Into White (23 page)

Hope.

When I finally reached the edge of the woods, Gus Von March stood in the distance, but the quarters led the way to the empty castle. After a few more miles, they became less frequent—one every half block or so. Then, at the base of Colossus, they disappeared altogether, so I went around. I just couldn't find the strength to take it on alone.

I saw Dad's Fiat parked haphazardly in front of the house. Hampton didn't run up the driveway to meet me like he usually did; he staked out the mailbox instead, waiting. I ran to my room. Mom yelled after me until Dad told her to give me space—she actually listened for once. I sat long enough for the sun to sink and the spider to construct the most intricate web I'd ever seen from her. “All the other spider ladies are going to be so jealous.”

I heard more than two voices downstairs, but none of them was Alex. They sounded like my evil aunt Evilyn and cousin Joyce, who'd made the trip all the way from Tuscaloosa for some mess. They'd never understood Alex. They seemed to think he was strange or weird, so their presence pissed me off.

The doorbell rang for the first time in months, which meant someone knew to stick something long and sharp in the hole where the button used to be. Alex! I opened my bedroom door to stand at the top of the stairs, but it wasn't Alex. It was our handyman neighbor, Hank, who had never bothered to come by our broken house since we'd moved in, but there he was when someone went missing.

Everyone stopped their conversations to gawk at me. I just walked back into my room.

When the door almost met the catch, Evilyn said, “That poor gal. How's she doing, Cam?”

I reopened the door. “Ha! You don't care how I'm doing, and you know it! You're just here because your old, decrepit ass doesn't have anything better to do, and my missing brother trumps reruns of
Family Feud
. Well, I think this is just cruel, you showing up after all the hell you've put me and Alex through. Since you're being cruel today, I'll just be honest. Evilyn, freshman year you told me that I looked like a man. Your words changed the course of my life and ruined my self-esteem from that moment on. I looked up to you, you foul old bat. As for the rest of you, why are you even here? You hate Alex. How dare you all stand in my father's home? My father, the same man you called a loser, a failure, an idiot, or worse. Go home. All of you low-down, sorry, sad excuses for family members. You too, Hank!” I slammed my bedroom door behind me.

My dad kindly escorted every one of them from our home. He never swore or raised his voice, but he started with “You heard her, out.” Mom mostly sobbed into the pillows. Meanwhile, I sat on my two-seater, counting my quarters. I counted and recounted all night long. Never slept or lay down or even moved from that one spot. I just sat there upright, counting, until the spider undid her masterpiece and the sun peeked through the trees. Thirteen dollars exactly.

There was a vigorous knock on the door and yelling from the front porch. Dad opened the door. “Yes?” Dad's voice was tired and worn.

“It's Deanté. I'm here for Toya.” His voice was frantic.

“You are welcome in my home,” said Dad. My heart melted for my father, who had rarely welcomed a soul into his house but allowed my friend over the threshold without question.

He banged on my bedroom door. “Toya!”

“Come in,” I replied weakly.

He found me sitting cross-legged, surrounded by my quarters. He stopped at the entrance to my room.

Deanté said, “You look like you again.” His eyes were glassy.

“They're his favorite, you know? He hates dimes, he says they're too small and easy to lose. They'd slip right through his fingers when he tried to put them in the drink machine at school. Nickels, Lord knows he's always despised nickels. His nickname for nickels was Jan Brady, or the middle child.” I chuckled while Deanté just stood there, looking horrified. “You get it? They're sort of like fillers when a dime is too high and a penny's too low. They're stuck in the middle of all of it. They don't quite fit into the flow of things, kind of like him.” I took a breath to make sure that I still could. “Pennies were the worst, because they made his hands smell like butthole, he said. Weird, though, he always said that if he had a daughter, he would name her Penny.” I held a quarter in the air. “He revered the quarters. Every so often, he'd spout on about their usefulness: arcade games, air hockey, bubble gum machines, parking meters, McChickens, Quarter Pounders, laundry—he could go on and on like Bubba could about shrimp. The quarters made sense; I thought…” My voice cracked from too many hours without water, and I broke, right there on my bedroom floor. “I thought they'd lead me to him.”

Deanté lifted me in his arms and placed me gently on my twin bed. He sat with me until I fell asleep.

 

YOU'RE WEIRD, BUT I LIKE YOU

The next hours were a blur. One of God's ways of protecting us from overwhelming hurt was a short attention span. Ask any mother to describe the pain of childbirth and she can't remember it. I do recall Deanté's vague account of Josh crapping his pants and the twins being kicked out of show choir. Apparently Mr. Holder made a dramatic scene in rehearsal, telling them how they could never be his Dolly P.'s, because Dolly was as sweet as pecan pie and they were bitter Louisiana lemons. Deanté seemed confused by the reference, but I understood perfectly.

Mom and Dad treated me like a Fabergé egg: lovely, irreplaceable, and breakable. Mom kept apologizing for the slap and Dad kept telling her to quit apologizing. Meanwhile, I was mostly worried about them. I'd always thought they were ill-equipped to deal with most of life's curveballs—but they surprised me. Mom spent the remainder of that night screaming and crying, but afterward flooded social media from the bathroom computer. Dad retreated into himself, walking for hours and quietly going about the business of paying for the empty castle. The most reassuring thing about my parents was they watched that night's episode of
Unsolved Mysteries
. In the major ways, they didn't change, which I appreciated more than they knew.

“My God.” I shot up from my bed, startling Deanté, who had fallen asleep on the carpet. Had we slept the whole day away?

“What is it?” he asked, alarmed.

“Mrs. Roseland!” I threw the covers from my legs. “Has anyone spoken to Mrs. Roseland?”

“What? I don't think so. Why?”

I ran down the stairs, yelling, “Someone needs to call Mrs. Roseland. She's the Alabama History teacher. Someone find her number and call her right now!”

I walked in on Mom, Dad, and Aunt Evilyn gathered around the kitchen counter, stapling flyers.

“I'm sorry,” said Aunt Evilyn. She clutched her purse and held it over her chest. “I'll let y'all alone to talk. I wanted to help.”

“Aunt Evilyn?” I asked.

“Yes, little girl?”

“Is Mrs. Roseland still in your bowling league?”

“Betsy?”

“I have no idea what her first name is,” I replied. “Wears bright red lipstick and kitten heels?”

“That's Betsy,” said Aunt Evilyn. “She's in my league.”

“Do you have her telephone number?”

She smiled, obviously eager to help in some way. “I'll check,” she said without making eye contact.

As she thumbed through her wallet-sized address book, Dad asked, “Why Mrs. Roseland?”

“I overheard them talking. She's his Jesus.” I began pacing the kitchen. “She may have helped him.”

“Your cheek has my handprint on it,” Mom interjected. “I'm so sorry.”

“Mom. Later. Please.”

“I found it,” announced Aunt Evilyn.

“Deanté, give me your phone,” I said.

I dialed the numbers as Aunt Evilyn called them out. The telephone rang and rang, but there was no answer. “Do you have the address, too?”

Aunt Evilyn nodded. “I've dropped her off at home a time or two. She's just a few streets over. Only pink house on Kensington.”

“Deanté?”

He grabbed his car keys. “Let's go.” We ran to his mother's Mercedes, while my mother and Aunt Evilyn squeezed into the Fiat with Dad.

*   *   *

The sun was setting as we pulled up to the only baby-pink house on Kensington Boulevard, Mrs. Roseland's car parked in the driveway. When we rolled to a stop, I immediately jumped out, leaving Deanté in the car.

“Should we wait on your parents? They were behind me, but I think something may have gone wrong with the car.”

I was already halfway up the sidewalk, approaching the pale-green front door. “Go check on them. I'll be here.”

I pressed the bronzed doorbell. “Coming, coming, coming,” I heard Mrs. Roseland chirp from inside.

Mrs. Roseland peeked through the right-most curtain and quickly cracked the door. “Toya, Toya, Toya! I'm happy to see you're back.”

“Is Alex here, Mrs. Roseland?” I blurted. “He's missing.”

“He's in the in-law suite out back. He was waiting here when I got home from school on Tuesday. I heard him call your mom and tell her.” She saw my shock, and she held her palm to her lips. “He tricked me.”

I stormed off the wraparound porch and pushed the fence open. “Alex!” I howled.

In the distance, the Fiat sputtered to the curb, followed by Deanté's Mercedes. Alex opened the suite door and wiped the sleep from his eyes. He wore green plaid pajama pants and a faded T-shirt that read
Hello Courage
. “How did you find me?” He gawked at me, squinting.

“The principal found your note in your cubicle.”

“Dang.”

“Dang is right,” I said. “He gave it to Mom and Dad, and Mom made a scene at school. The Gatekeeper put down her magazine to watch.” I smiled.

“So that's what it takes for her to put down that catalog?”

“That's nothing. Mom slapped me!”

“Shoot! I hate that I missed it.”

I laughed. “I'm sure you do.” I reached into my pocket, pulled out a quarter I'd found in the woods, and held it to him.

He placed it back in my palm and closed my hand around it. “How many did you find?” he asked, staring at the ground. “I left most of them in the woods.”

“Thirteen dollars' worth.”

“There's more.” He smiled faintly.

“Alex! You're all right!” Mom nearly knocked me down to get to her son. “Let me look at you,” she said, inspecting his arms, legs, and face.

“I'm fine, Mom.”

“You scared us, kid.” Dad stood a few feet away, unable to move any closer.

Even when I'd humiliated and abandoned him, he still thought to leave me his shiniest quarters. I felt undeserving of such a sibling. I took a few steps away from them to stand near the fence with Aunt Evilyn, who was still clutching her purse.

“You've grown up to be kind of pretty,” she told me. “You weren't too pretty when you were little, but I shouldn't have told you to your face.”

It was the best Aunt Evilyn had to offer. I'd take it.

 

FIERCE

Later that night, I checked on my spider. After hours of spinning and weaving geometric shapes, she perched herself in the center to reap the benefits of her magnificent work. She truly was fierce.

I opened my spider's window a half an inch. “Hey there. I've been watching you for a while, and I just wanted to let you know that I think you're freaking awesome. I love what you do with your web; it's gorgeous, and you will always have a place on my window as long as you would like. But never—and I repeat, never—come into my room or I'll squash you without a second thought.” I carefully closed the window and latched it shut.

Afterward, I powered up the computer in the bathroom. The Wi-Fi was running faster than I'd ever seen it. It only took fifteen minutes to log in to my hardly used e-mail account, then another twelve to look up the e-mail address to north-central Alabama's NPR news station, based in Birmingham. That station housed the Southern Education Desk, which said it was
committed to exploring the challenges and opportunities confronting education in the twenty-first century.

I gulped down one deep breath and caught my reflection behind the bulky computer. I focused on my large dark eyes, almost black but not quite. I hadn't realized it, but my eyes were beautiful. No. Fierce!

To: Sam Watson

From: Toya Williams

SUBJECT: Do with this information what you will

Dear Mr. Watson at the Southern Education Desk,

I am a student at Edgewood High School in Montgomery, AL. I recently reported an attempted rape to my principal, Principal Smith at Edgewood High School, and nothing was done about it. Since the boy, Joshua Anderson, belongs to a well-respected Edgewood family, the principal rejected my claim. Joshua is the son of the owner of Anderson Toyota, Jeep, Dodge.

I'm writing you because though I was saved from outright rape, I fear this boy has and will continue to pursue other victims. I fear that I am forever changed by this incident, but I would feel accountable if I didn't take further action in this matter, and God forbid, another girl is victimized.

I am contacting you first, but if you do not respond to this e-mail within a week, I will pass the story along to another station. If they don't respond, I will pursue media outside the state. In other words, Mr. Watson, I will not stop until Joshua Anderson and Principal Smith are exposed. I would appreciate your help, but if you are not receptive, I'll find someone who is.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

T.M.W.

My finger hovered over the send button, and I considered erasing the e-mail, shutting down the computer, and walking away, but then swallowed. The lump in my throat had shrunk from pea-sized to the size of a small seed. But it was still there.