Runaway Girls

by Skylar Finn

  Daniel wouldn’t care. He couldn’t care less about what she did. The only reason she was stuck here now, going to his stupid construction site, was because her mom couldn’t pick her up from school, and he got stuck with her. She knew he would much rather be spending all his time with Katy.

  From the back of the restaurant, he watched her. Her pensive, moody expression as she looked out the window. He sensed how she felt ignored. Oppressed by her surroundings. She was special, this one.

  There was no doubt about that.

  Brittany told him all about her friends. Her friends, school, her dissatisfying home life and humdrum, circular existence. It was the friends that interested him. They sounded a great deal like her. As if she’d chosen them not merely for proximity or common interest, but for the deeper longings and resentments they all shared.

  Crystal Deakins waited for Brittany after last period in the faculty parking lot, smoking cigarettes. That in and of itself told him all he needed to know about her. Not even the student parking lot, which was certainly out-of-bounds, but the faculty parking lot. She was a risk-taker. She liked tempting fate and thumbing her nose at authority, asking to get caught out of bounds. He liked that about her.

  Crystal applied her rebellion in powders and dyes: on her face, in her hair. She pierced things and flashed skin just to declare to the world that she had every intention of defying its orders, what it thought of her, asked of her. It was a prosaic means of expression. There was nothing particularly individualized about it when so many other girls chose the same form of rebellion. But if Crystal was the only one at her school who did it, then in her mind she was the only girl in the world with that style.

  Always it was a shield to cover up someone who felt vulnerable and so acted tough in order to mask that vulnerability. It couldn’t have been more apparent if she’d hung a sign around her neck. It was ironic, but she would be the easiest to hypnotize. She was so desperate for attention, for compliments and praise.

  As much as he desired both Brittany and her best friend, there was just one more girl who fascinated him beyond the rest. Even more than Brittany, and certainly more than Crystal.

  Her name was Dana.

  22

  A Girl Like Dana

  He had a rule: a girl with a happy home life and a good family must never be taken. She was already happy, and any alternative would seem like misery. And if the family was good, they did not need to be punished.

  He was disappointed—when he followed Dana’s family—to find that they seemed like the perfect studio portrait image of a family. Her mother went to the grocery store and shopped for healthy food to make for her family. She picked Dana up from school and from dance practice. Her father dropped her off and picked her up from work. She had three little brothers who played sports and were boy scouts. There was a rambunctious golden retriever named Morris who frolicked with all four kids in the front yard. It was nauseating.

  For the first time ever, he considered breaking his rule. But what was the point of having rules if one could so easily break them whenever it felt convenient? So he continued to follow them.

  By the end of the week, he was ready to call it quits. To throw in the proverbial towel, as it were. But a last-minute impulse convinced him to follow Dana’s mother—just one more time.

  After her stops at the grocery store, the post office, the florist, Dana’s mother made just one more stop. She stopped at April Deakins’ house to buy meth from her boyfriend, Randall. He could hardly contain his glee. This perfect suburban housewife was getting cranked on crystal, probably just to keep up with the laundry of five other people—plus her own.

  That officially landed her in the punishment category.

  But Dana had been a tough nut to crack. She was rarely unsupervised. And while Crystal had been compromised by her jealousy of Brittany, talking to a boy while Crystal went ignored, Dana seemed, if anything, afraid of boys. It was hard to know how to approach someone like that.

  Initially, he considered pretending to be a girl. Maybe Dana wanted an older friend, a mentor, a big sister of sorts. Wasn’t she the only girl in a family of boys? But he quickly dispensed of this idea. He had never pretended to be anything other than a girl’s fantasy of what she thought the perfect boyfriend would be like. He felt certain his awkward machinations masquerading as a high school girl would be immediately exposed. They were young, not stupid.

  But Dana did have one weakness, one point of vulnerability—she was deeply obsessed with a boy band from South Korea. A quick hack into her computer revealed this much. She wrote fan fiction and talked about them on her YouTube channel. She was actively involved with a group of similarly minded teenage girls online who routinely discussed their grooming habits, likes, dislikes, and whether or not they had girlfriends.

  While he was pretty sure that draconian record companies routinely castrated such cash cows so that they could never grow old or exhibit a will of their own, Dana didn’t know that. He reconsidered pretending to be a teenage girl and joined their group as Poppy. Poppy not only knew all about the band but was from a rich family who paid for her to fly all the way to Seoul for her sixteenth birthday and meet the dazzling K-Pop trio in person. She even had contact information for the lead singer (!!!) who liked her so much, he insisted that they remain in touch.

  It had been a job believably introducing this unlikely premise, but he’d found over time that believability hinged largely on a person’s desire to believe. Dana, left out in the cold by her boy-crazy friend’s boy-crazy new best friend, liked the idea of a boy more than the reality of one. Some far-off impossible prince she would never have to see physically, or meet was a different story.

  Poppy didn’t like the other girls in the group, except for Dana. She told Dana as much one night and said that Park Sangsoon would really like her. She would never ever say this to the other girls, so please don’t mention it because they’d all be horribly jealous and hate her forever, but she wanted to know if Dana wanted to speak to him directly.

  Of course, she did. Dana was thrilled. She finally had a secret from Brittany and Crystal, who’d been keeping secrets from her for months now. She’d confided as much in Poppy. And now she finally had a secret boyfriend (sort of) of her very own.

  The likelihood of J-14 appearing in Dana’s small Ohio River valley town was virtually nil. They might, theoretically, perform in Pittsburgh, but that was the kind of thing that could easily be checked and involved parent chaperones and all sorts of other headaches that would make it impossible to get her alone. Even if he did, she would be terrified. Dana wasn’t the sort of girl who would be intrigued upon encountering a grown man in place of the adolescent Korean pop star she’d been envisioning.

  So he would have to come up with something else. He decided to tell her they were playing a secret show in a city close to hers, and while he knew that her strict mother would never allow her to attend—did not, in fact, allow her to listen to anything other than gospel music and show tunes—he would send a gift for her by messenger.

  He spent a ridiculous amount of money on a silk embroidered bomber jacket which he forged with the signatures of the band, wrapped it up in a gold box with a silver ribbon, and then showed up at her work on a day he knew that both Brittany and Crystal had called out to get high in the woods behind the school.

  Predictably, she was so entranced with her gift, she barely registered his presence, which he’d been banking on. When she did, it was to inundate him with questions about Park Sangsoon: what was he like? Was he as nice in person as he was in his interviews?

  He told her everything she wanted to hear, then contrived of a second story. This would be what drew her away—from her life, her world, and her dreadfully corrupt parents. He had just the story in mind. The plot could have been lifted directly from a YA novel about a teenage girl who meets and falls in love with a rich and famous celebrity who spirits her away from her small town.

  Park Sangsoon longed to experi
ence life as an ordinary teenager. As much as he enjoyed flying all over the world, performing, and meeting his fans, he longed to take a girl out for a movie at the mall like a normal kid would. He longed, in short, to meet an ordinary girl-next-door—a girl like Dana—who could give him exactly that.

  Dana was so riveted by this tale—her head tilted, her eyes wide, her attention fixed on him—that he almost felt guilty. Almost, but not really. She had been incredibly challenging for him to isolate and persuade, and now that he had finally managed it, watching the dominos fall proved incredibly satisfying.

  If Park Sangsoon snuck out, he proposed, would she be willing to show him how an American teenager lived? Would she take him to see the sights? To give him an experience, just for one day, that he could take back with him to his impossibly glamorous life and carry in his heart forever and ever?

  Of course, she would.

  And he, the dutiful assistant and American emissary of one of the most successful South Korean boy bands of all time, would be the one to unite them.

  The Gas and Oil Festival normally occurred during September, but due to a previously unimaginable public health crisis during an otherwise ordinary flu season, it had gotten postponed until March. As winter gave way to early spring, the last of the snow melted and the birds began to return to the newly budding trees, the fairgrounds erected its rides and midways, tents and booths.

  Much of middle America did not have access to the massive malls with multiplexes, historical museums, and the hustle and bustle that a large city offered. But they had a lockdown on festivals and fairs that no city could hold a candle to, and the Gas and Oil Festival would be no different.

  Brittany and Crystal, had they not been held captive by a madman in a basement, would have planned for weeks what outfits to wear and what boys to flirt with. Dana wouldn’t have even bothered with the festival without Brittany and Crystal there—if it hadn’t been for the imminent appearance of Park Sangsoon from J-14.

  She spent hours in front of the mirror, deciding what outfit to wear. Nothing seemed suitable, though she did have a denim jacket she liked that she’d borrowed from Brittany. She couldn’t do anything too crazy with her hair or makeup, or her parents would never let her leave the house. Just a little bit of eyeliner and clear lip gloss. She could always sneak more makeup along in her purse.

  She felt guilty about it, of course. She should have been going to the festival with her two best friends. Instead, no one knew where they were, what they were doing, who had them, or if they ran away—or if they were even still alive.

  At the same time, in a deep, dark place, she would never acknowledge to anyone, not even to herself: there was a small part of Dana that enjoyed the attention conferred upon her in the wake of her friends’ disappearance. She had first noticed it at the fish fry she had organized, and then in a dozen other small ways at school and at home, ever since.

  At home: her parents let her off chore duty and made her little brothers do stuff like the dishes and vacuum—all the “girl” chores as they normally put them—in addition to yard work and taking out the trash. Her mother brewed her chamomile tea and rubbed her back before bed. Her father took her all the way to Wheeling to a bookstore across from the fish market and let her browse for hours before buying her all the books she wanted and two fish sandwiches and fries to eat in the car on the way home.

  At school: her teachers pulled her aside after class and asked, concerned if she needed more time on her assignments. Tom Haines, a football player and an upperclassman, punched her lightly and affectionately on the arm and told her to “hang in there, kid.” Jenny Lundgren, the most popular girl in school, invited her to sit at her lunch table with the charitable, beatific smile of Mother Teresa. The girls there asked in eager whispers if it was true that both Brittany and Crystal were sleeping with a child predator they met on the Internet and had then run away with.

  It was more attention than Dana had ever gotten in her entire life, especially her recent life of being completely overshadowed by Brittany and Crystal. The small but terrible part of her sometimes whispered in her ear, What if they come back?

  She’d be happy, of course. She thought it defiantly, beating back the voice and its uncharitable and unkind connotations. She’d be the happiest she’d ever felt, having her two best friends in the world back. Unsafe and untouched.

  Would you really? whispered the voice. And she knew, deep down, that there was part of her that would be thrilled to see Brittany—and dismayed to see Crystal. The spotlight would swing back to them, with Dana forgotten in the corner. Everything would go right back to the way it had been before. And after this taste of the good life, Dana didn’t think she could stand it.

  Crystal and Brittany would go back to treating her like the third wheel. They would be even closer as a result of their time being kidnapped together. They would have all kinds of secrets together that only kidnapped girls know—that only kidnapped girls could relate to. Dana couldn’t imagine the kind of inside jokes that would form, things she’d always be on the outside of and couldn’t possibly understand.

  Maybe they were even having fun. Maybe he was like the perfect boyfriend and let them watch whatever shows and movies they wanted to watch on Netflix and fed them ice cream all day long. Maybe the two would reminisce about the experience. Leaving her out in the cold yet again. She shuddered, just thinking about it.

  But that hadn’t happened yet; she reminded herself. Right now, it was all about Dana. Dana, who for the first time in her life, had a date. It was one she was determined to enjoy, in spite of everything else that had happened.

  Brittany and Crystal would have wanted it that way.

  “Help!” screamed Crystal at the top of her lungs. “Help!” It was a pitiful, drawn-out wail that Brittany could hear even from around the corner and down the hall, and it chilled her in a way nothing yet had. Hearing Crystal afraid seemed like they might truly die. Crystal was never afraid. Crystal was fearless.

  In truth, Crystal was the most frightened person in the world. Certainly, the most scared person she knew. It was why she acted so sassy and so tough to compensate. To hide it. Even little scaredy-cat Dana had more balls than Crystal, she thought bitterly.

  And why shouldn’t she? She had the biggest safety net in the world suspended beneath the tightrope of adolescence they all walked across on wobbly colt legs. She had parents and a family who loved her. A sober one, what a lark that must have been. (Even Brittany’s picture-perfect little family was far from sober.) She even had a golden retriever. It was like something out of a TV show. A completely nauseating one.

  Crystal collapsed onto the floor in a fit of despair. There was a threadbare rug laid out across the hard cement. Like it was some kind of consolation prize for being locked in a basement by some total weirdo. Who knew what he planned to do when he came back? He probably drugged the food he left her under the door.

  The food. Her stomach rumbled loudly. She could see the sealed container of vanilla pudding on it like he knew it was her favorite somehow. It was sealed, right? Like the cases of bottled water in the corner. There was no way he could have messed with something that was sealed.

  She hadn’t responded when he’d slid it through the slot in the door, and so he’d left it there. Said he’d be back for it later. He sounded pleasant enough. The same way he had outside of the gas station.

  She crawled over to the tray. There was a bowl of mac and cheese as well as mashed potatoes that she wanted desperately to eat. She had never felt so hungry in her life. At home, there were always Pop-Tarts in the cupboard and Snickers in the fridge. She’d never had to go without food before, even if it was only a few hours in between meals.

  Before she could stop herself, she started pouring the bowl of mashed potatoes directly into her mouth. It was as if she’d never eaten food before and was just now tasting it for the first time, they were that good. Suddenly she stopped, gagging. There was something hard and wooden in her mo
uth, something that shouldn’t have been in a bowl of mashed potatoes.

  What if it was a knife or something? She spat the object out into her palm and looked at it, puzzled. A pencil? Was this some kind of sick joke?

  Mystified, Crystal looked through the rest of the tray. She lifted the bowl of mac and cheese off and examined it to see if there was paper or something for her to draw on. But if he’d given her the pencil for her amusement, why hide it in a bowl of mashed potatoes?

  The hair rose on the back of her neck. She heard a very distant shout from someplace far away. It sounded like her name. Brittany.

  Crystal flipped over the tray. There, in the middle, she saw it. A very small piece of paper folded up and stuck to the bottom with the tiniest piece of gum.

  23

  Plans

  “Harper,” I said thoughtfully as we sat in the car in front of Barista’s Pub, the engine idling and expelling clouds from the tailpipe. “I’m not entirely satisfied with something.”

  “What’s that?” he asked, glancing at his mirrors before backing out of the spot.

  “Dana Haskell,” I said.

  “Ah,” he said. “The missing thread.”

  “I feel like she’s been evasive in our conversations with her,” I said. “I feel like she knows more than she’s letting on.”

  “I always feel that way when I have to interview a teenage girl,” he said. “I can’t imagine having one.”

  “They’re like spies,” I said. “They’re experts at secret-keeping.”

  He glanced at the dash. “She should just be getting to work now,” he said. “You want to try talking to her again?”

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  As we drove over the bridge and the river, passing the office that now sat empty, it began to rain in earnest. It had been raining steadily since the night before. A vaporous mist hung over the river, and an eerie fog was forming.