A Void the Size of the World

by Rachele Alpine

“Maybe we could try something new?”

  “Somewhere new? But you love eating at Deagan’s.”

  “I used to love it. When we’d go together.”

  It was true. Deagan’s was a family favorite. I craved their burgers, and Dad liked how they served breakfast whenever you wanted it. He was a firm believer that a person should eat a good breakfast at the start of their day, even if his day started in the evening because he worked the late shift. More often than not, he’d come home from work when we’d be eating cereal or toast before school and he’d have a plate of spaghetti or leftover meat loaf. It frustrated Mom to no end, since she battled with Collin, who hated any type of breakfast food that wasn’t a sugary cereal. Collin still didn’t think it was fair that Dad got to eat the dinner leftovers while he was stuck gagging down Cheerios. We usually went to Deagan’s once or twice a month, but since Abby disappeared, we hadn’t been back. It didn’t seem quite right. It was just another reminder of what I was able to do and Abby wasn’t.

  Dad placed his hand on my shoulder. “I hear you. We can go somewhere else.”

  I relaxed, relieved. “Thanks.”

  Dad and I went along the strip of stores that was Coffinberry’s downtown. It wasn’t a huge area, but the sidewalks were always crowded. People came here to get odds and ends, to listen to the weekly outdoor concert, or socialize. Our flyers would be seen.

  I told Dad about the flyer at the grocery store.

  “There were three phone numbers ripped off.” I tried to hide the excitement in my voice. I’d been thinking of them and imagining scenarios that all ended with Abby coming home.

  “That’s three more numbers than we’ve seen in a long time,” Dad said, which was true. “But I haven’t heard anything new.”

  “Do you think someone knows something?”

  “It was probably more likely a person interested in what was going on in our yard right now.”

  “I hope that’s not the case,” I said.

  Dad was right about the flyers. There were piles of them in each store we stopped in, but I reminded myself of the three tabs. People were noticing, and I’d make sure there were enough flyers to do just that.

  After we left the fifth shop, Dad suggested splitting up.

  “How about you drop off flyers over there, and I’ll get this side. Then we can meet for dinner at Otis’s Diner when we’re done.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said.

  He crossed the street, and I entered the first store, a little bakery that every bride in town ordered her wedding cake from. I refilled the stack of flyers. I hung another one on the bulletin board near the entrance of the coffee shop before I moved on to my next stop. I waved to Tessa’s mom, who worked at the post office, and dropped a bunch off on the table they had set up near the stamp machine. I moved from store to store, making sure Abby’s flyers were everywhere, so even if people wanted to keep her out of their minds, they couldn’t.

  I dropped off the rest of them at the little antique shop with a bell that rang when the door opened. The gray-haired woman who owned the place was working with some customers, so I put the papers near the register and felt a tiny bit better that at least I’d done something.

  I was about to text Dad that I was done when Johnson appeared about a block in front of me. I studied him with a strange fascination.

  He attempted to push his cart up a curb, the wheels not cooperating and the entire cart leaning to the left dangerously. People walked past without helping. A mom grabbed her daughter’s hand and dragged her across the street, so the two of them wouldn’t have pass him. It didn’t take a genius to see that even though the police had cleared Johnson, the town wasn’t letting him off that easily.

  “Just like Tommy,” I said to myself.

  I joined the group of people who stopped and stared as Johnson tried to pick up the front of the cart and put it on the curb. There was this little voice in the back of my head that made me wonder if maybe, just maybe, he knew what happened to Abby.

  A man in a Coffinberry High School football shirt walked up to Johnson and put a hand on his shoulder.

  Johnson shook it off. “Hey, listen, no problems,” he said and held his hands up in defense. “I want no trouble.”

  “How about you get out of here then,” the man said in a way that made it clear it wasn’t a question, but a statement.

  “That’s what I was trying to do,” Johnson said.

  I wanted to turn away, to leave all of this, but instead, like those around me, I stood glued to the spot, unable to move, and hated myself for the small bit of doubt about his innocence that had crept into my mind.

  “Do it a little faster, asshole,” the man said, and spat at Johnson. It hit him on the cheek, the wet blob dripping down.

  Johnson made a fist and pulled his arm back as if he were going to hit the guy. I tensed up, scared to see what would happen.

  “Go ahead and hit me,” the man said, and laughed. “It’ll just prove to us that you had something to do with Abby’s disappearance.”

  Johnson dropped his arm and pushed his cart forward, not even wiping the spit off his cheek. He moved down the street and the crowd dispersed, everyone going their separate ways as if nothing had happened.

  I walked in the opposite direction, shocked. This must be how people viewed Tommy, too. It didn’t matter that they were both officially cleared. When there wasn’t an answer, the town needed to find one, and Johnson and Tommy were their targets. I was ashamed that I’d stopped like everyone else to watch what would happen with Johnson. How was that any different from the way people treated Tommy?

  Things weren’t going to change. I could scream the truth about Tommy, and people would not only go after him but me, too. Because we needed to find a reason that my sister wasn’t here. And until Abby came home, the town wouldn’t stop blaming people for taking her away.

  My phone buzzed with a text from Dad. Grabbed table at Otis’s. Meet me when done.

  I headed to the restaurant and found Dad sitting near the back in a booth. I slid in across from him and he smiled.

  “That was a good idea you had, putting up more flyers,” he said.

  “I feel like we need to keep doing things,” I said, Johnson still on my mind. “We need to bring Abby home, so we can end this nightmare.”

  A waitress came and took our orders, and Dad and I fell into an easy conversation with each other about school, the weather, and Hound Dog. Insignificant things.

  I was halfway through my burger, dragging a French fry through some ketchup, when an older woman approached our table. She stopped in front of us.

  “You don’t know me, but I’ve been watching your family on the news,” she said, as if it was perfectly okay to come up to people during dinner and interrupt them. “Every time I see a picture of your beautiful daughter, my heart breaks. And to think, that boy who she trusted might have hurt—”

  I dropped my fork and it clattered against my dish. “He didn’t do anything,” I said.

  She opened and closed her mouth as if she was trying to say something but didn’t know quite what.

  “Tommy,” I clarified, just in case she didn’t understand exactly what I was saying. “He isn’t a suspect, so stop trying to make him one.”

  “Excuse me?” she said, confused, as if I were the one who crossed some kind of line at the moment.

  “Rhylee, calm down,” Dad said so loud that people at other tables turned to look. He apologized to the woman. “What she’s trying to say is thank you.”

  “I was only trying to help,” she said, pulling back.

  “Of course, we appreciate your kind words,” Dad said, and it took every ounce of control inside of me to stay quiet.

  Dad pushed his plate away and leaned toward me. “Do you want to tell me what the hell that was about?”

  “What? How she thought it was okay to interrupt us while we’re eating to chat it up about Abby? How she accused Tommy, just like everyone else in this da
mn town?” I asked.

  “You might not agree with her, but you need to respect her,” Dad said.

  It was the word “respect” that pushed me over the edge. I thought about the way everyone had treated Johnson, the way I had treated Johnson. How Tommy was now a target and about all the people in our yard, the endless news reports, the way my classmates stared at me with pity and Tommy with disgust. What was happening to our town had nothing to do with respect. It was about me and what I’d done and what I’d ruined. This, all of this, was my fault.

  “How can I respect them when they treat Tommy like a criminal? Like he’s the one who hurt my sister.”

  “The town is hurting,” Dad said “Something like this makes people afraid—that this could happen to them, too.”

  “Then let them hurt,” I shouted, not caring that I was causing people to look over at us. “But Tommy isn’t the one they should blame.”

  “You’re right, honey. It isn’t fair, but we’re trying to get through this. Everyone is searching for an answer in the nightmare that we’re living now.”

  “I just want her home,” I said, a truce to Dad. A signal that I was done fighting with him.

  “We all do,” he said. “There’s nothing more that I want in the world than for your sister to come back to us.”

  It suddenly felt very important to tell him the full truth. If Dad was noticing a change in me, everyone else must be too. Abby was slipping further and further away from me; I couldn’t do the same.

  “What if I did something really bad; would you still love me?” I asked, terrified of his response. “Something that would be hard to forgive me for. Something awful.”

  “I’ll always love you, no matter what,” he said, and I wanted to believe that was true.

  “I need to tell you something,” I told him, and my heart sped up.

  Dad leaned in, as if he could sense that this was important, but before I could confess, our waitress came over to our table.

  “How are you two doing?” she asked.

  “Great, we’re great,” Dad said.

  “Are you thinking you want any dessert?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t have an appetite anymore. Not even for one of Otis’s Diner’s famous salted caramel sundaes.

  “I think the bill is fine,” he said.

  She fished around in her pocket for a moment before pulling out a slip of paper. “Thanks so much. Have a great night.”

  Dad counted out a bunch of money and I waited in silence. My heart slowed and now that I had a few minutes to think, I realized how stupid I was to have tried to say something. I pictured Mom’s face that first morning when Abby went missing. How she’d looked at me as if she hadn’t recognized me. How even though she tried to hide it, she blamed me for not coming home with my sister. Would admitting my role in all of this make things better or worse? Would it show that there was even more information Tommy was withholding or could it help him? I wasn’t sure, but what I did know was that I didn’t want to do anything that might possibly hurt Tommy even more. It had been selfish of me to want to shove the weight of my secret off my shoulders. What good would that do? Just so I could hear that my dad still loved me?

  “What was it you wanted to tell me before I paid the bill?” Dad asked as he put his wallet back into his pocket.

  “Nothing. It was nothing,” I told him, even though it was really everything.

  “You sure?” he asked, and I nodded.

  “All right, ready to go?” Dad asked, standing up.

  I slid out of the booth and followed him. He put his arm on my shoulder, and I wanted it to feel okay, but it didn’t, not at all, because there was no way he could love me if he found out that my selfishness was what had made Abby run away.

  41

  Instead of going to lunch at school the next day, I walked over to the gym and stepped outside. There was a pay phone attached to a metal stand on the wall. Probably the only one left in America. It was covered in graffiti so thick with different colors that it looked like an abstract painting.

  I grabbed the receiver and fished around for some change in the bottom of my purse. Pay phones were safe. Unlike cell phones, no one could identify the person on the other end.

  I pulled out the magnet we’d gotten during homeroom when Abby first went missing. It had a list of phone numbers that “might be important during a time like this,” said one of the crisis counselors they’d brought in to talk to us. Most of my classmates had rolled their eyes and stuck the magnets on the back of our metal seats or in the trash when they left the room. It did sound kind of crazy that anyone would actually call one of these numbers, but today I needed to talk to someone about what I had done. Anonymously, maybe, I could find some relief. I found the number I was looking for and punched it onto the keypad on the pay phone.

  “National suicide prevention hotline,” a female voice said. “Do you need an ambulance?”

  I paused, taken aback. Nothing like expecting the worst right from the start.

  I counted each breath to remind myself that I was still living. A boy wandered out of the gym, his eyes blinking in the sunlight. He walked toward me and I gripped the phone tightly against my ear. Not a lot of people used this phone anymore. It was once important to secure rides after practice or games, but now everyone had cell phones. The only people who still used it were probably kids who planned to call in bomb threats or make shady drug deals.

  Regardless of what this kid wanted, he wasn’t going to use the phone. I stared him down with a scowl on my face until he left.

  “Do you need immediate medical attention?” the woman asked again, her voice firmer.

  “No,” I whispered at a level so quiet that I didn’t think she could hear me. But she did.

  “I’m glad you’re okay, and I’m happy you called. My name is Kara.” She sounded all soft, like butter left on the table, and I imagined her living this perfect life. I pictured her going home from her job, pulling on faded jeans, and ordering take-out with her boyfriend. They’d eat on the couch, and while they might fight over the remote, he always let her win.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Abby,” I said. That surprised me. I’m not sure why I gave her my sister’s name.

  “Abby, that’s a nice name,” she answered back, as if making a decision. As if she were picking out a dress to wear or deciding on a meal off a menu. “What has your day been like, Abby?”

  “Awful,” I said. I figured the direct route seemed to be the best way to go.

  “Why is that? Sometimes it helps to talk.”

  “It’s not fair,” I told her.

  “What isn’t?”

  “The fact that some people are here and some people aren’t.”

  “What do you mean by ‘here?’ ” She spoke in that same calm voice, and it made me want to talk more.

  “Here. Earth. Living.”

  “Do you not want to be here?”

  “No, the opposite. I’m missing someone really bad right now. So bad that it hurts to breathe when I think about it.”

  “Did someone you know pass away recently?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” Kara repeated after me, and I could tell that I was confusing her. I was confusing myself.

  “That’s why I’m calling,” I said. “Someone disappeared, and I’m afraid she isn’t coming back.”

  “Can you look for her?” Kara asked.

  “We already have,” I told her.

  “Maybe you’re not looking in the right spot,” she said. “Maybe she’s waiting to be found.”

  A door opened a ways down and a group of girls piled out with shorts and tennis rackets.

  “I have to go,” I told Kara.

  “You don’t,” she said. “You can talk to me for as long as you like. I’m here for you.”

  “I know.” I was impatient to finish the call before the girls made it to me. “I’m not going to hurt myself if tha
t’s what you think. I’m okay.”

  I hung up the phone before she could say anything more, and repeated the word “okay” over and over again until it didn’t even sound like a word I was familiar with anymore.

  42

  On the second week of the circles, the police had to intervene because traffic had grown so heavy it blocked the intersection a quarter of a mile from our house. The light would change from green to yellow to red and no one would move because so many cars were trying to turn down our street. Officer Scarano directed those making the pilgrimage to our house to turn in to an empty field across the street from Tommy’s front yard. The slam of car doors and engines turning on became part of the normal noise of the spectacle that had formed outside our house.

  The school bus had begun dropping me off at the top of the street because it took forever just to get down my street. Today, I counted seven cars that passed me before I even made it to Tommy’s house, and I was willing to bet that most of them were headed toward our field.

  A beat-up Subaru pulled up alongside me, and a man leaned out the window. He had a toothpick in his mouth that he chewed on.

  “Excuse me, maybe you can help,” he said. “Is this where the girl went missing?”

  I didn’t bother to answer. I continued to walk down the road. He followed me in his car.

  “Did you hear me? I’m looking for the fields where the circles appeared. For the house where that family lives.”

  I turned toward him. “Why?”

  “Why what?” he asked, confused.

  “Why the hell do you care? What would seeing the house and the field do?”

  He pulled the toothpick out and flicked it out the window. “Shit, I don’t know. I thought it would be interesting. Something to do. You know what I mean?”

  “No, I don’t,” I snapped.

  “Aww, come on. It’s all anyone is talking about. Most of these people are here for the same reason. You can’t tell me you aren’t curious.”

  It might have been the way he assumed I thought my family was a freak show. It might have been the way he joked with me as if what he was doing was perfectly normal. It might just have been that I was sick and tired of being on display. Whatever it was, I snapped. I was done being someone else’s entertainment.