Finding Mighty

by Sheela Chari

  Tonight we were almost done packing. I could tell Ma was tired. She usually kept her hair up for work, but now it hung down in dark waves past her shoulders.

  “You sure your lip is okay?” she asked, frowning. “I don’t see how you could fall going up the stairs.” We were sitting on the floor eating leftover tandoori pizza for dinner. Only I wasn’t eating much. The swelling had come down but not a lot.

  “I said I had the pizza box in my hand, so I couldn’t see where I was going.”

  “Well, I’m just praying for my kids. First, Randall, now your face.”

  “I tell you I’m fine.”

  She leaned over. “Is that Randall’s?” she asked and felt the sleeve of the hoodie I was wearing, as if the fabric might feel like him.

  I didn’t answer. I could talk about Randall, but I couldn’t talk about his stuff.

  She changed the subject. “Petey, you’ll love the new house.”

  “Who is this friend of yours, anyway? I’ve never heard of her.” I stared at the flecks of orange paint on my sleeves. They were from when Randall went out to tag, and they never came out in the wash.

  “Margaret. She’s great—she was always throwing dinner parties, getting people together. She went to Mercy College with Pop and me. We got married and moved out of town, but she settled there. Then she moved away with her partner, but she still owns her house in Dobbs Ferry. That’s what she’s renting to us. Real pretty, near the water, and you can see the Palisades. And she was friends with Grandma Rose, too, who lived there on Broadway. But I haven’t been back in years. Not since . . .” Her voice tapered off. She couldn’t finish, but I knew what she meant to say: not since my pop’s death.

  I’d seen a few photos of my parents at Mercy. Still, I couldn’t picture either of them in college. As for Grandma Rose, I’d seen her only a few times before she died. So this place, Dobbs Ferry, meant nothing to me.

  On the fire escape, we could hear some squirrels running around, making a racket. Ma looked out and her eyes filled. I know she was thinking about Randall. Which was good. Otherwise, she would seem like a monster. I mean, I knew she cried to herself at night, and she filed a report with the police. And yeah, she went around the neighborhood to ask if anybody had seen my brother. But now we were suddenly moving, with no Randall.

  The racket on the fire escape got louder, so Ma went to shoo the squirrels away as I ate the last of the wretched tandoori pizza. One thing packing had shown me was that there wasn’t anything left to find. Nothing under the bed, nothing in the closet, nothing behind the stupid door. No clues to where he’d gone. Soon we’d be gone, too, and I’d be no closer to finding my brother.

  Plus there was the duffel bag.

  Truth was, I was scared of the thing. That day at the train station, when I showed Ma what Randall had painted on the platform wall, I remember the look on her face, like she thought someone was after us. My ma’s look was a clue. If you could call it that.

  My pop was a construction worker in New York City. He poured cement, laid bricks, and erected giant beams of steel. According to Ma, one day he was on the fortieth floor of a new construction, and he fell to his death when a metal beam hit him in the ribs and the harness around him snapped as he was knocked down to the street below. I was five years old when it happened. Randall was nine.

  Two things that didn’t make sense:

  First, I remember my ma one day pulling everything out of the closets that belonged to my pop, and stuffing them in garbage bags as my brother wailed, “Don’t take them to the Salvation Army.” My ma missed the duffel bag because Randall hid it under his bed in time. The lock came later. I don’t know who Randall was locking the bag from—my ma, me, or someone else.

  Second, if you Google my pop’s name, Omar Wilson, you’ll find an obituary from the Westchester Times. It says he was a construction worker found dead on East Fiftieth Street in Manhattan, next to a new construction. It says he fell but it doesn’t say anything about what floor he fell from. It doesn’t even say he died on the job.

  Which is why it came to me, maybe the bag had to do with the way my pop died. Because if he didn’t die on the job, what made him fall? And why did Ma tell me a different story from the one in the newspaper?

  Was the bag a clue? I wasn’t sure. But it was enough to make me scared to open it. Because Randall thought the bag was important. And now he was gone.

  After we got home from Yonkers, Ana and I went up to my room to look at Craggy’s note. So far we’d figured he knew about Dobbs Ferry because he talked to his mom. And Ana guessed our bumper sticker gave our car away: MY KID LOVES CHESS IN DOBBS FERRY. Which was ironic because Cheetah hates chess, and quit the chess club a month after he joined.

  “But will he find me here?” I wondered as I sat on my mattress, which was now on the floor.

  Ana was next to me looking on her phone at pictures of Stazi, one of the horses she rides at the stable. “I don’t know. But wait. I have a picture of him here.”

  I sat forward. “The craggy guy from the fair?”

  “Yeah, he’s next to you. It’s the picture with you trying on my hat before I bought it.”

  Well, I looked ridiculous in the hat. But I already knew that.

  Ana enlarged the photo on the screen with her fingers. “Actually, he’s cute for an old guy.”

  “What are you saying? He’s creepy. His face is craggy like a cliff.”

  Ana moved the image around, zooming it in and out to study his face. “Not craggy. Rugged. Like someone who’s outside a lot. Maybe he rides horses.”

  I snorted. “You’re just saying that because you were thinking of Stazi.” Ana was always thinking of Stazi.

  She moved the picture around. “See, he even wears boots.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “And those are cowboy boots.”

  She shrugged. “Fine. Maybe he’s in construction.” She swiped to the next picture.

  “You got the boy!” I exclaimed. She’d been going for the Om, but he’d showed up to one side. You forgot your naan. Could I have said anything more idiotic?

  “His face is blurry.” She zoomed in and out. “Why, did you want a picture of him?”

  I shook my head. “No, not really.” I hadn’t told her what happened in the alley. And it wasn’t because of the naan comment. It was something I couldn’t quite explain. Watching him get struck was terrifying, but I knew it wasn’t just the blood. It was the feeling it could have happened to me, that we were the same. I went to my desk and got out a roll of Scotch tape.

  “Wait, are you putting up that note? What if your parents see it?”

  “They never come in here. And they’d never notice it on The Wall.”

  The Wall is covered with different types of paper from top to bottom. Some are from school: homework, flyers, notes. But most are pages from my journal. The Wall is like one big jumble of words and sentences, my own personal graffiti. The Wall is something my mom hates. She tells me about minimalism, how it’s the latest in urban design. But I went ahead with The Wall anyway.

  After I stuck up Craggy’s note, I walked back until I was near the curtains. “He’s left-handed. See how the handwriting slants to the left.”

  Ana came next to me. “You’re right. A left-handed construction worker.” She looked out my window. “Wow, it’s almost evening. The sun’s so pretty from here, Myla.”

  From my room you can see the Palisades, and the sun setting behind it. When I was little, I would make myself look out because Mom said the best way to overcome your fears is to face them. I’d stand by the window and imagine there was another girl my age out there in the cliffs, and we could communicate by thinking thoughts at each other. She was like the outdoor version of me who wasn’t scared of heights and could climb the Palisades, even if everyone knows it’s illegal.

  “Hey, there’s a window open next door,” Ana said.

  The sky was turning orange, and the ground heaved, but that was just m
y stomach as I looked out. I took a step back from the curtains.

  “You’re not going to fall,” she said.

  “I know,” I said sharply. “You’re right. There’s a window open.”

  Margaret and Allie had been our neighbors until last summer, when the bookstore they owned went under and they moved away. Their house had been empty ever since. For a moment, I thought of Craggy. You know those scary movies where the bad guy is secretly riding on top of your car and following you back home without you knowing? I imagined Craggy stowing away on top of our Subaru. But of course, that was ridiculous. And why would he be in Margaret’s house? Unless an empty house was the perfect place to hide if you were a necklace stalker.

  “I wonder why it’s open,” Ana said.

  I wasn’t sure either.

  We went downstairs. Mom and Cheetah had gone out, but my dad was in the family room.

  “Is Margaret back in Dobbs?” I asked him. He was seated lotus-style on his green yoga mat.

  Without opening his eyes he said, “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “They’re hiking in the Swiss Alps. There’s a postcard in the kitchen.”

  The Swiss Alps? Like all the way over on another continent? I stood a minute longer.

  I actually liked watching my dad when he was doing yoga, though I’d never tell him. There was something magical about the way he found a pose. Each movement was like a slow reach into the place where his limbs were supposed to go. My favorite was Surya Namaskar, which is a prayer to the sun, where you keep your body in a line, then lean backward and forward, and stretch like a snake. Maybe he would do that now. But he opened his eyes at me, and I knew what that meant.

  In the hall, Ana said, “I have an idea. Why don’t we use the key?”

  At first I didn’t know what she meant. Then it dawned on me. “No,” I said.

  “Oh, come on. Margaret left it for you. We wouldn’t be doing anything wrong.”

  I shook my head.

  “We’ll close the window. We’re doing a favor—what if it rains?”

  “But it’s not raining.”

  Ana gave me a look. Ever since she’d found out about the key, she was always saying, Let’s do our nails there, let’s have a sleepover, and I always said no. I thought of all the times I’d been to that house, but not once after they moved away. I thought of Craggy’s note on our car. Was that an idle threat? Or was he the kind of person who would follow a twelve-year-old girl home? He had already followed me to a bathroom.

  In the end Ana convinced me. All she had to do was bring up braveness—that word for doing things you don’t want to. For her it was always easier: school, friendship, talking to others. For me, it seemed to take longer. It was like I was always in the shadows, looking for the sun.

  Outside, fireflies were starting up in the backyard. I can be brave, I told myself. But even with my feet on the ground, I felt my stomach lurch as we walked across the yard to Margaret’s house.

  FACT 1: He took $120, not enough for a hotel or rent, so he has to be staying with someone, probably someone he knows.

  FACT 2: He doesn’t e-mail, so the only way to reach him is through a friend.

  FACT 3: He hid the duffel bag, but he left it for me. He trusts me.

  FACT 4: He knows how to jump train tracks and land from a distance. His shoes are more scuffed up than mine. He’s been practicing—but for what?

  FACT 5: His new tag is the same as the first two letters of our pop’s name.

  FACT 6: If I can find more of his Om tags, I can find him.

  Before leaving, Margaret told me she knew what it was like to be my age, when sometimes you wanted to be left alone to figure out things by yourself. So she gave me this beautiful brass key with a loop at the top. She called it a skeleton key and said it opened all the doors in her house.

  I left it in the kitchen drawer. The house was a great place when Margaret and Allie lived there, full of nooks and crannies and odd-size rooms. Without them, it was creepy, with shadowy hallways and tiny windows.

  “I don’t understand why you want to go there,” I said.

  “And I don’t understand why you don’t,” Ana said.

  “There’s nothing to see. They’ve taken everything away.”

  “It’s not what’s there. It’s being there.”

  “Or who’s there,” I muttered. I tucked my necklace inside my shirt just in case.

  The front door opened with the key, although we had to give it a shove. But when we got in, we stopped. All the lights were on. For the first time Ana looked surprised, and even a little scared.

  “All right, so someone is here,” she whispered.

  I could picture it now: Craggy atop our Subaru, then nimbly cutting across Margaret’s yard after we went inside. “Let’s go home,” I whispered back.

  Then we heard a sound. It rattled all the way from the second floor down the stairs to where we were. “Oh,” I said, feeling foolish. “Nora.”

  “Who?”

  “The cleaning lady. She comes around once in a while. That’s her vacuuming upstairs.”

  “Oh.” Ana sounded strangely disappointed. “I guess we should go.”

  “Well, we’re here, so we might as well tell her to close the window before she leaves.”

  We went up the familiar winding staircase. When we got to the second floor, the vacuuming had stopped but now I heard something else—heavy shoes on the wooden floor. Not like Nora in her tennies. More like work boots. Like what a construction worker would wear. I clutched Ana’s arm.

  Before either of us could decide what to do, a bedroom door flung open.

  A teenage girl stood staring at us. She was the person in the heavy shoes: combat boots, paired with denim cut offs and a black T-shirt a shade lighter than her straight hair that read give me freedom or give me death. “Whoa.” She looked us up and down coolly and jabbed a finger at me. “You must be Myla.”

  I blinked. “I must be Myla? Then who are you?”

  “I’m Kai.” She jerked her thumb behind her. “Nora’s cleaning for the renters moving in.”

  “Are you cleaning, too?” I asked.

  Kai scoffed. For the first time, I noticed a camera dangling from a strap crisscrossing her back. “No, I’m with the Westchester Times.” She turned to Nora. “Thanks. I’ll see myself out.”

  “No problem, sweetie,” Nora said. “Be careful in the hallway. I just mopped.”

  I tried to digest this information as Kai strode past me. “Who’s moving in?” I asked Nora.

  “The Wilsons. A woman and her son who’s starting middle school.” Nora looked me over. “You used to come over with your brother. Huh, you’re growing up fast.”

  “We came to tell you to close that window,” I said. I realized how lame that sounded. But I suppose it was better than saying, Don’t mind us, we thought a crazy guy might be hiding here.

  “Sure, of course,” Nora said. “I’ll close everything when I leave.”

  I stood in the doorway where I could see Kai walking down the hall, peering into each bedroom and taking photos. She was wispy and small, but her calf muscles rippled powerfully above her combat boots. How old was she? Sixteen? She kept going, taking more photos.

  “Not to be rude,” I said, “but does Margaret want you taking photos here?”

  “I’m just looking.” Kai saw my face. “I know Margaret, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m here because of the house.”

  “What’s so special about it?” It was the first time Ana spoke.

  Kai turned to her. “You live down the street, don’t you? You’re the family with the Norwegian flag ornaments on the tree at Christmas time.”

  Ana was speechless. Then she smiled. “That’s right. Wow, you know a lot.”

  “I’ve been down this street a hundred times,” Kai said. “It’s my job to know people. As for what’s so special? This was the last place Scottie Biggs was seen before he was arrested and thrown in pr
ison eight years ago for stealing diamonds. But since you’re like ten years old, you’ve probably never heard of him.”

  “Thanks, but you look like someone in high school without a car,” I shot back.

  Kai looked at me for a moment. “Google me. Kai Filnik. You’ll see I’m graduating from Mercy College next spring. You’ll find out my mom is Margaret’s real estate agent. And my dad’s in law enforcement. Between the two of them, I know everything there is to know in this town, including this house. But I’m a journalist, and we like to get all our facts before we write the story. That’s why I’m here. Because Scottie is getting out of prison in a few weeks.”

  “And who is he, that Scottie guy?” Ana asked.

  “Only Dobbs’s most notorious resident,” Kai said, “and the head of the Fencers.”

  Ana’s eyes widened. But I didn’t want her to give it away that I’d heard about the Fencers from Craggy. “Prison!” I interjected quickly. “Well, he wouldn’t be here, would he?”

  That seemed to work. Also, Ana had become distracted by Kai’s camera. “What kind of lens are you using?” she asked her. “Can you take close-ups of animals?”

  “Dude, you can do everything with this,” Kai said. She opened a closet door, studying its interior carefully, before taking another photo. What was she doing? Was she hoping to find that Scottie guy hiding here? Whatever it was, she was pissing me off.

  “Do you ever use your phone to take photos?” Ana asked, following Kai like a puppy dog.

  “Not really.” Kai stopped at a door at the other end of the hall, jiggling the knob both ways. I frowned. That was the door to the attic. As far as I knew, it had always been locked. But why was it locked now after Margaret and Allie had moved out?

  “Nora, this door doesn’t open,” Kai called out. “Do you have the key?”

  “That must be the attic,” Nora called back. “And no key.”

  Kai came back to where Nora was cleaning. “What do you mean, no key?”