The gossip and stares were worse the second day. People were convinced Hope wasn’t just missing but that she’d actually been kidnapped. If you listened to the rumors, the gossip, she had been snatched and sold into white slavery or ended up as serial killer fodder, or had been taken by Colombians for a hefty ransom. She had skipped town due to drugs, run off with an Internet boyfriend or a Tunisian prince; someone’s cousin had spotted her in Hawaii or the Barbados; she had been working on her GED and was recruited by Quantico.
“We just want her back safely,” Renee wailed in biology class.
No one talked to me, but everyone was talking about me.
“The boyfriend did it,” someone muttered as I stood at my locker.
“I thought the butler always did it,” someone else guffawed.
“Who else was mad at Hope?”
Everyone, I wanted to scream. Hope burned everyone. That was how she operated.
She was the celebrity darling, the princess of Florence High. She had followers and admirers and flatterers, and when she loved you, she loved you fiercely with all her heart and soul and bank accounts and privilege, but when she was through with you…
Our love is a flower…
When Hope Jensen was through with you, she wouldn’t just discard you, she needed to destroy you. She loved revenge. She loved teaching a lesson to anyone she presumed wronged her. That was Hope. She needed entrails in her wake. She needed a trail of broken hearts to prove that her own heart was worthwhile, and she would do whatever she could to get the outcome she wanted.
* * *
When I pulled up to the elementary school, Alice was sitting outside on one of the long benches with the rest of her class. My kid sister is in second grade, and although I know I’m supposed to find her sticky and annoying (and a lot of the time she is), I still think she’s wickedly cute and funny for being such a little squirt. She broke into a huge smile when she saw my car and came running toward me, a construction paper butterfly taped to a paint stirrer in one hand, a mass of all her second-grade necessities in the other. I took her lunch box, her backpack, and her jacket and shoved it all into the backseat while she flapped the construction paper butterfly around for a minute before climbing into her booster chair.
“Hi, Tony!”
“Hey, squirt, did you have a good day?”
Alice worked the belts on her booster seat. She was still a peanut; her nose barely reached the window. “I’m not the squirt, you’re the squirt,” she said, using the butterfly as a pointer.
“Okay, fine,” I said, palms up. “I’m the squirt. How was your day? Were you a good kid?”
I gunned the engine and pulled out of the parking lot while Alice’s butterfly caught the wind that whooshed through the back window.
“See my butterfly?”
I glanced in the rearview mirror and caught Alice’s eye. “I sure do. Is that for Mom?”
“Nuh-uh.” Alice shook her head furiously. “Guess again.”
“Dad?”
“Nope.”
I slapped a palm against my heart. “Me? Aw, you shouldn’t have!”
“I didn’t. It’s for Hope.” Alice grinned, little-kid teeth sharp and uneven against her pink lips. “For when she comes back.”
My tongue went heavy in my mouth. “What are you talking about, Alice?”
She continued to fly her insect across the backseat. “’Cuz Hope is gone right now, and when she comes back home…” Alice grinned at me and popped me on the top of the head with the butterfly. “It’s for welcome.”
I swallowed slowly, my stomach rolling into tight knots. “How do you know Hope is gone?”
“Some mommies were talking about it at my school. Someone said Hope got a nap, and someone said that she just runned away.”
“A nap?” I mutter to myself.
Kidnapped.
“Hope doesn’t like to run though,” Alice continued. “It makes her sparkle.”
* * *
I was at home long enough to flip through all the channels and see that Hope’s story was being reported on three of them. All the reports were vague at best, some reporting things like suspicious circumstances but never saying what those circumstances were. I shifted on the couch and flicked the TV to cartoons when Alice came padding in from the kitchen, her little face serious as she balanced an overfilled bowl of cereal and milk. She eyed me and took a huge spoonful.
“Ma said I could eat this.”
I shrugged, just glad that Alice hadn’t seen the newscast and happy that my parents were at work so they wouldn’t have been able to see it either. I figured it would blow over by tomorrow morning—Friday, at the latest, Hope making some big appearance and the whole school still laughing at me.
But the cops were involved…
And then the doorbell rang.
Alice looked at me, a wad of Fruity Pebbles mounded in her cheek. “Who’s that?”
I opened the door and stepped in front of Alice. Flashes went off, and I tried to blink away the hot, black spots.
There are two uniformed officers on my doorstep, and behind them, what seemed to be a sea of reporters tramping on our lawn and shoving their iPhones in front of them, snippets of flashes bursting in the twilight.
“Tony Gardner?” the female officer asked me.
I nodded dumbly.
“I’m Officer MacNamara, and this is Officer Pace. Are your parents home, son?”
Pace nodded his head, and I nodded to both of them. I’ve never had a run-in with cops before, never had any bad feelings toward them, but then again, I’ve never had a pair on my front porch asking my name and if my parents were home. I didn’t know what to say to them.
“Uh, they’re not home yet.”
There was an awkwardly long pause while Pace and MacNamara seemed to expect something from me. Numbly, I stepped aside, waved my arm, and then they were in my living room, a male and a female cop, him slim and broad shouldered under his black shirt, her straight from shoulder to ankle. MacNamara closed the door on the flashes and the screaming mob.
“What’s going on? Why… When did they get here?”
Pace looked absently over his shoulder and shrugged. “They’re just looking for a scoop.”
I nodded, still not entirely understanding. I peeked out the peephole on the door. There were only three reporters and two cameramen, but our yard was small, and having never had a single newsperson on the lawn, it looked like a paparazzi zoo.
“Are they allowed to be here?”
Officer Pace waved a hand. “Not on the lawn. They have to stay down on the sidewalk.”
I glanced out the inch of window visible through the blinds and noticed that no one was on the sidewalk, that the reporters were tangled on the lawn, one leaning up against the orange tree that has never actually produced an orange.
“We’ll get rid of them on our way out.”
I nodded, still feeling dumb, feeling out of place in my own house.
Alice pulled against my pant leg, pulled the back of my jeans. I had almost forgotten she was there. She tried to peer around me, but I inched her back again, crouched down low and told her to go to her room. She stared up at the police officers.
“Are you here for Hope?” she asked, her voice thin and babyish, and I wished she’d just go in her room.
MacNamara crouched down next to me and Alice and smiled kindly.
“We’re here to bring Hope home,” she said. “What’s your name?”
I stood up and stepped in front of Alice again. I don’t want her to be a part of this, of any of this.
“Go watch TV in Mom and Dad’s room, Alice.”
Alice thankfully did as she was told, and I crossed my arms in front of my chest and stared down MacNamara. I was not nervous until the other officer, Pace, stepped in front of me. He jutted a chin toward Alice.
“She yours?”
I blinked, looking toward the hallway, then back again. “Alice? She’s my kid sister.”
“So no kids?”
I couldn’t tell if he was joking, but I thought it best not to laugh. “No, sir.”
“We’d just like to ask you a few questions, Tony. Is that okay?” It was MacNamara now. Her voice was calm and serene, just like her smile.
“Don’t my parents need to be here or something?”
Pace shrugged like we were all friends.
“We’re not here to interrogate you, if that’s what you’re concerned about. We just have some questions about the night Hope went missing that we’re hoping you can clear up for us. If you’d like to wait until your parents come home, we can certainly do that.”
Neither MacNamara nor Pace looked like they were planning to wait anywhere but in my living room so I shrugged and gestured toward the kitchen table.
“S’okay, I guess. Want to sit?”
They did and Pace pulled a little notebook out of his breast pocket, a little leather-bound thing that I’d seen every cop on every TV show ever pull out. I wondered if they were standard issue like gun belts or badges.
“So Tony, did you speak to Hope two nights ago?”
I tore my eyes from the little notebook and blinked at MacNamara. She didn’t blink back. Her eyes were flat, wide saucers that weren’t intimidating but weren’t friendly either.
“Uh, yeah. She called me around nine.”
“And how did she sound?”
Annoyed. Frustrated… Worried.
I licked my paper-dry lips. “I don’t know. Regular, I guess. Then maybe…a little worried.”
MacNamara raised her eyebrows. “Worried?” she asked.
I nodded. I folded my hands in my lap, gripping so hard my palms immediately started to sweat.
“Well, yeah. I mean, annoyed at first, then a little worried, I guess.”
Pace looked up from the notebook he was writing in. “And that didn’t bother you?”
I swallowed. “Sir?”
“Bother you? You didn’t think you should do anything about it?”
“About her tone of voice?” I didn’t intend to, but I felt myself shrugging again. “Hope…gets worked up. She’s kind of emotional so…”
A smile cracked across Pace’s face. “Women, huh?”
I feel my cheeks redden, and I glanced at MacNamara who either wasn’t listening or didn’t care.
“I guess. I mean, we were fighting. She wasn’t exactly happy with me.”
“Because you had just broken up?” MacNamara clarified.
I shifted in my seat. “Yeah, that’s why.”
“But she broke up with you, isn’t that right?”
I heard Hope’s voice echo in the back of my head, smug: “Our love is a flower that blooms…”
“No. I broke up with her.”
Neither of the cops looked convinced, and my whole body tensed. I hoped the cops couldn’t see it. I cleared my throat and put my hands on the table. I saw some cop show once that said people who hid their hands tended to hide other things too. I didn’t want the cops to ask me any more questions. I wanted them to think I was being totally honest.
I was being totally honest.
The computer screen flashed in my mind’s eye. The websites, Hope’s information, the smiling picture of her in her red-and-white-striped bikini top, her breasts pressed halfway to her chin.
Share Location?
That blinking cursor.
I felt the sweat break out at my forehead, could feel a bead break free and drip down the center of my back. My heart started to thump, and I was sure everyone could hear it: Pace, MacNamara, the goons with the flashing cameras outside, Hope.
Where was Hope?
“Have you found her? Have you been looking for Hope?” My voice came out low and raspy, creepy even in my own ears. I cleared my throat.
MacNamara actually looked sorry for me. She put her hand on my arm, her five fingers burning like five cattails into my flesh. “We’re doing the best we can, Tony. We’re going to find her, and we’re going to bring her back home safe and in one piece.” She kind of smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “That’s why we’re here today, covering all of our bases. You want us to find Hope too, don’t you, Tony?”
I hated how she said my name, like she already owned it, like she had already arrested me, sentenced me, thrown me in jail.
“You want Hope to come home, don’t you, Tony?”
I sat with lips pursed, willing myself to talk, unable to make it happen.
There was a commotion at the door, a fresh rat-a-tat-tat of camera-phone flashes and people yelling, and then my parents shimmied through the door, looking flushed and nervous. Their eyes darted from me to MacNamara to Pace. Alice came out of the bedroom, dressed in her shiny Frozen nightgown.
“Of course I want Hope to come home,” I whispered.
* * *
The cops had been gone for barely two hours when the news reports continued streaming: Daughter of Bruce and Becky Jensen Gone Missing. Where is Hope Jensen? It was on every channel—there, then gone in a flash, Hope’s smiling face almost immediately replaced by a stock photograph of the whole Jensen family looking television perfect in a panorama of carefully matched outfits, propped in front of a white sand beach in Florida or Myrtle Beach or probably some beach set that folded back up in the Channel 7 offices.
My mom fixed dinner, but I didn’t move from the head of the table where my dad usually sat. He walked to a different chair and we ate in silence, the background noise from the television making my stomach lurch.
“They’re going to find her,” my mother said, her hand soft on my arm.
I nodded without looking at her. I couldn’t say anything because I couldn’t believe that Hope was actually missing. Girls like Hope didn’t go missing. They ran the world. They made you fall in love with them; they tore your heart out of your chest and spat on it.
“Our love is a flower that blooms…”
I pushed my plate away.
She’s not really missing.
It was Hope…trying to teach me a lesson.
A lump grew in my throat. Another news report: same story, different picture of perfect-looking Hope. My chest tightened; my skin felt like it was suddenly too tight.
“Can I be excused?” I asked.
I didn’t wait for anyone to answer, because before they could, I was in the bathroom, the few bites of dinner that I did eat coming out in a stomach-torturing torrent. My head was pounding, and the sweat was blurring my eyes—sweat, or maybe tears. I didn’t stay around to find out because my mother came in and pressed a wet compress to my forehead. She guided me across the hall and into my bedroom and gently pushed me down, taking off my shoes like she still did to Alice and pulling the covers up to my chest. I tried to open my eyes to look at her or thank her or apologize for being such a horrible son, but my room went dark and she shut the door with a soft puff of air behind her.
I didn’t know how long I lay there. I didn’t know if I slept. All I know is that the room was pitch-black when I opened my eyes, and my heart still felt like it was being squeezed. Where the guilt used to be was anger now, white and hot because Hope did this. Hope orchestrated this whole thing. She had to. Her whole life was orchestrated. Everything she did was to get the biggest shock, the biggest surprise, the biggest bang for her selfish buck.
I kicked off my blankets, pulled my phone off the charger, hit speed dial, and waited for Hope to pick up. I knew her phone was in my car, but figured for sure she would have the calls forwarded to whatever new phone or burner she’d procured because she was faking it. She had to be. Pulling a prank of this magnitude—going missing, making the world look for her while looking at me like some sort of criminal? It had Hope written all over it.
“Hi, you’ve reached Hope! Leave me a message!” Her voice was singsongy, every sentence ending with an exclamation point.
“Call me back, Hope. Pick up your goddamn phone and call me back. This isn’t funny anymore. The police were here today.” I gritted my teeth. “Call me, Hope.”
I cut the phone off, then immediately dialed her again, not sure what I thought would happen. Two rings. Voice mail.
“Hi, you’ve reached Hope!”
I dialed again.
One ring.
Two ring.
A weird sound like fumbling, like someone trying to answer.
“Hope!”
“Hi, you’ve reached Hope…”
I threw my windbreaker over my head and went out the front door. The reporters were gone, but still I pushed my crap car down the driveway and halfway down the block so as not to wake my parents or Alice. It was amazing that Hope would allow herself to be seen with me in this heap. I got in, revved the engine, and sped out, headlights barely making a dent through the dense fog.
I didn’t care where Hope was hiding. I was going to find her if it was the last thing I did. I was going to find her, and the whole world would know what a bitch she was—a manipulative little bitch.
I’m not your toy, Hope. I’m not your fucking plaything.