Do You Know the Monkey Man?: A Novel

by Dori Hillestad Butler

  “I’ll have a miserable time,” Angela argued. “But so will our father and what’s-her-name, his new wife. We’ll all get to be miserable together. Let’s talk about something else. How’s your forehead? Does it hurt a lot?”

  “No, it’s okay. But guess what? I talked to my mom about all those articles and stuff we found in the basement this morning.” I told Angela what my mom had said about Sarah’s body not being found.

  “That’s bizarre,” Angela said.

  “Yeah,” I said glumly. “But my mom says there’s no way Sarah could still be alive.”

  “Well, of course not,” Angela said. “That quarry’s pretty deep.”

  “I know,” I said with a heavy sigh.

  Angela was right. I knew in my head that there was no way Sarah could still be alive. But somewhere way down deep in my heart was a little voice that wanted to believe there was at least a tiny possibility my sister had somehow survived.

  Chapter Seven

  Someone was calling me. “S-a-a-am…S-a-a-am …”

  It was dark out. Really dark, and cold, too. About the only things I could see were the little white puffs of air I was making every time I breathed out.

  “S-a-a-am …”

  I shivered. “Sarah? Is that you?”

  “Yes. Sa-a-am, come here …” The voice trailed away.

  “Where are you?” I didn’t know where I was, much less where she was. I knew I was on some dirt path, surrounded by trees. I could hear water in the distance. But I didn’t know where we were and I couldn’t see anything.

  “Please, Sam …”

  “I’m trying!” I opened my eyes as wide as they would go and groped around in the darkness, terrified I would run into something. “It’s too dark. Where are you?”

  “I’m right he-eere …”

  Where? I tried to follow her voice, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

  “Are you by the water?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Hang on, Sarah. I’m coming!” I started running, my bare feet slapping against the hard ground. There were sharp rocks and sticks in my path, but my sister needed me. I had to keep going.

  Then my foot caught the bottom of my long nightgown. My hands and knees hit the ground. Hard.

  Tears stung my eyes. “Where are you?” I cried, pounding my fists into the dirt.

  “I told you, I’m right here! Hurry, Sam! Hurry!”

  I clambered to my feet. I didn’t know which way to go.

  “Where?” I cried desperately. “Where are you?”

  “Over here …”

  The trees parted and all of a sudden I found myself at the edge of a lake. Finally I saw her: My sister. She was my age and she had on a long white nightgown exactly like mine. Her white-blond hair fanned out around her shoulders. She looked exactly like me.

  She was about a hundred feet out, standing—no, floating—just above the water. She reached out her hand for me. “Come with me, Sam.”

  But I couldn’t go with her. I couldn’t stand on top of the water like she could. If I tried, I would surely drown. “No, you come over here,” I called to her.

  “I can’t, Sa-a-am. You have to come to me …” She was drifting further away.

  “No,” I cried. “Don’t go! Don’t leave me here!”

  “Come with me, Sa-a-am…ple-e-ease …” She was almost gone.

  “Sarah! Sarah!” I screamed.

  “Sam?” I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  I turned and a bright light shone in my face. I covered my eyes with my hands. But my hands were…wet. So were my knees.

  “Samantha? Are you all right?” someone asked.

  I slowly lowered my hands. I was resting on my knees. In a body of water. But it wasn’t a lake, it was a pool. A little kid’s inflatable backyard pool. And the light in my face was a back porch light.

  “Oh my goodness, what are you doing, Sam?” My mom had hold of my arm.

  “Is she all right, Suzanne?” Mrs. Sandvick called from her back porch.

  By then it was all starting to make sense. I was in the Sandvicks’s yard next door. This was their inflatable pool.

  How incredibly embarrassing.

  I wasn’t wearing any long, white nightgown. Instead I had on my usual navy nightshirt that barely covered my butt. I leapt away from both the pool and my mother and tried to pull my nightshirt down a little farther, but it didn’t stretch as far as I wanted it to. Luckily at this time of night the only people up were me, my mom, and Mrs. Sandvick. And Mrs. Sandvick’s eyes probably weren’t real good.

  “She’s fine, Mrs. Sandvick, thanks.” Mom waved at our neighbor. “She just had a bad dream and sleepwalked out here.”

  A bad dream? It was all just a dream? Sarah wasn’t calling me?

  Of course she wasn’t. She drowned ten years ago.

  But it had all seemed so real.

  “Come on, Sam.” Mom put her arm around me and led me back to our house.

  “Get some sleep, Suzanne,” Mrs. Sandvick called. “You too, Sam.”

  Mom held the back door for me. “You haven’t sleepwalked in years, honey,” she said as I stepped into our kitchen.

  Huh? “I used to sleepwalk?” I didn’t know that.

  “Back when you were little,” she told me. “It usually happened when you were upset about something. Are you upset about…you know, what we talked about earlier?”

  I turned away. “No, no. I’m not upset,” I said. I went to the cabinet and reached for a glass.

  “Good,” Mom said, as I poured myself a glass of water. “Because there’s no reason you should be. All that happened a long time ago.”

  “I know,” I said. But if it was so long ago, why did the pain feel so fresh?

  “Angela! Sam!” Coral waved to us.

  It was Tuesday afternoon and Angela and I had decided to go to the water park.

  Dodging towels and moms and little kids, we made our way around the splash pool and found a spot over by Coral and some other girls we knew from school. They had claimed a group of lounge chairs by the deep pool, in perfect view of Kyle Jenkins, a cute sophomore who was lifeguarding today.

  There weren’t any chairs left, so Angela and I spread out our towels on the ground next to Tara Huntley and Melissa Holt. We all slathered suntan lotion on each other’s backs and combed our hair and talked. Angela told everyone about her upcoming trip to visit her father. Coral complained about her mom. And for the zillionth time, Melissa repeated the story of her big breakup with Dylan Kane. The girl was never going to get over it.

  While Melissa was talking I noticed a little girl in the pool. She had on a one-piece swimming suit with a big pink fish on her stomach. And a memory came to me, clear as anything. Sarah had a swimsuit with a big pink fish on it. I had one just like it, only my fish was yellow, and I liked hers better—

  “Earth to Sam.” Coral waved her hand in front of my face.

  I blinked. My friends were all staring at me.

  “What?” I tucked my hair behind my ear.

  Melissa shifted on her towel and rolled her eyes like it was a big deal for her to repeat herself. “I said, I heard your mom’s getting married.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Next month.” The little girl with the fish suit climbed out of the pool, then cannonballed back in with a big splash.

  “Do you get to be in the wedding?” Melissa asked.

  “Yup.”

  “You are so lucky!” Melissa squealed.

  “And Bob is really nice,” Angela put in.

  I pulled my knees up to my chest. “Bob is nice.” I couldn’t argue with that. “But …” They wouldn’t understand.

  “You wish you knew where your father was,” Angela said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Why don’t you know where your father is?” Coral asked. Her parents were actually still married to each other. In her world, parents didn’t get divorced. And dads didn’t go years and years without seeing their kids.

>   “He left when my parents got divorced,” I said. “My mom has no idea where he is. And neither does anyone else.”

  “Well, people don’t just disappear,” Coral said. “I bet you could find him if you tried.”

  “She’s tried,” Angela said in a tired voice. “Believe me, she’s tried.”

  “I’ve tried everything—the Internet, the library, all of our neighbors.”

  “She even tried a psychic!” Angela blurted out.

  I glared at her. Had it ever occurred to Angela that maybe I didn’t want people knowing about that?

  “A psychic?” Melissa squealed. “Oooh! What was that like?”

  I shrugged. “It was okay.”

  “What about a private detective?” Coral suggested.

  “I can’t afford a private detective,” I said. “And even if I could, where would I find one who’d work for a thirteen-year-old?”

  “How about online?” Coral suggested. “I bet you could find someone cheap online. And they’d never have to know you’re only thirteen.”

  Hmm. “I never thought of that.”

  “Yeah, but you have to be careful,” Angela said. “There are a lot of scams online.”

  “Plus you’d probably need a credit card to pay for it,” Melissa put in.

  “I have a credit card,” I said.

  “You have a credit card?” Melissa raised an eyebrow.

  “Well, sort of. My mom got me a debit card a few months ago and told me I could use it for an emergency.”

  “This isn’t an emergency,” Angela said.

  It was as far as I was concerned. Okay, maybe it wasn’t the kind of emergency my mom had in mind. But if that card would help me find my dad, I was willing to use it.

  I turned to Coral. “How do you find a detective online?”

  “We get ads for them all the time in our junk e-mail. Don’t you?”

  “I don’t think so. Could we go over to your house and look at those ads? See if we can find someone to hire?”

  Coral squinted at me. “Right now?”

  I glanced at my watch. “Sure. We don’t have softball for almost two hours.”

  “You’re serious about this?” Angela asked. “Don’t you think you’re getting a little carried away? How are you going to explain the charge to your mom when she sees her bank statement?”

  I shrugged. “I’ll worry about that when the time comes.”

  “Well, count me out,” Angela said, getting up and turning over on her towel. “Our moms talk, you know. If my mom finds out about this, I’ll probably end up in just as much trouble as you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m not going to get in trouble!”

  “Right,” Angela said.

  “I’ll pass, too,” Melissa said, stretching out on her chair. “I need to tan at least twenty minutes on this side or I’ll be uneven.”

  Coral sat up in her chair. “Well, I’m done with the rays. So if you want to come over to my house right now, I don’t mind leaving.”

  Angela shook her head with disapproval. But I didn’t see what the big deal was. My mom probably wouldn’t even notice the charge. And if she did, well, I’d pay her back.

  So Coral and I gathered up our stuff, picked up our pool passes, and biked down the street to her house.

  When we got there, her little brother and three of his friends were hunched around the computer in the family room. And her mother was using the computer in the kitchen. But there was a third computer upstairs, in Coral’s bedroom. I swear, these people had more computers than people in their family.

  “All our computers are networked, so we can still get into my dad’s e-mail files from here,” Coral said as she booted up her computer.

  She grabbed the mouse and opened the e-mail program. She clicked a couple more times and a list of e-mail messages filled the screen.

  Coral scanned the list. “Here we go.” She clicked on a line that read “Find anyone, anywhere. Guaranteed!”

  “Do you think that’s a good one?”

  Coral shrugged. “Let’s check out his website.” She double-clicked on the link and a website came up.

  “Whoa. He charges seventy-nine ninety-nine,” Coral said.

  I just about choked. “That’s a little much to put on my mom’s debit card.”

  “I think we can do better than that,” Coral said. She pulled up a search engine and typed in “find anyone.” There were thousands of matches. But Coral went right down the list, clicking from one website to another so fast she made my head spin.

  Finally she stopped. “This one looks pretty good.”

  “Hey, they even tell you how they find people.” I read the list out loud. “‘Motor vehicle registration records, voter registration records, national telephone listings, property ownership records, consumer credit reporting agencies, magazine subscription databases, pilot licenses, and more.’ This guy sounds good. Can we find out how much he charges?”

  Coral scrolled to the bottom of the page. “Nineteen ninety-nine.”

  “That’s not bad,” I said, nodding.

  “Should we go with him?” Coral asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Okay.” Coral read from the form. “First we need your e-mail address.”

  “But my mom can read all my e-mail.” I didn’t know whether she would read it, but I didn’t want to take any chances. I could just hear her if she suddenly came across an e-mail with my dad’s address in it.

  “I guess we can use my e-mail address and I can let you know when I hear something,” Coral offered. “My mom and dad never check my e-mail.”

  “Okay.” That worked for me.

  “Now we need to type in what we know about your dad. The more information we can include, the better.”

  We filled in his name and we put my address in the blank for “former address.”

  “What about birthday?” Coral asked.

  I shook my head. I didn’t even know when my dad’s birthday was. “I know he’s around thirty-three, though. My mom’s thirty-two.”

  So we counted back and figured out what year my dad had probably been born.

  “Every little bit helps,” Coral said, typing the information in. “Anything else?”

  I squinted at the choices on the screen. I had no idea what city or state my dad lived in, what his Social Security number was, whether he practiced any religion, whether he was affiliated with any groups, or anything else. The only thing left to fill in was my credit card information.

  I dug the card out of my wallet and Coral typed it in. Then she scrolled back over everything else we’d already typed in so we could double-check it. “Looks good. Should I click on ‘Submit’?” Coral asked.

  I bit my lip. There was still time to back out.

  But I wasn’t going to.

  “Click on ‘Submit,’” I said.

  Now all I had to do was wait.

  Chapter Eight

  That night I dreamed about Sarah again. This dream wasn’t as vivid. In fact, I think I was even aware I was dreaming. But I didn’t want the dream to end.

  We were here in this house and we were playing hide-and-seek. I’m not sure how old we were. Older than three, but not as old as I am now.

  “Come find me, Sam!” she called in a giggly voice.

  I searched for her in the front closet, behind the living room couch, under the kitchen table. Finally I found her in my mom’s room, crouched behind a chair. She came out laughing. “Again, Sam! Again!”

  So we did it again. I pressed my forehead against our front door and counted. “One, two, three …” When I got to twenty, I went to look for her again. It went on like that several times, with her doing all the hiding and me doing all the seeking.

  Then I said, “I want to hide this time. You count and I’ll hide. Then you can come find me.”

  Sarah tipped her head back. “Silly! You can’t hide. Everybody knows where you are. But nobody knows where I am.”

  And then I woke up.<
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  Nobody knows where I am.

  I opened my eyes and blinked a few times in the darkness. I rolled over and checked my clock. 2:14 A.M. I groaned. It was still nighttime. I hugged my stuffed monkey to my chest and tried to go back to sleep, but I was wide awake.

  I turned on my reading lamp, then leaned over the edge of my bed and slid the photo of Sarah and me out from my book.

  Nobody knows where I am.

  Things always seem kind of creepy at night when you’re alone in your room and everything’s all dark, but I couldn’t help but wonder whether my sister was somehow trying to communicate with me through my dreams. We were twins, after all. We had a connection to one another that other people didn’t have.

  I stared at the photo, looking for…I’m not sure what I was looking for, but whatever it was clearly wasn’t there.

  I lay back on my pillow and sighed. I tried to remember what it was like when Sarah was here. What it felt like to have a sister. But no matter how hard I strained my brain, all I could remember were tiny bits and pieces.

  A little glass bird that hung in the window and spun around. A humming noise in the bedroom like a fan or a humidifier. Somebody throwing up. Was that me? Or Sarah?

  I also remembered high-heeled shoes clicking on the kitchen floor and a dog barking and my mom yelling and a little kid crying…but nothing came together to form a real scene that made sense. The memories were there, though. Memories of what it was like when we were a family. I could feel them hanging there in the air, inches beyond my fingertips. I just couldn’t grab any of them. And the harder I tried, the heavier my eyelids grew.

  At some point I must have fallen asleep, because the next time I opened my eyes my bedroom was bright with sunlight. It didn’t even feel like I’d slept, but obviously I had. I sat up and rubbed my eyes.

  It was nine o’clock now. My mom was at work. Which meant Sherlock and I had the house to ourselves. I got up and went about my morning routine, but I felt off balance somehow, like something was out of place.

  Maybe it was that bump on my forehead. I lifted my bangs and peered at myself in the mirror. The purplish bump was still there, but it looked better. The swelling had gone down some.