Angel's Dance

by Heidi Angell

  Running her fingers over the top of the books, Clear saw images of Kat reading late into the night, sitting on the balcony reading, curled up on the couch, sitting on the roof, in the park… all the images happy and content.

  She turned to the closet next. Opening the closet, Clear found it jammed full of clothes. Kat was obviously experimenting with her identity. On the left were a dozen dance outfits and two pairs of ballet slippers on the floor. In the center were a bunch of dressier clothes, some more formal like what someone might wear to church, some clearly for going out with her friends to concerts and such. To the left were t-shirts and jeans. On the top shelf were two stackable drawers. Clear opened one and found underclothing. The other contained gloves, scarves, hats and other apparel. There were a variety of Goth looking outfits, several with a more punk feel; some were cheerleadery and some were suiting a more athletic girl.

  On the top shelf next to the drawers Clear found a memory box. She carefully pulled it down and set it on the floor opening it. On top were papers and notes, cards from her dad and grandparents, ticket stubs, brochures and pamphlets from events and locations she had visited. At the bottom of the box were some shiny rocks a butterfly in a glass box and a brown leather pitchers mitt. When Clear brushed the mitt she felt the first sorrow in the girl’s life. It was a deep sadness with a fair mix of anger and even hostility. Clear saw Grant playing ball with a much, much younger Kat. She saw Kat holding the glove and remembering. She saw her mom’s resentment of Grant trying to make their daughter a tomboy and Kat’s resentment at being pushed into activities her mother thought were more appropriate for girls. The failed piano lessons, the failed voice lessons. Her satisfaction at compromising with ballet. Despite the tu-tus, Kat enjoyed the physicality of it. She never let her mother know how much though and instead used ballet as a bargaining chip to go to soccer camp, to try out for basketball. But she was not allowed to play baseball and she resented that.

  Clear could feel herself crying and tried very hard to stop, but didn’t realize that she was even making a sound until she felt Grant’s hand on her shoulder. She swiped at her eyes angrily.

  “Are you alright?” Grant asked quietly.

  Clear nodded, unable to speak. She cleared her throat, again swiping at the tears leaking from her eyes. “Not for me,” she mumbled, unable to say more. Grant nodded, understanding.

  Laura scoffed, “Not for you, for us?” She shot daggers at Grant. He glowered back.

  Clear stood up and started putting everything back in the box. “Your daughter was very good at compartmentalizing.” She stated, trying to sound professional. She began to put the box back and stopped. There was a baseball… She sifted through the memories trying to place it. Where was the baseball? It was important somehow. She shoved the box back up into the closet.

  “Laura, do you know where her baseball is?”

  Laura looked at her in shock, with a little guilt she shook her head. “How… how…”

  Clear looked at Laura hard. “You threw it away right after he left. You thought that was the end of it, but she fished it out of the dumpster that night and hid it away so you wouldn’t get rid of it again.” Clear sat on the bed and looked around again.

  “How is this significant?” Grant asked.

  “I.. don’t quite know…something…” She put her hands to her head and closed her eyes. Her head was starting to ache. “I’m sorry, I don’t know. I just… Well, I need to lie down.”

  Grant looked at her a bit surprised and a little worried.

  “Oh, that’s all you have up your sleeve?” Laura muttered. “Nothing else to share?”

  Clear glowered at her, her head beginning to throb. “I can’t tell you anything the police didn’t already figure out and you already told Grant. She wasn’t taken from here. She didn’t run away, but she was taken. I just don’t know where she was taken from.”

  Laura threw her hands up in the air. “Then what have you been doing pawing through my daughter’s room for the last half hour for?”

  Clear sighed. “Chicago is very big. There are a lot of people. It’s so… overwhelming. I have to know Kat if I’m going to find her.” She bit her lip as pain shot through her head. “Please Grant… I need to lie down. My head,” she bent over feeling as if she would be sick.

  “Laura, you got anything for a headache?” he growled. He helped Clear stand up and led her into Laura’s room. She pulled back.

  “No, I shouldn’t.”

  “She’ll get over it.”

  “There is Imitrix in my bag… for the migraine.”

  Grant flipped the light switch off and headed out. “I’ll be right back.”

  Clear writhed in pain for what felt like forever, but was probably no more than a few minutes. Finally Grant came back in with a glass of water and her pill bottle. He handed it to her and she squinted as she popped the pill top off. She chugged the water and tossed in one pill, then curled up on the bed facing away from the window. Grant walked to the other side of the bed and closed the blinds then carefully left the room, closing the door behind him. Clear had a momentary feeling of gratitude before the numbing lead feeling began to descend. She welcomed it, knowing the pain would end soon.

  Clear awoke groggily. She shook her head, trying to remember what she had seen in the dream she had been having. It was about Kat, she knew that much. Kat and… there had been a man… an oogy older man with graying teeth.

  Carefully sitting up on the bed, Clear squinted from the tensing of her muscles. Everything ached so badly. She had almost forgotten this feeling. It had been so long since she had been plagued with the migraines. Civilization sucked!

  She gently rolled her head, loosening the muscles in her neck and focusing on her breathing, trying to release the images and let them flow freely. Trying to focus on them would simply cause them to slip away out of her grasp. As her neck muscles loosened, she began gently rotating her shoulders, loosening the back muscles.

  There was the man and there was another girl. The man had hurt Kat… hurt her feelings. The other girl was supportive… Once again the images flitted away. Clear took a deep breath pushing her frustration away and slowly stood, feeling the muscles in her legs groan in protest. She began rotating her hips slowly to loosen the lower back and hips and tried to breath in rhythm with the rotations, forcing her conscious mind to relax along with the muscles.

  A stark image of the girl came into focus and the emotions Kat felt for her. They were very close. The girl was telling her something…. Not to worry about what he said… Suddenly the bedroom door came open and a shaft of bright light struck Clear in the face. She snapped her eyes shut as they prickled from the light sensitivity still plaguing her. Immediately the images, the whole thing just disappeared.

  “Worst. Timing. Ever!” Clear growled.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Laura snapped back. Clear realized that she was still swaying and moving and immediately stopped, somewhat embarrassed.

  “Laura.. leave her….” Grant was right behind Laura and Clear felt this overwhelming sense of compassion and concern from him. The stab of jealousy was quickly brushed aside. Realizing that what images she had were now gone, she flounced out of the room.

  “I need some water,” she muttered as she carefully slipped past Grant and Laura. Once she got to the kitchen she realized that she had no idea where to get a glass. Turning, Grant and Laura were right on her heels.

  “Feeling better?” Grant asked tentatively.

  “The migraine is gone… for now,” Clear amended. She knew there would be more, probably one every single day they were here. Even more motivation to get this whole thing over with quickly.

  Grant moved past her and grabbed a glass. He filled it with water and ice from the fridge then offered it to her.

  “Thanks,” she murmured, feeling guilty for the jealousy in the bedroom. She took the proffered cup then looked around for Laura. Just because her vision was gone, didn’t mean she could
n’t get more on it. She headed into the living room where Laura stood looking at pictures on the entertainment center. Clear was hit with a wave of melancholy and realized that perhaps Laura was worse off than she appeared. Clear had no right to judge her. If anything, she should be impressed that the woman was holding it together as well as she was.

  Clear sighed and jumped right in. “Um… Laura? May I call you…”

  “Well, you have to call me something,” Laura snapped.

  Clear brushed off the attitude. “Did you know all of your daughter’s friends?”

  The woman glared at her balefully. “Are you kidding? Who could possibly know all their child’s friends?”

  Clear decided that it would be best to just get this miserably annoying part out of the way.

  “Look, I know you don’t believe in me. Fortunately for both of us, that isn’t going to affect what I do. I get that you have it in your head that there must be something going on between us,” she jerked her thumb at Grant “because you think I am young and beautiful and how could he not want me. I also get that you have a skewed view of him and think that I would have to want him, because how could anyone not want him as much as you, even with all his… issues. I hate to embarrass either one of you with all this painfully revealing emotional bullshit, but I need to make a point here. Grant and I are not together. We will not be together. I know he thinks I am hot, but he also has been with me enough to be more than a little… disturbed… terrified… awed by what I do,” Clear shook her head. “I totally get how you see Grant. He is good looking for his age, he can be sweet and charming unexpectedly, but the guys got baggage, even more baggage than I could have realized. He doesn’t have time for me and… well, he can’t handle my baggage because he is pretty overloaded right now. So, stop being so snarky and obnoxious to me because you feel like I am taking your place. I am not.” She took a deep breath, pleased to see that she had managed to take the woman completely off guard.

  “I know that you are blaming yourself for Kat disappearing and you feel like everyone else has to blame you too, which makes you angry and makes you feel like every question anyone asks is a personal affront to your motherhood. I also know that you don’t like blaming yourself because you’re not that type of person. The only person you can shift that blame to is Grant and you have good emotional logic to justify it. He is the reason you feel like you are a horrible mother. You are stretched too thin and you couldn’t do all the mommy things you wanted, because you were busy being dad too.

  “Let me make this clear. I don’t blame you. Grant doesn’t blame you. When I ask a question, it is not a challenge to your motherhood. I just need a straight answer. Now, back to my original question.”

  “I need to see.. or talk to a specific friend of Kat’s. Trust me, you will remember her if you met her. She is tall with miles of leg. Her hair is a blue black, but it is not natural. She was probably originally a red head or a blond. Her eyebrows weren’t dyed. She has her hair cut raggedly and is probably Goth. Does she sound familiar?”

  Laura stared at her in shock and amazement, obviously not keeping up.

  “Well?” Clear re-iterated.

  “Um.. no. No, I don’t know the girl you are talking about.”

  “Damn!” Clear muttered under her breath.

  “Was this girl involved in Kat’s disappearance?’ Grant asked

  “I’m not sure, but she was there when Kat had a bad experience with some guy, some WAY older guy.”

  “Experience? What kind of experience!” Grant snapped.

  Clear held up her hand. “I don’t know. I was trying to pull it all back when you two came barging into the bedroom.” Clear squinted. “I’m sorry, my eyes are still feeling very sensitive. Can we please turn off that light” She pointed overhead. Laura walked over and flipped the switch, still moving as if in a trance.

  “How…? How…?”

  Clear waved it off impatiently. “How doesn’t matter, just that I can. Please, we need to focus on this. I just.. I have a feeling this is important somehow.”

  “What does the man look like?” Laura asked.

  “He was.. I don’t know. I think his image must be distorted by her feelings for him. He was balding and wrinkly and had graying teeth, He was sort of hunched looking. I don’t know.”

  “Distorted by her feelings for him?” Laura asked in confusion.

  “Yes… people’s feelings for others distort the way they look in those people’s minds. Kind of like Shallow Hal… but not usually that extreme. It goes both ways. If you have negative feelings for someone, then their imperfections become much more noticeable to you. A large nose becomes humongous, bad teeth are even worse, a few crow’s feet become a bag of wrinkles. If you’re fond of people their good features are more enhanced. Their eye color brighter, their smile whiter… and their negative features are diminished. The overhanging gut is smaller, the receding hair line is less noticeable. This phenomena is much more pronounced in young people.” Clear shook her head again. “But neither of them ring a bell?”

  Laura shook her head, still trying to process everything.

  “Look, this girl was very important to Kat… I don’t know why, but she felt very close to this girl.”

  Laura shook her head again. “No… Kat didn’t have any Goth friends. Believe me, I would have known anyone she was close with. I do know everyone she was close with. This makes no sense.”

  “She has Goth clothes in her closet,” Clear pressed.

  “It’s just a phase. She is trying a bunch of new looks.”

  “They are being influenced by someone.”

  “Sure, the people she sees on TV!” Laura snapped. “And… well, the dancers that come through the school. Some of them are so… edgy…was the word she used.”

  “The dancer’s from her dance school?” Clear probed. Something about that felt right. The man had criticized something she had done… yeah, that felt right.

  “Wait, you think someone from the dance school had something to do with her disappearance? No, no way. She wouldn’t have been anywhere near the studio when she disappeared.”

  Grant butted in. “That doesn’t mean they weren’t involved. If someone was stalking her?”

  “Don’t you think I would have noticed some sleaze ball hanging around?!” Laura yelled.

  “Not all sleaze balls look like sleaze balls,” Grant countered, obviously trying to remain calm.

  “Trust me, no one from that school would have done this!” Laura insisted.

  Clear waved her hand to get their attention. “Please, stop yelling. I can only help if we keep the headaches at bay. You two going at it is so not going to help!” She turned to Laura. “Maybe this has nothing to do with anything, but it is possible that someone who was not involved with the dance school, but who may have seen her from the dance school is involved, right? They do live performances, right?”

  Laura looked at her speculatively, the doubt showing in her eyes.

  “Good lord, come on Clear. I know where her studio is.”

  “No. She changed studios a few months back,” Laura countered.

  “What? Why? No one told me anything about this.” Grant turned on her, barely keeping his temper.

  “Well, you’ve been a little busy with those other kids,” Laura snapped back, venom in her voice. “She was invited to try out for a scholarship and she got it. The scholarship made it a lot cheaper than the school she was in and there would be smaller classes, more one-on-one training… It seemed like a good deal and.. she had seen the other dancers. She wanted to go…”

  “But something bothered you about it,” Clear finished.

  “Yeah, at the beginning, but not now. They are wonderful… amazing. They clearly know what they are doing and Kat has just blossomed under their training…”

  Clear cut her off. “What bothered you?”

  Laura hesitated, but the thoughts came to her mind unbidden and Clear, fully charged and wide open, caught the
m. “You didn’t understand why they would have accepted her. She wasn’t really that good. Why would they accept her, let alone give her such a big scholarship.”

  “How dare you?!?!” Laura growled, coming at Clear in a very threatening manner.

  “I can’t help what you thought,” Clear said calmly as Grant stepped between them. “I could also see from your head why you thought it and you’re right. It is weird.”

  “It is not!” Laura insisted, tears streaming down her face. “They just can see talent more clearly than we can. They saw her potential and they were right…” Laura was shaking her head, trying just as hard to convince herself as them. “They were right, she is amazing now. She is at the top of her class and she… she always loves it there. If she were in danger… I would have… should have…” she burst into sobs.

  Clear felt the pressure building in her head again and the emotional-roller-coaster-that-was-Laura was more than she could take at that moment. She muttered on her way out. “You couldn’t have, and you shouldn’t, blame yourself.” She moved into the kitchen mostly to put some space between her and Laura. She opened the fridge, thinking food might help and grabbed the carton of milk. Who bought cartons anymore?

  As soon as she touched the carton, she gasped. The shock hit her so hard that she dropped the carton and it splattered all over everything. ‘Oh God!’ Clear thought ‘This is not good!’ Images flashed through her mind of a mother crying, a room in a hotel being searched, police with dogs, the mother talking to the police and the mother sitting alone on a bed.

  The girl that Clear had seen Kat talking to was missing too. Clear’s knees began to buckle under the weight of the mother’s misery and on her way to the ground a fleeting thought as she hoped she wouldn’t hit the counters.

  Grant walked into the kitchen behind Clear and saw the carton fall. He was about to tease her when her knees buckled and she started going down too. He barely made it to catch her under her arms, but the floor was slick with milk and her weight threw him off balance. They hit the ground, not as hard as she might have, but hard enough to hurt. Grant’s shoulder took the brunt of the damage, bouncing off the kitchen cabinet.