Lost (4 page)

“You really think so?”

“I really do. But just in case, can you fake a nosebleed?”

I’m still smiling ten minutes later when I enter Kelly’s room. My intention is to rummage around, see if she left a
contact number for Seth. No doubt it’s right there on her computer somewhere, but her computer is forbidden to me. The personal computer, Kelly has explained, is like a diary. Therefore no peeking, on pain of death. To which I agreed. Not the death part, of course, but the general idea. So in my mind her computer is off-limits until one second past noon. Until then I’ll stick to her address book, the handy little purse-size one I gave, assuming she hasn’t taken it with her.

Can’t find the address book. What I do find, nestled way back in the drawer, very nearly gives me that seizure Fern was suggesting. A photo album I’ve never seen before. Quite new, very slick.

Pictures of my daughter doing something really awful. Something worse than sex. Far, far worse.

7. When Sleepy Voices Make It Snow

Once when Roy Whittle was a boy—just the one time—Pap took the whole family to a carnival in Belle Glade. Some kind of harvest jubilee thing, where they blessed the dirt and prayed for the sugarcane, or anyhow that’s how Pappy explained it, in the brief interval when he was sober and smiling.

The thing about it was, the memory Roy savors, he and Dug got to pretty much run wild because Pappy was off doing whatever he did, and their momma went to the bingo, and the Whittle boys were left to their own devices. They didn’t have money for rides or cotton candy, so they took to sneaking into the sideshow tents. Crawling under the heavy canvas, flat on their bellies, the smell of wet grass in their faces. Saw Howard Huge, the blubbery fat man, big as a whale and sitting on a scale that proved he weighed a thousand pounds. Saw a boy using a hammer to drive big
spikes up his nose, which Dug thought was funny—it was a rare thing, hearing his brother laugh out loud—and a skinny old woman with really disgusting scaly skin calling herself the Real Fiji Mermaid.

What Roy remembers best though, is getting hypnotized. This man in a shiny black suit and western string tie, the Amazing Mizmar, had the ability to control minds not his own. Picking folks out of the little audience for his famous experiment in mass hypnosis, he’d pointed out Dug to his pretty assistant, but Dug wouldn’t have none of it. He wasn’t one for talking to strangers, or drawing attention. So Roy took his place up on the stage with the other victims, all of them looking pretty sheepish, and then the Amazing Mizmar produced this truly amazing device, a glittery little ball on the end of a wand. He clicked the wand and the glittery ball shot pulses of light. Alluring, rhythmic pulses that blended in with the Amazing Mizmar’s sleepy voice, urging Roy to stare at the wand and feel the light and then to close his eyes and still see the light through his eyelids, and in less than a minute Roy was really and truly hypnotized. It was like being awake but sleeping somehow, frozen in a half-dream, in-between state, and it felt good. Felt right somehow. When the voice suggested it was snowing, Roy looked around, delighted—he’d never seen snow—and then set about dusting the big wet flakes from his shoulders. The laughter of the crowd was like the sound of flowing water or the crying of distant gulls, and when the voice told him to wake up at the sound—a sharp hand clap—he tried resisting. Wanted to stay in the between world, where sleepy voices made it snow.

Roy still has his “between” moments and this is one of them. Sitting in the air-conditioned cab of their new Dodge Ram, Dug nods off as they wait, and Roy studies the shimmering
waves of heat that rise from the white runway. Makes the air look like pulsing, transparent jelly. With that and the regular sound of Dug breathing heavy through his nose, Roy can almost hear the drone of the Amazing Mizmar’s voice, he can almost see through the heat-shimmered air into some other place.

Almost but not quite, because Ricky Lang pulls him back into the big bad world. Yanks open the door and pokes Roy with an index finger that feels like a warm steel rod in the ribs.

“Wake up,” says Ricky.

“I wasn’t sleeping,” says Roy. “I’m keeping watch.”

Ricky, studying him from behind his mirrored sunglasses. Nodding to himself. “Uh-huh. Whatever. What you watching for, Roy?”

“Like you said. A plane.”

Ricky’s face untightens, and he smiles with just his lips. “Good. The specific aircraft we’re expecting, that would be a Beechcraft King Air 350. Twin turboprops. Color, green and silver. Tail number ends in seven, my lucky number.”

“Yes, sir,” says Roy. He’s tried nudging Dug, but Dug is deeply asleep, and he’s worried about how it looks, his brother snoozing while the boss is giving instructions.

“Leave him be,” Ricky suggests. “Don’t matter if he sleeps through the end of the world. This is on you, not your retarded brother.”

“Dug ain’t retarded.”

“Whatever’s wrong with him, that’s not my concern. You got the Glock?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you know how to fire it? How to get the safety off, rack a bullet into the chamber, all that?”

Roy nods. He’s pretty sure he knows all that.

“Good,” says Ricky. “Then you know how to leave the safety on, how not to fire it.”

“What’re you saying?” Roy asks.

“I’m saying the gun is for show. Don’t shoot nobody is what I’m saying.”

“Okay,” says Roy. “I won’t.”

“Good. Little while, the aircraft will circle the field. It will land from the east, over there,” Ricky says, indicating where the long runway blends into the low scrub pine. “It will taxi to us. First thing you do, when the engines shut down, you come around from behind and put the chocks under the wheels. Think you can do that?”

“I guess.”

“Make sure you come at it from the back of the plane, behind the wing, so you don’t get your fool head cut off by the props.”

“Okay.” Roy files it away, the propellers are dangerous, watch out for the props.

“You just follow my lead,” Ricky says. “Wheels chocked, okay? Next, we get the passengers out of the aircraft. There’s a little door unfolds in the tail, that’s where they’ll exit. Don’t show the gun till their feet’re on the ground.”

“How many passengers?” Roy asks, just to show that he’s always thinking.

“One or two,” Ricky says, indifferent to the question. “Whatever, you just hold the Glock on ‘em. Don’t say nothing, just look like you mean it. Don’t let ‘em go back in the plane but don’t shoot ‘em. I’m doing all the shooting.”

Roy follows Ricky to his BMW, parked nearby. Dirt adheres to the lower panels, fouling the hubs, probably messing up the brakes, too. Waste of a good car, Roy thinks, not
meant for the backcountry. And then Ricky Lang, his scary new boss, Ricky the crazy damn injun who is going to change Roy’s life, he pops open the BMW trunk, produces an oversize, odd-looking rifle. Almost a crossbow look to it, fitted out with some sort of dartlike powerhead.

“What’s that?” Roy wants to know.

“Animal tranquilizers,” Ricky explains. Showing his white teeth in a killer grin. “Works on people, too.”

8. Jumping Into The Bare Blue Sky

There are some things your eyes refuse to see. Sights unimaginable, or so out of context your brain can’t make sense of them. That’s how it is with Kelly’s secret photo album. I’m looking right at the pictures and still it doesn’t make any sense. What would my daughter be doing on a runway, near a small airplane? Why is she grinning so mischievously? What is she holding up to the camera, some sort of backpack?

I know what it is but find it hard to even think the word, let alone speak it aloud.

Parachute.

Must be a joke. She’s kidding around. Like those old trick photos on Coney Island, where you stick your head through a hole in the canvas and pretend to be a cowboy on a painted horse. Like that.

More photos. Kelly climbing into the little airplane, wearing a baggy jumpsuit and what looks like a crash helmet. Kelly crouching inside the plane, giving a thumbs-up. Kelly buddied-up with a handsome pilot, a young man with dark, soulful eyes, gorgeous hair and white, white teeth. I didn’t really get a good look at the guy on the motorcycle, but something about the way this young man holds himself erect,
good posture even sitting down, something makes me think this might be Seth.

If so, he’s way too old for a girl of sixteen. Old enough to be a pilot—how old is that? Has to be at least twenty-one, right? Or is it younger? Hard to say—they both look so pleased with themselves, and happiness makes you look younger. Whatever his age, no way is he in high school with my daughter. He’s not a school kid. No droopy drawers and skateboards for him. He’s into airplanes, motorcycles, high-speed machines.

Have him arrested,
that’s my first dark impulse. Send this handsome, grinning man to jail. How dare he take my daughter up in a small plane without my permission? How could he let her jump into the bare blue sky. What was he thinking?

Because I know what comes next, even before I flip the page. A shot of Kelly waving bye-bye from the open door. Pale sky all around her. A wobbly, slightly blurred shot of an open parachute, a slim figure dangling beneath it. Then the reunion on the ground, with Kelly looking triumphant as she folds up her colorful parachute. A parachute that looks about as substantial as the silk scarves displayed next to her counter at Macy’s.

It feels like I’ve been kicked by a mule. At the same time, in some weird way, everything has gone numb. How could I have been so stupid, not to have had an inkling of what was going on with this boy? Never knew he existed until yesterday, and yet he and my daughter have, obviously, been executing a series of death-defying stunts. No doubt there’s more going on than motorcycles and parachute jumps.

Suddenly, whether or not Kelly has decided to have sex is a lot less important than the fact that she’s risking her life to impress an older, thrill-seeking boyfriend. Save that hogwash
about skydiving being as safe as going to the supermarket. If my purse doesn’t open, I don’t end up embedded in the concrete, okay? When I make a mistake parallel parking, do I drift into the high-tension wires? No. Skydiving is about certain death being averted at the last possible moment, that’s what makes it exciting. I may be a stick-in-the-mud, the type who always fastens her seat belt, but I know that much.

When Kelly calls with whatever lame excuse she’s cooked up, what should I do? What can I say that won’t make it worse? Fern’s idea of chaining her to the radiator is starting to sound reasonable. I’m at a complete loss here, but whatever I decide to do, it means clearing my calendar for today. No way can I meet with clients, or deal with Alex over lunch.

First call is to Alex. Unfortunately, I get him, not the machine. “Janey doll,” he says, chipper as ever. “I have you down for Cholo’s at one.”

“I’ve got to cancel,” I tell him. “My daughter.”

“The divine Miss Kelly? Is she okay?”

Just like that I spill the beans. Everything, more or less. Alex makes all the usual sympathetic noises, but he sounds slightly impatient. “So your daughter has a boyfriend, Jane. It’s not the end of the world.”

“She ran away! She’s jumping out of airplanes!”

“She left a note,” he reminds me. “She’ll call. And by the way, more people get struck by lightning than die while skydiving.”

“She’s a child!”

“No,” Alex says firmly. “Kelly is no longer a child.”

I could strangle him. How dare he?

“She’s a totally amazing woman,” Alex concludes. “Very much like you.”

It’s a great relief when my accountant doesn’t pick up and I’m able to leave a message about the quarterlies. Ditto for my contact person at East Coast Wedding Wholesalers, imploring them to put a trace on the Norbert and Spinelli orders. Both calls seem to take a tremendous effort on my part, as if merely thinking about work is exhausting. Luckily Tracy has her schedule and can take care of herself, workwise, because I can’t bear the thought of another phone call. What’s wrong with me? Why do I feel so hollow and shaky?

Food. Haven’t eaten since I got up and discovered Kelly gone. And I’m one of those people who simply must have something in her stomach in the morning—must be a blood-sugar thing.

That’s probably why my hands are shaking when my cell phone rings. I’m thinking it can’t be Kelly—it’s not quite noon and she never calls early—but that’s her name glowing on the little screen.

“Kelly honey? Where are you?”

There’s a delay, a pause, long enough so I’m almost convinced the connection has been broken. Then her voice comes through. Not her bright, confident chatty voice. Her whispering voice, as if she doesn’t want to be overheard. As if she might be afraid.

“Mom, I need your help. Please call—”

That’s it. The call cuts off in mid-sentence. No static, no nothing. Just a final, overwhelming silence.

9. Watching The Detectives

Kelly and I watch a lot of movies. Started out with kiddy stuff, of course. When she was hospitalized or enduring
chemo, movies were an escape, a way to avoid the harsh reality of our situation. Early on I stopped worrying about how a violent or racy scene might affect her. When an eight-year-old stares death in the face every day, can you tell her she can’t watch a car chase, or cartoonish villains firing automatic weapons at infallible heroes, or someone saying a bad word?

Some parents did. Not me. Kelly wouldn’t let me. If a movie had a kid with cancer in it—not many did, actually—she always insisted on seeing it. Even if the child died. As she told me, her face screwed up with righteous indignation, she knew plenty of real children who had really died. Okay, four or five at least, which is way more than the average kid. So a character dying in a movie was no big thing to her. It was pretend. Sometimes she’d cry, but that was because it was a sad story, not because she thought the actor really died.

Movies were movies and life was life, and they were connected, but not in a scary way. Not for my Kel. And we’ve continued our habit of watching films together. Lately I’ve had to keep my comments to myself, so as not to endure her “please, Mom, give it a rest” reactions, but we still screen two or three movies a week, more if she’s in the mood.