by Dalya Moon
He hadn't come by to see me at all. It was Monday, and he'd come in to have his same old breakfast—brown toast, crispy bacon, and poached eggs—and he wanted to quietly work on his crossword puzzle.
He didn't want me any more than my mother wanted her family.
I stood, pulled the notepad out of my mini-apron, and wrote the following:
MARC IS A TOTAL DICK!
I smiled sweetly. “Shall I put in your regular with the kitchen, or do you want to hear the daily special?”
“I'm not really a daily special kinda guy,” he said.
“No, you sure aren't.”
As I walked away, he was already pondering his crossword puzzle.
Somehow, I got through the first half of my shift. When I took a meal break, sitting at the back window to eat my bagel and scrambled eggs, Toph started talking to Donny about some girl he'd met at a concert.
“She was so fake,” Toph said. “She must have used spray tan. There's no way you'd get that tanned in Colorado.”
“You have to watch out,” Donny said as he adjusted the sweatband he'd worn that day. Summer was coming and the kitchen had been getting hot, even on drizzly-weather days. Donny waved his spatula and said, “You have to get a good look at them under the bright light.”
“What do you mean them?” I demanded from my seat on the bench. “Women are not some enemy camp, trying to trick you with our womanly wiles. We're people. We have feelings.”
“Too many feelings,” Toph said.
Donny, who was not quite old enough to be Toph's parent, patted him on the shoulder in a fatherly way. “Easy now. Just because you only have two prevailing emotions doesn't mean other humans aren't more complex.”
Toph, apparently missing the insult, laughed at Donny's comment.
“Perry, what do you think?” Donny asked. “Do you have any girlfriends who might take our friend's virginity for him? You know, teach him the ways of the mysterious female.”
“You guys. I can't even lose my virginity.”
Donny clapped his hands together with glee. “Problem solved! Two birds, one stone. Uh, two eggs, over easy. Two sausages, ready to serve. Or, one sausage and one … taco?”
I put down the second half of my bagel, my appetite gone. “Enough, Donny. I'm picking up on what you're throwing down. No more metaphors.”
Toph, looking as hopeful as a little boy who's just seen the giant teddy bears at a carnival, grinned at me.
“Not gonna happen,” I said. When Toph caved in on himself with disappointment, I added, “Only because it would be weird with us working together. You know. I've seen you work with your hands and I'm sure you'll be a very skilled lover for someone … some day.”
I scraped off my plate and put my dishes on the dishwasher rack, feeling Toph's undressing gaze on me. I stuck out my chest, enjoying the sensation of being wanted, even if it was just Toph.
When I got back out front to relieve Ginger for her break, I was still thinking about Donny's suggestion. You might even say I was considering it. Toph always smelled clean, like soap, and since he'd shaved off that scraggly goatee, he wasn't so bad to look at.
Thinking about bedding my co-worker certainly took my mind off my family problems. He wanted to have the experience as much as I did, so it would solve two problems at once.
One thing held me back from saying anything to Toph, though. Well, two, if you include his ridiculous name.
I couldn't shake the mental image of my other co-worker, Ginger, having one night in a hotel room with another guy, just to see what it was like, and then falling in love with him.
I'd heard of girls getting attached to guys because of all the different hormones that fluctuate after intimacy, and I didn't want to accidentally fall in love with Toph.
When I got home from my shift, the house felt ancient and lifeless.
Everything was exactly where I'd left it, including my note on the table. On the way home, I'd stopped to pick up a few items I'd forgotten to buy on Friday, and it was already half-past four. My brother should have been home from school and my father from work.
Instead, I had a feeling they hadn't even been home the night before. The kitchen was perfectly clean, as I'd left it, with no cereal bowls anywhere, not even in the empty dishwasher.
I ran around looking for my phone, to call them. I couldn't find it anywhere, and worse, couldn't remember where I'd used it last. I picked up the land line and dialed my number, listening for a ring—I'd set it up so the land line always made a ringtone, extra-loud, specifically for these situations—but I heard nothing. The battery must have died.
Next, I would have called my father's cell, but I couldn't remember the phone number. Nor could I remember my brother's. Or my mom's. Or the number of anyone who would be remotely useful.
My mother had probably mentioned a hundred times that we needed to print out all the numbers and tape them up somewhere in case of emergency, but we'd never gotten around to it.
With no numbers, no cell phone, and no sign of my family, I teetered on the brink of panic. And by teetered on the brink, I mean I sat on the floor and hugged my knees while talking to myself. If other people had been there, and we were in an old-timey movie, some dude would have had to slap me across the face to calm me down.
With no one else to do it for me, I patted my hands on my cheeks until I felt better. This triggered a memory, of a beautiful Indian woman who'd done a workshop with me and Mom, for some wackadoodle self-help therapy. She'd given us some exercises, and they came back to me in pieces.
I began tapping my arm with one hand, lightly tapping from the wrist to the elbow and back down again. “This is my skin,” I said out loud.
I moved on to the other arm, tapping up and down and repeating the mantra that I was in my skin, in my body. My mind calmed enough for me to remember the name of what I was doing: EFT, or Emotional Freedom Technique. My arms were feeling tender from all the smacking, and I had to stop doing the tapping so I could remember what I was all worked up about.
My father and brother were missing.
A friend. I needed a friend to help me figure out where my father and brother were.
I grabbed my jacket from its hook by the doorway and pulled everything out of the pockets, looking for a phone number.
I still had the business card Marc had given me before he came over for dinner. I also had a card Sunshine had given me, with her home phone number, which was also Cooper's number.
Marc was smart, on his way to becoming an engineer. He would be able to think like my father, and thus help me find my father. I grabbed the cordless phone from the hallway and pressed the first few digits of his phone number.
In my mind, I saw him glance at his crossword puzzle, uninterested in my problems. I canceled the call.
I didn't need an engineer so much as I needed a friend. Haylee and Andrew would have been great, and while I didn't have their number, I could go to their apartment.
There was another option, though.
Holding the second business card in one damp hand, I phoned the Cooper residence. Sunshine answered. My mind cut to black and I couldn't remember Cooper's first name for a few seconds, so I asked if her brother was there.
She said, “Perry?”
“Hey Sunshine,” I said. “My little brother's missing and I need some help.” I started to say something else, about my Uncle Jeff's instability and everything being my fault, but it came out as blubbering.
“Hang on,” she said.
I held the phone to my ear with my shoulder and tapped my fingers on my arm until she came back on the line, saying she and her brother were both going to come over and help.
Chapter 23
While I waited for Sunshine and Cooper to show up, I checked my dad's and my brother's computers, but found no hints about where they might be.
I grabbed my laptop and posted emergency messages on my Facebook wall and my brother's, asking if friends had seen either my dad or my brother
, to call the home phone number. We never gave our number out, because of my mother, but I posted the phone number, along with a note that I didn't have my cell phone on me.
You're being silly, I told myself. They're just at Uncle Jeff's.
Uncle Jeff's seemed like a logical place to look.
But first, I needed to call Mom and let her know.
I opened the emails from my mother and found a dozen different phone numbers for various hotels and studios she would be at some days, some times. I couldn't figure out which place she'd be at on that particular day, but did it matter? She was in LA, what was she going to do from there?
I sent her an email that would get her attention.
Subject: Emergency, 911, I can't find Dad or Garnet
Email: Mom, I've lost my phone and Dad and Garnet didn't come home last night. I don't know where they are and I'm worried sick and have no phone numbers. You were right about printing out a phone list for emergencies. I'm sorry I didn't do that. I'm sorry about everything. Can you try phoning them and tell them to call the house ASAP?
I then typed something snarky about her finding time in her busy schedule between making out with random dudes, but I deleted that part and sent the email without the hate.
The doorbell rang, and I raced down the stairs. When I opened the door and saw Sunshine and Cooper standing there, it felt almost as good as if it had been my dad and brother. I threw myself into Cooper's arms. He rubbed my back and told me everything was going to be okay.
Sunshine had a notepad and pen in one hand, and an iPad in the other. She flashed me a web page that looked like an official government site. “We're supposed to call the police immediately if the missing person is a child, or if they're suicidal.”
“I don't think they're either,” I said. “Garnet's fifteen, so, I don't know.”
Softly, Cooper said, “What about your dad? He saw those photos of your mom, right? Marc told me about that.”
“My dad's weird, but he's not suicidal. He takes pills for anxiety, but not depression. I think.”
Cooper and Sunshine exchanged a worried look.
“Can we just drive to my uncle's place?” I asked. “If they're not there, we'll call the police.”
We walked over to Cooper's car, where Sunshine squeezed into the back seat and let me take the front.
I didn't know my uncle's exact address, but I named the cross streets, in New Westminster, which was east of Vancouver.
Cooper did a low whistle. “It's rush hour, that's going to be at least an hour.”
“It'll be fine,” Sunshine said. She rubbed me on the shoulder. “We'll be fine. Just an hour. Don't worry, we'll find them.”
Sunshine read more from the website, out loud. Much of it was rather obvious instructions, but in light of how panicked I'd been, I could understand why the RCMP had a bullet-point list telling people to first try calling the missing person on their cell phone, and to contact their friends.
The school. I should have called the school to see if Garnet had been there that day.
I told Sunshine and she looked up the phone number for the school. I called with Cooper's phone, but the school's office was closed for the day. I left them both the home number and Cooper's cell phone number.
When we were half-way to New Westminster, I swore so loud it startled Cooper. “My phone,” I said.
“You remembered where you left it?” Cooper asked.
“No, it's probably stuffed between couch cushions, or at The Whistle. It didn't grow legs and walk off. If the three of us had stayed there and searched the house, we would have found it by now and plugged it into the charger.” I rubbed my forehead on my hand, ashamed of myself for being so stupid.
“We'll do that yet,” Cooper said, reaching over to grab my hand. We were stopped at a red light, so he turned to look me in the eyes, which made me feel so much better.
My uncle's house is what a real estate advertisement would describe as a handyman's special. As in, bring your decorating ideas! Plenty of opportunities to add value!
The porch is loosely held up by a network of blackberry brambles, and the roof looks like one of those enviro-friendly green ones you see in architecture magazines, except the moss and weeds that originate in the gutters are not there on purpose.
Even though I was in a panic over my missing family, I did feel a little shame on behalf of Uncle Jeff's house, and apologized to Cooper and Sunshine.
“It's cute, like a cottage,” Sunshine said as she wiggled out of the back seat of the car.
Cooper looked up at the house, then stood on the mound in the front yard and surveyed the area. “Great location,” he said, waving a hand across the view, overlooking the Fraser River. “I would paint this.”
I approached the house, which had an aura of not just neglect, but emptiness. I banged on the door, but nobody answered, so I grabbed the spare key from on top of the door frame and unlocked the door. At least if Uncle Jeff was out, he could have been with my father and brother.
Echoing my thoughts, Cooper said, “At least the three of them are all somewhere together.”
I agreed that I was relieved to not find my uncle home, though it certainly hadn't gotten us any closer to figuring out where anyone actually was. It was a Monday, but Uncle Jeff had been on disability for years, so he couldn't have been at a job, since he didn't have one.
Cooper and Sunshine stood silently, waiting for me to decide what to do next.
“Sorry in advance for the mess,” I said, opening the door to the house. They followed me in and were polite enough to neither stare at the fast food garbage and filth nor insult my intelligence by denying the mess.
“My uncle doesn't own a computer,” I said, talking it through. “So we can't check that, but maybe he's smarter than my family and has a list of phone numbers somewhere.”
“We'll find it,” Cooper said, already opening cupboard doors and drawers. Sunshine said she would go check the rest of the house and use the washroom.
“I wish I could check the phone messages at my house,” I said to Cooper. “But I don't know the password to get them from somewhere else, because we just dial star-nine-eight from the home phone.”
Cooper's eyes widened and I gasped, then both of us reached for my uncle's phone. He beat me to it, and handed the cordless phone to me.
I dialed the code, and sure enough, I accessed my uncle's phone messages. The first one was a saved message, and it was incomprehensible, just giggling and babbling. Probably one of his train-wreck girlfriends, I thought. The next one was from my father:
“Jeff. It's your brother-in-law, Dale. Have you heard from Peridot? I can't seem to locate her and I'm worried she's done something strange. Call me immediately.”
He didn't leave his phone number, and the next two messages were from the neighbor, asking Uncle Jeff not to water their flower beds or lawn, whatever that meant.
My uncle's phone didn't have call display, and when I dialed star-six-nine for the last number called, it was a pay phone.
I hung up and turned to Cooper, who was clearing some empty beer cans into a shopping bag. “Making myself useful,” he said. “Any clues?”
“Ironically, my father left a message, and he was worried about not being able to locate me.” I thought over the last day's events. “Maybe he was home last night after all.” I put my face in my hands. “I'm so sorry to put you two through all of this. I'm such an idiot.”
Cooper pulled my hands down and held them. “There's nothing wrong with you caring about your family.”
“I guess we go home and I find my cell phone before my father calls the cops.” I called the house, in case he was there waiting for me, but there was no answer.
“Well, you have to eat.” He grinned. “I know a good place.”
“Of course you do,” I said.
I leaned back against the kitchen counter, feeling slightly more relaxed after hearing my father's voice.
Cooper looked down at my le
gs. “You're wearing those crochet-looking leg things again, just like when we had dinner at the Greek place for our first date.”
“Oh, are we dating?”
“Some people think we are,” he said.
Sunshine hadn't returned from the bathroom yet, and I was glad to have the time with Cooper. I reached up and touched his spiky blond hair.
He caught my hand and kissed me on the wrist, which was so hot and romantic at once that I nearly died on the spot.
I was about to ask him why he'd been so cool to me after the night of the drawing class when our attention was drawn by the sound of gravel under tires in the front yard.
Sunshine came out of the bathroom and the three of us ran to the front window in time to see a beat-up old truck park on the driveway, and then a slim fifteen-year-old boy step out from the driver's side.
I ran out the front door and collided with my brother, hugging him while alternately kissing his cheek and berating him for giving me a scare on top of driving without a driver's license.
My uncle staggered a couple of steps toward the house. “Burglars!” he yelled. “I'll shoot you!” He staggered a few more steps.
Sunshine said, “Hey, you must be Uncle Jeff. We're here with Perry.”
“You're not Perry!” he shouted.
Sunshine pointed at me. “She's right there.”
Uncle Jeff turned slowly and nearly fell over when he saw me with my brother.
“Seein' things!” he yelled.
Garnet said, “He's drunk.”
“No kidding,” I said.
My uncle muttered something about watering the neighbor's lawn and began taking a wee on the flowers next door.
“I'm so sorry,” I said to Sunshine and Cooper, who were struggling to keep their faces straight.
Cooper, who had met my brother briefly at our house, shook Garnet's hand and introduced Sunshine. The sky glowed in red and gold over the Fraser River, and it was actually a nice little moment, until my uncle, still watering the neighbor's flowers, started farting, apologizing, and farting again.
I turned to my brother and said, “Has he been drunk the whole time you've been here? You were supposed to come home Sunday night, why didn't you?”
