“I have seen nothing.” I had to fight to keep control of my voice. “You think it’s different, but it’s all the same—the same crappy apartments, the same being new all the time. I never fit in anywhere, thanks to you.”
We stood there for a moment, not saying anything. I could sense Nick behind me in the doorway. Finally my mom said, “Well, you are welcome, Rae. We always had so much fun together, I guess I somehow missed the part where I completely screwed up your life.”
I felt the tears start up again. I hated crying. I couldn’t believe I was doing it twice in one day. “I don’t want to fight with you. We did have fun sometimes. I don’t know why we can’t just stay put for once. Just this one time, until I’m done with high school.”
She reached down and set her cigarette on the edge of the ashtray. “You never said much about moving before. I thought I was giving you the world.”
“I didn’t want the world.” Blinking back tears, I said, “I just wanted to be home.” I said the words and something clicked in my head, like the mechanism in a combination lock: clink. It echoed in my brain. Just wanted to be home.
And that’s when I knew where Allison went.
Chapter 32
Again, A Road Trip
Home. The word comes up time and time again. Home cooking. Hometown hero. Home sweet home.
Soldiers stationed overseas dream of home. Dorothy went all the way to Oz to learn there’s no place like home. In baseball, every batter tries to make it home with one powerful hit. A home run.
Where was Allison? My best guess was home, even if home wasn’t there anymore.
Originally we were all going to go, but Gina worried that Allison might show up at our apartment and feel abandoned if no one was there. I suggested it be just Nick and me, but Gina worried about two high school students making a car trip two hours each way. Finally Nick, greatest guy in the world, offered to wait at our apartment in case Allison showed up. Not that I thought that would happen. I was sure she was long gone, but Gina wasn’t as convinced. I would rather have driven with Nick than my mom, but this was the only solution that satisfied her.
“Are you sure we take I-94 west?” my mother asked as she turned onto the expressway.
“I got the directions from Google maps and MapQuest. What are the chances they’d be the same and both be wrong?” I’d gotten the address from the newspaper article about the fire at Allison’s house. It had her house number on Magnolia Drive and the name of a neighbor. It was a start.
Gina pursed her lips and reached for the Mountain Dew in the cup holder. We’d stopped for gas on the way out of town and stocked up on road trip snacks. She took a sip and set it back without taking her eyes off the road. “I hope you’re right about this. It’s a long way to go if she’s not there.”
“But wouldn’t it be sad if she was there and we never looked?”
My mother sighed. “I want to find her, Rae, as much as anyone else. It just seems so far for someone without a car. And Meg said the police in that community have been notified and are on the lookout for her.” This was Blake’s mother. Apparently we were all friends now.
“She would avoid them,” I said. “But if she saw us, she’d come out from wherever she is. I know she would.” At least I hoped so.
“I just have so much trouble understanding why Allison’s stories don’t add up,” Mom said, her fingertips tapping the steering wheel. “Meg told me that they wanted Allison to come live with them. A group of relatives got together and decided Meg and her husband were the best choice because they had the big house and the financial resources to help her. Did you know that the Dalys are all going to family counseling to help Allison adjust? Meg said it was helping all of them.”
“Yeah, Blake said something about family counseling. He was pretty pissed about it.”
“So it’s true then.” She took another sip of soda. At this rate we’d have to make a potty stop before we even got there. “Another thing Allison told me was that her aunt couldn’t be bothered taking her shopping for clothes and school supplies, but Meg said she begged her to go to the mall with her, and Allison said she didn’t want new things, she preferred to wear Meg’s clothes.”
“Hmmm.”
“I mean, Allison said these things right to my face, and they were out-and-out lies. Why would she do that?”
“Because she’s a messed-up kid?”
“Yeah, but that messed up?”
I shrugged. “Maybe from her point of view it wasn’t a lie. Maybe that’s how she really saw it.”
“But it was the complete opposite of how it really was.”
“Well, look at you and Grandma and Grandpa. They said they were trying to help you when you were a teenager. You thought they were trying to ruin your life.”
She opened her mouth and then seemed to think better of it, her lips coming together in one thin line. “Mmmm.” I think I made my point.
The rest of the trip was spent with me reading directions and Gina restlessly changing radio stations. Every time I got into a good song, she switched to something else. Finally I swatted her hand away. “You drive, I’ll be in charge of the music.”
Just outside of Allison’s hometown we stopped at a QuikTrip, me to double-check directions, Mom to make a bathroom stop. There were two guys behind the counter watching some sports show on a small TV. When I walked up, the younger one leaned over the counter and smiled. I showed him the address, and he confirmed that we were headed in the right direction. Then I handed him Allison’s photo from the newspaper article. “Have you seen this girl recently?” I asked.
He took the paper from my hand and showed it to his coworker, an older guy with a gray beard, before answering my question. “Allison Daly? She went to school with my little brother, but I haven’t seen her since the funeral. You a friend of hers?”
I explained that I knew her from her new high school and that she was missing. “If you see her, notify the police immediately,” I said.
“She won’t be coming around here,” he said with a laugh. “Not after what she did. What kind of psycho burns down their own house?” He handed the paper back to me. “Even her own boyfriend wouldn’t talk to her after that.”
“I heard it was an accident.”
He shrugged and said, “They never proved it, but everyone knows she started that fire on purpose. She and her folks were at war. Her mom grounded her and took away her cell phone, and Allison was mad as hell. She told everyone at the high school she was going to get her parents. She was going to make them sorry.” He nudged the other guy. “I guess she did make them sorry, hey?”
The other guy nodded. “Bill Clark, my cousin, was working the firehouse that night, and he was the one who found her. She was drunk as a skunk, he said, and talking all kinds of stupidity. Said she fell asleep outside, like anyone would believe that.”
I felt a chill go up my back. Even when Allison was being cold toward me, I never would have believed she’d deliberately set a house on fire with her parents inside. I mutely stepped away from the counter, letting a man in overalls pay for his gas. When my mom came out of the bathroom, I met her at the door.
As we headed out, she said, “Are our directions okay?”
I nodded. “Yeah, we’re right on track.”
Chapter 33
You Can Never Go Home Again
Allison’s hometown was one of those places you see on Christmas cards. The center of town had a park with a bandstand, perfect for concerts on summer nights. A small café sat next to Joe’s Barbershop. Across the street was a Piggly Wiggly and a hardware store. We passed a fire and police station, both in the same building. The same guy probably ran both, that’s the kind of quiet small town it was.
I gave Mom directions down a country road, where the houses were further apart.
We had to zig and zag and turn again to reach Magnolia Drive. When we reached the crossroads, my mother stopped the car and we both looked up at the sign. “Are you ready for
this?” She reached over and squeezed my arm.
“I think so.”
She turned left while I checked the address. “We’re looking for 612.” We both scanned the mailboxes, checking the numbers. As we counted down, she eased off the accelerator and the car slowed to a crawl.
Both of us spotted it at the same time. We could have been doing fifty-five and we’d still have seen it. A lone lamppost in the front yard illuminated the ruins. We pulled into the driveway and stopped alongside the light. “Oh my God,” Gina said.
We got out of the car and walked to where the house had been. Now it was an open basement filled with junk: burned wood and shingles. Stakes had been pounded in the ground at each corner, and yellow caution tape linked them. The trees closest to the house looked charred and dead.
We stood where the front porch must have been and looked down. It was hard to believe this foundation once held a house—walls and furniture, a roof. Without speaking we slowly circled the perimeter. Bulldozer tracks came right up to the edge of the basement walls. In back was a concrete slab, filthy with dirt and soot. I guessed it was once a patio, the place where the newspaper article said Allison’s dad loved to have cookouts with friends. I tried to imagine a group of people there, laughing and talking as burgers sizzled on the grill, but it was impossible for me to get a visual.
“This is even worse than I pictured,” Gina said, which was exactly what I was thinking. There was nothing here but wreckage. Nothing for Allison to come back to. I knew the house had burned down, but somehow I’d pictured the property with some other structure—a shed maybe, or a garage. I imagined we’d find her huddled inside, just waiting to be found. That we’d talk her into coming back. Save her. It sounds delusional, I know, like I thought we’d be heroes or something, but it wasn’t just about me. I honestly had a strong feeling she’d go back home, pulled to the place she belonged for sixteen years.
“Now what?” Gina asked. “Should we drive back into town and ask around? She might have gone to a friend’s. Best-case scenario she’s in someone’s house right now playing Guitar Hero and thinking about calling her aunt.” Somewhere in the last few hours my mom had gotten less concerned, and I’d gotten more.
I thought of what the QuikTrip guys had said, how Allison’s boyfriend wouldn’t even talk to her anymore. They made her sound like a social pariah. I somehow doubted she’d reconnect with old friends. “She never mentioned any friends here. I got the impression she’s sort of distanced herself from everyone in her past.”
“Should we check with the neighbors and see if they’ve seen anything?” She looked at me expectantly. My mom was all about action, while I liked to think things through.
“I guess.” But I didn’t move. I just wanted a little more time here. It was unrealistic, I knew, but I still hoped to find some clue that would lead us to Allison. “Maybe you could go and I’ll wait with the car? Just in case?”
Gina nodded and pointed off to our right. “I’ll try there first.”
After she’d left I walked around the house again. I tried to imagine Allison getting off the school bus and walking up the gravel drive to the house. Was her mother there to greet her, to ask about her day? I tried to remember if the newspaper article said something about her parents’ jobs, but all I could recall was that Tammy Daly led the local Girl Scout troop. What a sad legacy—she left behind one screwed-up daughter, a burned-down house, and a group of girls who’d remember her for organizing the cookie drive and doing whatever else Girl Scout leaders did. I never got a chance to join, so I was a little foggy on the details.
It was dusk now, getting dark and colder too. I went to the car and got the flashlight out of the glove compartment. I pushed the button, happy when a bright beam of light snapped on. Off in the distance I could see my mom standing on the neighbor’s front porch, gesturing as she talked to someone in the house.
I circled around the caution tape, swinging the light toward the ground. Something rustled in the woods behind the house, freaking me out a little. I froze for a minute, and then relaxed when I saw a bird fly out and pass overhead.
“Allison?” I called out. “Allison, can you hear me?” I didn’t really think she was within earshot, but I had to try. I walked closer to the trees and said her name over and over again, my own personal mantra. I said it so many times that it started to feel like a foreign language: Al-li-son. In my head I heard her say my name in return.
I stopped and called out her name again. “Allison?” I heard my name again, but this time it came from outside of me, in the direction of the thicket of trees. I held my breath. Was it the wind? No.
“Rae.”
My heart quickened. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my mother and a strange man walking on the road toward me. Some kind of electric lantern dangled from the man’s hand.
“Rae.” Now I knew I heard it.
It was her. I walked toward the voice, past the tree line, into woods so thick I wouldn’t have been able to see at all if not for the flashlight. “Allison, where are you?”
“Here. I’m here.” I barely heard her voice, and yet it was enough to guide me.
When I found her she was sitting with her back against a tree, a backpack at her side. On the ground next to her, a hunting knife and a container of pills rested on top of a piece of folded lined paper. The beam from my flashlight showed dirt smears on her face and blotchy bloodstains on the edges of her white sweatshirt sleeves. Her hair stuck up in clumps. The relief on her face when she recognized me broke my heart. All I could think was what if we hadn’t come? I knelt down and smoothed the hair away from her face. “It’s okay, everything’s going to be okay.”
She clutched at my sleeve and pulled me close. “Help me, Rae.”
Chapter 34
First to Aid, Last to Leave
The man walking with my mother turned out to be Jim Benson, the same neighbor who’d called 911 the night of the fire. I’m not sure if it was a good omen or a bad sign that he was involved again, but he made the call this time too. After he was done explaining the situation to the operator, he walked out to the driveway to wait for the ambulance.
Gina stayed with me, but she wasn’t much help. As soon as she saw the blood she started freaking out, hyperventilating and making suggestions about CPR, which wasn’t appropriate at all since Allison was clearly breathing and had a heartbeat. While she was talking nonsense about compressions, my health class first aid training kicked in. The cuts on Allison’s wrists didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore, but she might have been in shock, so I had my mom help shift her position until she was lying flat. Then we elevated her feet using the backpack and covered her with a blanket we kept in the trunk.
When Gina left to see if we had a water bottle in the car, Allison said, “I’m sorry, Rae.”
“It’s okay, Allison. Don’t worry about it. You’ve been through a lot. Help is on the way.” I pulled the blanket up to her chin.
She pulled my hair so my ear was level with her lips. “I never told you my secret that night,” she whispered, “but I’m ready to tell now.”
“It’s okay, you don’t have to, really.”
“No, I want to.” It was hard for her to speak, I could tell. She was talking softly, with long pauses between each word. “My secret is that the fire was my fault. But I didn’t burn my house down on purpose, I swear. I forgot about the candle.”
I pulled back and looked right in her eyes. “I know, Allison, it’s okay.”
“The candle was for my boyfriend Zach. It was our sign. I put it on the porch so he would know to meet me in the woods. Zach and I fell asleep out here, and when I woke up the house was on fire. I didn’t want my mom and dad to die. You have to believe me.”
“I believe you.”
She closed her eyes, and for a few minutes we were alone in the world. I arranged the blanket snugly around her—she was shivering now—and smoothed her hair away from her face. Then the stillness was broken by the sound of a
siren as the ambulance approached. Soon I could see the flash of light through the trees and hear the sound of men’s voices and the crunch of boots on gravel.
My mom’s voice said, “This way.”
Within moments three men came into the clearing, one carrying what looked like a large tackle box, the others carrying a stretcher on wheels. I stepped aside and they went into emergency mode, checking Allison’s vitals, assessing her injuries, and eventually moving her from the ground onto the gurney. My mom, Jim Benson, and I stood on the sidelines. A few minutes earlier I’d made all the difference. Now I was in the way.
The rest of it went by in a blur. After the ambulance drove away with Allison, the police arrived to question us and take down our information. From there we drove to the local hospital and called Blake’s mom, then Nick, Kylie, and Mason.
The phone call to Mason was the most awkward. His team had placed first in the statewide mathematics competition, so it was one of those good news/bad news phone conversations with me saying congratulations and him feeling terrible that he wasn’t there during the crisis. That’s how life is, I guess. While some people are attempting to die, other people are rejoicing because they really know their trigonometry.
We sat waiting for news about Allison, but no one would tell us anything because we weren’t relatives. I shifted in my seat, but couldn’t get comfortable. Above us a buzzing florescent light cast a harsh light.
Mom fidgeted with her fingers. I thought she was going to excuse herself and go outside for a smoke. Instead she said, “I once tried to kill myself, you know.”
I sat up straight. “When was this?”
“In high school. I took a butt-load of sleeping pills. I was staying overnight at my friend Vickie’s house. I stole the pills out of her mom’s medicine cabinet.”
Life On Hold Page 14
