by LS Hawker
Jade was cheered by this. “And I can’t imagine that the guy is hanging around here. You said yourself he drove away.”
“He did have out-of-state plates,” Elias said.
“Which state?” Jade said. This was new information.
“I don’t know,” Elias said. “I just know they weren’t Kansas plates.”
“What make of vehicle?” Berko said.
“A white Japanese crossover,” Elias said.
“What’s a crossover?” Olivia asked.
“It’s a cross between an SUV and a minivan,” Berko said. “Big with soccer moms and small-town abductors.”
“Not funny,” Olivia said.
But Jade laughed.
“Not that you need our permission,” Elias said, “but I’d feel better if you didn’t walk the town until after you report it to the police. Just my opinion.”
“I’m with Elias,” Berko said apologetically. “Although I’m baffled something like that happened in a little town like this.”
“You callin’ me a liar?” Jade said, putting on her Western cowboy voice.
“Naw,” Berko said, intoning John Wayne, making his hands into pistols and putting them on his hips as if ready to draw. “I’m sayin’ yer yella.”
This surprised Jade so much she let out a loud belly laugh, and Elias joined in. Olivia smiled indulgently.
Embarrassed, Berko shook out his pretend pistols and pushed his glasses up, grinning self-consciously.
Jade socked him in the shoulder. He’d always been polite and friendly, but this was the first time he’d actually joked around with her, and she felt like a dam between them had broken.
“Thanks, guys,” she said. “So if we shouldn’t walk, Olivia, would you mind if we drove around the town for a little while? I’m not ready to go back to the Compound yet. If you don’t want to, you can ride home with the guys and I’ll meet you all back at the house.”
“Oh, no you don’t, not by yourself, Miss Deathwish,” Olivia said. “All right. We can drive around for a little while, although why you want to is beyond me.” She turned to Berko and Elias. “See you at home.”
The guys got in their car and drove away.
“Thanks, O,” Jade said as she got in the driver’s seat of the blue Volt.
“You’re welcome.”
As she pulled out of the parking space, Jade noted only three cars parked on the street. In Ephesus, you always met lots of walkers on a fine evening like this one. But as she drove west down Main Street, the sidewalks were empty, the sun setting before them.
Olivia Bluetoothed her smartphone to the car’s computer system and put her music on shuffle, lots of Adele and Lady Gaga and the occasional rap song.
Jade and Olivia drove toward the cemetery in companionable silence, Jade thinking about her sister and her mother, Dan, and the families in the restaurant. One of the little girls reminded her of a younger Clementine. A by-product of having a special-needs sister was Jade constantly assessed other people’s placement on the autism spectrum, and this girl appeared to be on the high-functioning end. She was adorable, of course, reddish hair and freckles, and her father had to keep moving her different foods apart, making sure they didn’t touch.
Jade hadn’t had the opportunity to be around kids for a long time—college, then grad school, and now SiPraTech. She relished their giggles and high-pitched voices and inability to stay seated at a table for more than a few minutes at a time.
She pointed the car toward the city park next to the public swimming pool at the west end of town, where surely some teenagers would be hanging out or people walking their dogs.
Jade turned in to the park, driving past the playground, with teeter-totters, swings, a merry-go-round. No kids, no dog-walkers. She was disappointed. Of course, it was after seven o’clock on a school night. But Jade had driven through here a half dozen times at varying times of day, and it was always deserted.
She drove slowly toward the municipal swimming pool, stopped in the empty parking lot, and killed the engine. Tinny radio music—“Wide Open Spaces” by the Dixie Chicks—echoed over the cracked asphalt.
“What are we doing?” Olivia said.
“Just want to take a look,” Jade said, and exited the car.
“At what?” Olivia said, following her.
Jade kept an eye out for a white Japanese crossover, but no one was around. They walked to the white-painted cinder block locker room entrance, where a hand-written sign hung. CLOSED, which seemed weirdly ironic in contrast with the song.
They strolled around to the pool itself, enclosed behind a chain-link fence, and gazed out over the deep blue of the water. Jade hooked her fingers into the chain links. “When I was a teenager during wheat harvest, we wouldn’t finish cutting wheat until late at night, and it would be hot and dusty, and we’d be desperate to cool off. So a lot of times we’d hop the fence at my hometown pool and go skinny-dipping. Good times.”
“Just girls?” Olivia said. “Or guys and girls?”
“Guys and girls,” Jade said. “But when you’re that overheated and worn-out and covered in wheat dust, sex is the last thing on your mind.”
“On yours, maybe,” Olivia said. “But I guarantee you it wasn’t the last thing on those boys’ minds.”
That pool didn’t close until nine p.m. from the first of May through the end of September.
Jade checked her phone. It was eight-fifteen, and the sun’s light still lingered just beyond the horizon.
“You want to hop the fence after it gets dark?” Jade said. “Go swimming?”
“We’ve got a pool back at the Compound,” Olivia said.
“What’s the fun of that?”
“I see your point. But I think to really make it fun we need to include the guys.”
Jade’s face got hot, thinking about skinny-dipping with Berko and Elias. “Never mind,” she said.
“What?” Olivia said, all innocence. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about one or both of them in that way.”
Jade had, in fact. Both of them. You couldn’t help it, being in such close proximity, with hormones flying through the air. With reasonable certainty, however, she figured neither of them had given her a second thought, especially Elias, since they talked to each other like guys.
“I overheard this girl at Carnegie Mellon once tell someone I wasn’t the type of girl guys go for. I’m too big and loud and not that attractive.”
Olivia whirled on her. “Bullshit. You’re a beauty. You’re an Amazon princess warrior.”
Jade flashed on the fact that she wished Olivia had been there to say exactly those things to that nasty girl from Philadelphia.
They got back in the car and drove the residential streets, by house after house, with neat, manicured lawns, trimmed hedgerows, tall elms, sycamores, and oaks surrounding them, shading them from the relentless late-summer heat.
Jade liked driving these streets, imagining what it would be like to have one of these houses to herself instead of living on the SiPraTech grounds. But she paid no rent to live in the brand-new Compound house with all the latest comforts and amenities.
Jade drove down a street that led to a sprawling one-story building with its own playground. She parked at the curb.
“Now what are we doing?” Olivia said. “More nostalgia?”
“Just want to take a look,” Jade said.
“Come on,” Olivia said, impatient. “Let’s go home.”
“I’ll be right back,” Jade said.
She walked toward the school, remembering her enduring excitement about the first day of school every year. The elementary school building would be clean and shiny, new collages up on the bulletin boards, cardboard cutouts of apples and pencils and stacks of books.
When she got to a window, she peered into one of the classrooms. It was empty. Not just empty of people, but of signs of people. No stick-figure drawings, tempera paintings, lumpy clay ashtrays.
No desks. No chairs. This classroom m
ust not be in use. She moved on to the next one.
Same thing. No bulletin boards. No artwork. No chairs. No desks.
In each room, it was the same. No signs this building had been used in years.
Miranda must have been swept into a consolidated school district as it and other nearby farm towns shrunk.
She walked back to the car, thinking, her buzzing alarm going off again, and she combed the environs for a glimpse of the baseball-capped stranger who’d grabbed her. But there was no one.
Jade got back in the Volt. “The school’s empty,” she said as she started it up and drove.
“Dude,” Olivia said, “It’s nighttime. Of course no one’s there.”
“No,” Jade said. “It’s empty. It’s not being used.”
“Oh,” Olivia said. “That’s weird.”
“I know,” Jade said. “The kids must be bused to another town to go to school. Except that . . .”
“Except that what?”
“I’ve never seen a school bus in town.”
Olivia looked back out the windshield. “Have you been in town when buses would be running?”
Jade thought. “Guess not,” she said. But still, it bothered her. Something tickled the edge of her brain, but she couldn’t grab hold of it. Buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz . . .
She thought of the families in the restaurant, and she realized that both vehicles out front had out-of-county plates. The families didn’t live in Miranda.
Jade remembered the people she’d seen in town today, the women at the dry cleaners, the men at the gas station, and realized something strange. They were all the same age—between twenty and thirty.
In the grocery store. Women were food shopping, but no kids with them. No babies or toddlers. No children.
That was it. What was weird about this pristine, adorable little Kansas town.
She’d never seen a baby, child, or teenager.
There were no children.
No children anywhere.
Chapter Eight
This stunning sudden realization narrowed her vision for a moment as her blood pressure rose. She was conscious of every move she made, worried she’d blurt out her nonsensical thoughts.
This couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. As it usually did, her brain went into list-making mode. Possible reasons for a town without children.
But she couldn’t let her mind go there. She couldn’t. It was science fiction stuff.
Jade remembered the stacks of diapers in the grocery store, next to the Depends and sank to another level of unreality: she realized she’d never seen an elderly person in town either, which was even weirder. These little farm towns always were top-heavy with elderly populations, because the young people tended to move away to where the jobs were.
Jade needed a drink. And come to think of it, that was a great idea. If she could impel Olivia to have a couple of cocktails, what Jade had to say might not sound quite so crazy.
“Hey,” she said as she pointed the car toward downtown again. “Why don’t we go to the bar and get a beer?”
Olivia’s lips curled. “I don’t think it’s exactly my type of establishment.”
“It’s got booze,” Jade said. “That’s your type of establishment, right? And anyway, these little dives are the best kinds of bars. Really. You ought to try it.”
“Let’s just go home and drink there,” Olivia said, cajoling.
But Jade didn’t want to talk about this in front of Elias and Berko. She felt weird enough about it already. “After the day I’ve had,” she said, “the feeding tube news, and the assault, I’d like to sit in the bar and have a couple of drinks.”
“Oh, honey,” Olivia said, putting her hand on Jade’s arm. “I’m sorry. Sure. We can go have a couple of drinks. No worries.”
Jade felt only slightly guilty for pulling the mom card. Because she needed to sort this out. She had to know if she was losing her mind.
They’d talked many times about dropping by the town beer hall, but Jade realized each time, Olivia had talked her out of it. Now as they got out of the car, Olivia looped her arm through Jade’s solicitously, and Jade expected that once they’d consumed some booze, she could make her observation sound less demented.
Jade and Olivia entered the dim coolness of the tiny tavern. Olivia wrinkled her nose looking around, and Jade stifled a laugh. Some of Jade’s high school friends had been desperate to shed their small-town roots and begin a life of genteel urban living. But not Jade. She yearned for small-town life. She felt at home here, and she’d come to grips with the fact she always would.
Hank Williams yodeled on the jukebox and a couple of guys played pool against the back wall at one of the two pool tables. A lone man sat at the bar on a stool. A TV mounted high up behind the bar played the Royals game.
“What can I get you?” the bartender asked as they slid onto barstools, a few down from the seated man. The bartender was a clean-shaven, short-haired mountain with dark brown eyes, over six feet with impressive biceps stretching the sleeves of his plain white T-shirt.
“Bud Light,” Jade said.
“You got any Stella?” Olivia said.
The bartender stared at her and then opened the cooler. “We’ve got—Bud Light, Bud, Michelob, Coors, Coors Light, Miller, Miller Lite.”
Olivia wrinkled her nose again. “Give me a Michelob,” she said, but she wasn’t happy about it.
The bartender pulled two bottles out of the cooler and opened them before setting them on the bar.
“Could we get some napkins?” Olivia said.
“Oh,” he said. “Right.” He pulled two square Budweiser napkins out of a holder, set them down, and replaced the beer bottles on top of them.
Jade spun on her barstool, and the other patron side-eyed her before sliding off his stool and relocating to a table.
“Didn’t mean to chase you away,” Jade said, hoping to strike up a conversation.
He waved and took a drink of his beer, fixing his eyes on the television.
Jade turned back toward the bartender and waited for him to ring them up, but he didn’t. He just stared at the TV.
Jade glanced at Olivia. “How much?” she said to the bartender.
“How much what?” he said. “Oh. You mean—sorry. That’s—that’ll be . . .”
Jade glanced up at the chalkboard behind the taps and said, “Nine bucks, right? Four for the Bud and five for the Michelob?”
He followed her gaze and turned back to her. “Right.”
She pulled a ten out of her pocket and slid it toward him. He looked as if he didn’t know what to do with it and finally wandered over to the cash register, which he stared at for a minute before punching some buttons.
He reminded Jade of the clerk in the grocery today. Did anyone know how to run a cash register in this town?
“I’ve bartended before,” Jade said. “You want me to do that for you?”
“I don’t usually work here,” the guy said. “I’m filling in for a friend.”
Again, déjà vu from the grocery. First day on the job, filling in for a friend . . .
Jade turned. Both pool players and the guy they’d chased off were watching her and Olivia.
“Filling in for a friend,” Jade said. “Right. You want me to ring us up for you?”
“I don’t know,” Olivia said. “What if you’re accused of robbing the register or something?”
Jade turned back to the bartender who scowled at Olivia.
“You won’t do that, will you?” Jade said to the bartender. She hopped off her barstool and went around the counter, where she rang up their beers, put the ten in the drawer and pulled out a one, and handed it to the bartender. “There you go,” she said.
He stared at the one in his hand.
“That’s a tip,” Jade said.
Jade sat back down and Olivia leaned toward her and muttered, “Here’s a tip for him—get another line of work.”
Jade laughed and took
a long swallow of her Bud Light. Just what the doctor ordered on a hot, weird night.
“What’s your name?” Jade said.
“Don’t bother the poor guy,” Olivia said.
“I’m just asking his name,” Jade said. She smiled at him.
He didn’t smile back. “Steve,” he said.
“What do you normally do, Steve?” Jade said.
“I’m a—farmer,” he said.
“You got someone else planting your wheat, or you done already?”
“Yeah,” he said, turning back to the TV.
Jade cocked an eyebrow at Olivia who shrugged at her.
“Not the talkative type, I guess,” Olivia said. “Cute though.”
Through the closed door, Jade heard a car rumble by outside, no muffler, “Achilles Last Stand” by Led Zeppelin blasting at earsplitting levels. Then both sounds abruptly ceased, and the bartender focused on the door as if awaiting a battering ram. Jade laughed.
The door banged open and in walked three visibly intoxicated farmer types, in wheat-dusty jeans and boots, bringing in the scent of whiskey and man sweat with them.
“Hey!” one of them shouted, a blond with a matching mustache, his arms outstretched as if he were entering a surprise party just for him. He looked all around, ceiling to floor. “Will you look at this place! What the hell!”
The other two bellied up to the bar, both with dark hair, one with a beard and the other with a Jack Daniel’s cap.
Steve the bartender regarded them skeptically.
“Hey,” the blond shouted to Steve as he ambled around the room, squinting at the shiny new beer advertisements on the walls. “When did you all open back up?”
Steve inexplicably flicked a glance at Jade and Olivia. “What are you talking about?”
“This place was, like, boarded up. The whole freakin’ town was, practically, like just nine months ago.”
The guy turned to his friends, his elbows behind him on the bar. “Hey, back me up here,” he shouted.
“Are you going to order something?” Steve said, with an odd warning note in his voice. But Jade couldn’t help feeling excited. These were her people, and she hadn’t seen many of them in a while. All the cares of the day faded to the background for the moment.
