I Know You Remember Page 6

  Sapolu’s brows furrow low. “I’m sorry, I don’t know the case.”

  “Y’all treated her like she was just a runaway, is why,” Ron says. He looks down at Charity, his expression troubled. “She lived down the street. Used to play with Zahra when they were kids. Her mom was a piece of work, so maybe she was a runaway.”

  “Or maybe she wasn’t,” Charity says. “What if . . . I mean, what are the odds of two girls going missing from within a few blocks of each other?”

  The question turns something over deep in the pit of my stomach. I look up at Sapolu, a shudder moving in slow motion up my back.

  He pauses in the doorway, half-turning to look back at us. He seems to choose his next words carefully. “I’ll pull up that file when I get back to the station, just so it’s on my radar. But look, I work a lot of missing-teen cases, and most of them are kids who’ve run off for a few days and come back when they’ve cooled off or sobered up. Try to keep positive, keep calm. I’ll let you know as soon as I know anything, okay?”

  Charity gives a frail nod. Ron moves to walk the officer out.

  When they leave, the room is very quiet for a moment.

  I reach out to take Charity’s hand. Her fingers are cold and shaking, but she smiles weakly up at me.

  “Thank you, Ruthie,” she whispers. “For being here.”

  “Of course,” I say.

  Across the table Tabitha is still looking down, her nose crinkled. She’s fighting tears, I think.

  “Mrs. Gaines . . .” she says.

  “I told you, honey, you can call me Charity.”

  She nods a little. I realize suddenly that she doesn’t spend much time here, in the trailer, with Zahra’s family. Whatever the nature of their friendship, either Zahra doesn’t share this part of her life, or Tabitha doesn’t want to see it.

  “Charity. I’m . . . I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have let her . . .” She trails off, her voice choked. Charity gets up and goes around the table to put her hands on Tabitha’s shoulders.

  “It’s okay,” Charity whispers. “Whatever happened, it’s . . . it’s not your fault. It’s not.”

  I look away from them. Maybe it’s not Tabitha’s fault—but some part of me isn’t willing to let her off the hook. She let her drunk, heartbroken best friend wander into the darkness. Alone. I would never have done that. If I’d been here . . .

  But then I don’t know how to end that thought. If I’d been here, would I have kept her safe? Would I have even been at that party? Would we have been friends, still, given all the ways she’s changed, given all the things that have changed?

  “I’m going to head home,” I say. “But will you guys let me know if you need anything? Anything at all?”

  Ron pulls me into another hug, and I let him. His wrinkled flannel shirt smells like peppermint and cigarettes.

  “You girls be safe out there, okay?” he says. “Be careful.”

  Tabitha follows me out to the front steps. Malik’s gone. I wonder if he’s in his room, or if he’s off roaming the neighborhood with the other kids, slow-pedaling on a rusty BMX or dribbling a basketball. Hiding his feelings behind teen-boy toughness.

  Tabitha nods at my car. “Do you mind giving me a ride home? I ran here.”

  “Sure.” I unlock the door. The car’s old enough that there’s no power lock, so she has to wait for me to let her in. When she climbs in, she rests her head back against the seat and closes her eyes.

  “Fuck,” she says.

  I’m not sure what to say to her, so I pull away from the curb. She looks legitimately scared, but there’s something else in her expression, and I don’t know how to place it or what to ask.

  She passes the rest of the ride without speaking except to give directions. Her house, paneled in gleaming cedar, is in a subdivision with streets named after colleges, lined with old trees and new cars.

  She sits in silence for a second before turning to look at me.

  “Look, my family’s out of town right now and I don’t want to be alone. I’ve got a couple people coming over tonight to help make some flyers. Marcus and Jeremy’ll both be there.” She looks me in the eye, maybe for the first time. “You want to come, too?”

  I bite the bottom of my lip. “Yeah. That sounds good. What time?”

  “Come around dinner, we’ll get a pizza.” She gets out of the car, then leans down to peer at me across the seat. “Thanks for the ride.”

  “No problem.”

  I watch her walk up to the garage and punch in the code to let herself in. She straightens her spine, runs her fingers through her hair. The worried lines smooth out of her expression as she disappears through the door.

  And I wonder—was she putting on a show at Zahra’s? Trying to look scared and sad and vulnerable? For Zahra’s parents? For the police?

  For me?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WHEN I GET HOME, Dad’s outside, spreading mulch around an aspen sapling. When he sees me he waves. The twinge of dread tugging at me makes me feel guilty; I’d been hoping to slip downstairs without notice, without having to talk to him. But here he is, with that earnest, hopeful smile.

  “Would you look at this little guy?” he asks as I approach. “Made it through the aphids. Now if I can keep the moose off it through the winter it might just survive.”

  I nod a little. Dad never used to care about yard work, but now he’s out here, trying to get his plants ready for winter. God and gardening: Dad’s sobriety hobbies. There are worse options, I guess.

  He kneels down and starts coiling up the hose. “Last year I tried planting apple trees but they only ever turned into apple shrubs.” He gives an awkward dad-joke laugh. “I think I planted them the wrong time of year. I’m still learning.” He finally looks up at me, and his expression shifts, turning uncertain. His eyes squint as if I’m far away. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I say. Then, “No. Not really.”

  He stands up quickly. “What’s wrong?”

  “Zahra.” I don’t like looking at him while I talk. It makes me feel vulnerable. So instead, I look down at the plants, fresh and green and bright, watered and nurtured by a man who once drunkenly threw a shoe at my head. “My . . . my best friend. She’s missing.”

  His pupils flare. He carefully puts the hose down, then straightens up to look me in the eye. “Missing?”

  I nod automatically. “Since last Friday. They announced it at school.”

  He pulls me into a hug. I don’t fight it. I close my eyes.

  “I’ll pray for her,” he says. “For both of you.”

  * * *

  —

  DOWNSTAIRS, I GO STRAIGHT to my room and shut the door. Not much natural light makes it through the sunken windows, and the bright pink walls look flushed and feverish in the glow of the lamp. Words and letters swirl all around me. Peace. Hope. Gratitude. I stand frozen in the center. Then I move quickly, quietly around the walls, taking it all down. When I’m done the walls are almost bare, except for the vinyl decals spelling my name.

  Then I lie on the bed and pull out my phone.

  Ingrid’s texted a few times, but I dismiss the alert without checking. Instead I open the internet browser. There’s nothing on the news about Zahra being missing, but Tabitha’s already posted FIND ZAHRA GAINES all over her own social media accounts. Her most recent Facebook update is a long rambling post about her: Zahra is the best friend I’ve ever had and she has been there for me through thick & thin. If you have seen her or have any information call the police at . . .

  She’s attached a picture. I barely recognize Zahra. She stands with a red solo cup, wearing a short yellow dress. Her hair is gone. Not gone-gone. Just short, chopped into a shaggy pixie that makes her look sharp and angular. She’s beautiful. She always was—her long limbs graceful instead of gangly, her eyes a light-filled hazel sur
rounded by dark lashes. But with the hair gone, with the lines of her face left so starkly exposed, she’s haunting.

  There are already over a hundred comments, and it’s only been twenty minutes or so.

  OMG I can’t believe it, where is she?

  Zahra babygirl come back we need you

  I had a dream about her last night and I woke up with the worst feeling . . .

  I skim through them. Nothing really stands out. Mostly superficial “come home soon” kind of messages. Lots of thoughts and prayers. A few people who rattle off long stories or hint at inside jokes. I’ll never forget the jumpsuit she made for the seventies dance . . . Or, Zahra you still owe me that trip to Portage!

  Zahra!

  Zahra.

  Zahra . . .

  They address the comments to her, as if that will call her back. But if that were enough, I’d have long since summoned her.

  I click through some of Tabitha’s older posts, mostly just to see if there’s anything else that stands out to me. Other posts about Zahra, other pictures that might tell me something about their relationship. But Tabitha mostly reposts aggressive fitspo memes (Life is hard . . . run harder. Today I do what others won’t . . . so tomorrow I can do what others can’t). There are pictures of her running, skiing, snowboarding, rock climbing. Her body is sleek and strong, all force and speed.

  Zahra doesn’t have a Facebook account—or at least not one that’s publicly searchable. I’ve googled her a few times over the last few years, mostly out of idle curiosity. I’ve never found much. When I look her up now I get a few hits, none very informative—she’s listed on some school websites. Cross-country running, yearbook. I find a picture of her on a community news website; she’s in a little group of girls about our age, all of them wearing bright green T-shirts with a coffee mug screen-printed across the front. It looks like they’re on one of the trails, enjoying a stroll on a sunny afternoon. Employees of the Cup and Saucer participate in the annual Walk and Roll for Hope, says the caption. She’s smiling, her eyes hidden behind large aviator shades.

  I stare at that one a long time. In a way it’s the most familiar of all the pictures I’ve seen of her. When I knew Zahra she wasn’t particularly athletic, but she loved to walk. She walked all over the trailer court, all through the woods, all over the neighborhood, just because the rhythm and movement pleased her. I can see an echo of that in the photo, even though her eyes are concealed from view.

  I put the phone against my chest, staring at the ceiling.

  Then I pick up the phone again and search for Ben Peavy. Zahra’s boyfriend.

  Right off the bat I get dozens of hits. I recognize him—he’s the boy from her pictures. Full mouth and dark, flashing eyes; black hair shaved close to the scalp along the sides, longer on the top. Turns out he’s Merrill High’s next great hope for a cross-country win. Last year he came in third in the state, and a bunch of universities are eyeing him. The local news outlets have tons of pictures, his muscles tense with exertion as he pulls ahead of the pack midrace. The Anchorage Daily News even wrote a profile on him a few weeks ago. Tradition, family keep Peavy grounded as he soars. Next to a picture of him crossing a finish line there’s one of him dressed in a beaded moose hide, dancing with a drum.

  Like most Alaska Native teenagers, Ben Peavy comes from two different worlds. There’s the world of his elders, with its rich history and complex traditions—and there’s the world of his peers, obsessed with the latest trends and technology. But for Peavy, bridging those worlds has helped him find balance as he trains toward the coming cross-country running season. It goes on to talk about his background—his paternal grandma’s a Koyukon Athabaskan artist known for her beadwork, and his mom’s an outreach coordinator for one of the local homeless shelters.

  On a dark whim I type in “Bailey Sellers.” The girl who vanished from Walker Court a few years ago. There aren’t any old news reports that I can find. There’s a school picture of her on NamUS, the government’s missing person site—I recognize her right off the bat. Tangled blonde hair, pinched cheeks. She used to follow Zahra around. She doesn’t smile in the picture; I remember she had a badly chipped tooth that she was self-conscious about.

  There’s not much accompanying information. No one seems to have dug into her case, to find out where she was last seen, or when. I can imagine it too easily—her mom too messed up to be able to answer the cops’ questions. The cops putting out a perfunctory search, but no one really bothering beyond that. It’s awful. It’s unfair. But it’s not surprising.

  A soft knock comes at the door. I sit up in my bed.

  “Yeah?”

  It’s Ingrid. She’s flushed, her backpack still on her back. For a long moment she doesn’t say anything. She just stands there with an odd look on her face.

  “Oh. Well. I just wanted to make sure you made it home,” she says. “Since I didn’t see you after school.” Her tone has a forced lightness to it, but I can feel the jagged edge beneath it.

  And then I remember.

  I left her there at school, without a ride. I didn’t tell her where I was going. I didn’t even think about her.

  “Oh, shit. Ingrid, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to just ditch you there,” I start, but she just gives a little shrug. Her smile doesn’t falter.

  “It’s okay. It’s kind of a long walk home, but it’s not too cold yet,” she says. “If I’d known you were leaving without me I could’ve taken the bus. But it’s not a big deal.”

  I’m one hundred percent in the wrong. But I’ve never had any patience for passive-aggressive bullshit. That was what my mom used to do, too. She’d get all wounded, start talking about everything she’d done to make a better life for us. I’d rather us scream at each other all day than deal with that.

  So I just stare at her. “Good, I’m glad it’s not a big deal.”

  Taking someone’s sulky denial at face value is its own kind of passive aggression, of course, but I just don’t have energy to deal with Ingrid right now. So I turn back to my phone. A moment later, I hear my door click back shut, her footsteps fading down the hall.

  I’ll apologize later. When I’m not so focused on combing through whatever I can find online. When Zahra comes home with a sheepish grin and a weak explanation and we know she’s safe and everything is back to normal. I’ll apologize to Ingrid, and she can take it or leave it. It won’t matter either way.

  The important thing—the only thing—is Zahra.

  CHAPTER NINE

  IT’S AROUND SIX WHEN I haul Brandy’s rusty three-speed out of the shed. The brakes squeal and the gear shifter sticks, but it works.

  I could take the car. It’d be faster. But the last time anyone saw Zahra she was heading out to the trails. I doubt I’ll find anything, but I don’t want to pass up the opportunity to retrace her steps. Just in case.

  Anchorage has dozens of greenbelts, all with different names, but most of them are connected by bike trails, like emerald beads on a string. Russian Jack is the one closest to both my house and Zahra’s, but it links up with Goose Lake, Tikishla Park, the Chester Creek Trail, Westchester Lagoon, and the Coastal Trail beyond. I’ve always found it kind of comforting, the way you can slip away from roads and cars and feel the trees around you, almost anywhere in town. The way you feel connected to the whole sprawling network wherever you are.

  I wish time felt like that. I wish I could feel my past and my future and the way they intertwine with Zahra’s. I wish I could sense the way our lives flow together. Instead it feels like something sharp and violent has severed us. Like something happened to her to tear her out of the world.

  My breath comes in clouds as I heave up the first few hills of the trail. I wonder if she ran out to the trail the night of the party with the intention of walking home. It’d be a long walk, maybe a couple of hours, but we’d walked those distances plenty of times as kid
s. We were often out in the woods all night, the light dim but present. It’s September, though, and she would have had to rely on the street lights that are only intermittent along the paved trails.

  The image makes me tighten my fingers around the handlebar grips. Because while the trails are beautiful, magical even, they’re also dangerous. In the winter the moose come down from the mountains and forage, and in recent years there’ve even been bears. And I grew up hearing all kinds of stories—about the psych patient that shot a bunch of teenagers in Russian Jack back in the eighties, about the teen couple that hid out on the park after a thrill-kill spree. Just last year a man died in a shoot-out with the cops in the middle of a downtown street, and the investigators later matched his gun with a series of unsolved murders all throughout the trail system.

  I picture Zahra, in the dark, staggering drunk, the stars obscured by branches overhead. It’s easy to imagine her encountering something that night that kept her from coming out the other side.

  Of course, the truth could be even simpler than that. It could be the angry ex-boyfriend that everyone saw lose his temper just a few hours earlier. He could have been waiting outside Tabitha’s to follow her. Or waiting outside the trailer park to catch her.

  I come to a stop at the place where I’d turn off to the Precipice—to our playground. Then I hide the bike in the undergrowth and set off, following the landmarks I know so well. The dead spruce jabbing up like a wounded finger. The heart-shaped boulder with its filigree of moss.

  The playground’s just as I left it. And I know, as soon as I see it, that she’s not here. I knew that before I even arrived, really. If she’d been hiding at the playground I’d have seen some sign of her yesterday. But even still, when I see the barren playscape, the old sheet flapping in the breeze, I’m disappointed.