The Year of Disappearances

by Susan Hubbard

Page 15

  “I hate sports clues. ” Mãe set down her pen. “How about some oatmeal?”

  I made a face. The idea of thick, congealed food lacked appeal.

  Neither did the bowl of fresh fruit and yogurt she set in front of me. “Ariella,” she said. “You are beginning to worry me. ”

  I thought, I’m worrying me, too.

  “I understand how you feel,” my mother said, her voice full of concern. “It’s hard when people are talking about you, thinking you’re part of whatever happened to Mysty. ”

  And Kathleen, I thought.

  “Why aren’t you talking?” she asked.

  Speaking requires too much effort, I thought. Words have lost their meaning.

  “Sounds like teenage angst. ” Mãe went back to the crossword, trying to hide her worry.

  Part of me, I have to admit, enjoyed the experience of teenage angst. I spent days lying around the house or going down to Dashay’s mourning garden. It had been wrecked by the hurricane and patiently restored by her; she’d replanted the flowers and foliage, all in shades of black, and replaced the obelisk fountain with a new one: a statue of a woman that wept black tears. I sat on a black iron bench and contemplated death, because that’s what one is supposed to do in a garden of gloom.

  My mood lasted for nearly two weeks. Then, one afternoon in late September, when the humidity dropped and a sweet breeze blew in from the Gulf, I found a letter from my father to my mother lying unfolded on the kitchen table. I saw my name written in his handwriting. I didn’t even have to touch it to begin reading it.

  My father wrote: “I’m sorry to hear that Ariella is feeling depressed, but not surprised, given all she’s had to endure this year. The disappearance of the local girl is regrettable, not only for her family but for ours. ”

  I liked the “ours. ”

  “Since the FBI is involved in the investigation, I won’t return as I’d planned,” he wrote. “But Ari’s lessons should not be suspended indefinitely. Her current mood no doubt reflects a degree of boredom as well as the shock of recent events. My suggestion is that we begin at once to look into options for continuing her education. She’s more than ready for college, and a change of place will do her good. ”

  At that point I stopped reading. I wasn’t at all sure I was ready for college. But I let myself imagine what it might be like to begin a new life in a new place. It might be exciting. It might even be fun.

  That’s when I decided I’d had enough angst. It had succeeded only in worrying my parents and in boring me.

  Mãe was in one of the new upstairs rooms, painting its walls a pale shade of turquoise that had a hint of silver in it. She said that yes, Raphael had planned to return the following month, and that she’d warned him about the FBI interest in me.

  She handed me a paintbrush. “You can do the corners. ”

  “I like this color,” I said. “What’s it called?”

  “Indian Ocean,” she said. “A glorified name for a simple blue. ”

  “But it’s appropriate,” I said. I dipped the brush into the can, then tapped off the excess paint. “It looks like the color of an ocean far away. ”

  She smiled. “It’s good to hear your voice again. ”

  “I read my father’s letter to you,” I said, fanning the brush up the inner corner of a wall.

  “I know you did. ” She poured more paint into her roller pan.

  She’d left it there for me to read, I thought. Mothers can be devious creatures.

  For a while we painted. The windows were open, and the salty breeze mixed with the smell of fresh paint seemed to signal new beginnings.

  “Do you think I’m ready for college?” My voice sounded as uncertain as I felt.

  “I’m not sure. ” She’d finished two walls, and now began a third. “I think it might be worth a try. ”

  The next time Agent Burton called on us, Dashay was waiting for him. She met him at the gate, wearing a close-fitting dark red dress, her hair loose and wavy.

  From the kitchen window, Mãe and I watched her talk to Burton as they came slowly toward the house. “She’s flirting with him,” I said.

  “She wants him to help her find Bennett. ” Mãe’s voice carried disapproval and understanding, both. “She says she has a plan. And when Dashay has a plan, things happen. ”

  “Good things?”

  Mãe said, “Things happen fast. And some things get broken. ”

  We looked out at Dashay and Burton, and I had a sudden wild fantasy: Dashay would make Burton one of us, and then all our troubles would go away. But I knew better.

  Root sent me an e-mail later that day. Normally I received nothing personal, only newsletters about music and books. When I saw her name on my laptop’s screen, I felt repulsed, as if she herself had appeared in my room, and for the first time I questioned my reaction. Why did she bother me so? Was she part of my Jungian shadow?

  Root’s e-mail style was terse and to the point: “Vallanium capsule is a sugar pill. ”

  She signed the e-mail: “ROOT. ”

  I typed a thank-you, and added a question: “No eternal life?”

  She wrote back within an hour: “Not a chance. ”

  My father hated e-mail and telephones. He preferred letters and face-to-face conversations, modes of expression that allowed verbal sophistication and style.

  I respected the reasons for his feelings. Nonetheless, sometimes I wished he would pick up the telephone or dash off an e-mail. He was another void in my life.

  For many vampires, telepathy doesn’t work for long-distance communication—but like all traits, this one varies considerably. My mother had managed to send me messages that turned up in my dreams in Saratoga Springs. I don’t think this was possible because she had unusual telepathic powers, but because she was my mother, and the psychic relations between parents and children are known to be atypical.

  After lunch that day Mãe asked if I’d take my bike into town and buy more masking tape. The cooler weather made the prospect of a long bike ride enticing.

  I saw no one that I knew, until I was outside the pharmacy, unlocking my bike from the rack, and a woman’s voice said my name. I turned. A small woman, probably in her forties, with blond hair straggling past her shoulders, stood under a live oak tree, watching me. Mysty’s mother. I recognized her from the TV news we’d seen at Flo’s.

  “Will you come here for a minute?” Her voice was soft, with a Southern accent more pronounced than Mysty’s. “I’d like to talk with you. ”

  I wheeled my bike over to her. She wore a faded denim shirtdress and sandals.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, but she interrupted.

  “Tell me what you know. You’re that Ari girl, aren’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “I heard the things people are saying about you,” she said. “Tell me what you know. ” Her eyes were the color of spring grass.

  “I didn’t see her the night she disappeared,” I said.

  “Some say you killed her. ” Her hand flew out and clutched my arm. She had sharp fingernails. The red polish was chipped.

  I tried to pull my arm free. She was surprisingly strong. When I wrenched it away, her nails gouged my skin. I stared at the slashes, at my dark red blood.

  “Tell me what you know. ” Her voice reminded me of Mysty’s.

  When she tried to grab my arm again, I swerved away. “I’ve told you,” I said. “I had nothing to do with it. ”

  I climbed onto my bike and rode away, but I felt her eyes following me. She’d been spending most days since Mysty disappeared walking around town, watching and waiting.

  For a moment I thought about turning back, about telling her I’d been thinking hard, trying to hear Mysty’s thoughts—sending out what we call “locators,” thoughts that sometimes tell us where others are. I’d sent them to my father, too. But, like him, Mysty wasn’t sending anythin
g back. She wasn’t anywhere within my range.

  The sight of blood clotted along my arm kept me pedaling. I rode fast, out of town, past another group of searchers gathered around a sheriff ’s car, into the country again. I was thinking unpleasant thoughts. What if I did have something to do with it? What if whoever followed us at the mall that day was really after me?

  By the time I reached home, the gashes on my arm still hadn’t healed.

  Later that night, someone spray-painted the word KILLER across our front gate.

  Chapter Eight

  All my life, I’ve had the tendency to do things at the wrong time. The results have been mixed, but never boring.

  Going to college at the age of fourteen would strike many people as a misguided idea. The contemporary general wisdom holds that the proper age for higher education is the late teens, after one has reached a degree of physical and mental maturity. Educational experts (mostly self-proclaimed) don’t agree on whether the “proper age” might be different for students labeled “gifted. ”

  Plato, whom I’d studied with my father, believed that higher education should begin in one’s twenties, with advanced study of mathematics, then philosophy. Only students capable of understanding reality and making rational judgments about it were suited for such study, he said, for later they would become the guardians of the state.

  At fourteen, I didn’t know what I wanted to become, much less what was worth guarding. But I’d begun to wonder how I could contribute to society unless I actually lived in it.

  My mother, Dashay, and I sat up late one night with our laptop computers, reviewing college sites. Since the spray-painting incident, they felt a certain urgency about moving me out of Sassa and into another part of the world.

  “The timing is miserable,” Dashay said, looking at academic calendars online. “If she applies by mid-January, she can’t start till next August. ”

  “She is sitting right here,” I said, “and she appreciates your concern. But why the big rush?”

  They looked at me. They were on either end of the sofa, Grace sleeping on a cushion between them. I sat in one of the velvet chairs we’d brought out of storage.

  “Somebody got hold of a can of spray paint,” I said. “So what?”

  But I knew what they were thinking: that the spray paint might be only the beginning.

  “This isn’t the peaceful place it was,” Mãe said. “We hope that it will be again, when the rumors and speculation die down. ”

  It would die down faster with me somewhere else. I knew that. But I was too stubborn to admit it. “So the bullies win,” I said. “They make me run away. ”