“Get out of my way,” he said and tried to push his cart around me. I’m not sure exactly what happened next; his cart might have caught on a rock or something, but suddenly it tipped over on its side. He tried to right it, but the cart was too heavy and it crashed to the ground. “Son of a bitch. Look at what you did.”
“I’m sorry.” I bent to help him pick up his stuff. The coffee cups had flipped over on their sides and the liquid was making a slow descent toward the items in his cart that were strewn about the sidewalk. I handed him a flannel shirt and a garbage bag full of something soft and tried to stuff them back in the cart after he righted it.
“You don’t know how to leave well enough alone. All of you. Messing in my business. Asking questions, looking at me like I’m some sort of criminal.”
“I don’t think you did anything. I’m just trying to find out if anyone saw anything. My sister . . . there’s nothing . . . I was hoping maybe . . .” I spoke in disjointed sentences, but it wasn’t making a difference. He wasn’t listening to me.
“I told them what I knew. I’ve got nothing else.”
“Rhylee,” a voice yelled. Collin. I had forgotten about him. For a brief second it was as if two people had taken hold of each of my hands and were fighting over me, each person yanking me from side to side. I didn’t know which way to go at first, but then turned toward my brother. How could I have forgotten him? I must have left him alone at the library for at least half an hour.
I stuffed the items in my hands in Johnson’s cart. I didn’t want Collin to see what I was doing, because he’d tell our parents.
“I gotta go. My brother is over there. I was only trying to find my sister. I didn’t mean to bother you; I don’t know what else to do.”
Johnson continued to pick his things off the ground and acted as if I didn’t exist.
“Collin!” I yelled and jogged over to him. I expected to see tears, but instead, he grabbed my hand and tugged me back toward the library.
“Come on. They’re holding my books. They said you needed to check them out for me.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I told him and followed him up the steps of the library. “What kind of books did you find?”
“All different types. One of the ladies helped me. She got me a big huge stack. I’m going to be reading all night long, and Mom can’t do anything to stop me.”
“Of course she can’t.” I listened as he chattered on about his adventures at the library. I was glad he didn’t think there was anything odd about finding me outside on the street talking to a homeless man with a shopping cart.
I followed him into the library shaken up about the whole conversation with Johnson. I repeated his words over and over again in my head, making sure I’d heard them right. He said he told the police everything he knew, but the police hadn’t mentioned anything to my family. At least, nothing I heard about. That might mean there was something I didn’t know, and I was determined to find out what that was. I owed it to Abby to find out.
52
The next day, I ran up and down roads looking for my sister. The real version, not the so-called ghost girl who haunted the town. I searched everywhere; through the center of town, past Webster’s, the church we’d go to at Christmas and Easter, and the park where Tommy and I kissed. I moved faster and faster until I was afraid I was going to trip over my feet. Even then, I couldn’t go fast enough.
I looped around the high school and into the stadium where they’d had the memorial for Abby. The cross-country team was doing timed runs on the track. I headed up the steps of the bleachers until I reached the top, and lay on my back so I could watch the sky. It was one of those days that warned you fall was creeping in. The kind where the clouds held on to the edge of the horizon and made everything look all doom and gloom, and if you squinted, you could picture the leaves on trees changing colors.
Someone yelled “10:13,” calling out the time of a runner.
“That’s pathetic!” a voice shouted back, and from the high-pitched whine, I recognized it as Erica’s. “I bet Mr. Taylor could beat me in a race at that speed.”
I laughed despite myself. Mr. Taylor was the seventy-six-year-old English teacher who seemed intent on teaching until he dropped dead.
Voices shouted back and forth below me, and I closed my eyes. I thought about how the world should be right now. Abby would be running on that track, and I’d still be aching for Tommy in secret. Collin would be annoying me by stealing stuff from my room, and my parents would be their normal boring selves, making small talk at dinner and writing our daily activities on the big calendar in the kitchen.
A whistle blew from the track and jarred me from my memories.
Someone walked up the bleachers, the clang of heels against metal. I peeked out through the slit of one eye. It was Tessa, looking ridiculous in jeans, cowboy boots, a plaid shirt, and a bandanna around her neck. Her hair was in two pigtails.
She nudged me with her foot.
“Last time I checked, cowboys don’t live in Ohio,” I said.
“Today was show choir practice,” she told me, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “We’re doing a medley of Oklahoma songs.”
“Right, got it.” I tried not to laugh at her outrageous outfit, but I couldn’t hold it in.
“What’s so funny? You’re dressed in a costume too,” she shot back.
I glanced at my shorts and tank top and then back at her. “What are you talking about? I went for a run.”
“A run? And what’s with your hair?” Tessa kept going.
I touched the French braid I’d put in earlier today. Abby always wore one when she ran, and I thought I’d give it a shot.
“Since when did you become an athlete?”
“Why does everyone find it so hard to believe that I could actually do something that involves physical activity?” I asked and then gestured toward the field. “I was thinking of joining the team.”
“Sure you were,” Tessa said, not buying a word of what I was saying. I had a hunch that even if she saw me running with the girls in the morning, she’d still think I was joking.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I was leaving play practice when I spotted you here.” She fished a box of Hot Tamales out of her bag and pushed it at me. I took a handful and jammed them into my mouth.
“Remember how Abby hated it when we watched her run?” I asked. “She never wanted to see us in the crowd before a race. She said it messed up her thinking.”
Tessa laughed. “And you used to come up with the craziest costumes so she wouldn’t know it was you.”
“It always worked. We’d spend days inventing who we would be.”
It became a joke in our family, what we could wear to throw off Abby. We tried to see how outrageous we could get with our costumes and still not have her notice us. Dad and I would go to the thrift store or garage sales and pick through racks of other people’s discarded clothes. The two of us brought home hats, wigs, and oversize pieces of clothing to drape around ourselves. We stood next to families we knew at the away meets, and laughed because they didn’t recognize us either. Abby acted as if she hated it when we crowded around her in running suits and sweatbands or wigs of long dark hair and sunglasses, but Mom would always pull something out of her purse for Abby to put on to become a part of our group instead of wearing her cross-country uniform, and she’d happily comply.
I realized Tessa was right about my outfit. I was in costume now, a costume that looked a lot like my sister. But was that so bad? Abby had always been the better one. Would it be so horrible if I disappeared and tried to bring her back in small ways? Especially when she’s the one who should be here right now after what I did.
“Maybe Abby’s hiding somewhere out there now, in her own costume, and we don’t recognize her,” Tessa said.
“I wish she was.” The weight of my words hung between us.
“Listen.” Tessa changed the subject for me. “If I ask you som
ething, will you promise to think about it before you say no?”
“If you have to ask me that, I have a feeling I’m not going to like what you’re about to say.” I knew Tessa, and more often than not, her plans were a bit nuts.
She ignored me and launched into her idea, talking really fast so I wouldn’t have time to interrupt.
“Jarrett and I are going to homecoming, and I think it would be good if you came along. We’ll make it low key.”
“How do you make a dance ‘low key’?” I asked. It got crazy at school during homecoming and prom time. The girls talked about nothing but dresses and hair and nails and all that other stuff I didn’t get involved in because I’d never been asked to a dance before. It was enough to make you want to crawl into a cave and hibernate until it was over.
“We won’t make a big deal out of it. It’ll be fun. We haven’t done anything in forever, and you know how lame Jarrett is about dancing.”
“I’m not sure this is such a good idea,” I told Tessa, watching the team set up hurdles along the track. “It doesn’t feel right to go to the dance with Abby gone.”
“Your sister would want you to live your life,” Tessa said. “Will you at least think about it?”
I sighed, a big heaving sigh mainly for her benefit. “Okay, I’ll consider it for a minute or two, but that might be all the attention I give it.”
“Perfect!” Tessa reached out her hand to me, and I grabbed it. She yanked me to my feet, and then draped her arm around me. “Let’s get out of here.”
I followed her as she clanked down in her cowboy boots. I watched the girls on the track and thought again about how Abby should be practicing with them. How she should be the one here.
53
I pushed the dance from my mind, but it was clear Tessa wasn’t going to let it slide. I about jumped out of my skin two days later when she came up behind me and put her hands over my eyes as I was pulling books from my locker.
“God, freak out much?” She unwrapped one of the scarves from around her neck. She had at least four, and looked like a gypsy who’d escaped from the loony bin. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
“You have my schedule memorized; you couldn’t have been looking too hard.”
“But doesn’t it sound more dramatic to think that I’ve been scouring the school from top to bottom for you?”
I pushed away the scarf that she now waved in my face. “You’re nuts.”
“Well, I have some news for you.” Tessa got that look on her face I knew too well; the one where she gets a funny half smile, so you know she’s up to no good. She does it when she’s trying to figure out how to convince me to do things that’ll probably end badly. Like the time she asked me to help dye her hair black and we ruined her parents’ fancy towels after we used them to clean the countertops, or when we were in fourth grade and she thought it would be an adventure to hitchhike home. Our elementary school principal picked us up, and we had to listen to her lecture us about the dangers of taking rides from strangers the entire drive. Tessa was up to no good, there was no doubt about that. “We’re set for Saturday, so you can’t back out now.”
“Saturday?” I said, playing dumb.
Tessa pulled an envelope out of her purse and passed it over to me. She shook her head back and forth as if I was a little child forgetting something. “The dance. I got us tickets, but you don’t need to pay me back; it’s no big deal. We just need to make sure you have a dress. Do you have a dress?”
“I didn’t say I’d go. I told you I’d think about it.”
“Come on, don’t back out on me. You never do anything anymore, and Jarrett is excited that you’re coming too.”
“I find that hard to believe. No one likes a third wheel. What am I supposed to do during the slow songs, dance in between you two?”
“You won’t be the third wheel; you know Jarrett hates to dance. That’s why you have to come, and then I don’t need to spend the entire night begging him to go out on the dance floor.”
“There’s no way I’m going to dance either,” I tried to argue, but it was obvious Tessa wasn’t going to let me out of this. We hadn’t gone to last year’s homecoming; most freshmen weren’t brave enough to show up without a date, so instead, Tessa, Abby, and I had binge watched a new TV series while stuffing our faces full of ice cream and cookie dough. Tommy hadn’t gone either. He’d told me we should go together as a joke to laugh at everyone dressed up in uncomfortable clothes. I pretended that would be funny, but I should’ve told him the truth. That I wanted to go with him and be one of those people dressed up.
I rubbed my temples. “I don’t know, Tessa.”
“What do you have to lose? Please, live a little,” she said, and I could tell that she really did want me to go.
“Okay, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“It’s a great idea,” she said and hugged me.
The bell rang and our classmates scattered. As Tessa ran off down the hallway, I hoped she was right.
54
I lay awake that night staring at the ceiling. The air was still without a breeze. It hadn’t rained since the day after Abby disappeared, and the weather stations had declared us officially in a draught. It had been weeks without more than a quick sprinkle, and people whispered their worries about the dangers of days with all sun and no relief in sight. September was almost over.
I had the curtains open to try to let some air in, and the faint strains of the Miracle Seekers’ songs drifted above the whirl of the little fan I had on my night table.
There was a noise downstairs where Collin was sleeping in his blanket tent. He insisted on staying there since Mom refused to let him be out in the fields all night.
“Abby!” he yelled.
I lay still and waited for something to happen, almost as if my sister would answer.
“Abby!” he yelled again and began to cry. I jumped out of my bed and raced toward him.
He was curled in a ball, and his body shook.
“Hey, it’s okay, Collin.” I sat next to him and put my hand on his back. He had on his Spider-Man pajamas, the bottoms too short for his long legs. He climbed into my lap, even though he was too big to do that, and I let him because I needed it as much as he did.
The shaking stopped, but he continued to cry. “I missed you, Abby,” he repeatedly said.
I hesitated. Did Collin really think I was Abby? He’s half asleep, I told myself. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. He probably won’t even remember any of this.
So I didn’t correct him. Instead, I let him believe what we all wanted to believe.
“I miss you too,” I told him and rubbed his back to calm him down.
He clung to me in the darkness and his body relaxed.
“I didn’t think you were coming back,” he said.
“I’ve always been here. I’m not going to leave you,” I told him, because in the dark, you could pretend to be anyone you wanted to be.
55
I slept downstairs with Collin and didn’t leave until I heard Dad pull up outside. I untangled from Collin carefully and headed upstairs to take a shower. It felt more important for me to stick around this morning than to go running.
Dad was frying bacon when I came back down, and Collin read the back of the cereal box. His hair stuck up in blond clumps and he swung his legs under the table as he hummed a song.
I slid into my usual seat at the table and nudged Collin with my elbow. He nudged me back and the two of us continued until he fell into a fit of laughter.
“Guess what?” Collin asked as he bent close to me.
“What?”
“Last night I saw Abby,” Collin said, his eyes bright and shiny.
Dad turned from the stove so fast that he dropped the fork he was holding. He picked it up and walked over to Collin. “You did? Where did you see her?” he asked.
“She came right into the house and slept next to me all night long.”
“Sounds like a wonderful dream,” Dad said, and ruffled his hand through Collin’s hair. Collin squirmed away from him.
“It wasn’t a dream,” he insisted, his happy mood vanished. “She’s been visiting me at night. She sings me a lullaby when I can’t sleep.”
“You’re pretty lucky she came to see you,” I told him.
“It was even more special than those other people who saw her, because she stayed with me,” he said. “She didn’t run away. She really loves me. I just don’t know why she didn’t stay here and left again.”
I leaned my head against the window next to the kitchen table. It was cool on my forehead, and I pulled back, blowing the glass to fog it up. I took my finger and drew a heart.
Collin smiled and drew his own heart encircling mine, reminding me how important family is.
56
Collin wasn’t the only one who believed he’d seen Abby.
The Miracle Seekers kept a constant watch in our field for glimpses of her. They claimed she appeared more and more out of the blackness that leaked like ink through the field, but I wasn’t buying it. It was always one person at a time who claimed to have spotted Abby, the rest left wondering how they could have missed her.
“How gullible are these people? Don’t they find it odd that she’s never been spotted by two people at the same time?” I told Dad before he left for work. He fought with Mom about the circles almost every day, but they’d gotten so big, it was next to impossible for him to put a stop to them anymore. “I mean, that’s kind of a red flag that maybe these people are making it up.”
“We’re trying to believe in something right now,” he said.
“But a ghost version of Abby?” I asked, my voice rising from frustration. “Abby isn’t a ghost. This has to stop, Dad. It has to end. These people are ridiculous.”
And they were. Especially since those who claimed to see her affirmed that she didn’t just come at night, but during the day, too, in places that didn’t even connect to our field.
A Void the Size of the World Page 16
