Wherever Nina Lies (6 page)

I
realize, as we walk into my room, that this is the first time a guy has ever been up here.

I try and imagine how it must look to Sean, messy unmade bed, a dresser, a nightstand, a desk, a few items of clothing tossed around on the floor. It probably looks like no one spends much time in here, which is true since I’m almost always at Amanda’s.

I sit on my bed and Sean sits in my desk chair and I continue explaining Nina’s drawing. “So then I called the number on there but the guy didn’t know anything, didn’t even remember her. And the guy at the Mothership says he just found the book in the basement and it was practically empty when I was down there, and even if there were any more clues there, they’re all burned up now.”

Sean reaches out his hand and I give him the drawing. My fingertips brush against his, just for a moment. I am very aware of it. Sean holds the drawing close to his face and stares. He doesn’t move, he doesn’t blink, it doesn’t even look like he’s breathing. And I’m wondering if he’s beginning to
regret offering to help me since he is probably quickly realizing how futile this is.

“No pressure,” I say. “I mean, or…” And then I stop because Sean’s mouth has just dropped open, and then this huge grin spreads over his face. “Ellie,” he says slowly. His eyes are shining. “Did you notice
this
?” He jumps off the chair and lands next to me on the bed. He flips the drawing over so I can see the fake credit card printed on the back.

“What about it?” My heart is pounding.

“This is a cardboard credit card.” He taps it with his finger.

I nod, blinking. “Right.”

“And do you know where people get these? With credit card offers in the mail…” Sean is nodding at me, trying to lead me to his conclusion. “So…”

I shake my head slowly. “So…”

“So, your sister turned eighteen only a couple months before she left, right? Credit card companies have this list, of all the people in America who are about to turn eighteen. So they can start sending them credit card offers right around their birthday and sucker them in.”

“I’m not sure what you’re saying.”

“Chances are your sister got a ton of credit card offers in the mail before she disappeared, right? So what if she actually applied for one?” He turns the card over and points to the bank’s name on the back. “Say from Bank of the USA? I bet we could sign into her account no problem since you’re
her sister. All we’d need is her Social Security number, and then we’d probably just have to answer a bunch of random security questions and the answers would be things like your mom’s maiden name and other stuff you’d already know.”

“Oh,” I say. I try and force a smile.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s a nice idea! And thanks for thinking of it!” I frown.

“You’re frowning,” he says.

“I just don’t think it’ll work.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too easy.”

“But that,” Sean looks me straight in the eye, his mouth curled into a mischievous little smile, “is exactly why it’s going to.”

Three minutes later we’re in the spare bedroom, which I think of as Nina’s room even though Mom uses it for storage and we moved here after Nina was already gone. One of the only jokes I can remember my mother making in the last few years is one she made right after we moved in. She said, “Ellie, you know you’ve really made it when you’re so rich you have an entire room for just your shoes,” and then she opened the door and tossed in a pair of discount black flats that she said pinched her feet but the store wouldn’t take back because she’d already worn them. She meant this, of course, ironically. So now this is just where we keep all the stuff that
has nowhere else to go—old tax returns and report cards and a lamp that was my grandmother’s that’s too nice to throw out but too depressing to display.

“So apparently I was a top-notch user of scissors in first grade,” I say, holding up a report card. I’m crouched down on the floor behind a big, green plastic box. “But occasionally I ate the paste.” I put the card back in the box, and keep digging. Sean is crouched down next to me looking over my shoulder.

“And you’ve had all your immunizations,” he says, nodding, “which is important.” He reaches down into the box. He picks up what looks like a small blue notebook. A passport. He opens it.

I look over his shoulder. It’s Nina’s. In the photo Nina’s about the same age that I am now. Her hair is pale pink hanging just above her jawline. She’s smirking, like she has a secret. I’ve never seen this picture before.

“I guess my mom must have tossed that in there when we moved from our old house,” I say. “Nina was already gone then.”

Sean is staring at it, then looks up at me and then back down at it. He’s shaking his head slowly, his face is flushed. “You look so much alike it’s insane. You could be twins.”

I look at the picture again. “You think?”

I don’t believe him, but I’m flattered, anyway.

“You ever think about dyeing your hair like that?” He taps Nina’s picture.

“Not really,” I say.

“It’d look good I bet.” Sean shrugs and hands me the passport. “You should keep this with you.” I slip it in my back pocket. “You never know when you’ll need to make a last-minute international getaway.”

I laugh and then look back down into the box I was searching through. A little dog is staring up at me, with a curly mustache under his nose and a giant beret on top of his head. “Bijou!” I say, and I feel myself start to smile at the memory. I pick up Nina’s drawing. I haven’t thought about Bijou in a very long time.

“What’s that?”

“A picture of our old dog,” I say. “Bijou.”

Sean is looking over my shoulder, grinning. “Bijou must have had incredible balance to keep such a big hat situated so perfectly on top of his head. Most dogs can’t do that.”

“Yes,” I say. “Well, most real dogs can’t, but a few imaginary ones can.”

Sean cocks his head to the side.

“We didn’t have an
actual
dog,” I say. “We were never allowed to get one. But we got the very best imaginary dog ever one summer.” I pause. “Nina got him for us.”

And Sean nods as though of course this makes perfect sense. He glances back down at the stack of papers in his hands and then before I can continue he’s shouting “Yes!” and holding out a piece of paper so I can see. “Ellie, look!”

It’s a photocopy of an insurance claim form. Sean begins to read it out loud. “On October twenty-third, two thousand-four, Nina Wrigley had a regular cleaning at the dentist, a check-up, and a set of X-rays…” Sean flips the form over and points to a spot right near the top where her Social Security number is written out neatly in my mother’s serious-looking handwriting. “There it is,” he says.

I stand up, suddenly breathless. “The computer’s downstairs.”

A minute later Sean and I are sitting side by side on the couch in my living room, waiting for my mother’s ancient 45-pound laptop to boot up.

“Looking at porn on this thing must be a bitch,” Sean says.

“Hello, Ellie.”

I turn around. My mother is standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, in her bathrobe, drinking juice.

Oh shit.

“Mom,” I say. I can feel the blood rushing to my face.

She rubs her eyes, half smiles at me. I can’t tell if she’s smiling because she didn’t hear Sean’s porn comment, or because she did. My mom is a mystery sometimes. “I haven’t seen you in days.” She glances at Sean and raises one eyebrow. Sometimes she’s not a mystery at all.

“I’ve been sleeping at Amanda’s,” I say.

“Oh,” she says. “You’re sure they don’t mind you over there all the time?”

“They don’t.”

“Okay.” She nods, as though we haven’t had this conversation dozens of times before.

And then my mom just stands there, not even acknowledging the fact that there is another person beside me on the couch. She’s not being intentionally rude, she just doesn’t understand things like this sometimes. Like how people act. How people are supposed to act.

Sean stands up finally. “Hi,” he says. “I’m Sean.” He sticks out his hand.

My mother just stares at it. She looks him up and down. Then over to me on the couch. Then back to Sean. “Hello,” she says, awkwardly. “I’m Ellie’s mother.”

I put my hand in my pocket and touch the drawing, but I know I can’t show it to her. I wish I could.

“I thought you were working tonight,” I say.

“My schedule changed. I did an overnight last night instead. Got home an hour ago.”

“How were the babies?” I ask. I turn toward Sean. “My mom works at the neonatal ICU at the hospital.”

“Wow,” Sean says. “That must be crazy.”

“Preemie twins tonight,” she says. “Sixteen weeks early. They’re stable for now. But it’s hard to say what might happen later.” My mother shakes her head. There is a special kind of
exhaustion my mother always carries around. It radiates off her. When I haven’t seen her for a few days, it’s all the more obvious. Being around it, I catch it, like a flu. It makes me feel like someone is sitting on my chest. It makes me want to go outside, somewhere light and loud with lots of other people.

“That’s awful,” I say.

“That’s life, I guess,” my mom says. And she shrugs and lets out a sigh.

When I was younger I would always beg her to take me to work, imagining all the cute little babies I’d get to play with, but she would never let me come with her. Once, when I was nine years old, Nina showed me a picture on the Internet of a tiny preemie, seventeen weeks early. “Mom worked with this baby,” Nina had told me. Its head reminded me of an apricot—small and covered in downy little hairs, and soft looking. Its tiny arms and legs as thick as my pointer finger. The baby’s skin was so translucent I could see each vein swirling underneath. According to the article that the picture was attached to, the baby only survived for three hours. Looking at this picture and knowing this filled me with an almost unbearable sadness that I didn’t understand at the time. I was sad not just for the baby, but for everyone in the entire world. This baby reminded me of something that we are all born knowing, but that if we’re lucky, we forget—the world doesn’t make sense, things just happen, often
without any reason, and life isn’t fair, it was never supposed to be. I understood my mom in a different way after that.

“I guess I’m going to go back upstairs now,” she says. I watch her walk away in her bathrobe, clutching her mug.

“Hey, Mom?” I call out. For a second, one brief second, even though I know better, I consider telling her what’s really going on.

“Yeah, Ellie?” My mom turns back. Her shoulders are sagging slightly.

But I can’t tell her. I’m not going to. And I’m not sure if it’s for her sake, or for my own.

“Good night, Mom,” I say.

“Good night, Ellie,” my mom says. And then she’s gone.

“Your mom’s pretty cool,” Sean says. “Didn’t even mind that you have some random dude sitting here on the couch?”

“I’m not sure if ‘cool’ is the word I’d use exactly,” I say. “But thanks.”

“Better than my mom,” Sean says. He’s smirking. “Who is insane.”

I look down. The laptop’s finally booted up. Only when I hear the door to my mom’s room creak shut upstairs do I start typing.

I do a search and go to the bank’s website. It loads slowly, a picture of a man and a woman, sitting at a computer, each with a cup of coffee, smiling. My heart is pounding.

I click on customer login. There’s a tiny link under it.

Having trouble logging in? Forgot your username or password?

I click and am taken to another screen.
Please answer these questions to access your account:

Account Holder’s Name?
I type in N-I-N-A W-R-I-G-L-E-Y and press return. And then I suck in my breath, my heart pounding as the webpage reloads.

“If she doesn’t have an account, it’ll tell us, right?” I ask. But Sean doesn’t answer; we’re both staring at the screen.

A new screen has appeared,
Primary Cardholder’s SSN?

“Does this mean she has an account? I think this must, right?” My voice sounds higher than normal, which is what happens when I’m freaking the fuck out.

“I think so,” Sean whispers.

I type in the number.

Date of birth?
My hands are literally shaking.

Please answer the following four security questions.

“Almost in,” Sean whispers.

Mother’s maiden name?

R-A-I-N-E-R.

Name of first pet?
When Nina was six, she got a hamster. I was too young to remember, but I remember hearing the story about how my dad took it back to the pet shop because it wouldn’t stop squeaking. His name was Squeekers spelled with two
e
’s and no
a
because she didn’t know how to spell squeak. I type in S-Q-U-E-E-K-E-R-S.

I hit return again. I feel like I’m about to vomit.

Name of elementary school?

E-A-S-T O-R-C-H-A-R-D E-L-E-M-E-N-T-A-R-Y.

The last question pops up.