by Tom Ryan
I squeeze in and see that they’re looking at a livestream on the BNN homepage. Onscreen, Quinlee Ellacott is standing in front of Burke’s house. I notice that the curtains are all drawn.
“Authorities have confirmed the arrest of forty-six-year-old Terrence O’Donnell in connection with the disappearance of Layla Gerrard. We’ve also learned that O’Donnell recently moved into this house, which belongs to his brother. According to neighbors, O’Donnell is unemployed and spends his days aimlessly and can often be seen on the porch behind me, smoking cigarettes.”
An unflattering black-and-white photo of Terry appears onscreen, eliciting laughs from a couple of the guys.
“He looks like Burke,” someone says.
“That’s enough,” says Ms. Grisham.
The camera cuts back to Quinlee.
“BNN has learned that O’Donnell was also living at this address ten years ago when seven-year-old Sibyl Carmichael was abducted from this exact same neighborhood, and was investigated at the time but had a solid alibi corroborated by several witnesses. Sources tell us, however, that police believe that O’Donnell recently gained entry into an abandoned house and was using it as a den of sorts. According to these sources, items found in the house indicated that O’Donnell had a fascination with the older case. BNN has also learned, exclusively, that DNA belonging to Layla Gerrard was also found in the house.”
“They think he’s a copycat.” I turn, surprised that Brianna has spoken up. “He was close to the first case. It might make some kind of sick sense to him to return to this adventure and try to get involved.”
“Holy shit,” says Denny. “Isn’t that Burke’s mom?”
On the livestream, Marion O’Donnell is hurrying down the front steps to her car, her head down. The camera jostles as it pushes around other news people to get as close to the sidewalk as possible.
“Excuse me!” a voice yells, and the camera swings around to catch Quinlee as she shoves her way between other news gatherers. Her voice, as loud and clear as a bell, chimes out over the other yelling reporters, and somehow, despite the fray of people, she’s managed to instinctively position herself next to the O’Donnell’s mailbox in such a way that nobody can get around her, and her camera operator has a perfect shot of her yelling, with Mrs. O’Donnell in the background.
“Mrs. O’Donnell!” Quinlee yells, her shoulders back, her microphone held carefully to her mouth, her bouffant sweep of blond hair perfectly arranged to frame her face. “What can you tell us about your brother-in-law’s involvement in the disappearance of Layla Gerrard?”
Marion stops in her tracks and turns to stare at Quinlee, and the other reporters go completely silent, not wanting to ruin the moment and miss a good sound bite.
Quinlee comfortably fills up the space on her own. “Do you think Terrence kidnapped that girl?” she asks loud and clear.
Just walk away, I think to myself, willing my thoughts to transport to Burke’s mom telepathically. Instead, she takes a deep breath and walks over to the mailbox. Quinlee maintains a solid professional face, but her eyes glitter with triumph. I’ve got her, I imagine her thinking.
“Terry hasn’t admitted to anything,” says Mrs. O’Donnell forcefully. “My husband and I believe one hundred percent that he is not involved in Layla’s disappearance. There’s no way that he would do something like this to a poor defenseless child. Don’t you think if he wanted to kidnap a child, he would have hidden his tracks better and cleaned out the bedroom first? And also, the letter could have been written by anyone!”
Oh shit.
“What letter are you referring to, Mrs. O’Donnell?” asks Quinlee, who now looks like the cat who caught the canary. She glances briefly around her shoulder at the other reporters, half to sell the point that she was the one to score this scoop and half in irritation that she has to share it.
Mrs. O’Donnell gets flustered, opening her mouth to say something, then closing it again.
Just walk away, I plead silently. Just turn around and walk away.
“There was a letter found in Layla’s bedroom,” says Mrs. O’Donnell. “It was written for De—for the other child who was with Sibby when she went missing.”
Behind them, the front door of the house opens again, and I see Mr. O’Donnell stick his head out and a look of alarm crosses his face. He disappears inside again as the door slams shut, and a moment later it swings out again, and he’s hurrying outside, struggling into his rubber boots even as he begins down the steps.
“Marion!” he yells. “Get away from those animals! No comment! No comment!”
Burke’s mom seems to come to her senses and steps back from Quinlee, then turns and hurries to her husband, who shuffles her back up the steps and into the house. Quinlee turns back to the camera, totally unruffled, and holds her microphone back up to her face.
“One thing is for certain: police will surely be looking for answers from Terrence O’Donnell, and as this case enters its fourth day, we’ll have to wait and see if the focus of this investigation shifts. For BNN, this is Quinlee Ellacott, in Redfields.”
“What does that mean?” someone asks. “Wait and see if the focus of the investigation shifts?”
“It means they might not be looking for a girl anymore,” says Brianna. “They’ll be looking for a body.”
In the uncomfortable silence that follows, Sarah catches my eye. The sympathetic look she gives me is more than I can handle right now, and I look away.
“Okay, everyone,” says Ms. Grisham. “That’s enough. Back to your seats.”
“Dee is that true?” asks Hugo Broad as we make our way to our seats. “Did you get a letter?”
“No,” I say, wishing I were anywhere else than here, the object of the entire room’s attention. Ms. Grisham doesn’t even shut it down; she obviously wants to hear what I have to say. “I mean, they found a letter, but it wasn’t to me. It just mentioned the…the old case.”
“That’s crazy,” says Miranda Ng. “You’re like, part of the story now. Maybe you’ll get to do an interview with Quinlee Ellacott.”
“Yeah right,” I say, trying to keep my voice light. “Not if I have anything to do with it.”
To my relief, Ms. Grisham finally claps her hands and people reluctantly turn to their copies of Great Expectations.
I slip my phone out of my pocket and compose one final text to Burke.
I saw your mom on TV. Sorry you guys are going through this—text me back asap—we need to talk.
Almost instantly, three dots appear, telling me that he’s composing a message. I wait, keeping half an eye on Ms. Grisham, who’s writing out the themes of Great Expectations on the giant whiteboard at the front of class, but after a moment, the dots disappear, leaving me wondering what he was going to say.
We’re sent home from school before noon. The snow has started falling, and although the roads are still bare, it’s clear from the chatter in the hallway that the forecast has only gotten worse.
I’m on my way through the parking lot when I hear someone call my name. I turn to see Sarah strolling across to me. She’s wearing her old green parka, and she’s also in a knit cap I haven’t seen before, burgundy with a tassel. It hides her hair and she looks so hot it’s all I can do not to stammer when I open my mouth.
“Hey,” I say.
“I’m glad I caught you,” she says. “I looked for you between classes, but I couldn’t find you. Wanted to offer you a ride home.”
“Oh, cool,” I say. “Thanks.”
“I got you a present,” she says with a grin. She unslings her bag from over her shoulder and digs around inside, pulling out what looks kind of like a can of spray paint with a tiny red trumpet attached to the top. She takes in my confused look and laughs. “It’s an air horn,” she says. “In case I’m not nearby next time you need to shut down pesky reporters.” She presses on the trumpet and an extremely loud, extremely obnoxious blaring noise fills the air. Everyone within earshot stops and looks
.
“In your face, Anderson Cooper!” she yells before handing me the horn.
“Thanks,” I say, putting it in my backpack. “Nobody’s ever given me a noisemaker before.”
“So, you want a ride home?” she asks. She holds a mittened hand out in front of her, and for a second I think she is going to take my hand, but then she flips it palm up and we both watch as it quickly fills with snowflakes. “My mom was pissed that I took the car in the first place. I think she was probably right, but I’ve got to get it home now, right?”
I hesitate. For some reason, I don’t know what to say. Of course I should take a ride with her. She lives right across the street from me; it would be weird not to.
I’m hit with an urge to tell her about the podcast, about the email from last night, about everything I’ve tried to do to make up for what I didn’t do back in the woods ten years ago.
Her face is open, smiling in a way I haven’t seen yet, lacking the subtly sarcastic twist to the corner of her mouth. Open and encouraging. I feel a pang, and I know that something’s happening in front of me, something I can have for myself if I just reach out and take it. Part of me wants it more than anything in the world, but for some reason, I know I can’t allow myself to follow it. Not now. Not when there’s so much else at stake.
“Um, I don’t know,” I say. “I mean, I appreciate it, but I have some thinking to do. I think I’m going to walk.”
She looks taken aback. “Oh. Okay. No problem.”
“Nothing serious,” I say, hurrying to make up an explanation. “Just some stuff with my family.”
“I’m a good listener,” she says. It’s something I already know, and I ache to get into the car and tell her everything.
But I can’t allow myself to get distracted. I can’t let myself get close, drop my guard.
The missing girl, the visit from the cop, the email telling me that Sibby might still be alive—all of it is pointing toward a new and serious realization: I can’t hide from the past any longer.
And if I’m seriously going to do this, if I’m going to dive deep into Sibby’s disappearance, I need to do it completely. I need to put everything else out of my mind. There were only two of us in the woods that day. One of us is missing, and one of us was left behind.
There’s no room for anyone else right now.
“I think I just want to be by myself right now,” I tell her, and I force myself to turn away before the look on her face causes me to change my mind.
23.
So far, I only have two flimsy emails to go on, and it’s quite possible that there’s nothing to them. I’ve received my fair share of wild claims since I started the podcast, and as much as I want this one to be true, I have to be prepared to accept that the sender may just be a delusional listener who wants to be part of something.
But still…if I’m being honest with myself, I don’t think that’s it. There’s something about this one that rings true. It’s what the sender didn’t say, rather than what they did say. Instead of an elaborate, complicated theory, full of names and dates and certainty, it’s just this: I think I saw her. I’m pretty sure it was her.
I really want Burke’s take on this, but he’s still ignoring my texts, and he still hasn’t come back to school. I can’t blame him for keeping a low profile, considering what’s going on with his uncle, but I still need to talk to him, so I decide I’ll have to go to him.
I’ve hung out at the dugouts with Burke before—or more like I’ve gone to the dugouts with Burke. The concrete bunkers at the old ballfields behind the school are the perfect place for stoners to hang out. They have a full view of anyone approaching and an easy exit into the woods behind the fields in case someone spots the cops.
On the few occasions I’ve come here with Burke, it’s been a quick visit. Enough time for him to score some weed, maybe smoke with the guy he buys it from. I don’t love it there, but I don’t generally mind potheads. They don’t cause shit. If anything, they generally want you to like them, to validate what they’re doing with their time, or to laugh along with their jokes. Drinking makes people unpredictable. Weed is the opposite.
But this visit is different. Usually I’m just tagging along with Burke, and it’s easy enough for me to just stick to the side and wait for him to be done, maybe shoot the shit with one of the guys who’s hanging out there. This one guy who everyone calls Donkey but whose real name is Pete is pretty funny, and he always tries to make me laugh, like I’m some kind of challenge or something. Maybe I am, maybe I come across as surly. Burke tells me I have resting bitch face, but honestly it’s not like that. I’m just quiet. Donkey’s a funny guy though, and once he makes me laugh, it always calms me down a bit.
I know Burke is here, because I saw him out the school window during final period, walking across the field with a couple of people. As I approach across the field, I can feel their eyes on me from the dark of the dugout. It’s only three thirty, but the sun is already low in the sky, and it’ll be twilight within the hour.
As I step up to the edge of the dugout, I feel a wave of uncertainty, and I wish I’d waited until I could have found him alone, but he hasn’t answered any of my texts, and I suspect that he’ll be likelier to talk to me if he’s baked.
Besides Donkey and Burke, there are three other people in the dugout: two older guys I don’t recognize, and Maggie Dunne, a senior who I’ve known a little bit since we were kids, although we’ve never really been friends.
“Hey, Delia,” she says when I step up to the concrete-edged space. I’m actually kind of relieved to see another familiar face, since the other guys are staring at me unnervingly. “What are you doing here?” She doesn’t even attempt to hide the surprise in her voice.
“I was looking for Burke,” I say.
I look directly at him for the first time. He’s sitting on the bench in the corner, hunched over a battered textbook, breaking up weed for a joint. He glances up at me.
“Hey, Dee, just let me finish with this.”
I feel such a rush of relief that he’s talking to me normally that I want to rush across and kiss him on the head, but I hold back.
“Yeah, sure,” I say.
“So, Dee,” says Maggie, “what do you think is going on with that missing kid?” She leans forward and pushes her hood off her head, as if to better hear my response. “Since you’re the expert and all.”
I almost choke on my words. “Expert?” Does she somehow know about the podcast? What the hell is going on?
Behind her, the guys on the bench seem to sit up a bit straighter and start paying attention for the first time.
“You know,” she says. “Like, because you kind of went through something like this. I mean, you know, when Sibby went missing.” She looks genuinely awkward, like she realizes she should take back her words. “Sorry, Dee. I guess I kind of thought you were over it.”
I force myself to relax. “What happened back then doesn’t really make me an expert,” I say, shrugging and trying to keep my words calm. Getting myself worked up would only serve to give them something to think about and that kind of argument would be bound to escape the confines of the bunker.
“Jesus, Maggie,” says Burke, saving me from the awkwardness of the situation. “Do you really think I want to be hearing this bullshit right now?”
“Sorry, Burke,” says Maggie sheepishly.
Burke finishes rolling the joint, pinching the end and slapping it against his thigh a couple of times before twisting the paper and tucking it behind his ear.
“You gonna spark it up?” asks Donkey.
“Give me a minute,” says Burke. He hops down from his perch and gestures for me to follow him.
Outside the dugout the air is crisp and getting colder by the minute as the sky darkens. Across the ball field, a street-light comes on, and the halo around it enhances the flurries that spin through the blue glow.
“What’s up, Dee?” asks Burke. He doesn’t sound angry, just
wary, a tightness in his voice.
“I need your help,” I say. I dig inside the pocket of my coat and pull out the paper I printed this morning, the email with the Gmail address at the top of it.
He reads it, then looks up at me. He’s not shocked, just mildly interested. “So some wing nut thinks they know what happened to Sibby,” he says.
“I don’t think they’re a wing nut,” I tell him. “I have a feeling about it.”
He nods. “A feeling. So what do you need me for?”
“They haven’t responded to any of my emails,” I say. “I was hoping maybe you could try and see where it came from?”
He laughs. “It’s a Gmail address. I can’t trace a Gmail address.”
“I thought maybe there was something you could do, like look up the IP or something,” I say.
“Burke!” yells Donkey from the dugout behind him. “I’m freezing my nuts off! Let’s smoke this thing and get the hell out of here!”
“Yeah, hang on!” Burke yells back. He turns back to me and shakes his head. “It doesn’t work like that. Sorry, Dee.”
“I figured it was worth a shot,” I say. For a moment, neither of us says anything. I can’t tell what’s going on in his face, but I can tell that he’s hurting.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the note?” he says suddenly. “Why didn’t you tell me the cops came to see your family about a note?”
I stare at him, trying to find the right words. “Everything just kind of happened so quick,” I say.
“Not that quick,” he responds right away. It’s obvious that he’s given this a lot of thought. “You knew about the note before anything happened with Terry. You could have told me.”
I throw my hands up. “What was I supposed to say, Burke? That someone was out to get me? That I was scared shitless? Because I was.”
He shakes his head. “You could have told me what’s up. I would have told you.”
“Well, you’ll never have to worry about something like this,” I say. “You weren’t there. You haven’t spent your life wondering what would have gone down differently if you’d done something. You don’t know what it’s like! Everybody else gets to move on, and I’m the one left behind feeling guilty! I’m the one who feels responsible! Okay?”
