When Skylar clocked out of Wendy’s at the Glenmark Centre on July 5, 2012, she had every intention of returning to work the next day. Her shift ended at 10:00 P.M. and the drive across Morgantown to Star City took only ten minutes. When Skylar walked through the front door of her home, she found Mary and Dave sitting in front of the television, watching CSI.
After greeting her parents, Skylar headed to the kitchen for some of Mary’s homemade sweet tea. She loved the stuff and drank it by the gallon.
“Honey, are you hungry?” Mary asked from her recliner. The Neese apartment is open and airy so from her vantage point Mary could see Skylar standing in the small kitchen-dining area. Even before Skylar answered, Mary knew what her daughter’s dinner had consisted of: one of those little berry ice cream desserts Wendy’s sold. She just loved those.
“No, Mom, I ate at work.”
Skylar crossed the wood-laminate floor and came into the carpeted living room. There, she perched on the arm of the recliner and hugged Mary. “Love you, Mommy,” Skylar said, kissing her mother on the cheek.
Then she jumped up, leaned over the couch, and kissed Dave in the same fashion. “Love you, Daddy,” she said. “I’m really tired. I’m going to bed.”
“Do you work tomorrow?” Mary asked.
“Yeah.”
“Do you want me to wash your uniform?”
“Yes, it smells like French fries,” Skylar said, wrinkling her nose. Because she hated the smell of grease on her uniform, she always made a beeline for the shower. Not a minute later, Skylar tossed her dirty clothes out the door for Mary to throw into the washing machine. It was the same mother-daughter routine every night after Skylar finished work.
Mary waited for the wash cycle to end, then loaded Skylar’s uniform into the dryer. After switching it on, she said goodnight to Dave and went to bed. She didn’t know it, but Skylar’s slender arm peeking around the bathroom door as she tossed out her uniform was the last glimpse Mary Neese would ever have of her daughter.
Dave was more fortunate; while he was dozing on the couch, he received one last “Love you, Daddy,” when Skylar reappeared from the bathroom, wrapped in a large bath towel. She got a drink from the kitchen, went into her bedroom, and locked her door like every other American teenager who has a secret.
Dave Neese received no response when he knocked on his daughter’s bedroom door the next afternoon. “Hey, honey, get up. I want you to take me back to work so you can have my car.”
Nothing.
He knocked again. “Sky?”
Again, no answer. Usually, she was up—bam—as soon as she heard the car was available. Dave knew he shouldn’t be letting Skylar drive by herself; with just a learner’s permit, the teen was supposed to have a licensed adult in the car. However, he also knew she’d drive just enough to take him to work and then go to her own job. She’d come straight home after her shift. That was their agreement. The Neeses saved on gas and Dave always checked the odometer to make sure she was sticking to the arrangement.
After getting no reply, Dave went to the hall closet and grabbed a coat hanger—the door locks in the apartment easily popped open. But when he peered inside Skylar’s bedroom, she wasn’t there. Her unmade bed looked like it had been slept in, so Dave first assumed she must have gone shopping with a friend. Then he remembered her door had been locked from the inside. He called his wife at work.
“Mary, did Skylar tell you where she was going?” Dave’s voice rose as he spoke. He paced the small kitchen, feeling his worry build.
“Just calm down.” Mary knew how close to the surface Dave’s emotions ran. “Don’t flip out. She probably went shopping with one of her friends or something. She never misses work.”
“That’s what I thought, but her door was locked.”
“She probably just accidentally hit the button closing the door in a hurry. You know how she does.”
“Okay, maybe. But I’m going to look for her.”
Dave rushed back to Walmart, a few minutes away, and told a supervisor he had to take the rest of the day off. “Listen,” he said, “I can’t find Skylar. I don’t know where she’s at, but I gotta find my kid.”
He decided to check at home once more to see if she’d returned while he was gone. Skylar was largely a responsible teenager, and although she might forget to let her parents know where she was going, she would usually remember at some point to check in. But she was also fearless and willful, and that concerned Dave.
Skylar still wasn’t at the apartment when he returned. Dave walked through the kitchen and out onto the small balcony for a smoke. He wanted to think, to plan his next steps. That was when he noticed a small black bench sitting at the base of the back wall of the apartment complex, just around the corner from Skylar’s first-floor room.
Dave flipped his cigarette into the round ceramic bowl he and Mary kept for cigarette butts and went back through the apartment, out and around to Skylar’s window. The screen was leaning against the wall, her window open a finger’s breadth. That was the moment he knew: Oh, my God. She snuck out.