Chapter 5 Above
Above
Janie Martin made a practice of disappearing.
At first, I thought it was because of me.
Something I’d done, something I’d said, some way in which I wasn’t a good enough friend to the half--wild girl who crawled in through my window at night and made games of trading secrets.
But she made a practice of appearing, too—-her entrances considered and crafted.
She arrived in a burst of winter air, wearing her hair in two neat braids, spots of red high on her cheeks from the cold. She wore a thin blue cardigan, little protection against the December wind, as she strode into my parents’ store, where I was sitting behind the register doing homework.
I looked up as she slapped two crisp twenty--dollar bills on the counter. “I need silver,” she said.
“Silver?” I echoed, confused.
“Anything silver will do. It’s for melting down into bullets. I have a werewolf problem, you see,” she said, and at my utterly blank look, she burst into laughter. “Just kidding. A pack of Camels, please. Beer in the back?”
Later I’d realize, of course, that the werewolf story was her attempt to throw me off so I wouldn’t realize how absurd it was that a twelve--year--old was buying cigarettes and beer. It worked. I’d rung her up and watched her go before I realized quite what had happened.
The next time I saw her was in class after the holidays. The first--period teacher introduced her as our new classmate, Janie Martin, and sat her next to me.
“How are the werewolves?” I asked, trying to be clever.
She arched an eyebrow at me. “No full moon right now. It’s vampires you need to be worried about this time of the month. Luckily, silver works on them, too. Or maybe not so lucky, since you didn’t seem to have any.”
“My name is Audrey,” I told her, sticking out my hand.
“January,” she said. “The roster says Janie, but my full name is January, because I was born in a snowstorm and because I have an extra invisible eye that can see directly behind me.” A beat, in which she took in my lack of understanding.
“It’s a reference to Janus. The god? Don’t they teach you anything in schools these days?
” She let out a dramatic sigh and turned to face forward.
It was the second time I’d disappointed her. And the second time she’d lied to me.
It would be months before I realized the story about her name was a lie—-it was Janie on her birth certificate, had never been anything else—-and years yet before I started to think about just how often she made sure to let me know I didn’t measure up.
“You have no imagination,” she would lament. Or “You’re very nearly fun sometimes, Oddity, you know that?” That was her name for me. I was never certain if it was fond or mocking. I think sometimes she wasn’t sure, either.
The first time she disappeared, she did it in plain view.
Very suddenly, instead of spending every lunch period with me, she installed herself at a table across the cafeteria with a crowd of boys I’d never seen her talking to before.
When I made my way over, she declared, “Oh, Oddity. You wouldn’t like it here,” and set her books on the only empty seat beside her. Stunned, I sulked away.
My exile lasted a week and a half. And then she was back, and it was like it had never happened. “I need a break from you sometimes, Oddity. It’s no big deal, don’t be a baby about it.”
The next time, I showed up to her house for a planned visit and no one was home. She returned weeks later with a tan and stories of meeting boys at the beach and chided me for being worried. “You couldn’t entertain yourself for two minutes?” she asked, rolling her eyes.
“You didn’t tell me you were leaving.”
“Didn’t I? Huh.” A shrug, and that was that.
Later, of course, I’d learn that she hadn’t known she was leaving, either. That her father had done a stint in county jail, and she had been bundled off unceremoniously to stay with her maternal aunt, since her mother couldn’t—-or wouldn’t—-take her.
It went on like that. Three years of Janie--called--January rushing in and out of my life based on her whims and the strange weather of her home life, next to which my own was dull and steady.
She was the one who would be the heroine of a story, I was sure; I would be the boring friend she left behind by chapter two.
Maybe I left her for good so that she couldn’t do it first.
By the time she vanished, I’d given up on her. I’m not going to make that mistake again now.
“I’m not saying anything except that she was on that property, and maybe it’s worth looking into,” I say, juggling my purse and keys as I make my way up the walk, phone clamped between my shoulder and ear.
“Based on an Instagram post and some beads,” Len replies.
“Based on photographic evidence,” I retort. “She was there. Two weeks before she went missing. She wrote that she thought someone was watching her.” I fit my key into the lock. “What do you know about that guy, anyway? Bill something?”
“William Butler,” he says. “I know he lodged a complaint that members of SAR trespassed on his land yesterday.”
“That was an accident.”
“I can tell when you’re lying,” Len says. “Anyway, you got lucky. Melinda Hill called fifteen minutes later, and suddenly there’s no complaint anymore.”
“We found the kid, didn’t we?” I ask.
“And I would have done the same thing in your place, but we both know this is part of a pattern.”
I grit my teeth. “What pattern is that?”
“You putting yourself at risk any chance you get because you’re stubborn and obsessive and have very little regard for your own safety,” Len says, snappish.
I let the silence hold a moment. “So you’ll look into Meghan?”
He lets out a long--suffering sigh. “I’ll see what I can do, Audrey, on one condition.”
“Anything.”
“Have a conversation this weekend. Face--to--face. Don’t spend the whole weekend holed up alone.”
“I’m not alone. And I talk to Barry all the time,” I say.
“Do I really need to specify that Barry doesn’t count?” Len asks as the door swings open. Barry is waiting on the other side, tail thumping gently against the ground.
“He heard that. He’s very hurt,” I tell Len. He sighs again. “Look, I promise. Just find out what you can.”
“Deal. But, Audrey . . . you aren’t a detective. This girl’s not one of yours. Just let us do our jobs, and you do yours, okay?” Len asks.
“Okay,” I agree, not meaning it for a moment. Which he knows, but still he lets me go. I end the call, drop the phone onto the credenza by the door, and turn to the oh--so--patient Barry. “Thanks for waiting, Barry.”
With those words, over a hundred pounds of pit bull–-mastiff–-moose hybrid are unleashed at my midsection.
Barry—-blue -gray, a head like a concrete block, ninety percent muscle and ten percent slobber—-flings himself into me at the speed of sound, his back end gyrating as his tail fails to adequately express his joy at my return.
I drop to my knees, mostly for the added stability, and scrub my hands over his muscled flanks, making all the requisite cooing noises.
He finally flops onto his back, waving the white flag of his belly for me to scratch.
“Oh, buddy. I have had a day,” I tell him. He huffs understanding.
Barry was the deal I made with Len. If I was going to be going out solo hiking and taking long walks alone at night, I had to get a dog.
The biggest, fiercest one I could find. I ended up with Barry, whose scarred muzzle suggested a tragic past. Joke’s on Len: Barry loves everyone.
He’d give Ted Bundy the garage door code in exchange for belly rubs, but at least he looks scary.
My phone buzzes. I pick it up long enough to check the notifications.
The group chat is pinging back and forth with plans to meet up for post--deployment drinks at Wolf’s, the best mediocre tavern in Franklin.
We come from all over the county, but Franklin has proved a convenient middle ground, making my absence all the more conspicuous.
I mute the thread and put the phone face down. “What do you think tonight? Popcorn and a movie?” I ask Barry.
He quirks his head, his look skeptical.
“No, really. Let’s watch a movie,” I say. “I’ll just look at something on my laptop first.”
Twenty minutes later, Barry is curled up next to me on the couch, delicately nibbling individual popcorn kernels from my fingers while I scroll on my laptop.
There is, in fact, a movie playing. I haven’t paid attention to a single line of dialogue yet.
I have the file open on my computer that I’m only allowed to open once a week, because that proves that Len is wrong, and I’m not obsessed.
Len calls them my dead friends. And some of them—-maybe even most of them—-must be, logically and statistically speaking.
They’re the names and faces of the missing I’ve collected over the years.
Most of them are fairly local. A few are from farther afield and caught my eye for some reason.
It’s part of my penance—-remembering them.
Looking for them. I know the odds of ever finding someone from my list are near zero, and yet still I look through my collected files regularly, committing their details to memory.
Someday I will walk down the street, and Mikaela Dawson will be walking the other way, eight years older; I will follow Barry off trail and find the bones of Nicholas Tarbor wrapped in the tattered remnants of his rain shell.