I Hope You're Listening

by Tom Ryan

  “Besides,” he says. “Didn’t you say BNN is based in Vegas? That might as well be a million miles away. She’d have to do some crazy digging to figure out that the most popular true crime podcast—”

  “Eleventh most popular,” I correct.

  “Sorry, eleventh most popular true crime podcast is being recorded in the attic bedroom of some grunge-era stoner’s daughter.”

  I groan. “Don’t remind me.”

  “You’re a needle in a haystack, Dee. You’re an interesting needle, with a helluva backstory, but it’s one big-ass haystack.”

  The first bell rings, and Sarah Cash saunters into the room, pulling earbuds off and shoving her phone into her bag. She runs her hand absently through her hair before she sits, and the way it falls back down into place, loose and slightly out of place, sends a tightness up my back. I realize I’ve been watching her and quickly drop my eyes to my desk, sinking back into my seat.

  When I reach down into my backpack to grab my book, I notice Brianna across the room, her zipper case of colored pens and her hot pink Leuchtturm open on the desk in front of her. She’s making a big show out of picking out the perfect color pen, but when I look her way, she glances up at me with a smug, knowing smirk on her face. It’s obvious that she’s noticed me watching Sarah and has opinions about it. I want to grab her stupid perfect bullet journal and throw it out the window. Organize that, jerk.

  I turn back to my phone, trying to ignore her.

  Class has only just begun when there’s a rap on the door. Mr. Calderone lifts a finger, telling us to hold the thought, and walks over to answer it. He steps outside, and a moment later, he comes back into the room and points at Burke.

  “Mr. O’Donnell,” he says. “Your presence is requested in the office.”

  I turn to look at Burke, surprised, and he shrugs at me as he stands from his chair and walks past me on his way out of the room. A buzz makes its way through the room, but Mr. Calderone shuts it down, and soon we’re back to talking about the Russian Revolution.

  Burke is gone until halfway through our next class, civics. He hands a note from the office to the teacher and returns to his seat beside me. I glance at him and he gives me a wide-eyed stare and mouths holy shit before pulling his textbook from his bag.

  I’m not the kind of person to get interested in school gossip, but I’m dying to know what’s going on. I assume that if he was in trouble, he wouldn’t be back in class already.

  When the teacher steps into the hallway to take a call, I turn quickly to Burke.

  “What’s going on?” I whisper.

  “You remember those people we met at the gas station yesterday?” he says, one eye on the doorway. “The ones who live in your old house?”

  A shiver runs down my spine. A few seats over, I notice Brianna stiffen slightly, and although she’s staring intently at her textbook, running a finger down the page, I know she’s listening carefully.

  “Yeah,” I say. “The Gerrards right?”

  He nods. “The police wanted to talk to me because I’m a neighbor.”

  “Why?” I ask, although my spidey senses are tingling: this can’t be good.

  “It’s Layla,” he says. “Their little girl. She’s missing.”

  10.

  TEN YEARS EARLIER

  The forest is darker than normal, a hundred thousand layered shadows sliding over and under and into one another, and as Dee follows Sibby into the woods, she feels like they’ve lost hours and hours just by stepping through the tree line.

  The fort is pretty deep into the woods. Burke’s uncle Terry started building it for them a couple of months ago, when he moved into the basement in Burke’s house. All the kids in the neighborhood helped out, on and off, but mostly it was Terry and Burke and Delia and Sibby, with some visits from Terry’s girlfriend, Sandy. Dee’s dad even came out to help and brought lumber that he had left over from the deck he’d been building, but he was pretty busy with work, so it was just a couple of times.

  Since then, all the kids from the street play there every afternoon: Dee and Sibby and Greta, Dee’s little brothers—although they’ve been at hockey practice a lot lately—Burke, and even his sisters, every once in a while.

  “It’s about time we had the fort to ourselves,” says Sibby. “There’s never enough room when everybody shows up.”

  As always, Dee is happy to hang out with Sibby one-on-one, but she’s not sure she agrees about the fort being better when it’s just the two of them.

  But most of all, the woods are scary without a big gang.

  Ahead of them, the treehouse comes into view, a ghostly structure of weathered wood, just barely visible through the trees, suspended in the air.

  “Last one there is a rotten egg!” yells Sibby gleefully, and without waiting for Dee to catch on, she begins to run.

  Dee stands where she is, frozen in place. She doesn’t want to hurry to the treehouse. In fact, she wants to turn and run back the way they came, out into the clear air, the houses of their neighborhood in full view, and eyeballs looking through a dozen windows, watching them.

  But as Sibby crashes away from her through the underbrush, branches snapping and dead leaves crunching underfoot, Dee realizes that she’s going to be left behind, all alone, if she doesn’t follow in Sibby’s wake.

  Her boots, when she does start to run, are solid and thick. They aren’t the best for a footrace, but they’ll keep her feet warm. They’ll keep her tightly gripped to the ground.

  11.

  It’s snowing heavily by the time I arrive home from school. In the front entryway, I stomp to knock the snow off my boots, then I step through to the foyer. There’s a low murmur of voices coming from the living room. It sounds like my parents, which is odd since my mother usually doesn’t get home from work until a lot later than this, and there’s another voice in the mix too. A man’s voice.

  “Dee?” my mother’s voice calls out from the living room. “Is that you?”

  “Yeah,” I call back. I glance at the twins, and they raise their eyebrows. I wonder if they’ve heard about Layla Gerrard.

  “Can you come in here, honey?” It’s my father this time.

  An uneasy feeling rises from my stomach, and I let my backpack slide off my shoulder and drop it next to the stairs, then head down the hallway and into the living room.

  My parents turn to me from their perch on the couch as I enter. Their mouths are smiling, but it’s their eyes—wide and anxious—that express how they’re really feeling.

  Across the room from them, sitting in one of the beat-up leather wing chairs that flank the fireplace, is a face I haven’t seen in ten years. I remember it well, though. The face of the man who was charged with finding out what I knew after Sibby disappeared.

  Detective Reginald Avery stands to greet me, stepping forward to give me his hand.

  “Hello, Delia,” he says, shaking firmly.

  “Hi,” I say, looking back and forth between him and my parents.

  “It’s been a while,” he says, and all I can do in response is nod.

  “Delia, honey,” says my mother, “come sit with us.”

  My mother insists on calling me “honey,” even though I’m about as far from a “honey” as you’re likely to find. She’d do better to call me “champ” or “buster.”

  I squeeze onto the couch between them, the three of us staring across at the detective. Both of my parents are turned slightly toward me in a subtly protective gesture. The effect is of an awkward family photo, but as much as I wish they’d give me a bit of breathing room, I’m comforted by their concern.

  “You’ve grown up,” he says, smiling. I hate it when adults say this kind of shit. How am I supposed to respond? You’re looking older yourself?

  The truth is, he does look older now. I know that’s obvious, but when I was a kid, he seemed really old, although he couldn’t have been much more than forty at the time. That was at a point in my life when every adult was one of
two kinds of old: parent and teacher old, and grandparent old.

  Now I realize that this man was pretty young when he interviewed me, and he’s since moved well into middle age. His face is the same, but he’s aged. Lines on his face, gray in his hair, a slight paunch where there used to be a fit, trim figure.

  What interests me most, though, are the changes I can’t see. The hidden thoughts and considerations that sit behind his eyes.

  Maybe he was trying to be a savior back then. Maybe he thought he could fix things, make things right, find Sibby and bring the kidnappers to justice. Back then he was the man who was trying to solve the case.

  Now, ten years later, he’s the man who didn’t.

  It’s funny to think about, but I realize suddenly that Avery and I have come to the same place from two different directions. We’re both haunted by the girl we let down.

  He smiles at us, then drops his gaze to his hands, clasped as if in prayer in his lap.

  “You might have heard some rumors at school today,” he says.

  “About the missing girl,” I say. Next to me, I feel both of my parents tense, like dogs who’ve spotted a squirrel.

  Avery lifts his gaze to mine and nods. “Yes. What have you heard?”

  “Just that a girl is missing,” I say. When none of them say anything, I go on. “She lives in our old neighborhood. Burke and a few other kids from the area were pulled out and asked questions.”

  “That’s everything you’ve heard?” Detective Avery asks.

  “Yeah. What else would I have heard?” I sit up in my seat, suddenly alert, my spidey senses beginning to tingle. “Why are you here? What’s going on?”

  My mother reaches out and gives my shoulder a squeeze. “Take a breath, Dee,” she says. “Everything’s fine.”

  “Obviously,” I say, forcing myself to keep my voice calm and steady, “you’re here for a reason. Something is going on that involves me.”

  “Not exactly,” he says. “Not directly, at least.”

  “Delia,” says my mother. “The girl who went missing lives in our old house.”

  “I know that,” I say. I glance at my father, who looks shocked, and hasten to explain. “Burke told me about it. It’s Layla, right?”

  “You know her?” asks my mother, surprised.

  “Not really. I mean, I met her. The other day when I was out with Burke, he said hey to her. She was in a car, with her mom.”

  “When was this?” asks Avery. He’s fumbling for his notebook.

  “It wasn’t a big deal,” I say. “It was a few days ago. We stopped at the gas station on Livingstone because Burke wanted to buy some chips. We met her mom in the store, and Burke introduced me. When we came out of the store, Burke dragged me over to the car to meet Layla for some reason. That was it.”

  “How did she seem?” asks Avery.

  “Who?” I ask. “Layla or her mother?”

  “Both,” he says.

  I shrug. “They seemed normal. Like, the mom was nice, you could tell she likes Burke. I mean adults always like Burke, so no surprise there.”

  He nods, takes a couple of quick notes. “And the girl?”

  “She seemed normal,” I say. “Like a little girl. She seemed smart, I guess. Mature.”

  He keeps taking notes. “Nothing else?”

  “Not really,” I say. “I literally just met them and then forgot about them. There were no kidnappers lurking in the bushes or anything.”

  Avery finishes writing and tucks his notepad into his belt.

  “I understand,” he says. “But you never know when someone might have relevant information and not even realize it. That’s not why I’m here though.”

  My stomach seems to collapse in on itself, and I bite on my lower lip to calm myself down.

  “There’s more to this story,” Avery continues. “I wanted to come see you all because of something that was discovered at the scene.”

  He reaches into a leather bag sitting propped up next to his chair and pulls out a simple file folder. It’s purple, and the scratched out and rewritten labels tell me that it’s obviously been recycled many times. He places it on the coffee table between us and leans forward, placing one hand on the folder.

  “There was a…a note,” he says.

  “A note?” my father asks, pushing forward and looking at him with some urgency.

  Avery looks at me and hesitates.

  “You can tell me,” I say impatiently. “You can’t screw me up more than I already am.”

  “Dee,” says my mother, calmly reassuring. She puts her hand on my knee and squeezes, worried, I know, that I’ll have some kind of attack.

  “I’m fine,” I say. I turn back to Avery. “Please just tell us.”

  He takes his hand off the folder and pushes it across the table toward us, then sits back and waits.

  I slowly open the folder. Inside is one simple piece of paper, a color copy of what I assume was the original. It looks like a stereotypical ransom note from an old TV show, letters cut out of magazines and glued to a plain background. It would be almost ridiculous, a childish cliché, if it wasn’t for the message it spelled out.

  YOU KNEW YOU WERE PLAYING WITH FIRE WHEN YOU MOVED INTO THIS HOUSE.

  “What does this mean?” I ask, my heart thumping.

  Avery shakes his head. “We really don’t know,” he says. “It’s cryptic to say the least.”

  “Were there any other clues?” asks my father.

  “Nothing that I can talk about,” says Avery. “We’re still examining the scene of the crime. I can tell you that this is the only thing we found that implies a connection to…to the events of the past.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” says my father. “Why would they target our old house and not the Carmichaels’ old house? Isn’t there a family with kids living there?”

  “The Tufts,” says Avery. “They’ve lived there since the original…event.”

  “You can call it an abduction,” I snap. “I was there, remember?”

  “Delia,” says my mother, rubbing my back. I pull away.

  “It’s okay,” says Avery. “You’re right, Dee. I’m still trying to figure out how to approach this. The Tufts have a couple of boys, but they’re both off at college. They were teens when the Tufts bought the house. To answer your question, we don’t know why anyone would have targeted your old house.”

  “It’s been almost ten years,” I say.

  “You’re right,” he says. “It’s been a long time, and we probably wouldn’t even be making a connection if it wasn’t for the note. To be honest, we’d still be exploring other possibilities—that the girl ran away or was at a friend’s house—if it wasn’t for the note.”

  “No,” I say. “I mean it’s been ten years almost exactly, since Sibby went missing. Maybe someone is obsessed with the case, like a copycat.”

  Nobody says anything for a long stretch.

  “Right,” says Avery, and I can tell that this is the first he’s considered it. “Like I said, we’re trying to figure things out on the fly.”

  “The internet is full of stuff like this,” I say. “People obsess over old cases. There are copycat serial killers. Why not copycat abductions?”

  “We will consider every angle,” says Avery. “I can promise you that.”

  “Do you think there’s anything to be worried about?” asks my mother.

  “Do you think she’s in danger?” asks my father more abruptly.

  “Jesus, Jake,” says Mom, shooting him a what the hell look.

  “No, no, it’s okay.” The detective brushes off her concern. “I don’t think there’s any danger. We really don’t. But we do think it’s best to be extra vigilant for the time being. Basically, don’t go wandering around by yourself, okay, Dee?”

  “I’m not in the habit of doing that anyway,” I say.

  “Well, that’s good,” he says. “Until we’ve got some kind of an answer to what happened, keep it up.” He stands
, reaching for his bag, and I can tell he’s relieved to have delivered his message and ready to get out of here.

  “What happens if you don’t figure it out?” I ask. “You didn’t figure out what happened with Sibby.”

  His face blanches. “You’re right,” he says. “And we don’t want the same thing to happen twice, obviously.”

  “It isn’t an insult,” I say. “But isn’t it true that…” I hesitate, realizing it will sound kind of weird if I spout the exact percentage of unsolved missing persons cases. “A lot of cases like this go unsolved?”

  He nods slowly. “We’re going to do our best,” he says. “I promise that. But you all know the reality here. We can only do what we can do. Beyond that, we’ll have to figure it out as it develops.”

  Before he leaves, Detective Avery reaches inside his coat pocket and pulls out a card. He hands it to me, pressing it into my hand and folding my fingers over it.

  “If anything occurs to you, or if you are suspicious of anything or anyone, even if you just want to talk, you get in touch with me,” he says. “Don’t hesitate. That’s my cell number. Call or text me anytime.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Thanks.”

  He looks at me like he wants to say something else, but then he just gives me a tight-lipped smile. “You have nothing to worry about, Delia. We are going to do everything we can to find out who did this, and we will put your mind at ease.”

  I snort. At ease. As if anything they do can put me at ease.

  “What happens now, Detective?” asks my mother.

  “We’re having a press conference tomorrow evening,” he says, “and we’ll be organizing a search in the woods as soon as the weather cooperates.” He turns and glances out the window at the snow. “This obviously isn’t ideal, but unfortunately we’re stuck with it.”

  Avery makes his goodbyes, and I stand with my parents in the front window, watching as he gets into his car and pulls away.

  “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,” says my father. “I mean, yes about that poor girl, of course. But this has nothing to do with you, Dee.”

  “What were you talking about back there?” asks my mother. There’s a funny tone in her voice. “All those questions about copycats and unsolved crimes. Delia, have you been obsessing over Sibby online?”