A Girl Called Dust

by V. B. Marlowe

  Quinn lay in the guest room, staring at Grandma’s antique armoire. Mom had spent a great deal of time stroking Quinn’s hair and saying nothing about Paige. Officer Putney came over that evening and he, Mom, and I gathered around Grandma’s kitchen table while Grandma did what she had been doing for the past day: paced the living room.

  “Your husband, Mrs. Moss.” Officer Putney asked as he opened his trusty notepad.

  Mom swallowed hard. “He’s away on business.”

  “Yes, we know, but we haven’t been able to get ahold of him. Have you?”

  Mom shook her head quickly in such a way that made me feel that she was lying. “He’s very busy.”

  “I’m sure he is, but his child is missing. Aren’t you concerned that he hasn’t been returning any of our calls?”

  Putney was right. Dad’s voicemail was full, so we couldn’t leave him any more messages. Something had to be wrong. There was no way he wouldn’t call us back, and there were still a couple of weeks left until his business trip was over.

  “Are you looking for my daughter? What progress have you made?” Mom asked, avoiding the officer’s questions.

  “We’ve had several calls from people claiming to have seen a girl who looks like Paige, but they haven’t turned out to be anything. We checked the hotel your husband was supposed to be staying at, and he wasn’t there. He’s never stayed there, in fact.”

  My stomach ached. “What? What does that mean? Where’s Dad?”

  Mom placed her hand on mine. “Arden, please. Officer Putney, he’s not staying in any hotel. He was going to, but then he changed his mind at the last minute and decided to stay with his brother. He hardly gets to see him and his family.”

  Putney nodded as he wrote that down. “I’ll need the name and number of that brother. Mind if I speak to Arden for a few minutes? I just have a few questions.”

  Mom tightened her grip on my hand. “Sure, but I’m staying right here. She’s a minor. You can’t question her without me.”

  Putney sighed, not hiding his annoyance. “She’s not under investigation or anything. We’d just like a little more information.”

  “Then it should be fine if I stay,” Mom said.

  I should have felt safe with Mom there, and I almost did. I would have felt completely safe if it weren’t for the fact that Dad didn’t have a brother.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Officer Putney got called outside for a few moments before he had the pleasure of questioning me again. Grandma put on some chamomile tea, and we moved to the living room.

  “Don’t give him more information than you need to,” Mom said.

  I nodded, although I didn’t fully understand. Didn’t she want to find Paige? Why wasn’t she more upset?

  Putney came back inside and graciously accepted a cup of my grandmother’s tea. He slurped it instead of sipping, and I could feel Mom seething beside me.

  “Arden, aside from the broken window, there’s no sign of anyone coming into your home on Friday night. We even checked the surveillance cameras your family has set up. No one set foot in your yard, the front or the back, that night except for you.”

  “Yeah, I went back there after Paige was gone to see if I could find anything. If Quinn is right, you wouldn’t have seen anyone in our yard, and the cameras are set up to catch the first story only.”

  Officer Putney raised one eyebrow at me. “You want to stick to the story of the flying man?”

  I squeezed the teacup in my hands. No, I didn’t want to stick with that story, but it was all I had. It was the only thing that made sense, yet it didn’t make sense. Also, Fletcher said it had happened, and he had no reason to lie about that.

  He set his empty teacup down on the table. “You three girls were home alone, and one of you disappeared. Did something happen? Did you fight or something?”

  “Officer Putney, what exactly are you suggesting?” Mom demanded, and I wanted to know the same thing.

  “A witness has come forward. They claim they saw you and your sisters in Gerdy’s that night. They said you and Paige had a big fight because she wasn’t listening to you.”

  Freaking Lacey. It had to be her.

  “Maybe the fight continued at home,” Officer Putney went on, “and you lost control and hurt Paige.”

  “Okay, this is over,” Mom snapped. “I want you to leave now.”

  “Your so-called witness is Lacey Chapman, isn’t it? Lacey is a liar. The only problem Paige had that night was with Lacey, because Paige was sticking up for me. Me and Paige weren’t fighting at all.” My voice cracked, and I hated myself for it. Why couldn’t I speak with more conviction in my voice? “The glass from the window was in Paige’s room, which means someone broke it from the outside, right? I would never hurt my sisters. And if I had done something to her, you would have found her in the house, wouldn’t you?”

  “Arden, quiet!” Mom glared at Putney. “Get out,” she demanded.

  Officer Putney slowly rose and made his way to the door. “Fine, but we’re going to do everything we can to find that little girl, and until we get ahold of your husband, he’s a suspect. If I find out you’ve been in contact with him without informing me, I will have you charged with hindering an investigation and obstruction of justice.”

  I felt sick, but Mom didn’t look the least bit worried. “Good night, Officer.”

  We were allowed back home the following day. Mom allowed me to stay home from school, and I was glad. The only thing worse than being ignored and treated like dust was having people who didn’t even like you feel sorry for you. Also, I thought that if I saw Lacey, I would slug her and get myself suspended or expelled. Fletcher had wanted to meet me in the park, but I’d refused. I had no desire to speak to him. He might tell me more crazy things I’d decided I didn’t want to hear.

  Although I tried to stay up, my body wouldn’t let me. I fell asleep dreaming of winged boys coming to snatch me from my bed during the night.

  Quinn began to move around and answer questions with one-word answers, but she wouldn’t talk about Paige or what had happened to her. Any time we mentioned Paige, Quinn would shut right back down.

  Wednesday morning, Norma came over to do her biweekly housecleaning. Mom and I were eating breakfast when Norma went out back to empty the trash. She screamed, and Mom and I rushed out to see what was wrong. Paige lay on the back porch asleep and shivering. She wore what looked like a filthy homemade gown made of patches. Normally Paige wouldn’t have been caught dead in a garment like that.

  No matter what we tried, Paige wouldn’t wake up. Mom said she had probably been drugged. We called for an ambulance immediately, and Paige was taken to the hospital. This was all too much. First Quinn. Then Paige. Was I next in line for a hospital stay?

  Paige was examined, and thankfully she hadn’t been harmed except for a small, deep cut on the back of her left shoulder. At least she was alive, and unlike Quinn, the minute she was cleared of her grogginess and the doctors were done examining her, Paige was talking a mile a minute.

  “Me and Quinn were about to give each other makeovers and then something thumped against the window. At first we thought it was a tree branch, but it was a guy, and he was just floating there. Then he broke the window and grabbed me. He stuck me with something that made me fall asleep, so I didn’t know how we got where we got. When I woke up, I was in a gray room with beds and TVs and computer screens. Him and some other weird people kept looking at me and whispering about me. Some of them looked like monsters. They weren’t mean though. They fed me and everything, but they said I was just a stupid Human, and they brought me back.”

  Just a stupid Human? What were they?

  Officer Putney didn’t seem too happy to hear that Paige’s story matched what I’d told him. He eyed us all suspiciously. “Something is wrong here. Parents who can’t be reached. A mysterious uncle we can’t get ahold of. Your daughter goes missing and then she mysteriously reappears? Maybe you’re all making this s
tuff up for attention.”

  Yeah, it sounded crazy when you said it out loud like that, but we hadn’t asked for any of it to happen.

  Putney and Mom had a yelling match, the police left, and we were on our own.

  That night, Grandma wanted to stay over but Mom insisted she didn’t. Mom tucked each of us into bed, which was something she hadn’t done for me since I was eight.

  “It’s been a long day. Lights out for everyone,” Mom said before she went into Quinn’s room then Paige’s, then she came to mine.

  A book was propped open on my knees when Mom came in, but I had no intentions of going to sleep. I didn’t know how much longer I could dodge sleep, but I had too. I also needed to ask Mom about Fletcher’s accusations.

  She smoothed my hair back and kissed me on my forehead. “One more chapter and that’s it. You really need to get some rest.”

  “I can’t go to sleep.”

  Mom’s face scrunched with concern. “You want me to give you something?”

  “No. I can’t sleep because I don’t want to. I’m afraid to.”

  “I know what happened to Paige was very scary, but—”

  “Where’s Dad? You told Officer Putney he was staying with his brother, but Dad’s an only child. Why didn’t he come home when Paige was missing? He’d never stay away when something like that happened.”

  Mom took my hand and squeezed it. “It’s late. We’re both tired. Let’s talk tomorrow.”

  If we didn’t have the conversation then, it was never going to happen. “No. Tell me now.”

  “He’s away on business. That’s all.”

  “Am I your daughter? Your real daughter?”

  Her eyes filled with tears immediately, and that should have answered the question for me. “Of course you are. What kind of question is that?”

  “Then why are you crying? Fletcher was right, wasn’t he? That’s why Dad got so mad when he said you couldn’t be my parents because you smelled different. I don’t know what that means, but there’s a reason he said it.”

  Mom blotted her tears with her index fingers. “Something is wrong with that boy. You shouldn’t believe anything he tells you.”

  “I don’t look like anybody in this family. Not anyone. Aunts, cousins, grandparents. No one.”

  Mom squeezed my hand gently. “You can’t go by that. Genetics can be a funny thing. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I want us to take a DNA test. If you’re really my parents, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  She sobbed harder. I hated the fact that she was crying, but I needed answers.

  “Mom, please. Something is wrong. Well, maybe not wrong, but different about me. I have a right to know. Not knowing is driving me crazy, and it’s not fair.”

  Mom swallowed hard and then squeezed my hand tighter. “I went into labor the day before Halloween when I was eight months pregnant. You were supposed to be a Thanksgiving baby, but you wanted to come a month early. Your father was still out of town. You know he’s gone every October. Anyway, I was by myself, and everything was happening so fast. All I know is that I gave birth to this tiny pink baby with gray-blue eyes and a patch of white fuzz on her head. They took her away to clean her up and I fell asleep.

  “When I woke up, beside me in a cradle was a pale baby with a head covered with jet-black hair and the largest black eyes I’d ever seen. There was no way it could have been the same baby. I screamed for the nurses and told them the baby in the cradle wasn’t mine.” Me. She’d told them that I wasn’t her baby. “They all insisted that she was. No one besides the hospital staff had been there to see the other baby and to back me up, but I knew. A mother knows. I knew you weren’t truly my child. They said I was crazy and suffering from some sort of postpartum depression.”

  I swallowed a lump in my throat. I wasn’t hers and Dad’s, and she was disappointed about it.

  “But Arden, you are my child. None of that matters. I loved you from that day to this one. I couldn’t love you any more if you had really come from me.”

  This was too much. Way too much to take in.

  I had more questions to ask, but I was drained from learning that my mother wasn’t really my mother. I had expected it, but actually hearing it from her knocked the wind out of me. If Mom and Dad weren’t my real parents, who was? Where was their real daughter? Why had we been switched? Somehow getting the answers to one question had only produced several more.

  Chapter Sixteen

  For the next week and a half, I spent many restless nights waiting for the winged man to come and take me, but he never did. I sort of wanted him to come and get it over with. Living in fear was exhausting. Maybe he thought I wasn’t good enough to be taken. Whatever. I tried my best to put him out of my mind. There was always the possibility that he would never come.

  A week before Halloween, Trista passed out invitations to her annual Halloween party. I wasn’t sure if Bailey was going to come through on her promise or not, but she had been talking to me at school, so that was something. We hadn’t hung out outside of school yet, but talking was a start.

  Fletcher had come back to school because Principal Sharpe felt compelled to end his suspension early. I guessed the school board hadn’t seen his actions as a reason for expulsion. Fletcher didn’t seem to care one way or the other, but part of his return required him to apologize to Ms. Melcher.

  The two of us sat at our usual picnic table during lunch when Bailey delivered my invitation. I didn’t know what to make of the fact that Trista hadn’t delivered it herself, but Trista was only inviting me because Bailey was making her, so it really didn’t matter.

  Bailey handed me the invite as if it were the greatest gift she had ever given me. “You have to wear a costume, Arden. Something cool that people will understand.”

  I scrunched my face at her. I thought I did that every year. “What do you mean?”

  “Well last year you wore a blue sweatshirt and said you were Dory from Finding Nemo, and the year before that you made a green oval thing and said you were an olive.”

  So? “That’s my favorite food and my favorite character from a children’s movie.”

  “You cannot make your own costume. I’ll help you find something really cute if you want.”

  Her eyes shifted to Fletcher, who had been staring off into the distance, ignoring our exchange. She took a deep breath. “I suppose you can bring Fletcher if he wants to come.”

  He glared at Bailey. “Fletcher doesn’t want to come.” I nudged his knee with mine, and he stared off again.

  Bailey looked relieved. “Good then. See you. This is going to be the party of the year.”

  Trista’s Halloween parties had always been a big deal since the seventh grade. For weeks after, I’d have to listen to everyone talk about them, the catered food, the party favors, the awesome band, but now I was actually going to be part of it.

  Bailey wriggled her fingers in a wave. “Later, love.”

  “You shouldn’t go to that party,” Fletcher said after Bailey glided away.

  “Why not?”

  “I think something bad might happen then. After Mrs. Chin and Mr. Thompson—”

  Why did he have to bring them up? “Fletcher, don’t. Those were freak accidents that happened at the beginning of the school year, and nothing has happened since.”

  Fletcher shrugged and stared off into nothing again. Something was wrong with him, and I wasn’t sure what.

  “Fletch, you know I never do anything fun. Let me have this one night without you making me feel guilty. It’s just a party. Bailey said you could come if you wanted.”

  “I’d rather eat the cafeteria meatloaf, throw it up, and then eat it again.”

  Gross. Thankfully the bell rang.

  The next day I realized I had spoken too soon when I told Fletcher there was nothing to worry about. Ms. Melcher was missing. She was my favorite teacher, but I reminded myself that missing could mean a lot of things. It didn’t necessarily me
an dead. Paige had been missing, and she was fine.

  She hadn’t shown up to school that day and she hadn’t arranged for a substitute, which was nothing like Ms. Melcher. She was always there and rarely out. Principal Sharpe and the rest of the staff had to be worried, but they tried their best not to show it.

  Naturally everyone brought up Fletcher and how he’d told Ms. Melcher she was going to die. I knew Fletcher had nothing to do with her disappearance, but even I had to admit that it was a hell of a coincidence.

  By lunchtime, different versions of what people thought was the real story behind Ms. Melcher’s disappearance was all anyone talked about. According to her mom, Ms. Melcher had a boyfriend in Vegas. Lacey said he had proposed to Ms. Melcher over the weekend, and she’d dropped everything and moved there to be with him. He was filthy rich, and she wouldn’t have to work anymore. I had no idea how Lacey would know any of that but people ran with that theory.

  Some girls were saying good for her, but I knew that couldn’t be right. That didn’t sound like Ms. Melcher at all. The Ms. Melcher I knew wouldn’t drop her life and career and move to Vegas on a whim without telling anyone. She was smarter than that.

  The other theory was that she was dead and Fletcher was psychic. He’d known what would happen before it did. The most scandalous story was that Fletcher’s warning had actually been a threat and he had murdered her, and her body was down in his basement. Ranson was the main carrier of that rumor.

  “Do you believe what they’re saying?” I asked Fletcher at lunch.

  “That I killed her and that she’s wrapped in garbage bags in my basement? Of course not.”

  “What do you think happened to her?”

  He looked at me as if I had asked him the dumbest question in the world. “You of all people should know.”

  No. Not more riddles. “What?”