| |
Nora
Nora came through her front door like a woman half asleep. It had been a long night at the nursing home. She corrected her thinking: residential care home. They’d changed the name two years prior, but habits die hard. She’d worked there for fifteen years. It didn’t matter much what the sign out front said.
She was starving and exhausted, but before she went to the fridge, she started down the trailer’s hallway to check on Levi. It was Saturday morning, so he would be sleeping in, which was fine; she just wanted to make sure he was there, all tucked in, safe and sound. She did this every Saturday morning.
She touched the door, and it lazily swung open.
He wasn’t there.
She stepped into the room.
The bed was unmade, but that didn’t mean anything. Levi’s bed never got made unless she made it. She scanned the room. It felt eerily empty. Cold, almost. He hadn’t been there in a while. She didn’t know how she knew this; she just knew it. No reason to panic, she told herself. He could easily have spent the night being a stupid teenager. Didn’t necessarily mean he was in trouble. Yet there was something roiling in her gut.
Something was wrong.
Not necessarily, she tried to tell herself.
Feeling as if her hand belonged to someone else, someone far away, she pulled her phone out of her scrubs’ zippered cell phone pocket. He hated it when she called to check up on him, but she didn’t care what he hated right now: the sun was up.
His phone rang and rang and then went to voice mail. Her stomach sank. Something was wrong. Really wrong. He never left his phone behind anywhere, which meant he was near it. And if he was near it when she called him this early in the morning, he wouldn’t let it ring through. He would either answer it or decline the call to let her know how annoyed he was. He wouldn’t let it ring and ring. Unless his ringer was turned off. But why would he do that?
Or maybe he couldn’t answer the phone because he was passed out drunk somewhere. She couldn’t believe that was the answer she was hoping for. She wished Levi didn’t drink, but she knew that he did. He’d staggered in some nights smelling of beer and cigarettes. She wished she could stop him from being so reckless, but she didn’t know how, just like she hadn’t known how to stop his father from the same recklessness.
It was in Levi’s genes.
She stood frozen in the hallway, not sure what to do next. She could call his friends, but that would mortify him. Did she care about mortifying him? No, not right now, and she decided to call Shane.
But what was Shane’s number?
She had no idea, and without Levi’s phone, how could she figure it out? She chewed on her lip. She needed to go to Shane’s house. She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to drive anywhere. She’d been up all night, and she didn’t even know if it was safe to get behind the wheel.
She returned to her purse, found her keys, and went outside to climb back behind the wheel. She looked down with dismay at all the empty coffee cups. She hoped she would find him within the next five minutes and not need coffee, but somehow she knew that wasn’t how this was going to go.
First, Shane’s house. Then coffee.
She started the car but then had a thought and pulled her phone back out. She opened her social media app, which she usually only used to check out what Levi was up to, and went to Levi’s profile. It hadn’t been updated in days. She sighed. She went to her own profile, where she hadn’t posted in months. “If anyone has seen Levi, please message me. It’s an emergency.” She hit “post” and waited as if answers were going to start popping up like magic.
They didn’t.
It was Saturday morning. Anyone who knew Levi was still fast asleep.
She put the phone down and drove across town to Carver Harbor’s other trailer park. It took her a second to remember which trailer belonged to Shane, but then she saw his car. Her heart sank even further. She realized then that she’d hoped she wouldn’t find him at home. That would mean he and Levi were up to no good together. And there was safety in numbers.
She scaled the porch steps and rapped on the door. As expected, no one answered. She knocked again. Still nothing. She turned the doorknob. It was unlocked. She pushed the door open a foot. “Shane?” She’d only met Shane’s mother a few times but knew enough to know she didn’t want to deal with her right now. “Shane?” she called with more volume. It was dark inside the trailer and smelled of stale marijuana. She pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped into the darkness. “Shane? It’s Nora, Levi’s mom. I need to talk to you.”
She heard rustling and held her breath, listening.
Someone was coming down the hall. She hoped it was Shane, not his mother.
It was. He wore pajama pants and a ratty T-shirt, and his hair was disheveled. He looked tired, but it was the kind of tired that suggested he was a teenager who hadn’t gotten to sleep till noon, not the kind of tired that suggested he hadn’t gone to bed the night before.
He stopped in the middle of his cluttered living room.
“Hey, Shane. Have you seen Levi?”
Slowly, he shook his head and looked away from her toward his couch as if someone were sitting there.
Her eyes followed his, but the couch was empty. Had he expected to find Levi there? “Were you with him last night?”
He shook his head again, still staring at the couch.
This wasn’t right. If Levi hadn’t been with Shane, then who had he been with? She stepped closer. “It’s all right, Shane. You won’t be in trouble if something bad happened.” She didn’t know if this was true, but he was acting like a kid who had been involved in something bad happening.
He shook his head quickly. “Nothing bad happened.” His head jerked back an inch as if he’d said something he hadn’t meant to say. “I think Levi was with Kendall last night.”
“Kendall? Kendall Cooper?”
Shane nodded eagerly.
“Do you know where they were going? What they were doing?”
“Nah.” He was obviously becoming more awake now and had decided to try to act cool.
She hesitated. What question should she ask next? “Do you have Kendall’s phone number?”
Still staring at the couch, he shook his head.
This was bull. Why wouldn’t he know Kendall’s number? “Are you sure? Maybe you could check your phone.”
Finally, he looked at her, and his eyes were icy. “I don’t know his number, and I don’t know where Levi is.” He hadn’t said the words, but his tone told her to get out of his home.
Instead, she stepped closer. “If anything bad happened to Levi, and you don’t help him, you will be in trouble.”
He flinched, but only a little. “Lady, I don’t know where Levi is. Now I’m going back to bed.” And then he turned and walked away from her, and Nora had no idea how to make him do anything else.
