asked to trade, not you,” I point out. Still, I know all about guilt. I know all about feeling like you should have been able to stop something.
But why did Gabie have to dive in the river? Even though we’re on the riverbank, the sun already drying out our clothes, part of me still feels like I’m thrashing in the water. Feeling it close over my head, my feet searching for the bottom and not finding it. Water burning my nose and throat. My lungs all hollow with need.
In that same faded voice, Gabie says, “In some ways, it makes more sense that someone took Kayla.”
“What do you mean?”
“Because she’s pretty. Prettier than me.”
I sit all the way up. “That’s just whack. Are you saying girls who are pretty deserve to be kidnapped? They deserve whatever happens to them?”
“No,” she says.
But I’m not sure she means it.
Transcript of 911 Call
911 Operator: Police, fire, or medical?
Unknown male caller: Police.
911 Operator: What is the nature of your emergency?
Unknown male caller: It’s about that missing girl. Kayla Cutler. Ask Cody Renfrew about it. Ask him. Ask him why he painted his truck. Because it was white, and that’s the color they said on the news. The color of the truck that took that girl. Cody’s truck used to be white. Now all of a sudden, it’s brown. Ask him where he was Wednesday night. Ask him.
The Fourth Day
Gabie
I’M SITTING in front of my computer. It’s nearly midnight, but my parents are at the hospital. There was some five-car pileup on I-5, Jaws of Life, Life Flight, etc., the kind of thing that means their weekend just became a work-day. I’m eating one of three snack-sized bags of Ruffles Sour Cream and Cheddar chips I bought at Subway after work. I’m too scared to buy a big bag at Safeway when it’s dark, even if I park right up front.
I’ve decided this day has been weird enough that I deserve to eat junk food. Even though normally the house keeper who comes in twice a week empties the garbage, I’ll take the empty bags to school Monday so my mom doesn’t see them and lecture me about cholesterol, sodium, and trans fats.
My head is all jumbled up with what happened today. Seeing Sergeant Thayer again. Pete telling us about the bloody rock. Offering Drew my car without even thinking about it. Driving to the river and everything that happened there. Drew and I went back to work, and I tried to pretend I hadn’t told him the things I had been thinking. Tried to act around him the way I act around everyone. Like we hadn’t gone down to the river, hadn’t seen that white cross, hadn’t nearly drowned. Hadn’t rolled over each other on the riverbank.
Right now, I’m not even tasting the chips, just cramming them in my mouth while I look online. It’s scary how many sites there are for missing people. Most of them are crowded with too many words, too many fonts, too many pixilated clip-art pictures of roses and angels and candles. Some of them are sad remnants left up even though the person they were created to find isn’t missing anymore. At the top of one Web page is a newspaper story headlined “Prep School Student Admits Killing Girl with Bat.”
I click and click, until I end up at missingkids.com . It’s like a clearing house for kids all over the United States who have disappeared. You can search by name, by sex, by year, by state.
I just type in Oregon and hit return. There are nearly fifty kids who have gone missing in Oregon over the last twenty years. I click on the listings one by one. The recent listings have only a single photo that shows a chubby toddler or a sullen-looking teen. The ones who disappeared a long time ago have two photos, a dated-looking picture from when they first went missing and a second updated by a computer program, so you can see what they should have looked like when they turned thirty or forty or even older.
Sucking orange cheese dust from my fingers, I’m
But why did Gabie have to dive in the river? Even though we’re on the riverbank, the sun already drying out our clothes, part of me still feels like I’m thrashing in the water. Feeling it close over my head, my feet searching for the bottom and not finding it. Water burning my nose and throat. My lungs all hollow with need.
In that same faded voice, Gabie says, “In some ways, it makes more sense that someone took Kayla.”
“What do you mean?”
“Because she’s pretty. Prettier than me.”
I sit all the way up. “That’s just whack. Are you saying girls who are pretty deserve to be kidnapped? They deserve whatever happens to them?”
“No,” she says.
But I’m not sure she means it.
Transcript of 911 Call
911 Operator: Police, fire, or medical?
Unknown male caller: Police.
911 Operator: What is the nature of your emergency?
Unknown male caller: It’s about that missing girl. Kayla Cutler. Ask Cody Renfrew about it. Ask him. Ask him why he painted his truck. Because it was white, and that’s the color they said on the news. The color of the truck that took that girl. Cody’s truck used to be white. Now all of a sudden, it’s brown. Ask him where he was Wednesday night. Ask him.
The Fourth Day
Gabie
I’M SITTING in front of my computer. It’s nearly midnight, but my parents are at the hospital. There was some five-car pileup on I-5, Jaws of Life, Life Flight, etc., the kind of thing that means their weekend just became a work-day. I’m eating one of three snack-sized bags of Ruffles Sour Cream and Cheddar chips I bought at Subway after work. I’m too scared to buy a big bag at Safeway when it’s dark, even if I park right up front.
I’ve decided this day has been weird enough that I deserve to eat junk food. Even though normally the house keeper who comes in twice a week empties the garbage, I’ll take the empty bags to school Monday so my mom doesn’t see them and lecture me about cholesterol, sodium, and trans fats.
My head is all jumbled up with what happened today. Seeing Sergeant Thayer again. Pete telling us about the bloody rock. Offering Drew my car without even thinking about it. Driving to the river and everything that happened there. Drew and I went back to work, and I tried to pretend I hadn’t told him the things I had been thinking. Tried to act around him the way I act around everyone. Like we hadn’t gone down to the river, hadn’t seen that white cross, hadn’t nearly drowned. Hadn’t rolled over each other on the riverbank.
Right now, I’m not even tasting the chips, just cramming them in my mouth while I look online. It’s scary how many sites there are for missing people. Most of them are crowded with too many words, too many fonts, too many pixilated clip-art pictures of roses and angels and candles. Some of them are sad remnants left up even though the person they were created to find isn’t missing anymore. At the top of one Web page is a newspaper story headlined “Prep School Student Admits Killing Girl with Bat.”
I click and click, until I end up at missingkids.com . It’s like a clearing house for kids all over the United States who have disappeared. You can search by name, by sex, by year, by state.
I just type in Oregon and hit return. There are nearly fifty kids who have gone missing in Oregon over the last twenty years. I click on the listings one by one. The recent listings have only a single photo that shows a chubby toddler or a sullen-looking teen. The ones who disappeared a long time ago have two photos, a dated-looking picture from when they first went missing and a second updated by a computer program, so you can see what they should have looked like when they turned thirty or forty or even older.
Sucking orange cheese dust from my fingers, I’m
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