Weird Girl and What's His Name (7 page)

“How can you say that it's none of my business?” she asked quietly. “How can you possibly say that to
me
?”

“Well, how . . . how could you follow me?”

“Because I was worried about you! I saw you running into the woods like a bat out of hell and I thought—I don't know what I thought! I thought something was wrong, I thought you needed help! Your mom's for shit, Rory. Who else is gonna back you up?”

“I don't need you to back me up. Did it ever occur to you that I have a private life? That I don't want you . . .
watching
me? Quit playing Mulder and Scully for five minutes, okay? Fuck off and leave me alone!” I jammed my key into the lock. Even in the dark, without seeing Lula's face, I knew I'd gone too far.

“Your
private life
?” Lula's voice trembled. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? I thought we didn't keep secrets! I thought we—I thought I knew everything about you!”

“I couldn't tell you,” I tried to explain. I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself. The front door crept open, just an inch. I wanted to run inside and close the door on her and pretend that none of this was happening. But I stayed on the porch. “I wanted to, I wanted to tell you so many times, but he's afraid he'll get in trouble. If somebody got the wrong idea, he could be arrested—”

“Maybe he should be! Isn't he, like, in his
forties
? His
late
forties? He's old enough to be your dad.”

“Lula, swear to me, please, swear you won't say a word to anybody.” I turned to her, fully begging now. My chest was a mad flutter, all panic. I was so much bigger than Lula, but now I felt like a little kid.

“Are you serious? I saw him. Rory, this guy's
molesting
you—” she hissed.

“He's not, Lula, please, I'm begging you, he's not hurting me. I don't know what you saw or what it looked like to you, but I love him. I love him more than I've ever loved anybody. Please, please, you have to understand.”

“You actually . . . you
love
that guy?” Lula sounded incredulous.

“Yes. I love him. And he loves me, too.”

“And he loves you, too,” she echoed, her voice even quieter now. “So, football tryouts. Romancing the boss. What else you got up your sleeve, Theodore? While we're having this little heart-to-heart.”

“You know everything now,” I told her, feeling the blood drain from my face as I leaned against the doorjamb. “No more secrets.”

“I knew something was up with you. But I had no idea . . . I mean, I actually thought . . .” Lula exhaled, blinking her eyes like she was trying not to cry. She tucked her red hair behind her ears. “I thought that if we couldn't be . . . I thought at least we were in this thing together, Rory.”

“What thing?”

“This . . . being alone.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

“Lula—”

“But I get it now. Okay? So, forget it.” She gave me a funny smile. Her eyes were full of tears. “Just forget I was ever here.”

She turned and walked down the two porch steps to the mailbox where her bike was leaning. I watched her kick the kickstand up, but she didn't ride away. She walked the bike slowly down the street. I could've caught up with her if I'd wanted to. When she thought I was in trouble, she came running after me. I should have gone after her. But instead I just stood there, watching her pass beneath the wan streetlamp, watching until she turned the corner, out of sight.

eight

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, F
RIDAY, IT HAPPENED
just like my fantasy. Second period Algebra II. Except it was the vice principal. She pulled Mrs. Havens, our teacher, out into the hall, and I could see them looking at me as they whispered.

“Rory,” Mrs. Havens waved me over. “Get your books.”

My heart had already started to pound. And then I saw the goateed guy with his sleeves rolled up and the gun at his hip.

“Theodore Callahan?” the vice principal asked.

“Yes?” I felt dizzy. I kept staring at the guy's gun.

“This is Detective Addison from the police department. He'd like to ask you some questions about your friend Tallulah Monroe.”

That big slamming noise that made everybody in the class stand up was all 280 pounds of me hitting the hallway when I fainted.

“A
M
I
A SUSPECT
?”

“We're just trying to piece together a timeline,” Detective Addison answered without answering. There was something about him I didn't like, and I realized that it was because he reminded me of Krycek, the double agent on
The X-Files.
I sat back. My chair squeaked. I was sitting at the table in the faculty conference room with an icepack on the side of my head where I had hit the ground. The principal and vice principal were there, along with my mom, sitting on one side of me, and, sitting on the other side, Mrs. Lidell. Addison held a gold pen in his hand, tapping it against his fingers.

“When was the last time you saw your friend Tallulah, son?”

“Last night. Around ten or so. Maybe ten thirty.”

“Ten p.m.?”

“Yeah. She came over . . .” I hesitated. I didn't want to say anything about Andy. My head was killing me, and I felt nauseated. “We were supposed to study for midterms. But I forgot. I was—I stayed late at work. To help with inventory.”

“Where do you work?”

“Andy's Books & Coffee.”

“Can your boss corroborate your story?”

Corroborate my story? Jesus.

“Yes.” I licked my lips. My mouth was dry. “Yes, sir.”

“How long did she stay at your house that night?”

“Not long. Like five minutes, maybe ten. She was . . . upset that I forgot.” My voice broke. Mrs. Lidell reached over and took my hand.

“You and Miss Monroe argued?” Addison asked.

“Yes, sir. But it didn't seem like . . . anything serious.”

“Mrs. Callahan, were you at home when this fight was going on?”

“I was—ahm,” my mother cleared her throat. “I was out with some colleagues from work.”

“You're acquainted with Tallulah Monroe?”

“She's been over to the house before. She seemed like a sweet girl. And Teddy's not the type that would do anything—he wouldn't have done anything to hurt her. I know he's a big guy, but he's a sweetheart, he really is.” She was bleary as usual, but at least she stood up for me. I looked at my mom for some sign of how she really felt. Was she angry with me? Did she think this whole thing was all a big joke? Impossible to tell. Her face was blank.

Addison looked at my mother, then back at me.

“Son, what was the exact nature of your relationship with Tallulah Monroe?”

“She's my best friend.”

Addison clicked his pen.

“Theodore, was your relationship with Tallulah Monroe one of a sexual nature?”

“No, sir.” My face was burning. Mrs. Lidell squeezed my hand.

“I know it might be embarrassing. There might have been things going on between you and Miss Monroe that you don't want to talk about in front of your mother. But we need you to tell us everything about the relationship you and Tallulah had. Because anything you remember, any little detail, no matter how small, might help us to bring her home safe.”

“Yes, sir,” I nodded.

“Now, she told her grandparents she was leaving to go to your house at around eight p.m. You say you didn't see her until between ten and ten thirty. Any idea where she might have gone in the interim?”

“No, sir.”

“And did she say she was going somewhere else, after she left your house?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you make plans to reschedule the study session you'd missed?”

“No, sir.”

“Was there another boy she was close to, or someone she might have gone off with to make you mad? To get revenge for standing her up?”

Revenge.

“No, sir. Not that I know of.”

“Did she have any other . . . any girlfriends? Anyone she might have gone to spend the night with?”

“She used to hang out with Jenny . . . um. Jenny Walsh. But she goes to boarding school now. I think it's in Vermont or someplace.”

Addison nodded. He paced back and forth.

“So you can't think of any other place she might have gone, any other person in this whole town she could be with?”

“Her mother.”

“What?”

“Her mother. She might have gone to find her mom.”

nine

L
EO PACED THE KITCHEN, CHAIN-SMOKING
L
UCKY
Strikes.

“Goddamn
it.” The veins on his neck were popping out. “I flew a helicopter off the goddamn roof of the embassy in Saigon, and this pathetic excuse for a police force expects me to sit around on my ass and wait for a
goddamned telephone call.”

“Leo, honey, remember what Dr. Patel said about your blood pressure.”

“Janet—” he started, and stopped. It was the first time I'd witnessed one of Leo's nuclear moods, and it was a little scary. “At least her mother had the decency to write us a letter,” he growled. “At least we knew she hadn't been kidnapped in the middle of the night by a bunch of goddamned Hell's Angels.”

I sat there at the white-and-silver Formica kitchen table. I sat there staring at the backpack. The one that had belonged to Lula's mom. The one the police had just turned up at a truck stop four miles from the house. The thing that made Leo so pissed was that they weren't even looking for it. A lady cop had gone in to use the bathroom while they were searching the woods, and it was sitting there in one of the stalls. When she looked inside it for ID, she saw that one of the books was marked with a ripped-off piece of Lula's class schedule.

There was no sign of foul play. But Lula hadn't left a note. Her bike was still in the garage—if she'd left on her own, she left on foot. She left her cell phone, too. The police tried to search the Flying J security tapes, but there had been some mix-up, and the tape from the night that Lula had gone missing had already been taped over. Leo fumed endlessly about why their ass-backward security system wasn't updated to digital. The clerks at the Flying J couldn't remember seeing anyone who looked like Lula, even though the cops did a special computer rendering of her last school picture, to update her blond hair to red. Detective Addison took her computer, to search all her files and see if she was meeting some Internet creep. There was a duffel bag missing, and some clothes. The bedroom window was locked. They were assuming that she was a runaway, but they weren't completely ruling out the possibility of abduction.

Abduction. Jesus.

I
SPENT ALL DAY
S
ATURDAY AND
Sunday with Janet and Leo, printing missing posters on Leo's computer and putting them up everywhere we could. Leo and I went on long, tense, quiet rides out to neighboring towns, while Janet stuck to Hawthorne, walking the subdivisions, papering every lamppost. My mother even tried to help in her way. She got up early and went out to Bojangles' for bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits that I tried to eat but couldn't swallow. She called coworkers at her company's other branches in Denver, Indianapolis, and Houston, and asked them if she could email them some missing flyers to print out and pass around. I couldn't see Lula ending up in Indianapolis or Houston, but it was nice of my mom to try. On Saturday night, I went home and waited for Lula to email or call, but she never did. On Sunday night, after another day of driving, I went back to Janet and Leo's.

“I know you guys are probably tired of me. But Mrs. Lidell's midterm is tomorrow,” I explained to Janet, standing on the doorstep. I hadn't cracked a book all weekend. “Would it be okay if I . . . stayed in Lula's room tonight to study?”

“Sweetheart, we could never get tired of you. Come on inside—you look famished.”

After dinner, Janet and Leo sat in their recliners, the TV turned to a Hitchcock movie on TCM, the volume low, their phones in their laps. I went up to Lula's room. I sat on her bed and looked around. There was a faint, dustless outline on her desk from where the computer used to be. Above her desk, in a place of honor, was Lula's latest acquisition from her favorite movie memorabilia website: the teaser poster for the new
X-Files
movie. The poster showed Mulder and Scully walking away from each other, toward a bright light. But, even though they were walking away from each other, the light made their long shadows cross the page, forming an X. It was reassuring somehow to know that, whatever terrifying alien mysteries might conspire to tear our heroes apart in this upcoming chapter of their adventures, at least their shadows remained connected. I wondered how far away Lula was from me now. I wondered if she could feel any connection still, if she could feel how much I wanted her back here with me.

Janet had put Lula's mom's backpack in its usual place on the shelf. I took it down and emptied the contents. The Laura Nyro tape was missing, but the picture of Lula's mom was still there. So was the scarf, the postcard from California, and the books. Lula's sacred texts.

I felt the weight of the three books in my hands. I laid them out on the bed in a straight line, as if placing them there might somehow conjure her back. Faintly, from outside, I could hear crickets and tree frogs. It was too quiet in this room without Lula. I looked up at the row of DVDs on Lula's bookshelf. Some of the spines bore orange stickers with the word
USED
stamped in black; those were the ones she'd bought secondhand from the Suncoast Video at the mall. I remembered the day Lula asked Janet to drive us there so she could buy
X-Files
Season One. She wasn't working as a caddy back then, but Janet and Leo gave her a bigger allowance than my mom gave me.
Just because I'm buying these with my money,
she'd explained,
doesn't mean they're mine. They're ours. It's our show.
I opened the DVD player under Lula's TV. The last Season Three disc we'd been watching was still in there. I took it out and put it away. Season Four was too dark, too sad . . . I skipped ahead, took out a disc from Season Five and slid it into the DVD player. I turned the TV on and turned the volume down until it was just loud enough to drown out all this quiet.

I spread out my notes from Mrs. Lidell's class, my highlighted books. But I couldn't concentrate. I was reading the same sentence over and over again without seeing it. I closed my notebook and reached for Lula's books.
Okay, Lula, where do I start?
I waited for some Ouija board-like guidance. Nothing came. There could be clues in any or all three of these. Some passage, some perfect arrangement of words that would make this make sense. I started with the Stanislavski.
An Actor Prepares.
It was full of highlights and underlines, fuzzy pen lines bleeding into the text. These were probably Christine's underlines, not Lula's. But it didn't matter. I flipped to a random page.
When you cannot believe in the larger action you must reduce it to smaller and smaller proportions until you can believe in it.
Okay, this was useful. I couldn't—wouldn't—believe that Lula was gone, maybe forever. Forever did not compute. Forever washed over me like a giant wave, destroying my balance, my sense of direction, leaving me nowhere. Letting myself believe that something bad had happened, that I wouldn't see her again, felt like falling into a deep, dizzy black hole.
Lula isn't going to be in school tomorrow,
I told myself. That wasn't exactly a comforting thought, but at least it was easier to digest. Like maybe she was off visiting a sick relative and she'd be back by the end of the week. It was false hope, maybe, but it was better than thinking I might never see her again.

I opened up the Liv Ullmann book and saw an underlined passage. Again, I didn't know if Lula had underlined it, or her mom:
All the time I am trying to change myself. For I do know that there is much more than the things I have been near.
I read for a while, then I moved over to the book of Shepard plays. Found more underlining. From the character Lula stole her name from, Blue Morphan:
Gotta make plans. Figure out yer moves. Make sure they're yer own moves and not someone else's.
I closed the book.
Okay, Lula. Are you out there, anywhere? Trying to change yourself, looking for more than what's here? Are you making your own moves? Are you running away, running to your mom? Or did somebody take you against your will? You'd never let that happen, would you?
I sat quietly, listening, waiting for some epiphany, some certainty, but there was nothing. The low murmur of Mulder and Scully, preoccupied with their own mysteries, looking for their own truth.

I wasn't a big fan of cowboy-and-Indian western stuff, and all those Swedish movies we watched bored me out of my skull. But now, as I climbed into Lula's bed with her books in my hands, I felt almost feverish with the certainty that they would give me the clues I needed. The clues to figure out the moves Lula had made that had taken her away. By the blue light of the TV, I opened the books and started to read.

I
STAYED UP ALL NIGHT, READING
Lula's books while our show played in the background. I pretty much forgot about Mrs. Lidell's midterm exam. Now I sat there in her classroom, my eyes burning, the coffee I'd gulped before class doing nothing besides making me feel like I was either going to fly off into space or puke. I had Lula's
An Actor Prepares
tucked into my inside jacket pocket, poking gently into my ribs. I scribbled through the short-answer part of the test, faking my way through the finer points of
The Sound and The Fury, Hamlet,
and “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” But all that was going through my head was Liv Ullmann's Norwegian winter. Cowboy mind-control and Cajun beasts. The unbroken line, an actor presenting the truth on a stage. Mulder and Scully, adrift with no one to trust but each other. And Lula was going through my mind. Lula, laughing, throwing her book across the lawn. Lula, dyeing her hair Scully red. Lula holding me beneath her comforter.

I was failing this test. I turned to the last page. The essay questions. Make that question, singular. There was only one of them.
Great,
I thought. It'd probably count for half the midterm grade.

I opened the blue book and folded back the cover. And then I put my head down on my desk. I was going to fail Mrs. Lidell's midterm. I looked up. She looked back at me and gave me a sympathetic smile. I didn't want to disappoint her. I didn't want to disappoint Lula. I knew that sounded crazy. Lula wasn't even there, let alone reading my stupid midterm essay. But I knew this was it—my big chance to prove myself, to prove that I was true to her, that I'd read her books and that I understood.

Still, I felt like I was gasping for air. I put my head back down. I knew I had to pull something coherent out of the muddle in my mind.
This should be obvious. Write about Hamlet. There's a guy who's paralyzed by self-doubt. Easy enough. Or how 'bout
Sound and the Fury
? The brother . . . or, um . . . the other brother.
But it had all evaporated right out of my brain. None of the books I'd stayed up all night reading were on the independent reading list. Could I get away with a five-paragraph essay about Blue Morphan, and his choice to free the people of Nogoland? Was Liv Ullmann on a hero's quest? All I could think was
Lula. Lula, damn you. Why did you leave? Why aren't you sitting here next to me right now? Kicking my chair, trying to make me laugh? Lula, I can't do this without you.

All of a sudden this completely trivial thought popped into my head.
Lula, our Incomplete Guide to
The X-Files
is going to remain incomplete.
I could never finish it alone. Tears pricked my eyes—oh, no. I couldn't start crying, not during Mrs. Lidell's midterm. I squeezed my eyes shut. Was I hallucinating? Maybe it was the coffee, maybe the lack of sleep, but I could've sworn I heard Lula's voice right then. Like she was right next to me, whispering in my ear.
Good gravy, Theodore. Pull it together, kid.

I sat up. I smoothed out the page. I clicked my pen, and I started to write.

Faith and a Sense of Truth

It just popped into my head. It was one of the chapter titles from the Stanislavski book. Pretty soon, the rest of the words came tumbling out of me, as fast as my shaky hand could write them.

“W
E NEED TO TALK.
”

“Yeah,” was all I could say. I was exhausted, and Andy had been acting skittish, avoiding me in front of the customers even more than usual. Now that we were alone, Andy lowered his voice, even though it was just the two of us behind the counter.

“Look, I'm sorry your friend ran away, but I can't have this.”

“Can't have what?” I asked.

“The police were over here. Questioning me about you. About you working late on Thursday night.”

“I didn't tell them anything. I mean, I didn't tell them about us.”

“Rory, I think—” He swallowed hard. “Rory, I think you should leave. I'll send you your paycheck.”

“Wait a minute—”

“I just can't have this right now. This . . . attention. If they knew about you and me . . . you know they wouldn't understand. I could lose the shop, my kids—everything.”

“Andy.” This wasn't sinking in. Was he saying what I thought he was saying? “Are you firing me or breaking up with me?” He wouldn't meet my eye.

“You have to see where I'm coming from on this.”

“But I thought—” I looked at him. His face was stern. Expressionless. “I thought you loved me.”

“Rory.” He sighed. “Look, you're a great guy, and you're a lot of fun in bed. And I do—I care about you, I really do, I like you a lot. But this is getting way too heavy for me. Look, we've talked about this before—you think you want a long-term, serious relationship, and you're still just a kid. I just got out of a marriage. I'm not ready to take on all this . . . baggage and drama. It's not where I am in my life right now. And now, with the police and everything, it's just too much for me. I'm sorry it didn't work out, and I hope your friend comes home, but right now I really need you to go.”