Finding Hannah (11 page)

My mouth betrayed me as it opened in shock. One eye was bloodstained and the other was almost swollen shut. She covered her face with her hands. Her bare arms were badly bruised.

“Dylan, we need a towel, a wet washcloth, and an ice pack,” Mom said, looking at the back of Molly’s head.

I flew up the steps into the kitchen. I was shaking. I quickly gathered the items and ran back down to my room. Mom took them from me and told us to wait outside. She closed the door.

Dad looked at me. “Tony?”

I nodded. “He found the pictures on her computer.”

Dad shook his head in disgust and anger, and then he walked to the sliding-glass door and looked around. “Stay right here,” he said as he went upstairs. Soon I could hear him on the phone talking with the police.

I sat on the couch hating Tony for what he’d done to Molly. Anger swelled inside me as I imagined him throwing Molly across her small room. Only a monster could do something like that. I hoped they’d lock him up for good.

Dad returned and Mom opened the door. Molly was sitting on the edge of my bed in my sweatpants and one of my sweatshirts, holding the ice pack over her eye. She stared at the floor as I walked back in the room.

“I’m taking Molly to the hospital,” Mom said, “and you are going to stay here with Amy and Dad.”

Part of me wanted to protest, but I didn’t want to cause a problem. Not now.

A loud knock at the front door made us all jump. Molly looked terrified as she said, “It’s him.” She lay back down on the bed and pulled herself into a ball. “I’m so sorry.”

“Everyone is going to stay calm,” Dad said. “And everyone is going to stay right here.”

Mom gave him a concerned look as he left the room and closed the door behind him.

“You’ve nothing to be sorry about,” Mom whispered to Molly. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Something wrong was done to you. You are not to blame for this.”

I intentionally stood next to my backpack, my hand near the baseball bat sticking out of it. Part of me wanted to grab it, run upstairs, and dish out some of what Tony had given to Molly.

Molly sobbed as we waited. I could hear our door close and footsteps come downstairs. I was ready to grab the bat if it was Tony.

“He’s gone,” Dad said as he opened my door. “He was looking for Molly and I told him she wasn’t here. He looked like he believed me. I watched him drive away and then I called the dispatcher. They’re sending a patrol car to pick him up.”

Mom helped Molly to her feet. She limped slowly to the stairs and then leaned heavily on the railing as she carefully managed each step.

I followed everyone upstairs and helped Molly into the passenger seat of our car.

“I’ll call you when we get there,” Mom said, looking at Dad.

I could see Molly fighting the pain as she arched her back. She held the ice pack over her eye. Mom started the engine and backed out of our driveway.

“Tony looked scared,” Dad said. “After what he did, he should be.”

Mom called Dad ten minutes later to let him know they’d gotten to the hospital. They didn’t talk long. I knew they were discussing what would happen next.

“You should try to get some sleep,” Dad said after he hung up. “Tomorrow, if Molly is ready, we’ll take you to see her. She’ll stay at the hospital tonight, and your mom is going to stay with her.”

I got ready for bed. When I saw Molly’s blood on my comforter I got angry again. I felt like a terrible friend. I wanted to be there for her the way she had been there for me. I thought about what Dad had said, “Bring her with you into the forest and stay there as long as you can.” As soon as Molly was able, that’s exactly what I planned to do.

* * *

The next morning, Dad said Tony had been arrested and was still in jail. The police had been to his house to take pictures. Mom came home before lunch and told me how Molly’s mother was making a huge scene at the hospital by begging her daughter and everyone else not to press charges.

“Neither Molly nor her mom has any say in the matter,” Dad told me. “It’s up to the judge, who’ll consider what is in Molly’s best interest. Tony will go to court soon.”

Molly had told me all her mom cared about was getting high. I was certain that’s why she didn’t want Tony to be charged. “What else did Molly’s mom say?” I asked.

“She just kept pleading with the nurses and the social worker to release Molly into her care. It may still be another day before they release Molly, but when they do, she’ll go home with her mother.”

This didn’t surprise me. I hoped the first thing Molly would do is come see me.

“Is someone with Molly now?” I asked.

“Her mom said she’d be there until they released her.”

“When can I go and see her?”

“I told Molly I’d come and see her tonight. You’re welcome to come with me. It’s up to her if she wants to see you.”

After lunch, I told everyone I was going to see Wiz. It wasn’t a lie, but I didn’t mention the pit stop I knew I had to make. I grabbed my backpack and biked to Tony’s house.

The house looked as pathetic as ever. The police were gone and there was no sign of life. I knew I was breaking my promise to my dad, but I was certain nobody would be home. Why would the police monitor Tony’s house when they knew he was locked up?

I biked up to the large propane tank next to Molly’s room. The magnetic key holder was tucked up under the huge horizontal cylinder, which looked like a scaled-down railroad tanker car. I knocked at the front door just in case someone was inside. No one answered. I unlocked the door and found the living room full of empty beer cans and dirty clothes. The room smelled like cat urine. I headed straight for Molly’s room.

Her door was closed, and when I opened it I found out why. Broken bits of ceramic, which had once been Molly’s penguins, littered the floor, intermixed with keyboard keys. The laptop was on the floor bent in a U shape. It looked like it had been whacked several times by whatever attacked the penguins. The screen and the base were now in two separate parts connected only by a few wires.

Her dresser had several large dents in the top where it looked like someone had hit it with a baseball bat. Her mattress was leaning against the wall at an awkward angle. Molly’s swimming posters were crumpled in a ball on the floor.

The next thing I saw made my heart sink. High on the wall next to the bed was a dent in the sheetrock. The dent was the same size as Molly.

“Oh, no,” I groaned as I stared at it.

I understood why Molly had said her back and head hurt last night. I pictured Tony throwing her into the wall, and my anger swelled inside me.

I found the framed picture of Molly and her dad. The glass was cracked, but the photo looked intact. I looked around the room for anything else worth salvaging and spotted a penguin wedged under her chair. I pulled it out and found it was the hand-painted one she’d said her dad had brought back from Sweden. It had survived without a scratch, so I stuffed it into my backpack along with the picture and what was left of Molly’s laptop.

I closed her door and locked the front door as I left. I replaced the key under the propane tank and quickly biked away.

When I arrived at Wiz’s house, he grilled me with questions about how the search was going. He wore a grin as he asked what it had been like searching with Molly. I told him we needed to talk in private.

Once we were in his room, I told Wiz about the close calls Molly and I had and about finding Blake Weldon and his friends. I decided not to say anything about Molly being attacked by Tony. I thought I’d let Molly tell him if she wanted to.

“I have a computer project for you,” I said. He looked like I’d just told him I had brought him a Christmas present. Before I showed him the laptop, I told him about how Molly and I had come back yesterday because of Amy’s birthday and while we were away, something bad had happened to Molly’s laptop. I pulled out the twisted remains and set it on his desk.

“What the hell happened to this?” Wiz asked.

“Would you believe me if I told you a tree fell on it?”

He picked up the base to examine it, and the “S” from the keyboard fell off. He looked at me like he’d just found out the Christmas present I’d brought him was a pair of ugly yellow socks. “This thing is completely screwed.”

“Molly thinks so, too. She doesn’t know I have it. Any chance you could pull off any data?”

Wiz looked at me, looked at the laptop, and then back at me. “Are you serious?”

“Molly would love you forever if you could salvage anything from this. It would be a huge surprise, and it would mean a lot to her.” I told him about the letters she’d written to her dad after he’d passed away.

“I’ll have to pull it apart.” He stroked his chin as he considered the laptop. “If the hard drive is smashed, you can forget it.”

“So you’ll take a look at it?”

“Sure, I’ll take a look, but the chance of salvaging anything out of this mess is minimal at best.”

“Please, just do what you can.”

* * *

Mom and I drove to the hospital after supper, and she told me Tony would be arraigned in the morning on second-degree child abuse charges. She told me he could get up to seven years in prison.

Mom pulled into a parking spot. “If I could give you some advice,” she said, “it would be to listen to Molly. Don’t judge or question. If you think what you’re about to say may sound critical, don’t say it. She needs support right now, and a good friend. If that means you listen quietly and say nothing, so be it.”

I nodded to let her know I understood.

When we got to Molly’s room, Mom told me to wait outside. I stood in the hall for a minute before the door opened. Molly’s mom stormed out. She slammed the door shut, taking no notice of me or any of the nurses who stopped to look. She stomped down the hallway and pushed through a group of people before exiting through the stairway door.

Mom came out next.

“What was that all about?” I asked.

“Her mom wasn’t happy to see me. We had an argument last night. Molly said she’d like to see you. Remember what we talked about?”

I nodded and Mom told me she’d wait outside.

The lights were off and the blinds were closed. A dim light was coming from a small lamp next to Molly’s bed. She was lying on her back staring at the ceiling. She turned her head toward me. The blood that had been in her right eye was gone. The blue circle around her swollen left eye had darkened and grown, and her right eye had a purple mark underneath it.

“Hi,” she said, forcing a smile.

“Hi.”

“I guess our moms are getting along great.”

“I guess so.” I didn’t know what to expect, but Molly’s sarcasm was a good sign. I sat in a chair next to her bed.

“How was Amy’s birthday party?” she asked.

“It was good. If you can imagine dozens of giggling little girls running around screaming, it’d be just like you were there. It was good to see Amy happy again.” This made Molly smile.

She repositioned herself carefully. “When are you going out searching again?”

“As soon as my search partner is ready.”

Molly looked at me. “Are you sure?”

“I have the best search partner anyone could ever ask for, and there’s no way I’ll find a better one. I’m not leaving her behind.”

Molly laughed. “What about Wiz?”

I laughed. “He wouldn’t last four hours in the heat we’ve had. I went to see him today.”

“How is he?”

“He’s good. I gave him an update on the searching, and he asked me about you.”

“Did you tell him what happened?”

“No.”

The look on Molly’s face told me she was relieved I hadn’t. She took a drink of water and pointed at my feet.

“What’s in the bag?”

“I brought you something. First, we have this.” I pulled out the penguin and handed it to her.

“How did you … You went to my house? How did you get in?”

“I found the key under the propane tank, right where you told me it would be.”

Molly seemed impressed I’d remembered.

She inspected the penguin. “It’s not damaged. Where did you find this?”

“Under your chair. This is the one your dad brought back from Sweden, right?”

She nodded.

“And speaking of your dad,” I pulled out the picture of Molly and her dad. I had swapped the broken glass with another piece from an old, unused frame I found in our basement.

Molly was shocked. “I thought everything was smashed. Thank you! Thank you so much. You have no idea how much these mean to me.” She stared at the picture for a moment, then handed it to me. “Will you hang on to these? I don’t want my mom to know you were in our house.”

I nodded and put them back in my bag.

Molly held out her arm with the palm of her hand facing me. I sat forward in my chair and put my palm against hers.

“Do you remember the last time our hands touched?” she asked.

“Saliva was involved.”

“A lot of saliva,” she said.

We both smiled.

“Are you still holding up your end of the deal?” she asked.

I knew she was talking about our agreement. “I am. Are you?”

“I am.”

“Good.”

Molly pulled her hand back under the covers.

She looked at the ceiling. “Last night, when you found me in your room, you thought I was Hannah.”

I nodded.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” I said. “You did the right thing coming to my house after what happened.”

“I didn’t have anywhere else to go.” Molly’s face changed, like someone was digging a knife into her side. She took a deep breath. “Of all the things that happened yesterday, do you know what hurt the most?” As she spoke, her voice changed. I could tell she was fighting her emotions, and she was losing.

I said nothing and waited for her to continue.

“When I got home, Tony wasn’t there, but my mom was. She was sitting in her chair. She didn’t even ask where I’d been. When she spoke, she made it sound like I’d been in the house the whole time. I’d been gone for five days, and she hadn’t even noticed. I tried to tell her where I’d been. She didn’t care.”

Tears streamed down her face. “And when Tony came home, when he screamed at me about the pictures and smashed everything, my mom didn’t do anything. She didn’t try to stop him. She didn’t even move from her chair.”