Shade

by Marilyn Peake

  Gabriella left the room. We heard water running. Upon returning, she explained, “Sometimes I need to wash my hands between the handling of different items, to prevent any false connections I might make from simply touching one item right after the other. The mixture of life and death was so strong in those first objects, I want to prevent any possible cross contamination with the next items.”

  She picked up the love letters we had found in Ursula’s room from a guy named Dylan. Gabriella smiled. “Ahhh. This is very sweet. Very pure. First love, untouched by pain.” Putting the letters back down, that’s all she said about that.

  Gabriella closed her eyes. Once again, she waved her hands over the coffee table. Upon opening her eyes, she picked up the bloody knife wrapped in bloody tissue. She placed that on top of Misty’s diary. She then placed all that on top of Misty’s notebook. She said, “The same person owns all these items. The old blood on the knife suggests old pain. Intense pain, self-destruction. We should read the diary. For clues. The notebook feels like math, just math. The diary will have clues for finding its owner. Darkness surrounds this diary. I picture a dungeon. A basement. Cold and dank. Somewhere near a lake ... or, no, a stream, a babbling stream. I see a pine tree. A giant, deformed pine tree, bent over from the wind or something. I see the number four. The tree has the number four on it. There’s an emergency about finding this person ... before time runs out ... on something. I see a young woman in a very pretty dress, but she is scared. There is much darkness about her ... and a pirate on a boat.”

  Telling us she needed a break, Gabriella offered to make us hot chocolate or tea. We chose the hot chocolate. While Gabriella went off to make it, we walked around the room. George stopped in front of the fireplace and stared at the flames. Kailee found the calico cat curled up under a chair next to the fireplace. Managing to coax it out, she picked it up, brought it over to the couch and stroked its luxurious fur, as though in a trance. The cat purred loudly.

  I decided to gaze into the crystal ball to see if I could find any images there. As soon as I peered into the glassy depths, I was hit by a blinding headache, pain so excruciating, I had to look away. Two more times, I tried. I could not gaze inside that orb without being stabbed with the most awful pain.

  Gabriella returned. She served us hot chocolate. She took a few sips of tea. Then she picked up Annie’s hairbrush. Running her fingers over the bristles and the trailing strands of hair, she looked at the Japanese graphic novels, the suicide notes and notebooks we had found in her bedroom. After a considerable amount of time, she asked, “This belongs to the girl I found inside the crystal ball, pink star in one eye and a gold star in the other, doesn’t it? The girl I saw wearing a dress made out of cookies and holding a pitcher of milk?”

  I put my hand over my mouth to stifle a gasp. I started to cry. I just shook my head yes.

  Gabriella continued, “Like the blood on the knife, these suicide notes are old. They indicate past pain. However, the comic books suggest a preoccupation with all pain: past, present and looming on the horizon. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, except I get the impression that the preoccupation is both personal and obsessive. I get the same sensation from her writing notebooks. The hair in her hairbrush suggests something much more ominous. The DNA in the strands of hair provide me with a link to the person they came from. I see a troubled young lady who wandered off into places she shouldn’t have gone. I see a boat, but this time the boat is behind a curtain and not a real threat. I see a truck. I see a long dusty road upon which a serpent uncoils itself and rattles its tail in warning. This girl needs to be found soon. I see a skull and crossbones hanging above her head.”

  As she did the other day, Gabriella set up a small table in front of her chair and then set the crystal ball on top of it. “We should take a closer look.”

  The cat leapt from Kailee’s lap and took off for another part of the house.

  As Gabriella gazed into the ball, she said, “I see books, lots and lots of books. They look like old-fashioned ledgers. One book is open. It has columns. Does that mean anything to you?”

  Astonished, I placed my hand over my mouth. Kailee said, “Ye-e-e-sss,” in the most hesitant voice I’d ever heard her use.

  Gabriella lifted her hand to indicate silence. “I don’t need to hear about it right now. I want to keep my mind open to additional clues.”

  After a few moments of sitting in silence, peering into her crystal ball, Gabriella said, “Well, apparently, that’s all the crystal orb is going to reveal to me today, I’m afraid. Why don’t you take all the notes and letters and the diary and notebooks with you and see if you can find any clues in those as to where the missing girls might have gone? I’ll keep studying their other personal items to see if I can pick up any more vibes from those ... and I’ll check back with the crystal ball to see if anything else will be revealed to me.” She paused, stood up and arched her back, as though trying to work a cramp out of it. Then she added, “I don’t think we can mess around with this for too long, though. I sense very strongly that all three of these girls are in grave danger. If we want to save any of them, we need to move quickly. Why don’t we meet back here on Friday with as much evidence as we can possibly get together by then?”

  CHAPTER 22

  By a strange turn of events, Annie’s suicide notes and writing notebooks and the gory Japanese graphic novels we had found in her bedroom, Misty’s diary and math notebook, and Ursula’s box of love letters were all up in my attic room under my safekeeping. The reason was simple: I had the only bedroom into which another adult would never step. Well, more accurately, a non-ghost adult would never step. My mother never cleaned my bedroom or bathroom and never stopped by to visit me upstairs in the attic. When I shared that information with George and Kailee, they insisted it was the perfect place for us to hide the secret items and for us to meet to look through them.

  I reluctantly agreed. Our desperation to find Annie and the other missing girls far outweighed my concern to keep my friends at school from finding out about my mother. In one huge information dump, I told George and Kailee all about my mother. I crossed my fingers they weren’t going to get the idea to report her alcohol and drug abuse to any authorities. Thank God, they could have cared less. They mostly just shrugged their shoulders and said as long as my mom didn’t ever go up into the attic, my bedroom was the perfect place for storing the items and for us to get together to search through them for clues.

  We made plans to meet at my house on Tuesday night after I got home from work at The Daily Buzz and had time to eat dinner.

  Writing announcements that day felt especially weird. I hoped to God I wouldn’t someday be faced with writing or reading a death announcement about Annie. I wiped tears from my face. Then I refused to think about it.

  After I arrived back home, Kailee and George came over to my house. They had decided to drag the trunk of ledgers over to my house as well. George explained, “You have more guaranteed privacy than either Kailee or me. It seems much less risky for you to hold onto the trunk than for Kailee to just keep crossing her fingers that her parents won’t suddenly notice it and open it up.”

  I supposed he was right.

  We hunkered down in the attic. We decided that in order to speed up the process of finding clues, we’d each take something from one of the missing girls and share anything we thought was significant.

  I volunteered to look through Annie’s suicide notes and notebooks, but George pointed out that I was so emotionally invested in Annie’s case, I’d probably have trouble sorting out the important stuff from everything else she wrote. Well, he was right. It upset me not to be in charge of Annie’s stuff, but I figured I could just read over her letters and notebooks later on that night.

  I was assigned Ursula’s shoeboxes of love letters. Ugh. That really wasn’t my thing. But I cooperated. I took the lids off the boxes—all three of them—and opened up every letter.

  Dylan must have bought a dump
truck full of rainbow-colored stationary—maybe the first time he’d ever bought actual stationary—because all his letters were written on the same kind of paper, but in different pastel shades.

  A letter on mint green paper told Ursula she was the prettiest girl in the universe. Oh. God. Why did I have to get these boxes of drivel?

  A letter on lavender paper told Ursula that Dylan had had the best day of his life at the County Fair with her. It was so much fun winning a stuffed pony for her. The kiss she gave him on the Ferris wheel had made it all worthwhile.

  Oh, God, gag me with a pile of cotton candy. If the best day of your life is winning a stuffed pony at a State Fair, you do not even have a life.

  On pale blue paper, Dylan professed his love for Ursula. He hoped one day they’d get married and have six children: three boys and three girls. Wow, Dylan was quite the planner.

  Blah ... Blah ... Blah on pink paper. Blah ... Blah ... Blah on pale yellow paper.

  I persevered. I was glad I did.

  Toward the bottom of one of the boxes, the tone of the letters changed rather ominously. The bottom ten letters or so were definitely not love letters. Dylan’s letters became filled with anger bordering on rage. He asked Ursula why she wanted to ruin their lives. He threatened to leave her. He offered her money. He offered to take her to a clinic. He said hateful things to her. At one point, he called her a slut, accused her of sleeping around.

  I finished reading the letter in which Dylan had called Ursula a slut. That word became emblazoned on a part of my brain that sent the word repeatedly to my eyeballs, so that I could never unsee it. Slut. The word, that ugly arrangement of four letters, hung in the air before me.

  I put the letter back in its envelope. I stared at the handwriting on the envelope. I wondered: where had the guy gone who had once written, “My heart burns like the sun for you” and “I’m like the ocean, so far beneath you. You are the moon, pulling me toward you like the rising tide”? Maybe he didn’t write those lines at all. Maybe someone else had written them for him to give to Ursula.

  I pulled myself together. I got back to the job I was supposed to do. It turned out that the last three letters at the bottom of the box in which Dylan had called Ursula a slut weren’t even from him. They were from a guy named Tom. He said he could help; he had helped many girls in Ursula’s position before.

  Her position?

  Tom knew of several nice couples who desperately wanted the thing that Ursula was making. Ursula could meet with them. If they wanted that thing, he could make all the necessary arrangements: have the documents drawn up to transfer it to them, set up appointments for her with doctors, get her the larger-sized clothes she needed, everything. The last line of the letter read: “My fees for all of this are modest. We might be able to bring in $15,000 ... or even up to $25,000. I take my fee. You get the rest. You could go to beauty school, Ursula, just like you always wanted to do. Someday you could open up your own hair and nails salon. Or you will enter a world you really didn’t want to enter at your age. Think about it.”

  God. Did this mean what I thought it meant? What kind of thing would Ursula be making that could possibly have her interested in doctor appointments ... and in larger-sized clothes! ... at her age? My God, you do not ever tell a non-pregnant teenage girl that you will reward her with larger-sized clothes. In fact, if that girl is as big as a house with twin hot air balloons for a butt and she’s wearing clothes that stretch across her body as tight as shrink-wrap, you do not ever even hint at the idea that she might ever even possibly someday need to buy larger-sized clothes. You just don’t. You do not go there. Was Tom trying to get Ursula to sell her baby?

  Evil bastard!

  I thought of Ursula’s mother. Her beach ball of a pregnant belly. The little kids at the window, the toddler running off to get cookies and apple juice. Total chaos.

  I assumed Ursula had met with this guy named Tom, to see what he might offer her. I assumed she’d also met with any prospective adoptive parents he had come up with.

  I squeezed the letter in my sweaty hands. I managed to choke out the words, “Hey, guys, look at this...” in a voice you could hardly hear.

  Kailee looked up. Her face was tight, strained. She said, “I don’t know what you got, but I think Annie may have run away from home. And I wouldn’t be surprised if she still had thoughts of suicide. I don’t think that was just in her past...”

  I dropped the letter in my hand. I managed to ask, “What? Why?”

  Kailee showed me a letter. It was dated in the present year. Annie wrote that she thought her only way out might be to run away or kill herself. She wrote:

  Dear Mom and Dad,

  I’ve run away. I’m gone. Gone. That word lingers on my tongue. Gone for good holds an allure for me. Perhaps I was a mistake. Perhaps I was never meant to be. Perhaps I was an aberration, a deviation from the genetics that make you you and make Dad Dad. You always insist on smiling. Smile! Smile! You’re on candid camera! Dad always insists on doing business, getting the job done, making us bazillions of dollars and putting us at the top of the food chain.

  Well, I’m not happy. And I spend more time at the bottom of the food chain than at the top—just ask anyone in my high school. I am not a winner. I am not the best of the best. I doubt I have any of the right stuff. I never get voted best of anything at my school.

  Wyatt’s at it again. Mom, you choose not to believe me. Dad, you don’t even want to listen to me. You accuse me of being hysterical. ‘Stop being hysterical, Annie!’ is your only advice.

  I can’t take it anymore. Both of you inviting Wyatt into our home to stay a month while he interns at your business, Dad, is the final straw. Wyatt snuck into my bedroom last night. He’s my freakin’ cousin, for God’s sake!

  Adopt Wyatt if you want. I can no longer live in your house!

  Your Ex-Daughter,

  Annie

  Through tears blurring my vision, I said, “OK. But somehow Annie returned home after this and picked up her life. This letter is dated months ago. I hung out with Annie, I even hung out with at her house, after this.”

  Kailee said, “That’s true. Alright. I need to finish reading her letters.”

  I asked George if he had figured out anything about Misty. He said, “Well, I started reading Misty’s diary at the end. I’m going backwards because I figured whatever she wrote last might be the most helpful stuff ... unless, of course, she was kidnapped or something else totally out of the blue.”

  Kailee asked, “So, did you find anything?”

  George answered, “Yeah, I think so. You know how Misty was such a popular cheerleader at school? But how we found out she came from a run-down house and had a dad who was a total lowlife?”

  Kailee and I shook our heads yes.

  George continued, “And you know how we found out she was a cutter?”

  My thoughts went back to the day I had first discovered that in the hospital ER.

  George went on, “Well, she talks about all of that at great length in her diary. She talks about something we never knew: her mom had once been a model, way back in high school into her early twenties. Misty pasted some old photos of her mom into her diary. Here, look at this...”

  George showed us a page onto which had been glued a photo that was the spitting image of Misty: a teenaged girl lit up from inside with a beautiful glow, absolutely exuding happiness, with sparkling blue eyes and long, shiny blonde hair that curled ever so slightly on her shoulders.

  I had to ask, “Who is this? Is this Misty or her mom?”

  George answered, “Her mom.”

  While the gears in my head moved around, trying to click on some answer to the riddle of Misty’s disappearance, all I could think to say was: “Wow.”

  George said, “There’s more. Look at this ... There are two modeling pictures of Misty’s mom.”

  It was like Misty herself had had a modeling session. Her mom looked exactly like her, but remade into artwork, the w
ay models are. She was wearing a black-and-white polka-dotted dress with a ginormous black silk hat that had so many feathers poking out the top, you could imagine a real-life bird sitting in a nest there. Still, the image was beautiful.

  George said, “In her diary, Misty writes a lot about how she wants to have the kind of life her mother could have had if she’d never met Misty’s father. She doesn’t really complain about her dad very much at all, which is surprising considering how nasty he is. It’s like she didn’t want to concentrate on the negative, like she just wanted to focus on how life could be better if she just set big goals and kept working toward them. She writes a bunch in her diary about how she’s hoping to be a model someday. She mentions a lot how being a cheerleader is her first step toward becoming a model.” George wiped sweat from his forehead and continued, “The last part of Misty’s diary is frightening. Misty talks about meeting a man who might be able to help her with her life’s dream. Here, read the exact words yourself...”