him tomorrow, she picked up a freshly printed photo of Jake’s dad grinning with his chin nestled in Ms. Martinez’s beautiful hair. Tossing it onto the desk with all the other pictures from the Mystery of the Missing Father, she thought to herself: Case closed.
15
Things Aren’t That Simple
When her alarm went off the next morning, Tillie found herself sleeping on the floor with a large spread of photos as her mattress and pillow. Through her window, the sun poured in with a rude, inappropriate brightness. As she lifted herself to wake and rubbed her eyes, she saw that the prints of the door-kiss were crinkled. One of the shots of Ms. Martinez’s house had a torn edge. Her photo printer was maxed out. She saw its red light blinking. Her mom would be so mad at how much she’d been printing. “It’s more important to pay for printing than to go to college, is it?” she’d say.
