Vanished (2 page)

“I don’t get it,” I say, shoving my hands into fists under the table.  I have the overwhelming feeling this is a trap. 
Can this day get any worse?

“Just come,” she says and pulls a little piece of folded up note-paper from her sweater pocket, holding it out to me under the table.  I hesitate but the teacher walks in and she jabs the paper at my elbow, so I take it. “Come,” she says and actually touches my arm and gives me a warm smile.

“Miss Delaney, are you lost?” The teacher, Mr. Harborough, is looking over at us.  I squeeze the little note into the palm of my hand.

“Nope,” she answers, popping the ‘p’ and slides gracefully off the stool, “I was just leaving Mr. H.” She gives me one last look, winks, and then prances out the door.

It’s fortunate I’m invisible to teachers too because Mr. Harborough’s attention does not linger on me once Madison’s leaves. He turns and begins to write on the board and my dorky lab-partner takes his seat next to me and starts getting out his lab stuff. 

I realize my palms are sweating and the ink on the little note might smear.  I turn toward the window, putting my back to my lab-partner and uncurl my fingers revealing the little wedge of paper.  I glance over my shoulder. Harborough is now busy answering another student’s question.  I turn back and, with trembling hands, unfold the note.

The hand-writing is curly and perfect as opposed to my clumsy looking box letters.

We’re driving to my family’s lake house in the Ozarks for Spring Break and you’re coming with us!
No parents
. We’ll pick you up tonight at midnight. Listen for the car horn. Oh, and
bring a swimsuit.

A hysterical feeling bubbles up in my chest and I stifle a giggle.  The fact that she approached me, gave me the note and actually thinks I can go is so bizarre that I’m not sure how to respond, other than to shove the note in my pocket and turn to face the board.

I hear nothing Mr. Harborough says or the teachers in the next two classes. I take notes, mechanically, while my mind is focused on Madison’s note.  I realize, suddenly, that I’m actually considering going. I’m plotting in my head to sneak out of my bedroom in the middle of the night.

The bus ride home is a blur.  I have the house to myself for the first two hours until my mom gets back from shopping with the boys and Judge comes home from work.  I know I’m supposed to be praying but I throw my back-pack on my desk, sit down on my bed and pull the note out of my pocket.  I read it again. A second time.  A third time.

Bring your swim suit
. The words send a jolt of excitement through me and my stomach fills with butterflies. Those four words imply so many things about what to expect if I could actually go, particularly the idea of being in nothing but a swimsuit in front of boys. 
Do I even own a swim-suit
?

I glance at the clock. Plenty of time before anyone comes home. 

Sweat starts to tingle in my armpits as I chew on my nails.  My eyes dart to my closet and before I even realize what I’m doing, I’m up and rifling through the drawers. 

No swim-suit.

Mom has swim-suits
, I think, and then I’m shocked at myself for even thinking it.  Why am I even looking, why do I care? Sure, I could snoop through her drawers, I could probably even find a suit that would fit me – mom and I are close in size – but what then?  Then I will just feel worse because I won’t be able to stop picturing the swim-suit in my mind all week long and every time I do, I’ll think about what I’m missing out on.  It’s better not to torture myself.

I hear my mother’s voice in my head
:
Pray Trin, pray hard and hopefully God will cleanse you of those evil thoughts.

              Instead, an even more dangerous thought creeps into my mind.  I could go and
never
come back. 

              It’s been fifteen minutes since I looked at the clock last and mom and the twins will be home in forty five. 

              Plenty of time…

              Once I make the decision it gets easier because I have ample preparation to keep me distracted from the doubt. 

              It’s dark in mom’s room.  I flip the light switch on and swallow hard. I’m never in this room.  I’m not allowed.  They probably think I’ll steal something.  The room is immaculate.  The walls are white and mostly empty except for Jesus on his cross hanging above mom’s dresser.  I walk over to it, avoid looking at Jesus, and pull open the top drawer.  There are two swimsuits; a black, ribbed one-piece and, in a plastic bag, a purple bikini I’ve never seen before.  I try to imagine my mother in it but I can’t. 

              I take the bikini and stuff the black suit back down to the bottom of the drawer, rearranging the clothes to look like they haven’t been ransacked.  Jesus gives me a disapproving look as I close the drawer.

Honor thy mother and father.
I hesitate. Judge isn’t my
real
dad and my mom has always said how much easier life would be for her if she’d left me with my dad after the divorce. So aren’t I actually doing her a favor?

             
Maybe I will go see dad.

              I don’t talk to him very much, about twice a year on my birthday and Christmas, and on those rare occasions all we talk about is school.  He wants to know about my teachers, my favorite subjects, what kind of grades I get.  He stopped asking about my home situation a long time ago. In fact, his only condition for not fighting my mom on full-custody and child support was that I attend St. Raphael’s Academy until I graduate. 

              Around the house when Judge and mom refer to my dad they called him
The Atheist
.  When I was six I looked up the word atheist;
one who denies the existence of God
.  Why would someone who doesn’t believe in God be so resolute about their child attending and graduating from a catholic school?

              Returning to my room, I push the old lingering mystery out of my mind and dump out my back-pack.  I fill it full of clothes and stuff the purple swim-suit in next followed by my sketchpad and pencils. 

              I look around the room and try to think of anything else I might want to take.  I scan the tiny bookshelf above the desk.  I know I should take my bible but out there I can be whoever I want.  I don’t have to be broken, bible-thumping, Trin Snow, the religious freak, anymore. In fact, I’ve never really felt like that girl.  Deep down, away from the scrutinizing eyes of my parent’s, I’ve often wondered if there really is a God.  I’m a science nerd and science tends to bring religion into question. 

              My eyes leave the book-shelf and hang on on my bedroom door. 

             
The twins
, I think, slumping against my bed. 
This is wrong
.
They’re only five. I can’t leave them here with Judge.
Without me around for him to take his anger out on he might turn it on the boys. It’s the reason I never took YF up on the offer he or she made to help, why I regretfully threw each note in the trash before leaving school, not wanting to risk someone finding them at home.

              All my hope of leaving, and never coming back, is zapped out of me. 

              I almost unpack everything. If I can’t go forever, why go at all?

Then I hear the garage door opening. It’s
not
time.
Someone
is home early.  I get up, almost knock over the lamp on my desk, and hustle over to my bed, stashing the back-pack underneath and pulling the bed-skirt down to conceal it. I assume prayer position and this time I really do pray. I pray that it’s not Judge coming home before mom.  I don’t know why but for some reason mom being around keeps Judge mostly in check. It makes no sense because she has never once interfered but I know I don’t want to be alone in the house with my monster.

              I hear the heavy foot-falls coming up the stairs and resist the gnawing urge to climb under the bed with my back-pack. 
He’ll know your hiding
, a voice says in my head,
he always knows. He’ll find the back-pack and open it and…

              My bedroom door opens, “Where’s your mother?”

              I look innocently up at him.  My step-father is about six foot six with a giant round belly and hands as big as baseball mitts.  He has a bulbous nose lined with veins and his cruel black eyes look more blood-shot than usual. “She…she went to the grocery store…I think.” I squeeze my eyes shut again, hoping he’ll go away and leave me alone.

              “Do I detect attitude in your tone?” He asks, his words laced with poison.

             
Oh no, he’s in a bad mood
, I think silently.  I force myself to look at him again, “No sir,” I say and this time, for some stupid reason, I don’t look away.

              It’s a mistake.  He takes two steps towards me, his fists clenched, “You think you’re so perfect, don’t you?”

              I shake my head and instinctively lean back.  Even from four feet away I can smell the alcohol on his breath.  A lump forms in my throat.
Please God
, I pray,
please if you get me out of this, I swear I’ll never think of leaving again.

             
A vein is throbbing in Judge’s neck and his jaw flexes, “You know what you need, Miss Perfect?”

              I shake my head again. I should answer verbally but I can’t choke the words out past the giant lump in my throat. “Answer me,” he rages, lifting his fist.

              I scramble backwards, “Yes sir…I mean… no sir.”

              He lunges towards me but I’m faster and I dodge out of the way and wedge myself into the corner between my bed and the dresser. 

              “Miss Perfect
needs
a taste of humility,” he says with a maniacal smile and I watch, helpless, as he swings his arm back and his big, beefy fist flies toward my face.  I barely have time to throw my arms up and curl my head beneath them before his fist cracks into my forearm sending a jolt of pain up into my shoulder.  The next punch connects with my cheek-bone and I forget about my arm as searing white hot fire crackles through my face. Hot, thick blood fills my mouth. 

              It must be the sound of the garage opening that saves me because suddenly the beating stops.  I don’t even hear him leave – probably because my ears are ringing but through blurred vision, I confirm the monster is gone. I’m alone.

              My face is on fire and my head is throbbing.  I know I need to get up before my mother comes.  I can feel my heartbeat in my cheek and I raise a trembling hand to touch the spot. Searing pain shoots up into my head and a wave of dizziness washes over me.  It hurts but it doesn’t feel broken. 

              I straighten my clothes, move back over to the bed and get into prayer position.  When I close my eyes all I can see are nightmarish images of
my
monster turning on two little boys and I know I can’t leave, at least not forever.  I won’t let him hurt my brothers. I will take a thousand more beatings if it means he never lays a hand on them. And one day, if he does hurt Elijah or Isaac, I will slit his throat in his sleep. 

             
How’s that for sin, God
, I think, glancing up at my ceiling,
oh and by the way, thanks for the nothing. 

Chapter Two

Logan

              “Hey did you catch KU game last night?” Collin yells over the music as we pull up a few houses down from Trinity Snow’s house and I honk the horn.  Putting the Expedition in park, I turn down the music and lean around to look at him.

              Collin’s shaved red hair is almost touching the roof of the car; his mountain-dew green eyes are centered over a slightly large nose. He smiles at me excitedly, “Yeah, but not until the second half,” I answer, frowning at the dark gray sky over his shoulder and wondering - for the hundredth time - why I let Maddie talk me into this trip for a third year in a row. 

Things aren’t going well between us and it really isn’t the best time to be stuck with her for an entire week.  Then there is the most recent development – Maddie inviting that weird Christian girl we don’t even know to come to the Ozarks with us – and the mysterious look she keeps giving us anytime we bring it up.  “Someone check their phone, let’s see if the weathers going to clear up.” I suggest. 

              Parked in front of Trin Snow’s house I can’t help thinking about the awkward looking girl.  I’ve seen her around school, dressed like a boy, and usually hunched over a massive stack of books.    If she would stand up straight, comb her hair occasionally and stop dropping books everywhere she might actually be somewhat attractive with all that black hair and those…hmm…what color are her eyes?