Night Sky

by Suzanne Brockmann

  I peered out the window, watching the trees filter by, and thought about the dream I’d had two nights ago.

  “One big pimple,” I said, sighing.

  “Girl, you’re nasty!”

  “What?” I said, exasperated. “Why is that nasty?”

  Calvin turned his radio down a notch. “Here’s how I see it,” he started, sounding as though he were about to discuss quantum physics with me. “If you’ve got a trillion tiny pimples, then you can probably just use cover-up and the world would barely ever know. There’d be a lot of them, but they’d be tiny as hell. Now, one big one on the other hand…” He shrugged. “Then you’re basically a freak of nature.”

  I bit my nail and thought. “Maybe so, but one big pimple would disappear a lot faster than a trillion small ones.”

  “Not necessarily,” Calvin said, wagging a finger. “This thing is, like, headlight sized. Basically, you gave birth to a second head.”

  “My lord, Calvin!”

  He grinned. “You love me so much.”

  I looked at him and couldn’t hide my smile. “I do.”

  We drove in silence for a moment.

  “We’re gonna keep looking for Sasha this afternoon,” I finally told him. When he didn’t answer, I glanced over to look at him. “Aren’t we?”

  “Uh-huh,” Calvin said, but his expression was uncomfortable. He chewed on his lower lip.

  “I’m not going to give up,” I said. “She’s out there somewhere.”

  Calvin nodded. “At least today the cops can get involved. Although it feels like a whole lot of too little, too late,” he added.

  I agreed. The system was screwy, but apparently things were so bad these days that even the wealthy town of Coconut Key didn’t have enough money to pay for more than what my mom called a “skeleton crew” down at the police station. Because of that, now when a child went missing, there was a mandatory two-day waiting period. And even after that, a missing kid was more likely to be found by a neighborhood group or something called “citizen detectives.”

  Mom had muttered pretty darkly about that, saying that those citizen detectives probably took Sasha in the first place. When you earned your living finding lost children, the children had to go missing in order for you to find them.

  I hoped that was the case—that Sasha would be brought home by someone demanding a reward. But I couldn’t help but feel that was an unlikely scenario.

  Calvin pulled into the Coconut Key Academy parking lot. All the handicapped spaces were empty. Lucky us.

  “Do you think Amanda Green would go for me?” Calvin asked, as a group of girls walked by on their way to first-period class.

  I glimpsed Amanda in the crowd. She looked scary, as usual. Rocking the faux-hawk hairstyle and piercings galore, she was the epitome of retro punk.

  “I think she would eat you alive,” I replied. “Anyway, you only like her because she’s got your hairstyle.”

  “She’s sexy,” Calvin said, grinning. “I think she’d go for me.”

  I undid my seat belt and opened the passenger-side door. “Good luck with that,” I said. “If you take her out on a date, just make sure to pack condoms and mace.”

  “You’re stupid,” Calvin replied affectionately. He opened his door and pressed the ramp to his car. He slid out sideways, the ramp depositing him, wheelchair and all, gently onto the sidewalk. Just as quickly, the ramp unhitched from his chair and slid back into the car.

  “I wish I had a cool contraption like that,” I said.

  “Grass is always greener,” Calvin mumbled.

  —

  School pretty much sucked.

  With our rotating schedule, Chinese culture was my first class of the day, and I found myself in a new level of hell as I sat there listening to what was basically a fifty-minute infomercial. China was Coconut Key Academy’s biggest corporate sponsor, and the class was mandatory for all juniors, with the idea that most of us would someday find ourselves employed by the former nation.

  Of course, the number one job for American women was pregnancy surrogate, since the Chinese’s one-child policy, combined with genetic manipulation, had yielded a population of pretty much all dudes. Yeah, they didn’t think that one through.

  Added to that was their complete lack of industrial regulation, which had turned corporate China into an environmental wasteland. It was much worse there than it was here, but Ms. Morton, the teacher, tried to bright-side it by pointing out that when we went to live in one of China’s big cities—when, not if—we’d be amazed by the high quality of the Internet. And if we mostly stayed indoors, our risk of cancer wouldn’t be too high.

  Yay?

  Yeah, no thanks—even though moving to Florida from Connecticut had been like time-traveling back to 2005 in terms of the reliability of the Internet. I mean, cell phone service was so sketchy here in the South that we often had to resort to texting. Talk about old-fashioned…

  I got out of Chinese culture just barely alive and staggered through math and then stumbled into a popquiz in science class. I felt like I was dragging my brain cells through mud, and I must’ve failed the test. It was just too hard to concentrate when all I could think about was Sasha, missing and scared.

  If she was even still alive.

  That thought was horrible, and I quickly buried it. Sasha was alive. She had to be. I refused to believe otherwise.

  Calvin met me in the hallway outside the music room. We both had fourth-period band practice.

  “Where’s your clarinet?” he asked, nodding at my empty hands as we trudged into Mr. Jenkins’s class.

  “Ask Mr. Jenkins,” I replied darkly.

  Calvin whacked me in the butt with his trumpet case as he wheeled through the open doorway. I flicked him on the ear and followed.

  The bell rang, a final warning for us to find our seats. Calvin hurried toward the front of the U-shaped seating arrangement and parked himself next to the school’s star quarterback, Garrett Hathaway, who was first chair for trumpet.

  I moved all the way to the back, where Mr. Jenkins had assigned me for the rest of the school year. Grimly, I pulled a tambourine, cymbals, and a triangle out of a huge plastic bin. Kim Riley, master of the bass drum, nodded her hello. I nodded back.

  “Okay, people,” Mr. Jenkins said, tapping a pencil on the side of his music stand. “Let’s get to work.”

  No one bothered to respond. Instead, the din of students became a tiny bit quieter as kids shifted their conversations into whispers.

  “Let’s have some quiet in here,” Mr. Jenkins said, his voice only slightly louder. He tapped his pencil again. Today, his comb-over was especially horrendous, sticking up haphazardly as though a strong wind had managed to rearrange his follicles into some unique bird’s nest.

  I would have felt sorry for him if he hadn’t taken me off clarinet and assigned me to the unbelievably super-duper lame task of playing percussion, comma, other.

  “Quiet down, people!” Mr. Jenkins said again, his tone now insistent. Unfortunately, his big-boy voice carried quite an easily imitated whine. Calvin could do a mean Mr. J. I looked across the room at him, but he was busy listening to something Garrett was whispering in his ear.

  As I watched, Calvin frowned and clenched his jaw before turning pointedly away from Garrett and rearranging the sheet music on his music stand.

  “Okay, guys,” Mr. Jenkins said, patting at his cumulonimbus hair. “I want to start off today with a new number: excerpts from Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto.”

  Of course he did. It was my favorite piece—provided I was playing the clarinet solo.

  “It’s an arrangement I found, perfect for the instruments in our band. So, let’s take it from the top. A one, two, three, four!”

  The class started to play, and I laughed out loud because the tempo Mr. Jenkins had set was tha
t of a Sousa march.

  Even though the piece had a moderately fast tempo, lingering almost the entire time in a major key, it somehow still remained pensive—even melancholy. Leave it to Mozart.

  But leave it to Jenkins to suck the soul out of old Wolfgang. Come to think of it, Mr. J. conducted every piece we played as if it were a Sousa march.

  How on earth had he gotten the job of music teacher here? I’d had better musicality when I was six. Of course, when I was six, I was already playing the clarinet solo for this piece—which, in this arrangement, had been given to the trumpets.

  Garrett and Calvin both were struggling to keep up, even with the abridged version of the melody. I, however, had sheet music that was filled with brick-shaped rests. I skimmed forward five pages and spotted two eighth notes. Oh, goody. There was a chance I’d get to crash the cymbals at least twice before the class ended. I didn’t know whether to laugh or be horrified.

  But then someone poked me, and I whipped around, startled.

  Kim took her drumstick off my shoulder and used it to point to the classroom door.

  It was Mrs. Diaprollo, the school guidance counselor. A tired-looking man in an ill-fitting tan suit stood next to her.

  And they were pointing at me.

  Mr. Jenkins frowned but didn’t make any attempt to stop the band.

  Mrs. Diaprollo’s gesture to me was of the “Come with us, young lady” variety. So I set my cymbals on my seat before following them out of the room. As I shut the door, I could see Mr. Jenkins giving me the hawk eye. But the cymbals would have to wait.

  Out in the hallway, Mrs. Diaprollo cleared her throat. “Ms. Reid, I’m sorry to interrupt you in the middle of your class.” Her prim voice was authoritative and formal. It was the first time she had spoken directly to me since my first day at school. “But Detective Hughes needs to ask you some questions.”

  “Is this about Sasha?” I asked eagerly.

  Mrs. Diaprollo’s lips, pursed most of the time anyway, were puckered slits of pink. The creases in her face stood out deeply as she frowned and crossed her arms over her lace blouse. She looked to Detective Hughes, as if he might be better equipped to answer the question.

  But the man in the tan suit merely nodded as if he was too exhausted to speak, and my heart sank. This was the man in charge of finding Sasha?

  “This won’t take very long, Skylar.” Mrs. Diaprollo motioned for us to follow her down the hallway toward the teacher conference room, her sensible shoes clacking on the tile floor. I glanced over my shoulder at the detective, who trailed behind us. The man’s face was gray and swollen. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a month.

  “In here, please,” Mrs. Diaprollo announced, opening the door to the conference room with a flourish. Out of all the people in the world, the last person I would go to for advice was Mrs. Diaprollo. And yet she was the school’s only guidance counselor.

  “Skylar, you may take a seat,” she said as Detective Hughes tossed a manila folder onto the table. As I watched, he went to the far corner of the room and got a can of Diet Splash from the soda machine. Hands shaking, he then pulled a chair out from the conference room table and sat.

  I plopped down across from the detective. I was at least five feet away from him, but I swear I got a strong whiff of cigar smoke and stale booze. My stomach churned.

  Mrs. Diaprollo sat next to the detective, primly smoothing down her calf-length skirt and placing her hands atop her lap. It was clear she had no intention of leaving the room—and I was oddly glad for that. She looked toward the man and nodded.

  “Yes.” Detective Hughes cleared his phlegm-filled throat. “I’m here to ask you some questions about the disappearance of Sasha Rodriguez.” He rubbed his hands over his face and then opened his eyes wide, as if working to stay awake. His hands were large and callused, and all of his nails had been bitten to the quick. They were still shaking. It was a small movement, but it was undeniable. He cleared his throat again. “How long have you worked for the Rodriguezes?”

  “About five and a half months,” I said. “A little bit after my mom and I moved down here.”

  The detective nodded. “And how well would you say that you know the family?”

  I shrugged. “Pretty well. I mean, I babysit for Sasha every weekend.”

  Mrs. Diaprollo tucked a stray hair behind her ear and then folded her hands, watching us both like she was observing a tennis match.

  “Did you ever notice anything strange or unusual about Sasha?” Hughes asked, pulling a notepad out of his jacket pocket. He set it next to his soda can, but didn’t make any move to write anything down.

  Strange or unusual? “What do you mean?”

  “For example, would she sometimes get upset or cry?”

  I laughed once. “Well, yeah. I mean, she was nine. Nine-year-olds sometimes cry. You know?”

  Mrs. Diaprollo looked at the detective, who nodded and then reached inside the same jacket pocket and pulled out a small circle-shaped packet. He ripped it open and poured it into the soda can. It was Gas-B-Gone.

  The Diet Splash fizzled for a moment.

  “What about Mr. Rodriguez? Ever notice anything unusual about him?”

  “I…” I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

  Hughes took a long gulp of his drink and set it down shakily on the table. Without any explanation or segue, the detective launched into another question. “Did you ever observe Mr. Rodriguez punishing Sasha?”

  “I guess,” I said. “I mean, when Sasha broke the rules, Mr. Rodriguez would send her to her room for a time-out.”

  “Did Mr. Rodriguez ever go into Sasha’s room with her?”

  Mrs. Diaprollo repositioned herself in her seat like she was starting to get uncomfortable.

  “Well, obviously. I mean, he’s her dad.” I shook my head, hoping I’d misunderstood. I felt my cheeks start to heat. “What does this have to do with anything?”

  Hughes didn’t bother looking up at me but simply plodded on with the questions, his voice almost mechanical. “When he went into Sasha’s room, did Mr. Rodriguez ever close the door?”

  “Oh, come on,” I exclaimed. “Really?” I laughed, but it was a humorless sound. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Please answer the question,” Hughes replied.

  I tried to stay calm. “Yeah. And so did Carmen. And so did I.”

  “Did Mr. Rodriguez ever touch Sasha inappropriately?”

  “No!”

  “Did Mr. Rodriguez ever touch you inappropriately?”

  “What? Absolutely not!” I laughed my surprise again, then looked at Mrs. Diaprollo, but she was busy staring at the tops of her nails.

  “Did Mr. Rodriguez ever touch your leg?”

  Okay, now he was really pissing me off. “Seriously?” I asked.

  Hughes took another sip of his drink. “Please answer the question.”

  “No, he didn’t touch my leg.”

  “Did he ever touch you on the rear?”

  “My lord,” I said. “I know what inappropriate means. He didn’t touch me inappropriately. He didn’t touch me anywhere at all—ever!”

  Hughes nodded. “Did he ever touch your—?”

  At this, Mrs. Diaprollo cut him off, slamming her hands down on the table with surprising force, as she sat up pin straight in her chair. “Detective, Skylar knows what inappropriate means, and her answer was no. I think this has been established.”

  And just like that, old stuffy Diaprollo earned some serious points in my book.

  There was a moment of brief silence. Hughes sat back just slightly and retrieved a manila folder from his pile of paperwork. He opened it and slid the contents across the table to me. Tapping his callused finger on the glossy paper, he looked up at me, his eyes red-rimmed and serious.

  I looked down. It was a p
icture of Sasha, Edmund, and me. Carmen had taken it one evening, right before the two grown-ups left for the movies. Sasha and I had just come out of the pool, and we still had our bathing suits on. Mr. Rodriguez stood between us, his arms slung loosely around our shoulders. I remembered the moment clearly, because Carmen had told us all to make funny faces. We’d laughed the first time we’d seen the photo.

  I wasn’t laughing now.

  “Ms. Reid, can you please identify the people in this photograph?”

  I shook my head, because, again, I knew where he was going. Yes, in this picture, Edmund was touching me. “This is effed up.” Only I didn’t say effed. I used the full f-bomb.

  Mrs. Diaprollo groaned a little as if it had physically wounded her, but she kept her mouth shut.

  The detective began to repeat himself. “Can you please identify—”

  “I know what you’re trying to do.” I bit my lip. “You’re making Edmund look like a bad guy, but he’s not—”

  Hughes interrupted me. “Did Mr. Rodriguez request that you address him familiarly by using his first name?”

  I felt the room getting smaller and smaller. For everything I said to try to clear up the situation, the detective had a counter-question that made it sound ten times worse.

  This time, I thought before I spoke. “Both Carmen and Edmund said it was okay to call them by their first names,” I replied. “Ed…Mr. Rodriguez…is a nice man. He treated me like family.”

  Hughes finally took a pen out of his pocket and picked up his notepad. His chin was rough with stubble, and he scratched the side of his jaw with the closed pen before popping off the cap and scribbling something down. Then he rubbed his eyes and turned a page of his notepad. Throughout the entire string of questions, Hughes failed to make eye contact with me for more than a few seconds at a time.

  He didn’t care.

  He was too tired to care.

  I felt my face get hotter, and I swallowed hard.

  “Are you aware of any problems that Mr. Rodriguez has been having lately? With money or…?”

  “No!” I wanted to stop talking about Edmund! Sasha’s disappearance had nothing to do with him! She was still out there, somewhere, and this idiot was just wasting everyone’s time. “Why don’t you ask him about that? I’m sure if you just talked to him for two minutes, you’d see that—”