Harmless

by Dana Reinhardt

  “Oh, Pumpkin. I'm so sorry. I know how hard this is on you. You shouldn't have to be facing all this. This isn't right. You shouldn't have these kinds of worries.”

  It felt good to have her arms around me, it had been a long time since we'd sat like that, but I wasn't quite sure what to make of what she was whispering in my ear. I couldn't figure out which kinds of worries she was talking about.

  Anna

  Up to this point in my life, I was sure that I'd always be Anna Ba-nana, that I'd never be part of a popular crowd. I'd go to school dances alone or not at all. I'd hear people talking about parties in the bathroom and I'd take my time washing my hands and drying them so I could gather as many details as possible about who was kissing who and who threw up in whose mom's closet, and I'd file all these details away in my sad and lonely little head. But here I was, nearing the end of my freshman year of high school, and already things were looking better for the next three years than I ever could have hoped for in my wildest imagination.

  For one thing, I was pretty sure that Tobey Endo and I were flirting. I couldn't be entirely sure because flirting was new to me, but he did say hi and smile every time he saw me. He called me Hendricks, as in “What's up, Hendricks?” and “Hendricks in the house!” and even though I know addressing each other by your last name is usually something guys do among themselves, being called Hendricks felt much better than being called Anna Banana or, even worse, being called nothing at all.

  For another thing, I could sit at Tammy Frost's table at lunch if I wanted to. Emma sometimes wasn't even at lunch, and when she was she didn't seem to care much if I sat with her or not, so I started making a habit of sitting at Tammy's table and listening to her and her friends talk about lipstick shades. What had happened by the river was no longer the big news on campus. Our article came out and people talked about it for another day or two, but there were other things to talk about, like lipstick shades. And boys.

  I was debating telling Tammy about my crush on Tobey Endo. On the one hand, it felt against the natural order to talk to someone other than Emma about this. On the other hand, Emma seemed to be impatient with me lately and grumpy and also kind of bitchy and I wasn't sure she deserved to hear my confession or even if she'd care at all. And let's not forget that Emma was not exactly doing a great job of revealing her secrets to me these days.

  Tammy had clout. She could make things happen. If I told her, and she told more people, and word got around, and everyone talked about it, maybe it would become something real. But each time I opened my mouth to say something to Tammy, I felt the all-too-familiar heat in my face and I felt the old Anna grab ahold of my vocal cords and squeeze them shut.

  I decided to tell Mariah. Even if she didn't have pull with Tobey, she knew more about boys than anyone and I figured she could give me some valuable advice.

  We went to the Big Cup after school, just the two of us. I had my first-ever cup of coffee, and with a lot of milk and sev-eral spoonfuls of sugar, it tasted pretty good and I wondered why it had taken me so long to make the switch over from hot chocolate. We took a table in the corner and the place was practically empty. There were no other uniforms inside the Big Cup.

  I decided to jump right in and I told her I had a confession.

  She looked a little nervous and that made me feel even more nervous but I took a deep breath and came out and told her.

  “I know this may seem crazy, because he's, like, probably way too cool for me, but I have a pretty big crush on Tobey Endo.”

  She smiled a huge smile at me. “Christ, Anna. You had me all freaked out there for a minute. Inviting me for coffee. Telling me you had to confess something. You had me wor-ried.” She folded her arms in front of her. “So? What are we going to do about this?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Well, I do. We're going to get him for you. He'd be lucky to have you as a girlfriend. Get that into your head, because the first thing you have to stop doing is thinking you aren't cool enough for him. That kind of thinking gets you nowhere, my friend.” She stopped for a minute and looked out the win-dow. “I know how you feel. I know what it's like to want some-one you think may be out of your reach.”

  “You do?” Someone out of Mariah's reach? No way.

  “I mean, I guess I can imagine what that would feel like. Anyway, look at you, Anna. Tobey Endo would be lucky to have you.”

  I went home that night and, despite my first encounter with coffee, I slept a deep sleep and dreamed of something wonder-ful. But when my alarm clock went off the next morning and I reached back for what it was that had left me feeling so warm and content, it wasn't there anymore. The harder I tried to remember what it was, the vaguer my memory of my dream became. I got dressed in my uniform. It looked better in the mirror to me than it ever had before and I went downstairs for breakfast, happy to see my mom and dad sitting at the table, waiting for me.

  And then I saw the front page of the paper, her eyes gazing out at me, and just as mysteriously as the warmth from my forgotten dream had come over me, I felt it vanish.

  Emma

  Her name was Elinor Clements. People called her Ellie.

  As I carefully trimmed the edges of the article, I didn't take my eyes off hers.

  She was only twelve and lived about forty-five minutes north of here on the other side of the river. She had blond hair like mine, except hers was straight and fell just below her ears, and she had big blue eyes and a gap between her two front teeth. In the photograph she was wearing overalls. She was smiling and squinting into the sun. The caption said she was a junior explorer with the county nature society and that she was an excellent swimmer.

  She'd gone missing sometime after school. The last time anyone reported seeing her was at her locker after her last class of the day, an earth science class. Her earth science teacher was interviewed for the article and she said that Elinor was a wonderful student and very respectful of her classmates.

  Her best friend, Mandy, who chose not to reveal her last name, was supposed to meet Ellie in the library, where they were going to work on their essays for the sixth-grade graduation contest: “What's in Store for Us?” But Ellie never showed.

  Her father owned a big-and-tall men's store in the Ka-pachuck Mall. Her mother worked as a receptionist at a local veterinarian's office. Neither responded to requests for inter-views for this article.

  The police had no leads but they stressed that it was too early to assume anything. Kids get upset. They run away. They make irresponsible decisions. Even the good kids like Ellie Clements.

  I read the article three times, squeezing out every bit of in-formation there was to squeeze, glued it onto a piece of cardboard so it wouldn't get torn and put it away in my desk drawer, at the top of the pile of articles I've saved throughout the years. Over time, I swear her face started to disappear, worn away from all my hours of staring at it.

  When I came out of second period I saw Mariah and Silas sitting together on a bench. They saw me too and they waved me over like they were excited to see me, like it was a surprise to find me in the halls of my own school. “Hurry, Emma, over here! We were just talking about you!” But I kept on walking. I had an appointment with Ms. Malachy.

  She'd been on my case to come see her since the school assembly. I ignored the note in my locker and the one that was hand-delivered to me in English class and finally she was waiting for me the other morning as I was going into gym class, and I figured I'd better agree to see her or else she might follow me into the locker room and we'd be having this discussion with me in my bra and underpants.

  I didn't really believe in counseling, but there was something about Ms. Malachy, other than my desire not to have to talk to her in my underwear, that made me agree to see her in her office. She had a gentle voice and she always wore a blue bandana in her hair and she smelled like dirt and honey and she was big and soft and in every way the opposite of my mother. Don't get me wrong, I love my mom. I want to be her someday.
She's tall and thin and beautiful and glamorous and intellectual and when she tells a story the entire room hangs on her every word. But Ms. Malachy seemed like the kind of woman you could show your messiest self to and not have to worry that you were letting her down in some way.

  I liked her office. It was cluttered and small and the couch was an ugly shade of orange with a big tear in one of the cushions. The office had high ceilings and a small octagonal stained-glass window above her desk that gave the room an almost churchlike feel.

  “Forgive me, Ms. Malachy, for I have sinned. It has been forever since my last confession.”

  “You've sinned?”

  “I was joking. It just feels like a confessional in here, what with the stained glass and the close quarters, not that I've ever been in a confessional, but I've seen them on TV.”

  She looked around and smiled. “Yeah. I guess I see what you mean. Okay. Here I am, I'll take your confession.”

  “I said I was joking.” For a minute, the room felt hot. That window didn't let in much air.

  “Of course. Sorry. Is it okay if I ask you how you are?”

  I stuck my finger into the tear in the cushion and pulled out a tiny bit of the cottony stuffing.

  “I'm fine. Just fine.”

  “Hmm. Is it okay if I say that you don't seem that way to me?”

  “Is it okay if you stop asking me if everything is okay before you ask me something?”

  “Fair enough.”

  “And anyway, you don't really know me, so how can you say if I seem fine or not?”

  “It's my job.”

  Her job. It was her job to know if I was okay or not? I thought for a minute about Elinor Clements. Her father's job was to clothe the Big and Tall. Her mother's job was to take appointments for people's sick cats. Whose job was it to make sure Ellie made it safely from earth science to the library?

  There was a long silence between us, during which I stared up at the stained-glass window and the many shades of light that it cast on the walls around us.

  “I guess maybe you're right,” I said. “I guess I'm not really doing all that great.”

  Mariah

  Silas. Silas Calhoun. Silas fill-in-the-blank Calhoun. I didn't know his middle name. I made a note to myself to ask him.

  SilasSilasSilasSilas. CalhounCalhounCalhounCalhoun.

  We'd been talking on the phone almost every night. Whenever I called, usually around nine, he'd answer and after about an hour or so he'd ask if I wanted to talk to Emma and I'd say it was getting late and I'd better get back to my home-work but we both knew that I wasn't really calling to talk to Emma anyway. I was calling to talk to Silas. He had a deep voice with soft edges and a laugh like he couldn't quite catch his breath.

  We never talked about Bronwyn, but it was obvious that they were having trouble. If things were so great between them then why wasn't he on the phone with her for an hour every night?

  The morning of the Ellie Clements story he found me in the hallway and we sat together talking on a bench. It was the first time we ever hung out together at school except for the time we went out to the hill by the athletic fields, but nobody could see us together there. When we were on the bench in the hallway, we were together for all of Odious to see.

  Silas thought we should go see Detective Stevens. He said he'd tried talking to Emma about it but she refused to discuss anything at all having to do with what happened down by the river. Silas had a theory. He thought maybe the same guy who attacked Emma had something to do with Ellie's disap-pearance.

  “I don't think so, Silas. She lived on the other side of the river. That's pretty far away from here.”

  “So what?”

  “I don't know, this guy didn't exactly look like he drove a sports coupe.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Nothing really, I just mean that this guy didn't seem like the type who gets around easily.”

  “What, he had no legs? Don't you think you should have mentioned that to the police?”

  “No, stupid. I mean, I don't know, he seemed like a vagrant, and I don't really know how someone like that would make his way thirty miles north and across the river.”

  “Did you tell the police that he seemed like a vagrant?”

  It was time to change the subject. Silas was asking too many questions. I knew he wanted to be a lawyer. He wanted to be like one of those lawyers on Law & Order or one of those legal shows I never watch because they seem kind of boring. I knew this about Silas because he'd told me that was what he wanted to do. He wanted to go to Columbia Law School after he got his undergraduate degree from Columbia. “Settle down there, Clarence Darrow,” I said. “How do you know about Clarence Darrow?” “Why do you seem so surprised that I'd know about Clarence Darrow? He was one of our nation's greatest law-yers. The Scopes trial? Scottsboro? C'mon, Silas, I'm not an idiot.” What Silas was forgetting was that he'd told me on the phone that he wanted to be the next Clarence Darrow, and I had no idea who that was, so I looked him up on the Internet.

  “I never said you were an idiot. You're just surprising, is all.”

  Just then we saw Emma walking down the hall and Silas jumped up like we'd been caught doing something wrong. He called out to her and waved her over but she just kept on walking.

  A few days later I got a call from Detective Stevens. He wanted to meet with all of us again down at the station.

  Needless to say, I didn't really want to go, but it became clear that I had no choice. My mom had already talked with Emma's and Anna's parents and they had agreed on a time. Three on Saturday. Carl was coming. Mom and Carl were going to get a sitter and spend a few precious hours away from perfect little Jessica. This was a big deal.

  It seemed like a good idea for us all to get together, to go over the details of our story again, but Emma wouldn't agree to meet with us. I couldn't figure out why she was being such a bitch. At first I thought Emma was so cool and that Anna was the dud, but now it was starting to seem like I had every-thing backwards. Emma was sulky. She was too wrapped up in herself. It was no wonder that Owen totally blew her off after that first night at DJ's. She was turning out to be someone no-body wanted to be around.

  I met Anna in the library on the Friday afternoon before our meeting down at the station. She wasn't worried at all. Mostly she wanted to talk about Tobey Endo. I was getting a little tired of that topic and also of having to convince her that she had a chance with him. Tobey was a little weird. He was cute, for sure, but he was kind of a loner and had long hair that hung in his eyes and he was always writing and sketching in this little notebook of his. He wasn't your typical Odious jock type. Maybe Anna had a chance with him. Maybe she didn't. But it seemed like telling her I thought she had a chance was the right thing to do. That's the kind of lie I'm pretty sure makes you a decent person instead of a big fat liar.

  Just as we were moving on from Tobey back to the night by the river, a girl I'd never seen before walked into the library. She had long straight red hair and she wore jeans and an Indian-print shirt. New faces jump out at you in a place like this, and so does someone not in uniform. But I would have noticed her anyway because her hair was such a deep, dark shade of red and her face was so pale. She was beautiful. She carried a stack of blue flyers and pinned one to the bulletin board by the front desk; then she brought one over to our table.

  “Hey, guys. Take Back the Night march over at the college. Next Friday night. Be there.” Her nails were painted a color that matched her hair. She wore tan suede clogs.

  I looked at the flyer. It said:

  This is OUR world. WE make the rules.

  WE say that girls will be safe walking home from school.

  WE say that girls will be safe in our schools or on our streets or sitting by the river.

  WE say that girls will grow up to be women who will live without fear.

  Let's TAKE BACK THE NIGHT.

  Join us for a midnight march from the gates of the college, through
the surrounding neighborhoods, down to the river and back.

  This is OUR world. Let's reclaim it.

  STOP VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN NOW!!!

  Anna clutched the flyer and called out to the redheaded girl, “Hey! We were there! We were there!”

  I said “Shhhhh” and Anna shrugged and shot me a look that said Sorry, I forgot this is a library, but that isn't really what I meant when I shushed her.

  Red-hair-and-nail girl turned around and came back to our table. “You aren't Emma Calhoun, are you?”

  “No. I'm Anna. This is Mariah. We were with Emma that night.”

  “Hey. Wow. Heavy.” She sat down. “I'm Crystal, I'm cochair of the Feminist Union and I take classes with Professor Calhoun. Pamela Calhoun, not Raymond. He's a pig. Anyway, we're having this march on Friday. We had one last month too, but we didn't veer any farther than about two blocks off campus. This time we want to march not only for the women on our campus, but also for the victims in the larger community. We're going to cut a wider swath. It'll be a long one. Bring your marching shoes.”

  Anna was beaming. “We'd love to go.”

  “Hey, that'd be great. It'll be really powerful having you along. I'm hoping that we can get some folks from Kapachuck to come down for this too, but I'm not having much luck. It's a long drive for a midnight march. And anyway, they're still too wrapped up in searching for Ellie Clements, like there's any chance she's still alive.”

  “Who knows,” said Anna. “The police thought maybe she ran away.”

  “Yeah, sure,” said Crystal. “Not likely.” She stood up again. “Well, I gotta go. I gotta keep spreading the word.”

  “Oh man. This is a disaster,” I said. I put my head in my hands. Anna was folding the flyer neatly and slipping it into her backpack.