A Void the Size of the World

by Rachele Alpine

  She stood when she saw me and I was sure she could see what I had done written all over my face.

  “Why did you leave Abby last night?” Mom asked, her voice ragged and hoarse. She was barefoot in a pair of faded jeans and a wrinkled blue blouse that she wore to work. It was as if she’d grabbed whatever was nearby and threw it on.

  “I didn’t mean to,” I told her. It was the truth. I didn’t mean for any of this, not at all. “She was supposed to have a ride home. I’m sure she’s at one of her friend’s houses.”

  “Abby would’ve called. She wouldn’t make us worry like this.”

  Mom was right, and it made me sick to think about. This was unlike Abby; she never missed curfew and she always checked in if she was going to be late.

  But then again, she’d never had to come home to the person who had betrayed her.

  “Calm down. This isn’t Rhylee’s fault,” Dad said. “We need to focus and call as many of Abby’s friends as we can think of.”

  He picked up a pad of paper and passed it to me. I glanced down and saw a list of names.

  “What is this?” I asked him.

  “We made a list of people to call. Are there any other names you can add? Who was she supposed to go home with?”

  “We walked through the field with Mary Grace and Erica. I figured she’d go back with them.”

  “Okay, I’ll call both girls.”

  I read through the names he’d already written down and saw everyone on the cross-country team Abby ran with, her friends from school, and, at the top of the list, Tommy.

  “Have you talked to Tommy?” I asked.

  Dad shook his head, and I held up my cell phone.

  “I’ll call him.” I walked into the kitchen before they could object.

  Tommy picked up on the first ring. “Hey, you,” he said, and I swear I could hear the smile in his voice.

  “Hey,” I said back and then paused, unsure of what to say next.

  “So how are things? You’re still alive, huh?”

  “Barely. And only because I haven’t talked to Abby yet.”

  “Me either. Her phone is off. I’m surprised she hasn’t busted down your door.”

  “She didn’t come home last night,” I told him, and saying the words out loud made me uneasy.

  “What do you mean she didn’t come home?” Tommy asked, and I could hear the same panicked sound in his voice that Dad had.

  “She’s not here.”

  “Have you called her friends?”

  “My dad is doing that right now. I said I’d check with you and see if you had talked to her.”

  “I’ll come over and help.”

  “Not right now. Things are too confusing. My parents are trying to track her down. I’ll call you as soon as we find something out. Everything will be okay. I’m sure she’ll be home any minute now,” I said. But a heavy, deep feeling sat in my chest and I was afraid that wasn’t the truth.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Positive. I’ll talk to you later.”

  I hung up and walked back into the living room. Dad told the person he was talking with to wait.

  “What did he say?” he asked.

  Mom looked up expectantly, and I wished I had something to say to make everything better.

  “He hasn’t heard from her since we left,” I said.

  “I’ll keep calling people,” Dad said. “She probably overslept at one of her friend’s houses.”

  Mom closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Abby never overslept. She was out running in the morning before any of us even thought about opening our eyes.

  Dad and I went through each of the numbers on the list, but each reply was the same: No one had any idea where she was. All of these girls were safe at home with their families and my sister wasn’t with them. Mary Grace told Dad that she tried to find Abby before she left and when she couldn’t, she figured Abby was with Tommy.

  But my sister wasn’t with Tommy, and it was impossible to ignore the panic that was welling up inside; it fluttered like a bird that was trapped and couldn’t get out.

  A phone tree was set up, and in a town our size, that meant pretty much every person in Coffinberry received a message asking if they’d seen my sister.

  Each and every reply was the same.

  My sister was missing.

  Dad moved on to another call. He spoke in a low hushed voice, but I could still tell that he was talking to the police.

  Mom’s shoulders shook as the tears she’d been holding inside escaped, and I stood helpless, drowning in guilt.

  How had this gone so wrong?

  3

  The police showed up quietly. There were no flashing lights or sirens. Not that I expected cars to speed into our driveway and kick up dust as they screeched to a stop, like in the movies, but there should be something more to make this feel like a big deal. Because this had become a very big deal.

  It was rare to need the police in our town. Disturbances were few and usually involved a noise outside that turned out to be a raccoon scavenging for food or a group of kids skinny-dipping at Black Willow Lake.

  But this wasn’t the first visit from a set of police officers at our house. The last time the police came to our door was a lot different. It was almost a year ago and late at night when the doorbell rang. Hound Dog had started a frenzy of barking that probably woke up everyone within a five-mile radius. I’d stumbled out of bed to the stairs, where I’d sat with Collin, hoping no one would notice and tell us to go back upstairs.

  Abby had stood between the cops, dressed in black with smudges of thick dark paint under her eyes, a cross between a ninja and baseball player. She’d grinned at my parents and the cops had looked amused themselves, nothing like the gruff look they had when they walked up the bleachers during a football game and made sure no one was heading down the path of juvenile delinquency.

  “Is everything all right?” Dad had asked. He’d stood in front of Mom with the door opened all the way so light snuck out and let anyone who was driving by know that the cops were at our house. “Is my daughter in some kind of trouble?”

  The cops had exchanged a glance and then turned back to my parents. Hound Dog gave up his quest to sniff out their intentions and trotted up the steps to me. I’d grabbed his collar in my hand and scratched his ears the way that he loved, to get him to settle down.

  “Well, she’s not exactly in trouble,” the bald cop had said. “We caught your daughter and a couple of other kids dropping off cards and flowers on people’s doorsteps.”

  Mom had raised her eyebrows in confusion. “Cards and flowers? Why would Abby be delivering that?”

  “Sympathy cards, Mom. To those on Bolton’s team,” she’d said, mentioning the cross-country team they’d be competing against at the meet in the morning. Abby had pulled an envelope out of her book bag and passed it to Mom.

  “We wrote them out expressing the sadness we felt for the other team’s future loss tomorrow. We gave them flowers to let them know we’re thinking of them in this time of great sorrow.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Dad had said, and tried to look angry for the cops’ sake, but I could tell he’d wanted to laugh along with Abby.

  “We don’t think she was causing harm, but it’s after curfew,” one of the officers said.

  “Yes, thank you, sir,” Dad had said, acting serious. “We’ll make sure to talk to her about this matter.”

  The cops had nodded and turned to leave, but the bald one had stopped. He crossed his arms across his chest and stared down Abby. “I think a fair punishment would be to win your race tomorrow.”

  “I can handle that,” Abby had said, and patted the cop on the back as if he were an old friend, something I’d never dare to do.

  Dad had waited until the door was closed to start laughing himself silly. “Really, Abby? Sympathy cards?”

  Abby had shrugged. “Well, it wasn’t as if we were going to congratulate them. We wanted t
o make the team feel better since we’re going to destroy them tomorrow.”

  She’d grinned, and what could they do? It was the way Abby was.

  And true to her word, Abby flew past the other team and reminded us on the car ride home that she had fulfilled her punishment.

  Today, there were once again cops standing at our front door, but this time, Abby wasn’t with them and no one was smiling.

  4

  The officers sat at our kitchen table, as if we were about to eat breakfast together. I half expected Mom to pull out one of her famous egg and sausage casseroles from the oven, but instead, she slouched in a chair and cried. I’d only seen Mom cry two times in my life: when Grandma died and on Collin’s first day of preschool.

  The kettle whistled on the stove as Dad made cups of tea. He moved back and forth across the kitchen, never settling for too long in one place. Collin sat wide-eyed, too enthralled by having real live cops in his kitchen to watch cartoons, and I avoided eye contact, as if they could see my truth just by looking at me.

  “Are you here to bring Abby home?” Collin asked, and we fell quiet at the bluntness of his question.

  “That’s the plan,” the older one, who’d introduced himself as Officer Donovan, said. He pulled a stick of gum out of his pocket and gave it to Collin. “You’ll be fighting with your big sister again before you know it.”

  Collin grinned and unwrapped the gum while Officer Donovan focused on me.

  “We need to get a statement from you about what happened last night.”

  “A statement?” I asked. My pulse quickened. That sounded official and important.

  “No need to worry,” he told me. “It’s to help us get the events in order, so we can find your sister faster.”

  “Okay,” I said. I twisted the bottom of my shirt around in my hands.

  “When you left the bonfire, your sister was still there?” The second cop, Officer Scarano, asked, ready to note my every word on his pad of paper. He couldn’t have been more than a few years older than me.

  They sat on either side of me, and it felt as if I were trapped between them. I glanced from one to the other and neither of them relaxed the rigid look on their faces. They weren’t messing around, and the seriousness of it scared me.

  I hesitated.

  If I let them know what really happened, maybe it would help. But I couldn’t find the courage to do it, especially in front of the police. I’d told one story to my parents; what would happen if I changed it? They weren’t going to care about why I kissed Tommy; all they’d listen to is the fact that I’d done this to my sister.

  “Abby told me to leave, that she’d get a ride from her friends,” I said, which was the truth. I wasn’t lying, I was simply leaving out the part about her saying it after she had caught me kissing her boyfriend and wanted me as far away from her as possible. My parents would hear all about it when she finally did return home. “Tommy dropped me off, and I went to bed.”

  “What time was that?” Officer Scarano asked.

  “I don’t know, around eleven? Dad saw us come home. He flashed the lights.”

  He nodded. “I thought it was the three of you coming home together.”

  “Is there additional information you can remember? Any little detail might help us figure out where she is,” Officer Donovan added.

  I paused, the truth dangling so close.

  “Tell him something,” Mom insisted, startling us all.

  “Rhylee,” Officer Scarano said, “time is important in helping us to bring your sister home. Any piece of information might help.”

  My mind flashed back to the look on Abby’s face when she found Tommy and me together. She’d trusted me, and I betrayed her. I’d done this. There was no one to blame but myself.

  “Help us find Abby,” Mom shouted. She grabbed my upper arm. Her fingers dug into my skin. “Don’t you understand? Something might have happened to her. We need to find her.”

  Mom’s voice was close to hysterical. I looked at the floor, ashamed.

  “I . . . that night, Tommy and I . . .” I wanted to tell. I really did, but the words wouldn’t come out. How do you tell your parents that you kissed your sister’s boyfriend? You couldn’t. “I don’t know. I don’t have anything else to say that might help.”

  “That’s not good enough,” Mom snapped, and I wished I had the courage to say more.

  “Rhylee’s trying her best,” Dad said to Mom. “Why don’t you go see if you can find some pictures of Abby for the police to use?”

  It was unnecessary; the entire town knew what Abby looked like. She was our star. They didn’t need a photo of her.

  “Can I go talk to Tommy?” I asked, and if anyone thought it was unusual, they didn’t show it.

  Officer Donovan nodded. “Tell him to come over here, if you don’t mind. We need to get his statement too, and it’d be easier if we could stay here with your parents.”

  I agreed and ran toward Tommy’s house. I needed him to tell me it was going to be okay.

  5

  I heard Tommy’s music before I saw him.

  The sound of notes from a song swelled and floated out the windows of his living room. He was hunched over the keys of his piano, and his fingers moved so fast they blurred. He played with a passion and talent that was unexpected. No one had any idea where it came from. He’d simply sat at their piano one day when he was little and plucked out a tune. His parents enrolled him in lessons, and to his teacher’s amazement, he conquered pieces each week that usually took others a month to learn. He began to write his own songs when we were in middle school—silly ones at first that the two of us would make up words for, but now he created pieces that could make your chest swell with emotion. Tommy’s music was one of the things I loved about him.

  He was barefoot; he always played barefoot. He had on his usual jeans and one of the vintage T-shirts he searched for at the Goodwill a few towns over. The black ink of his tattoo peeked out from under the sleeve, a contradiction on someone who played the piano at the level Tommy did. But that’s always been who he was: a contradiction in so many ways, including subverting everyone’s expectations of the two of us ending up together when he began to date Abby.

  I listened as he played, until his fingers rested on the keys.

  I knocked on the window to get his attention and our eyes met. My body vibrated from the adrenaline. Neither one of us moved. It wasn’t until a car flew around the corner, its brakes screeching, that I was startled out of his gaze.

  “You’re here,” he said through the screen, and there was such genuine happiness on his face.

  Happiness for me.

  He still felt it, and my heart hurt for what I had to say next.

  “The police are at our house,” I told him through the screen. “Abby still isn’t home and no one has seen her.”

  Tommy swung his legs over the side of the piano bench and jumped up. The front door opened and he came outside.

  “Where is she?” he asked, his voice fast and frantic.

  “I don’t know. None of her friends remember seeing her when they left. And now the police are involved and they’re asking questions and looking for pictures of her and they want you to come over so they can talk to you. . . .” My words hung in the air, their meaning heavy and serious.

  He shook his head, but our denials couldn’t erase what had happened. “We shouldn’t have left without her.”

  “I tried get her to come with me,” I said. But did I try hard enough? Did I really do everything I could have?

  Tommy paced back and forth across his porch, his bare feet slapping against the old boards.

  “This is my fault. I did this to my sister and now she’s gone.” My voice rose until I was yelling hysterically. I thought about the policemen in our living room and my parents and about the truth. Tommy and I had ignited all of this and now the repercussions of our actions were exploding around us. “I did this.”

  I backed away, but he g
rabbed me. He wrapped me in his arms and hugged my body against his.

  “There’s no ‘I.’ There’s us. The two of us. You’re not alone.”

  My knees buckled from the weight of it all, but he held tight. He refused to let me go.

  “You’re not alone,” he repeated.

  I gave up fighting and let him hold me.

  “I did this,” I sobbed, and continued to say the words over and over again into his chest.

  6

  Tommy and I walked side by side with just enough space between us that we didn’t touch. No one knew what we’d done, and now, all of my hopes felt sour in the face of Abby’s disappearance. The closer we got to my house, the more anxious I became, but I forced myself to go numb so my guilt wouldn’t shine through and reveal everything to everyone.

  I filled him in on what I told the cops. “I didn’t say anything about the kiss. Or that Abby ran into the woods. They think I got sick and you took me home. I told them Abby was going to leave with Mary Grace.” I said all of this in a hushed voice, like I was telling him a secret, and in a way, I was.

  “We need to tell the truth,” he said.

  I shook my head quickly. “No, we can’t. Think about how it would look if I change my story. Everything will be fine. Abby will come home, and we’ll deal with it then.”

  I waited for him to argue, but he didn’t.

  “You’re right. She’ll be back in no time and everything will come out then,” he said. But like me, he didn’t sound convinced.

  We slipped in through the back door and sat in the living room on the couch. Dad nodded at Tommy, and Mom gave him a sad half smile. I couldn’t look at the two cops. I was pretty sure that if I did, they’d see the truth.

  “I’m here to help,” Tommy told my parents. “If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”

  I put my elbows on my knees and bent forward, as my parents and the police went over and over the same facts about my sister, searching for a clue that would reveal itself in the information that seemed to play on a loop. I acted like things were fine. I pretended I hadn’t just come from Tommy’s house, where we’d held each other and worried about the role we’d played in all of this. I became a part of the group and focused on finding my sister. That’s the way it had to be.