Set You Free (6 page)

“No, Dad. Why would I—”

“Where is he, Lauren? You must know.”

“I don’t,” I say. “I need to talk to Mom. We’ll call if we hear anything.” I grab my mother’s phone.

“The second you hear from Tom, or they catch him, you call me.”

“Fine,” I say, hanging up.

My mother is staring into space. Shaking her head.

“Why were you talking to him?” I ask.

“He called.”

“He always upsets you.”

She inhales deeply. “He’s your father,” she says, as if this explains anything. As if he’s actually been anything even close to a dad.

“He’s useless and cruel,” I say.

“Lauren, he’s your
father
,” she repeats.

“And that means I’m supposed to respect him?” I sit down beside her, and she leans her head on my shoulder. I’ve never been as good as Tom at comforting her. I sometimes fear that there’s a bit of my father’s cruelty in me. Or, at the very least, his disregard for others’ feelings. I notice it sometimes as well. The way I have passed over friends without really caring.

Like last semester, when some of the girls at school were playing this stupid game. Steph Carter started it. She’d go up to some of the bigger girls and ask them how they slept at night:
You know, back, front, left, right? Which side do you sleep on?

The girls were always confused by the question. First of all, who cares, right? And second, Steph Carter had likely never said a word to them before, so the sudden interest was confounding.

But for some reason, they would always answer. You watch something like this happen and you can see how people get pulled into cults, gangs, fundamentalist beliefs. These girls wanted to believe that Steph, super-popular Steph Carter, actually cared about them. Cared what they thought, what they did, how they slept at night.

If the girl said
right side
, there’d be an immense amount of hilarity because, apparently, pigs always sleep on their right side. The girl would find her way onto Steph’s piggy list, which was distributed online for all to see.

My friend Stacy had done it once in a blatant grab at popularity. She asked this girl Marlene, but Marlene had already heard of the piggy test and refused to answer.

No answer means right side, piggy. On the piggy list you go
, Stacy had said.

When we were little kids, Marlene and I played together all the time. We were absolutely best friends. Right up to
about eighth grade, before we went off to high school and everything changed.

Why do you have to be like that?
Marlene had asked.
Why do you have to be such a bitch all the time?

Why do you have to be so fat and disgusting all the time?
Stacy had replied before grabbing my hand and dragging me away.

I’d made the mistake of looking back. Marlene was watching us go. She was shaking her head, and I could tell she was sad. But not for herself. It really didn’t look pitiful. It looked pitying.

Lesson: never look back.

“Don’t talk to him anymore,” I say to my mom.

“He needs to be kept informed.” I notice the bucket beside the couch. These migraines are often so awful that she’s left throwing up, dizzy and discombobulated.

“I’ll take care of it,” I say. “Do you want to be out here or in bed?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she says. Then she looks directly at me. “Do you think he could have done it?”

“Abducted Ben?” I say.

“Yes.”

“No way,” I say. “He would never snatch a kid. How can you even think that, Mom?”

“I worry,” she says.

“What do you worry about?”

“That I never should have let him go.”

The truth is, she shouldn’t have. No one should have been forced to live with my father. But she didn’t force him. She just let him go. It’s almost the same, but not quite.

“He went,” I say. “He did it for all of us. So there wasn’t so much fighting. I don’t think he could take the fighting any longer.”

“I know he couldn’t have done something like this. Not our Tom,” Mom says. “I never thought he could. I hope I haven’t damaged him.”

“You didn’t,” I say. “He’s the same old Tom.”

“I think I’ll go to bed,” she says. “Wake me up if he comes home.”

I help her to her feet, and she shuffles off to her bedroom. “I will, Mom,” I say. Then, for the second time in the same day, I say, “It’s going to be okay.” As if I can promise something like that.

I step into my own very messy bedroom and slam the door. I look at my bed like the oasis it is. But before I give up on the day, I go to the bathroom. I felt gross when I woke up this morning, and nothing I have done during the day has changed this. I take a long hot shower, then look in the mirror.

Bad idea.

I look at my freckles and hate them.

My big nose. Hate that too.

My too-small breasts. Hate both of them equally.

My hair. Hate it. What possessed me to get bangs? They’re too short. I look like Velma from
Scooby-Doo
.

I’ve been slowly attempting to reinvent myself. You can’t do these things all at once or people notice, and they won’t give you an inch. They’ll mock you for trying. But for so long I was my brother’s sister. The two of us were so close in age that we always hung out together. Then the divorce happened, and he moved across town and I was on my own. There had been a group of us kids in the neighborhood who all hung out together. But once we hit high school, everyone found new friends with similar interests. I mostly kept to myself.

The parties started in my sophomore year. I don’t even know why I went to the first one. I guess it was because I had one friend left, Stacy, and she really, really wanted to go, to talk to some boy or other.

I’d never had more than a glass of wine before. But I was so bored at the party, and felt so out of place, that whenever someone would hand me a drink, I’d take it.

Then the shot glasses came out, and somehow I became the life of the party.

I heard someone say,
I didn’t know she was so fun!

I still have no idea who that was, but whoever it was changed me. I’d always been
Tom’s sister
. Or
that girl with the bad hair and glasses
. After that party, I decided I wanted to be someone different. Someone fun. I bought contacts, dressed a bit nicer, worried about my makeup. And no one said a
word. No one called me a fake or tried to knock me back down again. I was Lauren Saunders, the life of the party. I made new friends, though I never really felt close to any of them. But it seemed fine. It seemed like what people do.

I leave my glasses in the bathroom and turn away from the mirror.

I lie down on my bed and stare at the ceiling. My body sinks into the mattress. I can feel my muscles releasing. It’s getting dim outside, but not dark enough for the journalists to depart. They’re out there interviewing the neighbors.

I can already hear the sound bites:

“
He seemed so normal
.”

“
I wouldn’t think he would be the type
.”

“
They have had their troubles, certainly. The father moved away, you know. The mother is often ill
.”

A new story is being created out there. A new truth. A new identity for all of us.

I pull my duvet over me, even though it’s warm in my room, and close my eyes. It will be okay, I tell myself. Everything is going to be all right.

NINE

I wake up just after ten feeling a lot better but incredibly hungry. My contacts are in their little jar beside the bed. I pop them in, open my bedroom door and look out. My mom will be asleep. She often sleeps for twelve or thirteen hours after taking her medication. She tells me that every day she wakes up and hopes things will be different. That her head will feel different. That she won’t be bowled over by the migraines.

But every day is exactly the same.

I go to the kitchen and make a sandwich and pour a glass of orange juice. I sit on the couch and turn the
TV
on.

After some fascinating stories about pandas, a windstorm somewhere out west and bushfires in Australia, a picture of Ben appears.

A tall blond woman with brown eyes is discussing the situation with an anchorman. “The boy has now been missing for at least fourteen hours. Investigators cannot say exactly when he disappeared.”

“So what do we know, Kim?” the anchorman asks.

“We know that Benjamin Carter, our mayor’s son, disappeared sometime in the night. He was last seen wearing a Thomas the Tank Engine pajama set. That is, both top and bottoms.”

“Are there any suspects, Kim?”

“Not at the moment, no. However, someone with inside knowledge of the case who wishes to remain anonymous told me the police are interested in locating one Thomas Saunders. My source tells me that he may not be directly involved in the child’s abduction, but it is possible he has information the police could use at this desperate time.”

“Is there anything else the public could do?”

“Well, currently Thomas Saunders’s whereabouts are unknown. So if anyone out there sees Thomas or Benjamin, contact the authorities immediately.” Tom’s yearbook picture flashes on the screen. In it, he looks almost happy.

“Kim, have you had the opportunity to speak with the mayor?”

“Mayor Carter has asked that his privacy be respected.”

“And, of course, it will be, Kim. Thank you. And let’s hope this little boy returns soon. I know the authorities will be doing all they can.” The anchorman opens his mouth to
speak, but I shut the
TV
off before I have to hear another word. I stare at the blank screen while I finish my sandwich. Then I go into my room, put on a pair of jeans and a hoodie, remove the window screen and slip outside.

There is only a half-moon, but it’s a cloudless night. The lawn is thick and nighttime green beneath my feet. The long blades tickle my ankles as I move toward the tree house.

When we were kids, Tom and I would sneak out of the house at night. This was after the divorce, while Tom was still living with us, and our parents were debating our fates with strangers in court. We’d go barefoot out on the cool, dark lawn. The moon high in the sky, the stars unbearably bright.

We never went far. In fact, we never left the confines of the backyard. The previous owners had built this tree house in the corner of the lot. It had four walls and a roof, and you had to climb up a ladder at the bottom.

We didn’t really do anything. Most of the time we were silent, listening. Cars moving along the street behind us. Adults laughing. That slow rise and fall of voices and noise.

I climb the ladder and pull myself through. I can’t recall the last time I was inside. It smells musty and damp.

A kiddie table-and-chair set left over from the previous owners dominates the space. Tom and I never moved them from their original spot. How long has it been since I’ve climbed in here? Eight, ten years?

It seems like a lifetime ago.

I lean against the wall and close my eyes. I can hear the crickets chirping away and cars passing by on the street. The smell brings back a hundred memories. Weeks used to go by where only Tom and I would play together. No friends. No one from the outside world. Just the two of us and our imaginations. This tree house has been a castle, a coffin, a luxurious seaside home, an ice-fishing hut.

We played cards in here: Uno, Hearts and Go Fish. Later, we had handheld video games. I push my feet out and can almost feel Tom’s feet pushing back. That was how we would sit. Feet to feet.

But we grew too tall. So then we stretched out, backs against one wall, feet against the other. I try this and don’t come close to fitting. I have to bend my knees and lean forward. I open my eyes and look out the tiny window at the moon. Tom would tell me stories about people living on the moon. Even then I knew they were made up, but I loved his stories.

Other times we would stay silent and listen to the night noises. Sometimes I would fall asleep, and Tom would eventually wake me and we’d go back inside. He would never leave me out here.

When the divorce was finalized, Tom suddenly lived at the other end of town and went to a different school, and we barely saw one another. My father was often too busy to see me on his weekends, and a few times I didn’t see Tom for over a month. At first I didn’t think much of it. I mean,
I missed him. But other than that, it didn’t seem strange. My father was busy, so he couldn’t bring Tom to see us. That was it.

Our mother never fought for it either. She was deep in the blinding world of migraines by then, and the thought of having to entertain two kids for a whole weekend must have been crippling.

Tom was mostly quiet when we saw one another. He’d ask about people at school and about how I was doing in different classes. Whenever I asked how he was, he’d shrug and say he was fine.

I let it go.

I let it drop.

I let him be completely alone.

I take a final look around the tree house, then climb down the ladder. I start toward my bedroom, but I’m too awake to go to sleep. If I go inside, I’ll end up messing around on the Internet or watching more television. So instead, I turn around and slip through a hole in the hedge that runs the length of the backyard.

It’s not so late that the world has stopped. Televisions flash blue and orange behind curtains. People are walking their dogs, plastic bags jammed in pockets. Headlights cut holes through the darkness.

I’ve walked three blocks when I get the strange feeling that someone is following me. I can’t say where the feeling comes from, but one second I’m thinking how nice it is to be alone,
and the next second it feels as though someone is right behind me, following my every step. I slow down as I pass a bus stop and quickly turn. I don’t see anyone, though a car pulls to the curb a half block back, and the headlights flash off.

I begin walking again—slowly, waiting to hear the car doors open and close. Just as I’m starting to get freaked out, there are voices and laughter and doors slamming shut. I take another quick look back. There’s no one near the car, and because of where it is parked, I can’t tell if anyone is inside either.