0.5-Stone and Spark

by Sibella Giorello

  When I look up, Teddy's hand is shaking from the strain of holding the tip of the shoelace, clamped between his working thumb and the fingers stuck together.

  I lay down the paper. He exhales, releasing the shoe—her shoe. He shakes out his wrist.

  "Gloves," he says.

  "What?"

  "Put on some latex gloves. They're in the cabinet."

  I snap on the gloves, which before I've only worn for testing acids.

  "Turn it over, check the treads. But don't take all the soil out," Teddy says. "Like the bike tires, leave some soil in there. For the cops."

  "So we are calling police," DeMott says. He's still standing over by the door. "Right?"

  "You were the kid who always colored inside the lines," Teddy replies. "Right?"

  I pick up a soil knife. My hands feel far away. The latex bunches on my fingertips. I can feel the sweat inside them.

  "I just don't want us doing something illegal," DeMott says.

  "What we're doing is geology."

  "Yes but—"

  "Geology is a dirty business."

  “All puns aside, aren't we tampering with—”

  “Tampering's when you cover something up. We're looking for clues.”

  "Are you sure the police will see it that way?”

  "Raleigh," Teddy says. "Hurry up."

  Something is happening to me. I've had this feeling before but only when my mom goes dark. It's swallowed-up sensation. Like when people say "out of body experience." I think it's like this—I'm here and not here, all at once. I'm not even thinking, my hands just know what to do. Using the tweezers stored in the drawer to dig grains from the sole of her shoe. The dull rain of sand on the paper. I make a mental note of three tiny pebbles lodged inside the sand. I find a hair, short and brown. Pinch it, hold up the light, wonder if it belongs to Isaac Newton the Cat. Or the person who—whose existence won't even let me finish that thought.

  I set the hair aside from the soil.

  When I go back to the shoe's treads, the icicles are there.

  I turn the sole, pointing at the red shards so Teddy can see them.

  He nods. "Stratigraphy. Write down the stratigraphy."

  "Strati-what?" DeMott asks.

  I pick a Sharpie from the drawer under the counter and draw a rough sketch on the butcher paper. I place the soils in the order we found them. Here and in her bike tires. In both cases, the red icicles were buried under the other soil. The soil that matches the quarry.

  "Stratigraphy tells us the order of deposition," Teddy explains. "First soil you see is the last deposited. Deepest soil is deposited first. Make sense?"

  "History, you mean."

  I draw the order of soils vertically, showing the pink granite pebbles compacted by taupe sand covering the blood-red icicles. DeMott looks out the doorway.

  "We should call the police," he says.

  "We will," Teddy says. "And we'll tell them everything. Except this part."

  "Hold on! You said this was okay!"

  "It is." Teddy waves a clamped up hand, dismissing him. "The police don't have geologists on staff."

  "How do you know?" he demands.

  "Because I'm the guy they bring this stuff to."

  "Oh."

  "Only the FBI has geologists on staff. And believe me, we don't want them showing up.”

  I look over at my teacher. His forehead shines, a scrim of perspiration. I'm thinking about what he just said, how he said it. We don't want the FBI showing up . . . because . . . ? Because that would mean Drew's—

  I wait for him to look at me. But he refuses. When I glance over at DeMott, his blue eyes have darkened. The color of the ocean when clouds sweep in front of the sun.

  "It's okay if you need to leave," I tell him. "Really, it's fine."

  He only turns, continuing to stare out into that empty hallway.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Forty minutes later, DeMott turns into Drew's driveway. We both get out. Teddy stays in the truck.

  I don't walk around to the sunroom. Even though I know that door is open.

  Standing on the front stoop, holding the clear plastic bag that contains the purple All Star, I try to think of something to say. Once again, the words refuse to come.

  Reaching around me, DeMott presses the doorbell. But his other hand rests on the small of my back, making that certain kind of heat travel up my spine. I feel that flutter, let out a breath.

  "You okay?" he whispers.

  But the door opens before I can automatically say, "Fine."

  On this late Sunday afternoon, when her daughter's been gone for more than forty-eight hours, Jayne looks perfect. Her brown hair is shiny, the trimmed ends barely touching the shoulders of her red cashmere sweater. She smiles.

  "Hello, Raleigh. Who's your friend?"

  God forgive me. Again. I really want this woman to suffer.

  I lift the plastic bag, dangling it in front of her face.

  "We just found this, buried in a quarry. Right off Huegonot—"

  "Sorry to bother you, ma'am—" DeMott interrupts. "I know this is a shock."

  His manners are unbelievable. I want to jam my elbow into his stomach.

  But Jayne doesn't hear him. Her face is contorting, her features shifting from Miss Perfect to Screwed Up Mother.

  She reaches for the bag.

  I pull it back.

  I've come up with some new hypotheses these last two days. One: Jayne can't be trusted. Two: ordinary things, like bike tires and shoes, hold extraordinary information.

  And three: "You need to call the police. Right now."

  ***

  I dig through my backpack until I find Officer Lande's card, which I shoved way down, tucking it under the bottom interior flap so my mom would never find it.

  I hand it to Jayne. But she backs away, shaking her head.

  I pick up the phone, dial the number and get voice mail, which tells me to leave a detailed response, or if this is an emergency, please dial 9-1-1.

  "This is Raleigh Harmon, and this is an emergency," I reply. "But I'm not calling 9-1-1 because I want you to help us. And we need you right now."

  Jayne is standing to my immediate right, so close I can hear her breathing. It's quick and shallow, like someone running hard.

  "I'm at Drew Levinson's house. Her shoe was just found in a quarry off Huegonot Road."

  When I hang up, Jayne isn't standing beside me anymore. She's moved over to the kitchen but stays in the threshold. I wonder how much she wants some wine. Behind her, the cuckoo clock clacks against its door, rapping four times.

  Four o'clock.

  In two hours, it will be dark.

  ***

  Outside, we check on Teddy. He's dug one of his stinky cigars from some pocket.

  "Hope you don't mind," he says to DeMott, still sitting in DeMott's truck. "And course, even if you did mind, all that high Virginia breeding wouldn't let you say it. So we're cool, I guess."

  I go inside, DeMott follows. When I sit down at Drew's desk, turning on her computer, I feel like puking again.

  "Who is that?" DeMott points at the poster over her bed.

  "Richard P. Feynman." I type into the computer Feynman.

  But that's not her password. I squint at the blinking cursor, my fingertips resting on the keyboard, itching. DeMott continues to gaze around the room, taking in the mobile of the solar system, the charts on the walls showing her math theorems. The books and books and books.

  I try more passwords.

  Physics.

  No.

  Fibonacci.

  No.

  "She must be really smart," DeMott says, standing behind me now.

  "You have no idea."

  I can feel heat from him, even from here. I push that idea away and type out the combination from her bike lock, 0 1 1 2 3.

  "Why those numbers?" he asks.

  "Fibonacci sequence."

  "Pardon?"

  "It's a math myster
y. The next number in this sequence will be the two numbers before it, added together."

  "Always?"

  "Forever."

  "Whoa."

  "It's beyond me too." I keep typing the sequence, following Fibonnaci because Drew loves this idea of order and mystery all wrapped together with numbers. I'm up to 5 8 13 21 34 55 89, doing the addition in my head. I'm starting to want a calculator when I hit Return and—

  "Bingo!" I cry.

  "Talk about a strong password."

  On the black screen a quote appears in purple letters: "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."

  DeMott reads it over my shoulder. "Did she come up with that?"

  "No." I stare at the words. Like a message from the great beyond. "The guy on that poster over the bed said it."

  I scroll through her files, opening every folder, only to find that every weird physics phenomena in the known universe has found its home on this computer. Quarks. Nutrinos. String Theory. All the baseball math that makes my eyes glaze over—statistics, more statistics, still more statistics—but a pang of remorse squeezes my heart. I should've paid more attention, I realize. Maybe she did tell me something, and I missed it. Too wrapped up in my own projects, trespassing in a tunnel, to listen to the person I miss so much it hurts. I keep searching the files, hoping hoping hoping I'll find something labeled: My Plan To Run Away and Not Tell Anyone Even Raleigh.

  Nothing close.

  I click on her photo album.

  "Hey, look at you two," DeMott says softly. He is leaning down, so close I can smell the fresh air on his clothes.

  I swallow and scroll through her pictures. And then, that out-of-body feeling comes over me again, like these are only pictures of two girls I don't know. Pictures snapped at Big Man’s Burgers on Friday nights. Pictures at ball games. In most of them Drew looks like a tiny professor—small and scholarly and disappointed by the dumbness all around her. I search for the photos where she is smiling. Like her hero Feynman. I decide people will look at a smiling face.

  When I find the right image, I paste it to a blank page. Above it, I type some words. Erase them. Type again. Finally, I settle on:

  MISSING GIRL.

  The cursor blinks.

  Waiting.

  "Is something wrong with that?" DeMott asks.

  I delete both words, then type: HAVE YOU SEEN HER?

  "You're right," he says quietly. "That's much better."

  But still not ideal. That question sounds like those milk carton kids, the ones who've been missing for so long that you can only stare at their adult progression image and marvel at how noses grow and chins widen and then you're not even thinking about the missing kid anymore.

  Hoping to block that reaction, I write a short paragraph underneath her picture describing Drew Levinson, girl genius, wearing a St. Catherine's school uniform and possibly missing one purple Converse All Star.

  I read the text three times. She will hate me for this. I hate myself for this.

  I refuse to type Jayne's phone number. Rusty doesn't always answer his phone. I can't put my home number, that's for sure. So I pull out Officer Lande's card and hand it to DeMott.

  "Read me the phone number." I type carefully--I don’t want a single digit to be wrong.

  Downstairs, a door slams. It slams so hard a percussive shake rattles through the floor. DeMott looks at me, eyebrows raised in alarm.

  A man yells. He yells one word:

  “Jayne!!!”

  DeMott's mouth drops open.

  “Rusty.” I hit Print. Fifty copies. “C’mon, I'll introduce you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  A mélange, I decide.

  We've formed a mélange. All of us in Drew's driveway like random stones cobbled together by outside forces.

  That's the geological definition of mélange, and we fit it.

  Officer Lande, arriving right after Rusty's big entrance, stands between Drew's parents like a referee in the ring with prizefighters. I stand by the truck, trying to stay out of reach of the verbal punches and the jet stream of Teddy's cigar's smoke. DeMott stands beside me, silent, watching, listening.

  "This is all your fault!" Rusty yells, his finger aimed at Jayne.

  "Here we go!" Jayne throws her arms in the air. "Blame me. Of course."

  “You're supposed to be her mother.”

  “I am her mother!”

  “When? The three hours a week you're sober?”

  I glance at Officer Lande. Her cool gray eyes flick, following the words like uppercuts.

  "You and your ambition." Rusty continues. "Is it that hard to pay attention to your daughter?"

  "Me?" Jayne seethes. "Who're you—Father of the Year? You can't even crawl out of your hole long enough to take her on a vacation."

  "Vacation?" He stabs a finger at her. It's sooted with modeling clay. "I can't afford a vacation because you want child support."

  "It's called working for a living!"

  Money. That's their big button. Way back when, Rusty actually worked at a bank. He was an executive. He wore pinstripe suits and had short hair and that fake smile I hate so much. But one day he quit. He said he wanted to make pottery. They divorced within six months. Drew put it this way: "Jayne climbs and now Rusty reclines." Today, he's wearing flip flops—even though it's cold—and a wrinkled shirt with cargo shorts whose torn pockets sag open, like they're trying to remind everyone he really is a starving artist.

  "And New York!" he hollers. "I'll bet Drew was thrilled about that move. What did she say to you?"

  Jayne glances at Officer Lande, who is holding a notebook and pen, taking down every mean word.

  "Did I mention we're moving?" Jayne asks.

  Officer Lande flips through her notebook pages. "Two-thirteen Saturday morning."

  Jayne lifts her face, closing her eyes against the afternoon sun. She is beautiful. And she is ugly. All at once. I can't explain it except that it's like seeing a really successful person standing on the edge of ruin.

  "I refuse to apologize for advancement," she says.

  “Advance—”

  "Hold on." I step forward, cutting off Rusty. "When did you find out about this 'advancement'?"

  "I don't remember," Jayne says.

  "Bull—”

  I cut him off again. "Did you just find out?"

  She hesitates. "They told me last month. In September."

  "What?!" Rusty cries.

  She whirls on him. "I couldn't say anything—in case it fell through."

  "Or in case she ran away," he says.

  "Hang on." Teddy exhales a cloud of smoke. "Let's have a show of hands. Who really thinks Drew ran away?"

  The Levinsons both raise their hands. But DeMott, Teddy, and I don't. Officer Lande just looks at us, counting hands.

  Teddy looks at me, giving me a signal to continue his point.

  "Drew would argue first," I say. "She wouldn't run away, not right away." I look at Jayne. "Did she argue with you?"

  Jayne just stands there awhile. The wind rustles the leaves. "Yes, she got mad."

  "Of course she got mad," Teddy says.

  "But did she point out the flawed logic?" I ask. "Did she tell you it made no rational sense to move to New York?"

  "I don't remember."

  But I know Drew. Her first line of attack would be to outwit her mother, get into a verbal battle, conquering through her IQ. That's why Jayne didn't tell her earlier. Knowingness goes through me. It's almost something I can touch--it's so real. Like the shoe I handed Officer Lande, now stashed in the police cruiser.

  "She didn't run away," I insist. "And you know it too."

  "This is a very big promotion," Jayne says, like anyone cares. "I can finally stop worrying about money."

  "Great," Teddy blows smoke. "Now you get to worry about your daughter."

  "But Raleigh's wrong!" Jayne says. "I told her about the move. Drew said, 'You'll be sorry.’”

  Officer Lande asks, "Wh
en was that?"

  "Thursday night."

  "Interesting." Officer Lande again flips through her notebook. "You previously said you told her Friday. At breakfast."

  Teddy mutters, "Why I like dirt. It doesn't lie."

  "I don't remember the specifics," Jayne says, sounding defensive. "It's been so hectic. A lot of people wanted this position."

  "Enjoy the climb," Rusty says, "because it doesn't end anywhere nice."

  "Nice?" Jayne eyes are glistening with tears. "It's not supposed to be nice. It's called work."

  "Are you saying I don't work?"

  Officer Lande lifts her hands, calling the fight.

  "Let's not go down that road," she says. "Let's focus on what Raleigh just turned up." We wait. The wind swirls. Rusty is breathing hard, but Jayne looks frozen. Except her eyes. They are melting.

  Officer Lande's gaze lingers on Jayne.

  "With or without your permission," she says. "I'm calling in a report. Just to be safe."

  "What's that mean?" Rusty asks.

  "It means your daughter Drew is officially missing."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Even though Teddy's cigar has burned out, that throat-coating stench lingers inside DeMott's truck.

  But that's not the heaviest thing in here.

  The silence is.

  It's smothering. Choking. Dense.

  As we drive away from Drew's house, my ears ring with it.

  DeMott doesn't say anything until we're all the way down Grove Avenue.

  "Are you alright?" he asks.

  "I'm fine."

  Teddy sighs. "I'm not. And I'm not pretending."

  "I'm not pretending." I say.

  "DeMott, is she pretending?"

  DeMott nods.

  Teddy leans back. Normally he'd be grinning right now, satisfied that somebody agreed with his accusation.

  But when I look over, I don't see anything smug on his face.

  We turn onto his road, heading for his worn-out house.

  "I will never say this again," Teddy sighs. "So listen up."

  I wait.

  DeMott slows the truck to a crawl.

  "Ask God for some help," Teddy says.

  I study him a moment. "You told me you don't believe in God."

  "I don't," he says. "But you do. And right now, that's what matters."

  Except right now I want to tell him I might not believe. I mean, if God loves all the little children, what's up with giving Drew parents like Rusty and Jayne? They're supposed to love and take care of her, not act like their lives are way more important. And what about my mom? I could tell Teddy how often I've begged God to heal her—and that's not happening.