Shade

by Marilyn Peake

  We rang the doorbell. It made a strange sound inside the house, like it was dying. Dogs started barking ferociously. I felt my heart go up into my throat, shoved there by fear.

  A man’s voice boomed out, “Who’s there?” Then we heard a thud as he yelled at the dogs, “Shut up, you mutts!” Then whimpering from one of the dogs. Had he kicked it? God.

  The door was flung open. A man wearing pajama pants and a sleeveless undershirt, heavy black hair covering his chest and a cigar butt squeezed between two of his fingers, stood there, larger than life. Two dogs watched us from behind his feet. Ash fell from his cigar. He said, “Whatever you’re sellin’, I don’t want any!”

  George found his voice first. “We’re not selling anything. We’re here about Misty.”

  The guy kind of growled. “Misty? That tramp? What about her?”

  I was too shocked to reply. Once again, George spoke up. “Are you Misty’s father?”

  He laughed. “Well, that’s what her whore of a mother told me. I’m not sure about that, but I stuck by both of them since Misty was a baby.”

  George fumbled for words. “Well, that was quite good of you, Sir. Well, now that Misty’s gone missing...”

  The man interrupted. “Well, now, she’s gone missing ... technically. Her mother and I reported her missing because the ol’ lady insisted we do that. But, ya know, Misty’s a young lady now and I’m guessin’ she’s just off with a boyfriend somewhere. She’ll be back. I bet my sweet ass she’ll be back before the cops even have a clue.”

  The whole time George and Misty’s dad were talking, I was racking my brain for how to get inside that house and into Misty’s bedroom. I finally said, “Mr. Perkins, we need something.”

  The request sounded out of place.

  Mr. Perkins puffed on his cigar and sized me up and down. He said nothing.

  I felt incredibly uncomfortable. I pictured myself wrapping an iron fist around my words, so they wouldn’t come out weak. “Misty was working on a school project with us. We need some work she did, so that she ... and we ... don’t get an F. Can we get it in her bedroom?”

  He kicked a foot at the dogs. “Go lay down! Over there!” Pulling them by their collars, he told us, “Sure. No problem. Her bedroom’s in the back of the house.” Rolling his eyes he said, “You can’t miss it. It’s pink.”

  I thought I’d faint as we entered that house, I was so scared. My legs felt weak and wobbly.

  It wasn’t hard to find Misty’s bedroom, the house was so small. And dirty. There were dishes piled high in the sink and garbage overflowing a can onto the floor. The stench of rotten food mixed with alcohol and cigar smoke hung in the air. Then suddenly, there was a pristine pink door with a sparkle-splashed frame around a sign with the name Misty on it.

  We pushed the door open.

  Wow. What a contrast.

  The room smelled of scented candles and perfume.

  We flicked the light on.

  Everything was immaculate. The walls were pink, the ceiling and baseboards white. Misty’s bed had been made: rainbow-striped quilt and pillows in pink pillowcases. A white desk held framed pictures; school books and notebooks were arranged neatly on its surface. A wall shelf held cheerleader trophies. I suddenly had tremendous respect for Misty. Who she was compared to what she came from showed someone with great determination and inner strength.

  We searched around her room. The bottom drawer of Misty’s desk was locked, but we soon found the key. It wasn’t too hard to find. Misty had taped it to the back of a framed picture hanging on the wall, a photograph of her riding a horse.

  In that drawer, Misty had tucked away her misery. We found a bloody knife wrapped in tissue stained with old blood. We also found a diary. I took both, dropping them into my purse. We also grabbed a notebook, so that we could wave it in front of Misty’s dad and tell him we had found the work we had been looking for.

  We did just that. Misty’s dad barely glanced away from the reality TV show he was watching. One of the dogs growled at us as we crossed the living room to the front door. As soon as we were outside, we hightailed it out of there.

  When we got into the truck, we started laughing hysterically. A kind of gallows humor, fueled with maniacal fear. We then drove in silence to Ursula Wooten’s house, each lost in our own thoughts.

  CHAPTER 20

  Ursula Wooten’s neighborhood was the most normal of the ones we had visited so far—neither as wealthy as Annie’s nor as dirt-poor as Misty’s. Ursula’s house was in your average suburban neighborhood. Her house was two stories high, lights on in the windows on both floors.

  We approached the front door: just a plain red door with a plain bronze handle for a door knocker. To the left of the door: a small black button for a doorbell. Kailee pressed the doorbell.

  In a downstairs window, a curtain was tugged away from the glass to reveal a patch of light and a little girl with pink ribbons in her ponytails. A few seconds later, a little boy about her same height appeared next to her holding a toy truck.

  The door opened. A clearly pregnant woman stood there holding a toddler. Clutching a blanket, the toddler sucked his thumb and looked at us warily. The woman had dark circles under her eyes and looked exhausted. Her voice was timid. “Yes?”

  I wasn’t sure how to begin. I felt relieved when George spoke first. “We’re here about Ursula.”

  The woman put a hand over her mouth and wept. Then, placing the toddler on the floor, she told him, “Run to Becky. Run, run!” in the kindest, most encouraging way. As he darted off to find Becky, a girl around thirteen years old came out of the kitchen to meet him. She asked him if he’d like cookies and apple juice. I assumed that was Becky.

  The woman invited us into the front hallway where she sat down on one of the stairs leading to the second floor. “I’m Ursula’s mom. Is she OK? Is she OK?”

  George explained that we didn’t know where Ursula was. He apologized profusely as the woman returned to weeping.

  Then Kailee interrupted. “We wondered if you could help us, Mrs. Wooten.”

  Ursula’s mother wiped the tears from her face. She was clearly the model of a woman used to helping others, someone who would put aside her own pain to help her children. “How?”

  Kailee said, “We should introduce ourselves. I’m Kailee Knight...” Waving a hand behind her, she continued, “And this is George Williams and Shade Griffin. We go to the same high school as Ursula. We work on the school newspaper and run an online school forum where students can chat online. We actually know Ursula from the school forum.” After a barely noticeable pause, she said, “We also know Ursula from a creative writing project we were working on together. We don’t want to leave Ursula out of the project ... especially since it will most likely be printed in the school newspaper ... and we want to keep Ursula’s missing person story in the minds of all the students, so that they’ll be more vigilant in looking for clues that might lead to finding Ursula. We wondered if we could look in her bedroom for the work she was doing for the project.”

  A dim glimmer of hope, a pinprick of light, shined in Mrs. Wooten’s eyes. She stood with difficulty, grabbing onto the banister with one hand and supporting her back with the other. Touching Kailee on the shoulder, she said, “I would appreciate that very much. Ursula’s bedroom is upstairs. Turn right. Her bedroom is the last door on the right side of the hallway.”

  Mrs. Wooten stepped aside to make room for us to pass by her pregnant belly. It was very large. It kind of scared me.

  Thoughts raced through my mind as I climbed the stairs. Was Ursula pregnant? Was she scared to death about it? If she was pregnant, how many months?

  The door to Ursula’s room was plain white, no decorations or anything. We pushed it open. Her room was spotless. I wondered if Ursula always kept it that way, or if her mom was keeping it clean and straightened since she’d gone missing.

  We closed the door behind us. Ursula’s room was really pretty. Painted lavender wit
h white ceiling and trim, it had a pastel-colored border running along the top of the walls. Inside the border, colorful faeries with sparkling wings danced around gardens.

  Ursula had white furniture. She had a canopy bed with gauzy canopy drapes and a purple comforter. Her windows were covered with white blinds and lavender curtains. Her desk was white. Her dresser was white. Crystals hung from mobiles in front of her window, probably to throw rainbows around her room on sunny days. A white bookcase held books with colorful spines.

  We searched through Ursula’s closet. Lots of pretty dresses and nice shoes. We searched through shoeboxes on her top shelf. A few held love letters from someone named Dylan. Was that someone in our school? We decided to look up Dylans in our school’s records.

  We briefly flipped through the letters. I suggested we take all of them with us in order to read them carefully for clues. I whispered, “Ursula’s mom is very sweet, wants to do everything to help find her daughter, and is one hundred percent behind us taking the materials related to Ursula’s part of our ‘creative writing’ project. Let’s just take what we need and tell her it’s part of the project. We want to find this girl, right?”

  George and Kailee agreed. Kailee then had the brilliant idea of searching Ursula’s bed. Her reasoning was this: “From the looks of this room, I’m guessing Ursula’s mom cleans it, or at least helps straighten it. If Ursula needed to keep something private from her mother, where might she stash it? Shoeboxes are one place; the bed, if Ursula made it neatly enough for her mom to leave it alone, would be another possible place.”

  We found nothing under the blankets, nothing under the pillows or inside the pillowcases. About to admit defeat, we looked under the bed and discovered drawers there. Opening them, we found underwear, socks and stockings. In one drawer, under silky pink bras and underpants, we found an opened pregnancy test box.

  Bingo! Shaking the contents out onto the bed, we found three pregnancy test sticks. The rectangular results window on one stick read: Pregnant 2-3. Another read: Pregnant 1-2. The third read: Pregnant 3+.

  We looked at each other. Finally, Kailee asked, “Ever seen one of these before?”

  If the heat in my cheeks was any indication, I blushed bright red. “Noooo. Have you?”

  Kailee had no overt embarrassment. She simply said, “No. Of course not. George?”

  George looked at her in surprise. His cheeks for sure turned tomato-red. “Noooo. I’m a guy.”

  Kailee whispered in a rather harsh tone, “And if you got a girl pregnant, you wouldn’t be interested in the tests?”

  George glared at her, while his blush spread like a rash down his neck. “I didn’t get anyone pregnant. Drop it. Focus on what we’re finding out here about Ursula. She’s missing and this is pretty damn important.”

  Kailee asked, “So ... ummm ... what do these numbers mean?”

  I felt like an idiot. I’m sure Kailee and George did, too. We found the instructions inside the box and read them. Apparently, all of Ursula’s numbers meant: Pregnant! The specific numbers were possible weeks from last ovulation.

  Pregnant. Pregnant. Pregnant. Wow.

  George asked, “Should we take these with us?”

  We debated. What if Ursula returned and freaked out that they were gone? Would she think her parents had found them? Would she do something drastic regarding her pregnancy?

  Kailee reminded us to calm down. There was an outside possibility that these pregnancy test sticks didn’t even belong to Ursula. And, if they did, she may have already done something drastic. We were trying to find her. We were trying to help her. What would be the best course of action to do that?

  We decided to take photos of the test sticks using Kailee’s cell phone, then to put them back where we found them and remake Ursula’s bed.

  Choosing an intimate item for Psychic Gabriella, we decided to take a pair of Ursula’s underpants from the same drawer that held the pregnancy tests. We took a pink silk pair embroidered with pastel butterflies. I stuck them in my jacket pocket.

  After we left the Wootens’ house and got into George’s truck, he had one question: “There was pee on those sticks, wasn’t there?”

  I said, “Oh, brother.” Kailee rolled her eyes.

  I decided right then and there that my first order of business upon getting anywhere near soap and water would be to wash my hands.

  CHAPTER 21

  Mondays are horrible for me, forcing myself to get up early and head off to school after a weekend off. This particular Monday was especially horrible. I just wanted to skip school and go over to Gabriella Underwood’s house with all the stuff we had found the day before.

  I survived school. I survived a quick after-school meeting with Mr. Hoffman about how I needed to update The Tiger’s Den to reflect Christmas and winter ... but without being too obvious about Christmas ... keep the separation of Church and State ... add secular Christmas stuff, definitely a Santa Claus ... but add winter stuff, too: snow, sled riding, snowmen, stuff like that. I agreed to everything. I needed to get out of there.

  George and Kailee were waiting for me in George’s truck in the parking lot. After I hopped in, we sped over to Gabriella’s house.

  When we got there, we found the psychic’s home decorated with Christmas lights. Thanksgiving wasn’t even here yet. Apparently she had decided not to wait until the Celebration of the Famous Pig-Out Feast Between Conquering Pilgrims and Conquered Indians was over and had gotten a jump start on Christmas. I wish my mother had done the same.

  And, wow, was her house ever decorated! Electric candles flickered inside paper bags lining the driveway. Purple and white lights covered the roof and hung from the eaves. White lights on a bare tree in the front yard had been arranged in the shape of a different tree, one I had seen on a T-shirt in the mall: the Tree of Life. On the front lawn, fake reindeer outlined in white lights drank from a fake stream of water created from blue lights. The sign on the front yard announcing Psychic Gabriella Underwood—Reasonable Prices to Learn Your Future! had been festooned with evergreen branches. The overall effect was mesmerizing. I could have looked at the scene for a very long time.

  Instead, we continued on to the front door. It had been decorated in tiny twinkling angels whose wings flapped delicately whenever we moved. The dragon doorknocker guarded its territory, studying the angels with jealous purple eyes.

  Before we knocked, Gabriella opened the door. She wore a purple velvet dress covered in silver stars that danced with the light from the flapping angels. She said, “I thought I sensed you all out here. Come on in, so I can see what you have for me.”

  The inside of her house smelled like pine trees and gingerbread cookies. Candles flickered on every table. Candlelight and a crackling fire in the fireplace filled the downstairs with shadows and light dancing across walls and ceiling. I had the sense of being in the midst of a magnificent ball happening at least one dimension removed from our own.

  After entering the room where the faces of wizards had been carved into the mantel, we handed over the missing girls’ personal items to Gabriella. A wizard with an especially tall hat appeared to wink at us in the wavering light.

  Gabriella spread out the items on a wooden coffee table that had been carved with elaborate scenes of mythical creatures.

  I asked her, “Do you want to know which items are from which girl?”

  Gabriella answered, “No ... no ... not at the beginning. I just want to feel what I feel in the presence of these objects.”

  She stood by the table, waving her hands over the items. She looked at them closely. And shivered.

  She picked up Ursula’s silky pink underpants embroidered with pastel butterflies and clutched them tightly in her right hand.

  Kailee then gave Gabriella the photographs of the pregnancy sticks she had downloaded from her cell phone and printed out on her printer. She said, “We found these in the same drawer as those underpants. We wanted to bring the test sticks here to you, but we
were afraid that if the missing girl returned home, she’d freak out if she thought someone had taken them.”

  Gabriella sat down in her chair, still clutching the underpants. She closed her eyes. I wasn’t sure what she was doing. Gathering her thoughts, I supposed. She remained that way for a long time. Finally, she opened her eyes and said, “There’s a mixed sense of things here in this intimate item and in the vibe given off by these photographs. I sense death, but also life. In fact, both life and death come across with equal strength. I see a seed and a flower blooming; but also a flower dying quickly, petals turning black and falling from the stem.” After a moment, she added, “Someone was in trouble, but for them it’s too late. Someone else is in trouble. They’re being cared for, but there’s something not quite right about it. Danger still hangs over them.”