Pretty darn cool. Leotard Girl had entered mainstream thought at my high school, enough to lead to debates about her world.
For two seconds, I felt elated.
Then a new discussion topic popped up in the forum: This is Annie Green. Please help me! With a trembling finger, I clicked on the topic. The post read:
I posted here before. I told you I’ve been kidnapped. I think the guys who took me want ransom money from my parents. Please, please find me! I was blindfolded when I was taken here. But, please, tell the police! Get them to find me!
As I stared at that message, a thunderously loud knock came on our front door. I jumped and let out a scream. Then I waited, listening to see if my mother would answer the door.
When another pounding sounded like it was going to crash in the door, I went downstairs and answered it. No one was there, just a pile of small boxes. The illumination from the Mars rovers splashed eerie red light over them every time they blinked.
The sound of crunching leaves caught my attention. As I looked up, I saw a man at the edge of our front yard, walking quickly away from our property. He was dressed exactly like the man I had seen last night: tan dress coat, brown pants, men’s dress shoes and a brown hat. He had the same build, the same height.
I pulled my cell phone out of my pants pocket and started snapping photos. I had no idea if I’d capture any details whatsoever in the dark; but I figured it was worth a try, especially since the police might be able to blow up the photos and find details about the fleeing guy that I couldn’t see.
I guess at that point I knew: eventually, we’d need the help of the police.
I picked up the boxes. Cradling them in my arms, I carried them up to my bedroom. Afraid my mother would come up any minute, demanding her packages, I took them into my bathroom. I set them down on the counter.
I studied them.
Chills made the hair on my arms stand up and hurt. Every box was taped shut with plain brown packing tape. Every box was labeled simply: Griffin, P. That was the way all the names were listed in the ledgers! Last name, followed by the initial of the first name. My mother’s name, Poppy Griffin, would be: Griffin, P.
I decided I should open the boxes. I had to find out what was inside them.
I removed the tape very carefully. In a couple of places, the tape ripped part of the box away. I thought I would die. My hands shook. I had to take a break to calm down, so that I wouldn’t do any more damage to the cardboard.
Finally, I had all the boxes opened. I peeked inside the first one. It was filled with pregnancy test sticks—nothing but pregnancy test sticks.
I looked inside the other boxes. It was the exact same thing: nothing but test sticks.
I reached inside the linen closet and grabbed a thick towel. Spreading it out on my sink counter, I spilled a box of pregnancy test sticks onto it. They seemed to be dry, so I started picking them up one after the other to inspect them.
Every test stick was positive for pregnancy. And every one had a name on it, printed in black magic marker. And every name was recorded as a last name followed by a comma and a single letter. Alvarez, M. Novak, L. Ritter, N.
There were a lot of sticks, a lot of names.
How could I possibly deliver these boxes to my mother? I could not imagine doing that. But I couldn’t imagine the trouble I’d be in if I didn’t hand them over to my mother either.
I slowly opened the bathroom door. No one was around. And it was still quiet downstairs. Moving the bookshelf away from the bedroom wall with the hidden closet, I placed all the boxes in a hidden compartment in there, the same compartment where Brandon had once hidden the necklace his grandmother had given him.
Then I had to get out of my bedroom. I felt suffocated in there, completely claustrophobic. I could not share space with those freakish boxes of pregnancy test sticks.
I grabbed a flashlight and a loud siren I had bought just for fun awhile back on the Internet. I threw on my jacket and a scarf and gloves. I left the house through the back door. I headed on down to the stream with the soothing sound of water that babbled and sang as it flowed around rocks to wherever it was going.
When I reached the water’s edge, I walked carefully across boulders to get to the other side. After collapsing onto a wide stretch of grass, I wept. I couldn’t stop. Tears poured down my face—water without the happy singing sound of the stream rushing past me.
Eventually, I quieted. My sorrow had been released. All my energy had been spent. I folded my hands behind my head and looked up at the night sky. I turned off my flashlight. The moon was bright. It illuminated the edges of branches and tree trunks. Much like Gabriella’s Christmas lights that turned her ordinary tree into the Tree of Life, the moon turned these trees into ghost sentinels guarding the forest creatures at night.
I studied the stars. I found several constellations. A couple of planets burned brightly, like eyes in the heavens. I imagined those eyes watching over me.
And then I saw it. Like in a nightmare when your limbs become paralyzed, I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe.
Right smack in front of me, suddenly so obvious I couldn’t believe I hadn’t always known it, was an enormous evergreen tree with branches thick as tree trunks bent into the number four.
The stream sang louder. Bats even darker than the night swooped down through the forest, their wings whoosh-whooshing.
I picked myself up. I headed back to the house. I knew what I needed to do.
I called Kailee and George. I told them we needed to meet with Gabriella right away. I asked George if he could pick up Kailee and me and drive us there. They must have heard the panic in my voice. No one questioned me or suggested we wait until morning.
At Gabriella’s house, only the Tree of Life was still lit. The moon bathed Gabriella’s front lawn in eerie stillness.
When Gabriella answered her door, she was wearing a dark purple dress with a white shawl. As soon as she invited us in and shut the door behind her, I blurted everything out. I hadn’t told Kailee or George until just that moment about the boxes of pregnancy tests or the tree shaped like the number four. I had told them in George’s truck that I had some serious shit to tell them, but we’d need Gabriella’s opinion before we could take any action, and I just couldn’t go through telling this story twice.
I must have looked very upset because they never tried to get me to share.
Gabriella told us to sit down. She stoked the fire in the fireplace. Then she sat before her crystal ball. She began singing some ancient song. Fury the cat came into the room and crawled up onto her shoulders. She continued to sing. The song turned into chanting. Soon I felt as though we were in a monastery where the walls reverberated with the prayers of a solitary monk.
Could women be monks?
Gabriella waved her hands over the crystal orb. Shadows moved within its serene surface like clouds responding to wind.
Finally, Gabriella looked up. She turned to me and said, “I need your mother out of your house tomorrow. I need to come over there and to the tree shaped like the number four next to the stream behind your house. I need to see and feel things in the daylight there. If it is as I suspect, our next step will be to contact the police.”
I had expected this. I had known deep in my heart from the moment I had discovered the tree deformed into the number four that we would be going to the police.
CHAPTER 27
The next day was a complete blur. Nightmares and reality collided. Most of the day, I could not sort out what was real and what was nightmare.
I wasn’t able to get my mother out of the house. She was asleep with a hangover. I couldn’t even wake her to suggest she leave. I explained this to Gabriella. The psychic decided not to risk coming to my house. She told me to meet her by the four-shaped tree. George and Kailee were to meet us there as well.
When the time came, I snuck out of my house and went down to the stream. Everyone else arrived moments later.
Gab
riella started out by hugging the tree’s trunk. I thought she had gone mad, become a tree hugger or something. For one second, I imagined her a fraud.
Gabriella then put her ear against the tree trunk, as though listening to it. Hoo-boy, we are in serious trouble is what I thought.
Gabriella sat down on a boulder beside the stream and invited us to do the same. She told us in words that hit with the impact of boulders raining down from heaven: “Everything comes together here. The beginning of the solution to all our puzzles will be found here. I’m sure of it. Beneath this mighty tree are buried the tiny bones of several newborns. From their burial place the path will lead outward to solve the mystery of the girls who went missing from your school.” Her eyes filled with tears. She continued, “I’m sorry. I’m very, very sorry.” She hugged each of us in turn. Then she pulled out her cell phone and called the police.
The next thing I knew the police were there. No sirens, nothing. They snuck quietly into our neighborhood and joined us at the stream. After speaking with Gabriella, several detectives began digging around the tree. And there in the dirt a few feet down—exactly as Gabriella had predicted—were tiny, fragile bones, three tiny skulls.
My mother was immediately arrested. The police practically bashed in our front door, trying to wake her up. I excused myself, walked right past them and opened the door. The police stormed into the house. When they found my mother, she was lying in bed, snoring, makeup smeared across her face. It was not a pretty sight. The police woke her up by shouting and having one police officer bang his billy club against the headboard of her bed. Ouch. I almost felt sorry for her. My mother sat up, a dazed and vacant look on her face. She seemed unable to focus. Her bright red lipstick was smeared in such a way that she appeared to be sneering at the police. It was just an optical illusion. Her eyes suggested she was scared to death. The police read her Miranda rights to her. Then they handcuffed her and dragged her into a police car. Turning on their blaring sirens and flashing lights, they sped away out of our driveway. A police detective stayed behind to question us—all of us, including Gabriella. He was tall, the tallest person I had ever seen except maybe professional basketball players on TV. He had a bald head and blue eyes so intense, they just kind of stared right through you. We told him everything we knew. It turned out that the police detective had worked with Gabriella before. He had great respect for her insight. That helped us a lot. I felt so scared, I thought I might wet myself; but the detective treated us with a great deal of respect and that seriously helped me to calm down. George had on a poker face from the very beginning. But Kailee’s face had tension lines causing her mouth to twitch at one corner and that stopped after the detective started treating us more like colleagues than criminals.
Sadly, I realized that the police must have suspected my mother all along of some type of crime because they arrested her so quickly. I had apparently given them the evidence they needed to pounce. On my cell phone, I kept scrolling through my emails, forum discussions and Facebook updates to see if the news about my mother’s arrest had gone public. I thought I’d die a million deaths of shame every time I even thought about returning to school. It took about fifteen minutes. Then The Tiger’s Den went ablaze with gossip. Turned out that several other people in town were also arrested for their involvement with ... I could hardly say it in connection to my own mother ... the dead babies. I was able to verify their arrests by looking at the Twitter feed from a local news source. But the other rumors, oh my God! There were rumors that my mother had been drowning babies in the stream behind our house. I was horrified by such a bold-faced lie. Then I hoped to God that wasn’t true. I found myself actually praying to God that it wasn’t true. A few minutes later, the Twitter feed of the news source I was checking announced that the Assistant Principal of our school had been arrested!
I got off my cell phone, stuck it in my jeans pocket.
Gabriella, Kailee, George and I were asked to go the police station in the detective’s car, to officially answer questions and provide evidence. I thought briefly about getting a lawyer, to protect my mom. But I made a decision: It was more important that Annie and the other missing girls be found. Gabriella was so good at figuring out cases, the police actually respected her and she had told us that we needed to find the girls as soon as possible. In the end, I decided that my mother was a grown-up, even though I watched over her as though she were a child, and it was time she took responsibility for herself. She could get her own lawyer if she wanted one. Also, I had watched a number of crime shows, even though that wasn’t my favorite genre, and didn’t the state always provide a lawyer, even if you couldn’t afford one? And what if my mother actually was guilty of something horrible? Wouldn’t I want her to get locked up then?
I didn’t have time to think about it. The detective said the information we had already found would be incredibly helpful in solving the case and in locating the three missing girls we had been searching for. He went with us to get the ledgers, the boxes of pregnancy test sticks, and all the things we had taken out of the missing girls’ bedrooms, and he asked us to send him the photos we had taken of the creepy basement with the bedrooms and baby nursery. We cooperated completely. He told us we had done such a thorough job, his bet was that the police were about to find a whole lot of missing girls, not just the ones we were searching for.
As we walked through the police station, I saw my mother sitting at an officer’s desk. She still had handcuffs around her wrists. She was crying and talking very loudly. When she saw me, she started shouting to me, “Hey, Shade! Shade! Come talk to this police officer. Let him know I’m innocent of whatever was found back behind our house.” I looked away. She continued to yell after me.
The detective ushered us into his office. I think he felt sorry for me. His eyes and his voice kind of softened whenever he talked to me.
A few hours later, we were free to go. There was nothing for us to do except wait. The detective dropped Gabriella off at her house. George, Kailee and I decided to go back to my house. I’m not sure why we chose that location. It was basically the scene of the crime. Maybe we just wanted to be around my backyard, in case the cops showed up again, looking for evidence. We wanted to do everything we could to help in getting back the missing girls. Or maybe we hoped Brandon would show up. I don’t really know.
For the first time since we met, we were lost for things to do. We studied The Tiger’s Den for awhile. That was upsetting. As in all Internet forums, the trolls eventually come out to play. And they were playing hard that day, let me tell you. Some of the nastiest and grossest comments were personal. Extremely personal. The worst one ... and I find this awful to repeat ... was: Shade’s nothing but a two-bit whore. I bet those were her babies back in that stream. And then, as if that statement was true, the discussion thread—that exact same discussion thread, mind you—turned to whether or not high school girls should have access to birth control or abortions. The assumption was that I was having serial abortions and then dumping the babies back in the stream.
God. We stopped looking at The Tiger’s Den. As administrators, we realized we should go in and monitor the discussions, but we just didn’t have it in us that day. We figured maybe we should just let the discussions go on. Maybe someone connected to the kidnappings, to Ursula, and/or to the creepy baby nursery would start spilling information after the discussions got weirder and weirder. And eventually, if the trolls kept at it, someone would report it to Principal Lafferty and he’d take care of it. He’d have to take care of it. He was the Principal, after all, and trolls made the school look bad. Maybe we could just take a brief respite from our responsibilities and try to recover from all the shocks we had suffered that day.
We played chess for awhile. We had difficulty keeping our minds on it, but it did distract us a bit from our troubles. At one point, some unseen force moved the King across the board. I shouted for Brandon to stop it. He never answered, but the King moved back to its original spot.<
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Around 6:00, we realized we were hungry. We decided to search my kitchen cupboards and refrigerator for food. We found enough stuff to eat: cheese and crackers, soup, potato chips and a bunch of sodas. While we were eating, the kitchen door opened. I almost choked on the potato chips I had been crunching. Who the hell was coming into my house? I could not believe I hadn’t locked the door!
And then, there stood my mother. For a split-second my mind didn’t recognize her. I didn’t expect her to be there. I expected her to be in prison.
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