“You watch everyone outside?” I asked him.
“No, I keep an eye out for the aliens.”
“Collin, there’s no such thing as aliens.”
“There are too,” he argued. “They made the circles and they took Abby.”
“Aliens didn’t take her,” I told him, but it would have been as plausible as her simply vanishing.
“They did, Rhylee,” Collin said, his voice calm and even. There was no convincing him otherwise; he spoke with the authority of one who might have seen it with his own eyes. “They took her from us, because everyone loves Abby. It was only a matter of time.”
“She’ll be back,” I told Collin, but my words didn’t sound as believable as I wanted them to.
48
I woke in the middle of the night to ice cold air. The scent of mud and earth filled the room.
Someone was here.
I couldn’t see them, but I could feel their presence.
I remained still, and told myself I was disoriented. I counted to one hundred and when nothing happened, I convinced myself I must have been dreaming.
I burrowed under my sheets and had almost drifted off again, when my bed moved. Just a slight shift, but it was as if someone had sat on the edge.
“Collin?” I asked, but no one answered.
The curtains in my window stirred as if a wind was blowing.
Except, the windows were closed.
I didn’t move. I couldn’t move. I was terrified.
I pulled the sheets tight around me and told myself I only thought I felt something. I was in the room alone.
I don’t know how long I stayed frozen, but I refused to budge or turn on the light, because I didn’t want to see what the dark hid.
The bed shifted again.
I pulled the covers over my eyes and stayed buried underneath them until Dad’s car pulled up when his work shift was over and the door slammed shut. I crawled out from under the sheets and glanced around my room. The morning light had fought its way through my window, and landed on Abby’s running shoes that I wore when I ran.
The bottoms were covered in fresh mud, the purple laces wet and dirty.
And the missing person flyers and pictures of Abby lay on the ground. Every one of them ripped off of the wall and crumpled in a heap on the floor.
49
It was impossible to focus that day in school. Instead of listening to my teachers talk, my mind was stuck on what had happened the night before. It didn’t make sense. None of this did. It was as if Abby was trying to get in touch with me, and the idea both excited and terrified me.
The thought that she was out there hiding from us seemed crazy; that wasn’t who Abby was. And if she wasn’t hiding, then what did it mean?
Tessa offered me a ride home from school. It was one of those rare days when she was able to use the car. Even though she’d had her license for a few months now, her mom usually drove the family’s second car and Tessa and I were still doomed to take the bus forever.
“How’d you get permission to drive today?” I asked.
Tessa rolled her eyes. “My mom’s having a bunch of friends from the neighborhood over this afternoon and she needed to clean the house. They call it a book club, but they don’t really talk about books. It’s more like their monthly gossip session and excuse to drink way too much wine.
“Maybe we need to drive around so you’re not subjected to that torture.”
“I like the way you think,” she said. “Let’s stay away for a while.”
And so we did. For the next hour, Tessa drove the stretch of road that bordered Coffinberry. She rolled the windows down and the air twisted through our hair as we passed farms and fields full of hay bales. She turned the radio up and sang along with the songs. When she opened the can of soda she had and it sprayed all over her, I busted out laughing. I quickly put my hand over my mouth. I hadn’t laughed since Abby disappeared. It felt strange and unfamiliar.
“You’re allowed to have fun,” Tessa said, reading my mind.
“It sure doesn’t feel like I should,” I said.
“We’re still here,” Tessa said.
“And Abby isn’t,” I countered. The mood shifted in the car. I didn’t want to live in a world where I existed and Abby didn’t. I wanted us both to be able to laugh. At the dumb stupid things we used to joke about together. It shouldn’t be about what I was allowed to do and not do.
“Abby wouldn’t want you living this way,” Tessa said, and I wanted to ask her what way that was, because ever since my sister had disappeared, I had no idea who I was. Who I was supposed to be.
Tessa turned down a side road, and I realized we were headed toward the part of the woods where Johnson Franklin lived.
“Slow down,” I told her. She gave me a funny look, but did what I asked.
What if Johnson really did know something? The idea had been poking at the edge of my mind for some time now. Abby had run into the woods that night, and he had been there and could have some kind of clue.
I was fully aware that this was wishful thinking. If he knew something, he would’ve told the police. But I didn’t have any other ideas, and I needed to bring my sister home.
A thin strip of smoke rose in the air from the woods. He was there.
“Can you stop for a minute?” I asked when she was parallel to the smoke.
“In the middle of the road? There’s nothing here.”
“There kind of is.” I pointed toward the woods. “Johnson’s tent is out there.”
Tessa turned to look at me. “You’re kidding, right?” But she pulled over anyway.
There was a small opening into the woods. When we were young, we’d dare one another to go in there and touch his tent when he walked the main road in town. I could find it again easily.
Before I could think it through, I opened the car door and jumped out. My feet raced across the field. Most of the town now avoided the woods like the plague. It had become a place full of monsters, goblins, and evil waiting to swallow you up. Parents forbade children to go inside and hunters carried their rifles a little closer to their bodies, but I couldn’t let those fears rule me right now. I needed to take action. I needed to find Abby and set this right.
Tessa stood in the middle of the field and gestured at me to come back to her. I put my finger to my lips and moved to the opening to take a step in. I paused, waiting for something to happen; perhaps giant fingers would scoop me up and carry me away into the dark creepy places. But nothing stopped me. I stepped in farther.
Johnson didn’t live too far from the entrance, and I imagined at night he could hear the same sounds Abby and I used to listen to. The cars and trains in the distance. We’d sit on the porch in the summer, when the heat was so hot it was almost suffocating in our house, and listen to the sounds of the night. Abby once told me that a train carried Abraham Lincoln across the U.S. and every time you heard a whistle late at night, it was the same ghost train carrying his spirit across the Earth, the whistle wailing the tears of the mourners. A few years back she even tried to run alongside a train, racing it as it sped through our town.
She was fearless. And now I had to be the same.
I smelled Johnson’s fire before I saw it. The orange shimmered through the trees, the smoke twisted around the leaves. I crept closer but stayed hidden behind a bunch of trees. My clothes, a pair of jeans and navy blue shirt, weren’t exactly camouflage, but at least they were dark.
I took a few more steps and there he was. He sat on a bucket turned upside down, twirling a branch in his fingers. He mumbled something, but I was too far away to hear. His beard hung to his chest, and he wore a red wool hat that looked as if it had seen better days. Mom knitted hats for our city’s food pantry to give out each Christmas and I wondered if he’d ever ended up with one.
His fire spat and snapped once in a while, but otherwise, it was silent. So silent that it seemed possible if Abby had come this way that night, Johnson would’ve h
eard her. I took a step forward. Things like being careful didn’t matter now that Abby was gone. What mattered was finding her.
I held my breath as I moved. I didn’t know what I’d do when I reached Johnson, but it seemed important to reach him. He kept poking at the fire until Tessa’s voice rang out, spooking both of us.
“Rhylee, get out of there. I’m leaving,” she yelled.
Johnson’s head snapped up. He looked right at me and there was no turning back. I lifted my hand in a half wave and put it down.
He threw his stick into the fire and stood.
“What are you doing?” he yelled, and it wasn’t in the welcoming way. “You have no business bothering me. Get the hell out of here.”
I walked backward a few feet. I wasn’t entirely afraid of him; I just didn’t know how to act. He stood his ground and so did I.
“I wanted to talk to you. About my sister.”
Tessa must have walked back to her car, because a horn blasted through the air and a flock of birds flew from the trees, screeching at the sky.
“Get out.” He took a few steps toward me; his patience had run thin. Tessa honked the horn in short bursts, and if I didn’t get out of there soon, I’d have to walk home. I turned my back on Johnson and ran toward her car. This wasn’t the last time I’d see him. I wouldn’t let it be.
50
I woke the next morning to yelling in our backyard. Collin ran into my bedroom.
“Something is going on in the circles,” he said. “We need to get outside.”
“Calm down. Let’s wait and see what Mom says.” I wasn’t sure what had happened, and I didn’t want to bring Collin out there if it was something bad.
“Please,” he said. “We have to go.”
“It’s not a good idea,” I said, but he wasn’t listening. He ran down the stairs, so I rushed after him.
Light had begun to soften the dark edges of the woods into daylight and the dew had settled on the grass. Collin made his way to Mom, and she wrapped her arms around him. I kept my distance, not quite sure of what I was walking into.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“It’s Abby. She was back near the woods.”
“What?” I asked. A small flicker of hope ignited in me. “What do you mean?”
Mary Grace’s mom stepped forward and spoke. “I saw her while everyone else was sleeping. I was reading my bible. Something moved over by the edge of the woods. I thought it was a large animal, a deer perhaps, but when it got closer, I realized it was Abby.”
The group gathered together, and Mom stood in front of them, as Mary Grace’s mom tried to recreate the image she claimed she’d never forget. “Abby was in her cross-country uniform, but it looked old, faded almost. It was foggy around her, so it was hard for me to see.”
I thought about the mornings I ran with the team and the fog was sometimes so thick it was as if we were in the middle of the sky. The sound of our shoes slapping against the street would be the only way to tell there was someone else beside you. I knew exactly what Mary Grace’s mom meant; that when the weather was like that, it was impossible to distinguish between what was real and what might not be.
Some of the Miracle Seekers stared at her, their heavy-lidded eyes fixed and unmoving, but others were more hysterical. A few went back to the edge of the woods where Abby was spotted and moved through the trees, trying to spot her again. A man near me held a rosary in his hands and prayed loudly, and a woman sat and rocked back and forth. Tears fell from her eyes.
My old piano teacher, Jodi Hunter, said, “She’s telling the truth. I saw Abby too. I told myself it was a dream, so I went back to sleep. Abby was different. It was as if the fog followed her. Everything around me was clear as day, but she seemed transparent. She was there, but she wasn’t.”
Collin broke away from me and paced back and forth.
“I told you she was still here,” he yelled to me. “She was out in our field, but no one would listen. Why did Mary Grace’s mom let Abby leave? Why didn’t she stop her?”
Collin buried his face into my arms and cried. I was jealous of him. He was still young enough to cry and yell and hurt openly, when that’s all I wanted to do too. Honestly, I think it was all a lot of us wanted to do.
“You let her slip away,” Mom said, and she wrapped her arms around herself. It was as if the cold had settled into everyone and no one could escape it.
“I wasn’t thinking,” Mary Grace’s mom said. “All I could see was Abby. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.”
But she wasn’t really there, I wanted to shout. This is all ridiculous. You’re all ridiculous. How can you blame someone for something that didn’t happen?
Collin continued to sob. His heart was breaking, and I couldn’t fix it.
“What does this mean?” Mary Grace’s mom asked, standing beside me.
Everyone turned to one another searching for an answer, but like everything else in this mess, no one had a clue about what any of it meant.
51
I promised Collin I’d take him to the library to get some new books about the circles, which is how I found myself walking to our town’s measly excuse for a library after school. It was one big room with the sections divided in each corner. I swear I read every picture book there at least five times each when I was younger.
I picked him up at his elementary school, and he practically dragged me the entire way. His eyes focused on every person we passed. He was looking for Abby. And how could I fault him? As ridiculous as it was, I did the same thing.
“We don’t need to move as if we’re being chased by a rabid dog,” I told him. I carried both my bag and his on my shoulder, and the straps cut into my skin, making it impossible to keep up.
“What if there are no books left? What if someone else came and took them out?”
He had such panic in his eyes that I quickened my pace a bit to calm him down.
“I’m sure there’ll be plenty of books for you to check out. I doubt there was a stampede to the library for books about aliens.”
“You don’t know that,” Collin said, and I didn’t argue. Who knew, he might be right. Everything I expected to be normal had flipped itself upside down these last few weeks; I wasn’t sure what normal was anymore.
We were about to head inside the library when I saw Johnson.
Of course Johnson was here. I didn’t need to creep into the woods to find him; he pushed his rusted-out shopping cart here every day.
He moved with his head down, but he didn’t need to worry about making eye contact. Everyone around him still avoided him.
“Let’s go, Rhylee.” Collin drew out the last letters of my name into a high-pitched whine and tugged on my sleeve.
“Go ahead, I’ll be right there,” I said. He didn’t have to be told twice. He raced into the library and I took a few steps forward so that I could have a clear view of Johnson. It was stupid and irresponsible of me to let Collin go into the library alone, but I was too focused on Johnson and what he might know about Abby. Besides, what could happen in the library? A stack of falling books crushing him?
I followed Johnson. I lagged behind, so I could keep my eye on where he was going and think about what I should do. I doubted that he’d let me come up to him and ask a bunch of questions about my sister, but I didn’t really know any other way to approach him.
I asked myself what Abby would do. She’d probably stop right in the middle of his path with a big smile on her face and introduce herself. So maybe that’s what I should try. I ducked inside the small coffee shop that sat right next to the library. A few people glanced up from their newspapers for a second and one old woman gave me a sad smile, probably recognizing me, but no one tried to talk to me or offer me pitying words, thankfully.
“What can I get you?” a girl in a polka-dotted dress asked.
“Two coffees to go.”
She took my order, and soon the hot cups were in my hands. I added cream and sugar to
one and left the other black. I wasn’t sure how Johnson took his coffee, and I didn’t want to mess this up.
I couldn’t find him when I stepped back out, but there was no way he could have gone too far. His cart kind of hindered a quick getaway. I headed in the direction I’d last seen him, and it wasn’t long before I spotted him on a bench, his cart parked close to his side.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and summoned every bit of Abby’s courage I could find in myself. This was nuts, but it felt as if this was my only option. I owed it to Abby to talk to him. I sat at the other end of the bench and he shifted closer to his stuff as if I was going to steal his pile of junk. He kept his back turned to me, toward his cart, and didn’t acknowledge that there was another person sitting next to him.
Great, this was a bit anticlimactic.
I scooted closer and caught a whiff of someone who definitely lived in the woods.
I moved even closer until we were almost touching. The coffee cups were warm against my hands, the heat radiating from them almost unbearable.
“I don’t have anything for you to steal,” he grumbled.
“I’m not planning to rob you,” I said and thrust the coffee at him. “I brought you coffee.”
“Coffee messes with my mind,” he said.
“Good thing it’s still early,” I said and pushed both of the cups toward him. “Which do you want, black or cream and sugar?”
He turned to investigate me, a flicker of recognition on his face.
“Why are you bothering me, girl?”
“I want to . . .” I stopped and thought about how I’d phrase this. How could I get him to honestly listen to me? Because it seemed as if he was about to get up and leave. I decided to dive right in. “My sister was Abby. The girl who disappeared.”
“Aww, shit. I had nothing to do with that.” He stood and pushed his cart forward. “You have no right to—”
I jumped in front of him, banging my shin against his cart. “Wait, I don’t think you did anything.”
A Void the Size of the World Page 15
