15

Leah

Friday, October 6th, 1989
Lucy missing 1 week

Lucy has been missing for a week. Other than the car—which we’ve heard nothing else about—there haven’t been any new leads. Mom and Dad and I have stayed at home, huddled inside our quiet house, waiting for the phone to ring, waiting for something to break the silence. I’ve started to hate the mustard yellow wall phone itself, the phone I stare at, willing it to ring, willing for Lucy to be on the other end, but it just hangs there. My parents won’t let me take calls, and no one is allowed to make calls unless it’s to the police, for fear that we might miss something.

Dad’s big blue eyes leak with tears all the time, and every morning around the time that Lucy went missing, he marches back and forth to the bus stop, as if trying to retrace what happened. Mom and I watch him from the kitchen window. One morning Mom ran out after him in her rust-colored robe and caught his arm. I cracked open the window to listen.

“This isn’t your fault, Carl. None of this is anybody’s fault.” But Dad tore away from her and kept walking. She’s been in that robe every day, only changing once into normal clothes when she had to take more photos of Lucy to the police station.

They stay up most of the night talking in angry tones, and Dad has started drinking again, something he swore off years ago. Once, when Lucy and I were little, we went to a backyard barbecue with Dad while Mom was away on business. He drank too many margaritas and passed out in a hammock while he was supposed to be watching us. Lucy and I made our own way home that night, with Dad staggering in hours later. This had terrified him, so he quit completely after that. Yesterday morning, though, I could smell the sharp fumes of gin in his orange juice at breakfast and he goes through the days glass-eyed in front of the television, or shut off alone in his study, compulsively sketching pictures of Lucy that he hopes will bring her home.

Mom’s co-workers have been bringing by gooey casseroles and leaving them on the porch with notes pinned to the top, but this morning she insisted on making a proper breakfast, so she pulled out her cast iron skillet and fried a neat row of bacon and a batch of fried eggs. We sat around the breakfast table and ate in silence.

Mom and Dad have drifted back upstairs to take a nap, but I’m wired, I can’t sleep. I climb the stairs and for the first time since last Friday, I allow myself to go into Lucy’s room.

I pause at the door before walking in. I stick a bare foot onto the carpet and run my toes along the seafoam green shag as if testing the temperature of pool water. I suck in a deep breath and step into the room.

It’s raining out, and big drops of rain thud against the tall, thick windows, making the room feel like it’s rocking, like how you feel inside a car as it’s being pulled through a car wash.

I cross the room and throw myself on the bed and snuggle underneath Lucy’s Strawberry Shortcake comforter. I breathe in and I can still smell her—that little Lucy smell that is perfectly her own—a mix of Juicy Fruit gum and baby shampoo, which Lucy swore made her hair softer. My Lucy Belle. I can’t stop crying but I don’t want Mom and Dad to hear me so I sob into Lucy’s pink chenille pillow and find myself talking out loud to her. “Where are you, Lucy? What happened to you?”

Lucy and I like to joke that we are twins; we have the same birthday, December 8th. We were born four years apart, so we’re not really twins of course, but Lucy and I believe we can read each other’s minds and we’re closer than any other sisters I know.

It might be hard to believe that we are born on the same day, but Mom planned it that way. She had me by C-section and though Lucy wasn’t due until Christmas Eve, the doctor gave her the choice of when to schedule Lucy’s birth and she thought it would be neat if we shared the same birthday. And it is neat. We get to have a joint party every year with our friends—usually at the roller rink if it’s chilly out, or if it’s nice we have a party at our house. Mom bakes us each our own birthday cake: a yellow butter cake with chocolate frosting for me and a vanilla cake with pink frosting for Lucy. We each get a small pile of presents—usually new clothes—but we also always get our favorite gift: a matching brand-new Swatch watch.

I notice I’m twisting my own Swatch around on my wrist (a simple one with a teal-colored band and a Pepto-Bismol pink face) and a panic shoots through me when I realize I don’t even know if Lucy is wearing hers. I jump out of bed and go over to her creamy white vanity to look for it.

It’s gone, and for some reason this makes me feel relieved. It makes me feel connected to her somehow. I run my finger along the stack of other Swatch bands. Some are spiky, from when she was little and had to punch holes in them to make them fit.

We are both tomboys and it shows in the things we have in our rooms. Lucy is forever making stuff with her hands, and her vanity bursts with her creations: friendship bracelets—both the kind made from colorful thread and also the kind with safety pins and little glass beads—and leather wallets and belts. A tangle of her leather-making tools are scattered over the surface—little mallets and letter stamps and strips of leather that she dyes in deep tans in Mom’s art shed.

Above her vanity is a poster of Ralph Macchio. I reach up and touch a torn corner. She had it pinned up, I knew, both because she thought he was cute, but also because she wanted to be him. There’s a brick wall in the backyard and we used to balance on it, facing each other with one leg raised, trying to pull off moves from The Karate Kid. Just beyond the wall is our tetherball court. In the summer we’d spend hours out there trying to one up each other, but I can’t think about that now, the fact that I might never get to let Lucy win another game.

I flop back onto her bed and scan the room as if searching for clues. My eyes rest on a stack of letters on Lucy’s bedside table.

I rearrange the pillows behind my back and unfold the letters like an accordion over the bedspread. The edges of the envelopes are rubbed soft; I can tell that Lucy has read them over and over. I open a few and read them, but then toss them aside. Reading them makes me shudder as I remember our last fight, which hadn’t been as much of a fight as it had been me just being flat-out mean to Lucy.

Last summer, when we returned home from camp, Lucy got a string of letters from pen pals. All boys. Though we’re both tomboyish, Lucy’s always been more girlie than me, especially this past year—I’ve held onto my gawkiness longer than most. She’s just plain cuter, with her golden curls and almond-shaped caramel eyes, and she’s always got a flock of boys around her, even in grade school.

She was lying on her stomach in bed, her legs kicking lazily behind her, chewing bubblegum and reading the letters when I walked in. I was suddenly filled with jealousy and became irrationally mad at her. The only letters I ever got were from my bunkmate, Margaret, a nerdy girl who wears Coke bottle glasses and who is always citing scripture. I couldn’t stand it—this attention that Lucy always got from boys—so I started stomping around the room.

“What’s up your butt?” Lucy asked, an eyebrow raised.

“Nothing! But do you always have to smack your gum like that?”

“Sorry—”

“You’re SO gross, Lucy. Everyone is sick of you.” I started kicking at Lucy’s dirty clothes pile. “Just look how messy your room is. Mom’s gonna have a cow when she gets home.”

Lucy looked confused and hurt, like I’d just slapped her. “Le—”

“What?” I snapped. “I don’t even wanna BE here when she gets back.”

I pedaled off on my ten-speed, the warm air sucking at my damp shirt, and kept riding until I reached the nearest vacant lot. I threw my bike down and fell to the ground sobbing, hating myself for being so senselessly mean to Lucy.

I didn’t apologize to her or ever tell her why I was really upset; I was too ashamed. But as I’m lying here now in her bed, I start bargaining furiously with the universe: If you will let her come home, I will never be mean to her again.

When I finally did get my first boyfriend, Scott, just this past summer, I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. Hanging out with a boy was like hanging out with a girl, but you’re just more aware of what your hair looks like, what your clothes look like—you wouldn’t wear your headgear in front of a boy—you see everything through their eyes.

Scott’s a soccer player, a year ahead of me, handsome in a traditional way with wavy blond hair and hazel eyes. At first, I couldn’t believe he asked me to be his girlfriend. My new friend, Ali Sherman, is girlfriends with Scott’s best friend, Brett, so I figured it was just out of convenience that he had asked me, but honestly, I didn’t care. I was just happy to finally have a boyfriend, someone’s name I could scribble on my book covers.

Scott’s dad is an orthodontist and his mom is one of those perky moms always trotting out cookies or brownies and smiling constantly. She still cuts the corners off of Scott’s toast and embarrasses him by calling him Scottie.

Scottie. I can still hear his name in Lucy’s giddy voice. She liked him, and used to run around the house teasing me, saying with a mouthful of giggles, “Leeeuh’s gonna marry Scot-teee!”

The rain has let up. I get out of bed and walk to the window and look out over the backyard. The sky is a gray cloak pushing down, but just above the clearing in the woods where Lucy and I play, the sun has started to crack through. The ground there is a carpet of red leaves, matted down by the rain, but the sun is now trickling down a halo of yellow light. My eyes fixate on this spot, and something about it sends a shiver up my spine.