Authors: Jessica Warman
My aunt sighs again. Taking slow steps, she walks to the phone and answers it on the ninth ring. We don’t have an answering machine.
“Yes.”
“…”
This isn’t the first time I’ve hidden in the stairs, so I’m used to listening in on my family’s conversations when they don’t know I’m there. Eavesdropping is always an odd feeling, but listening to her one-sided conversation is even stranger.
“I have a meeting this morning, Mom. I can’t talk long.” She’s speaking to my grandma.
“…”
“I know I called you at ten o’clock last night. I thought you’d be awake.”
“…”
“Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“…”
“Mom, it’s fine.” Her tone is impatient and strained. She and my grandma aren’t particularly close. She lives just a few miles outside town, in the same farmhouse where my mom and aunt grew up, but we only visit her a few times a year.
My aunt is silent, listening to my grandmother. After a while, she interrupts with: “We don’t know where Alice is—that’s why I called you. If she shows up at your house, you
need to let me or Jeff know immediately.” Another sigh. “Because she’s not
well,
Mother. She needs help.”
Not well? She’s talking about me. Alice.
“I have to go, Mom. Please promise you’ll call if you hear from her.”
“…”
“Yes, we called the police. She’s eighteen years old. They’re looking, but they can’t do much. Not yet, anyway.”
“…”
“Of course Rachel’s worried. It’s not that we aren’t worried. Please don’t be this way.”
“…”
“Why would you want to do that?” she demands, her voice rising. “What do you have to tell Rachel that you can’t tell me? You’ll make things worse than they already are.”
“…”
“I need to get going, Mom.”
“…”
“I’m not doing that. I’ll let you know when we find her, but that’s all.”
“…”
“Stop it, Mother. I’m not having this conversation. She doesn’t need your help. She needs a professional.”
“…”
“I said I’m not doing this.”
“…”
“Great. Is that what you think?” My aunt’s tone is
suddenly much quieter. In an instant, her voice shifts from anger to … what?
“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m not Anna.”
It’s sadness. She’s talking about my mother.
“…”
“Don’t tell me how you feel. I know how you feel. I’ve always known.”
“…”
“I’m hanging up now. Good-bye.”
There’s a sharp
beep
as she turns off the phone. I expect her to do something else—to call my uncle maybe, or even start crying after such an unpleasant conversation—but she doesn’t do either of those things, at least not that I can hear. There is the sound of her keys jingling, followed by her footsteps leading to the front door, and four quick electronic beeps as she sets the security alarm. She pulls the door shut so hard that I can feel the whole house vibrating around me; the action is the only sign at all that she might be upset.
I wait. I close my eyes and slowly count to thirty in my head:
one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi …
Once I’m sure she’s gone, at least for the rest of the morning, I nudge the secret door open and step into the kitchen. The room is neat and orderly. The only sign at all of anything amiss is my aunt’s cup of coffee, which rests beside the phone on the countertop, untouched, no trace of lipstick anywhere on the rim, the contents still steaming.
I stand in the middle of the kitchen for a few seconds,
still breathing lightly, almost as though I’m afraid someone might burst into the house and discover me at any moment. What did my aunt mean when she said that I needed a professional? What kind of professional? I’m not
well
?
She thinks I’m crazy, just like my grandma. She thought my mother was crazy too. Despite the occasional nagging doubt—and the fact that my intuition is sometimes wrong—I don’t need any help, that’s for damn sure. Rachel is the one who needs help right now. Rachel needs
my
help; she needs everyone’s help. How much longer can I lie to everybody about who I am? How long until the deception makes me responsible for whatever might happen to her?
Okay, Alice,
I tell myself,
you need to get out of here.
I go upstairs to our room and grab my bookbag. I start to fill it with supplies: a notebook and pen, a change of clothes, my sister’s phone. I fish through her oversize purse—the same purse I was carrying on Saturday night at the fair—and find her wallet. Among other things, it contains her ID, her debit card, and twenty-seven dollars in cash. There are other random items floating around in her purse too: a fun-sized box of Good & Plenty candies, which are black licorice flavor. There’s a tiny French-to-English dictionary, its pages tissue-paper thin, the words so small I can barely read them. French is Rachel’s foreign language at school; she’s been taking it for years. (Not me; I did two semesters of Spanish to fulfill my foreign-language requirement, and I was done.) In the side pocket, I find a used tube of strawberry-flavored lip gloss, a
handful of gum wrappers (but no gum) … and something else. At first I think it’s just garbage, the kind of stray papers and junk that tends to hide out in the bottom of bags that have seen plenty of use. But it’s something more. I tilt the purse onto her desk and shake out the contents of the pocket. A little pile of what looks like grass clippings falls out. I lean forward, peering at them, and pick one up.
They aren’t grass clippings at all. They’re tiny flowers. Even though their color has long faded away, I can tell they used to be yellow buttercups, the kind that spring up in droves on people’s lawns every summer. Each stem is tied into a little loop, which is knotted at the base of the flower. There must be a few dozen of them here.
It’s a weird discovery. I’ve never known Rachel to have an interest in … whatever the flowers are supposed to be. And it’s almost like they were hidden away in her purse, an entire collection of dried-up loops. What reason would she have to keep them? I scoop them into my hand and put them back into the pocket. Even if they’re garbage to me, they were obviously important to her. There’s no way I can throw them away.
Just as I’m pulling a gray hooded sweatshirt over my head, I hear a rustling sound coming from downstairs. I stop, listening.
Maybe it’s the mailman on the porch. But the mail doesn’t usually come this early.
It could be Charlie. Maybe he’s forgotten something he needs for work.
The rustling grows louder, more insistent. I freeze.
The security alarm goes off, the sound shrill and deafening. I can’t move. There’s nowhere to run—nowhere to go but down, and by the time I could make it to the secret stairs, whoever’s inside the house might find me. Even if I got there, what if he or she knew where to look? What if it’s the same person who took Rachel? It’s like the whole world is being drowned out; I can’t even think straight. After something like sixty seconds, if the four-digit code isn’t punched in, the police will be notified. The security company will call my aunt and uncle. They’ll have to come home.
There’s another option, though. I was here when the alarm was installed a few years ago. The tech the company sent out was a hulking, three-hundred-plus-pound guy with sleeves of tattoos on both of his arms. As his big fingers worked to adjust the alarm settings, he explained to us that our system came with a feature called a “hostage code.”
“It’s different from your regular alarm code,” he said. “Basically, it’s another four-digit combination of your choosing. Let’s say somebody breaks in while you’re at home. The alarm goes off, and they order you to punch in your code. Instead of using your regular code to turn it off, you’d use the hostage code. The alarm will turn off as usual, but the system immediately alerts the police that there’s a hostage situation at your residence.” He gave us a stern look. “Cops take this seriously. It’s only for emergencies.”
“How do we program it?” my aunt asked.
He’d smiled. “I already did it for you. I used your street address—4606. Because here’s the thing: if somebody breaks in and you’re
not
home, they’re probably gonna take their best guess at the code. What do you think they’ll try? Something easy, right? Like your house numbers.”
“It makes sense,” my aunt said later, explaining the new system to my uncle. “But Jeff, you should have seen this guy. He was … uh …
imposing.
Maybe we should switch the code.”
I remember the events so clearly, but I don’t remember if they ever actually reprogrammed the alarm. If they did, they never told me. As far as I know, they never told Rachel or Charlie, either.
I could try it now. 4606. I repeat the numbers over and over in my mind, terrified that I’ll forget them in my panic.
Too much time has passed already; I don’t have the opportunity to think things through any further. I run downstairs, toward the front door where the keypad is mounted on the wall, adrenaline rushing through my body, ready to push past whoever has broken in. As I’m running, though, I lose my footing. I fall. And when I hit the hardwood floor, landing flat on my back, I get the wind knocked out of me. I can’t speak or scream or move as I lie there, staring up at the figure hovering over me.
The face is familiar, concerned, and looks just as panicked as I feel. She takes me by the hands and pulls me to a sitting position. I struggle and struggle, trying to breathe, until something inside me releases and I find air again.
I’m not going to need the hostage code. “Two-five-one-one,” I gasp, pointing at the alarm panel beside the front door. “Two-five-one-one-
stop
. Go punch it in. Do it now! Two-five-one-one-stop.”
I press my face into my hands. I’m still dizzy from the fall. How long has it been since the alarm went off? Twenty seconds? Thirty? More?
Just as suddenly as the noise erupted, it goes silent with a final, meek
chirp
. I stare across the room, breathing hard, watching her with a combination of relief and confusion.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I ask, standing up.
She looks ready to cry. “I don’t know. I was worried about you.”
“So you break into my house?”
She leans against the front door and slides her body downward until she’s sitting cross-legged on the floor. She pulls her knees close to her chest and tilts her head so her long blond hair falls across her face, like she’s trying to hide behind it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do. I don’t think anybody saw me. We can leave now, okay? Let’s go to school. It’s okay if we’re late.” She looks up at me suddenly, pushing her hair away from her face, pouting. “I was going to have perfect attendance this semester.”
Perfect attendance.
I almost laugh out loud at her. Instead I say, “Oh, Kimber. That’s so typical of you.”
Kimber shrugs. In a small voice, she says, “Attendance is important.”
“I need your car,” I respond. “I need it for the whole day.”
She blinks, confused. “For what?”
“To talk to the police. To look for my sister.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “It’s my mom’s car. She’ll go crazy if I let you use it.”
I should have known I would have difficulty convincing Kimber to hand over her keys. “Then come with me,” I tell her. “You can drive. But you have to go where I tell you.”
Her pretty green eyes widen. “You mean, like, skipping school?”
I nod.
“I can’t … Rachel, no.”
“Yes,” I insist. “Please. It’s important, Kimber.”
“Skip school,” she repeats, pronouncing the words like she’s saying something much, much worse.
Commit a felony. Hijack an airplane. Steal the Declaration of Independence.
“Make up your mind,” I say. “If you won’t do it, you need to tell me now.”
She nods to herself. She’s thinking about it, I can tell.
“We won’t get caught,” I assure her.
“The school will call our houses.”
“Is your mom going to be home?”
She brings her thumbnail to her mouth and begins to nibble at the edge. I notice that all her nails are bitten down so far that some of them are bright red around the cuticles. She shakes her head.
I give her a tentative smile. “Kimber, come on. I need your help today. Please.”
She swallows hard, still chewing. Then she pulls her finger away from her mouth and stares at it, appraising the damage with an unsatisfied expression.
“Okay,” she says, climbing to her feet. “I’ll do it.”
We both stand there for a minute, staring at each other, our breathing shallow; hers with nervous excitement, mine with a more troubled feeling of anxiety.
“Thank you,” I tell her. “You’re a good friend.”
She gives her head a small shake. “You don’t have to thank me. You know, ‘Do unto others,’ and all that. You need help, right?”
“My sister needs help,” I correct, moving toward the door. I peer outside to make sure none of the neighbors are around. It’s all clear.
“Alice needs help?” Kimber echoes. She laughs. “Yeah, Rachel. Everybody knows that. She needed help before she ever ran away. She needs more than
help
.”
I pause with my hand on the doorknob. “What do you mean?”
She gives me a blank look, her smile fading at my serious expression. “You know exactly what I mean, Rachel. We’ve talked about this plenty of times.”
They have?
“I don’t mean to upset you. I’m sure she’s okay. She’s just … well, it’s like you said. Her reality is different from everyone else’s. One of these days she’ll stop knowing what’s real, and then … she’ll be gone.”
So where are we going?” Kimber asks, fiddling with the radio settings on her dash, settling on a country station. Glancing at me, she says, “Sorry. I know you don’t like country. This is classic country, though. You should give it a chance.”
I don’t even want to dignify her suggestion with a response. I
hate
country—thank God Rachel does too. “Drive to the police station,” I tell her, rummaging through my sister’s backpack. “Make a left at this stop sign. Then go down to Pennsylvania Avenue and make another left. You’ll be going parallel to the trail.”