1
“911, WHAT IS your emergency?”
“Hello? Help me, please! They took my sister! Please hurry, I don’t know where they are. I can’t find them.” *rustling noise* *yells something* “Oh my god—oh my god. Piper!”
“Ma’am, I need you to calm down so that I can understand you.”
“Okay...” *crying*
“Who took your sister?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know them. Two guys. Dupont knows them, I—”
“Miss, what is the address? Where are you?”
“The theater on Pike, the Five Dollar...” *crying* “They took my phone, I’m calling from inside the theater.”
“Wait right where you are, someone is going to be there to help shortly. Can you tell me what your name is?”
*crying*
“What is your name? Hello...?”
*crying, indecipherable noises*
“Can you tell me your name?”
“Iris...”
“What is your sister’s name, Iris? And how old is she?”
“Piper. She’s fifteen.”
“Is she your older sister or younger sister... Iris, can you hear me?”
“We’re twins. They just put her in a car and drove away. Please hurry.”
“Can you tell me what kind of vehicle they were driving?”
“I don’t know...”
“—a van, or a sedan—?”
“It was blue and long. I can’t remember.”
“Did it have four doors or two... Iris?”
“Four.”
“And how many men were there?”
“Three.”
“I’m going to stay on the line with you until the officers get there.”
He leans forward, rouses the mouse, and turns off the audio on his computer. Click click clack. I was referred to Dr. Stanford a year ago when my long-term therapist retired. I had the option of finding a new therapist on my own or being assigned someone in the practice. Of course I considered breaking up with therapy all together, but after eight years it felt unnatural not to go. But I was a drinker of therapy sauce: a true believer in the art of feelings. I imagined people felt that way about church. At the end of the day, I told myself that a weird therapist was better than no therapist.
I disliked Allen Stanford on sight. Grubby. He is the grown-up version of the kindergarten booger eater. A mouth breather with a slow, stiff smile. I was hoping he’d grow on me.
Dr. Stanford clears his throat.
“That’s hard to listen to for me, so I can only imagine how you must feel.”
Every year, on the anniversary of Piper’s kidnapping, I listen to the recording of the 911 call I made from the lobby of the Five Dollar. When I close my eyes, I can still see the blue diamond carpet and the blinking neon popcorn sign.
“Do you want to take a break?”
“A break from what?”
“It must be hard for you to hear that even now...”
That is true, reliving the worst day of my life never gets easier. The smell of popcorn is attached to the memory, and I feel nauseated. A cold chill sweeps over me. Swallowing the lump in my throat, I nod once.
“What happened after you hung up the phone?”
“I waited...what else could I do? I was afraid they were outside waiting to take me too. My brain hadn’t fully caught up to what was happening. I felt like I was dreaming.”
My voice is weighed down with shame; in the moments after my twin was taken, I was thinking of my own safety, worried that her kidnappers would come back. Why hadn’t I chased the car down the street, or at least paid attention to the license plate so I could give it to the cops? Hindsight was a sore throat.
“I wanted to call Gran.” I shake my head. “I thought I was crazy because I’d dialed her number hundreds of times and I just... I forgot. I had to wait for the cops.”
My lungs feel like
they’re compressing. I force a deep breath.
“I guess it took five minutes for the cops to get there, but if you asked me that day, I would have said it took an hour.”
When I close my eyes, I can still see the city block in detail—smell the fry oil drifting across the street from the McDonald’s.
“The cops parked their cruiser on the street in front of the theater,” I continue. “I was afraid of them. My mother was an addict—she hated cops. To certain people, cops only show up to take things away, you know?”
He nods like he knows, and maybe he does, maybe he had a mom like mine, but for the last twenty years, he’s been going to Disney World—according to the photos on his desk—and that somehow disqualifies him in my mind as a person who’s had things taken away from him.
I take another sip of water, the memories rushing back. I close my eyes, wanting to remember, but not wanting to feel—a fine line.
I was shaking when I stumbled out of the theater and ran toward the cop car, drunk with shock, the syrupy soda pooling in my belly. My toe hit a crack in the asphalt and I rolled my ankle, scraping it along the side of the curb. I made it to them, staggering and crying, scared out of my mind—and that’s when things had gone from bad to worse.
“Tell me about your exchange with the police,” he prompts. “What, if anything, did they do to help you in that moment?”
The antiquated anger begins festering now, my hands fisting into rocks. “Nothing. They arrived already not believing me. The first thing they asked was if I had taken any drugs. Then they wanted to know if Piper did drugs.”
The one with the watery eyes—I remember him having a lot of hair. It poked out the top of his shirt, tufted out of his ears. The guy whose glasses I could see my face in—he had no hair. But what they had both worn that day was the same bored, cynical expression. I sigh. “To them, teenagers who looked like me did drugs. They saw a tweaker, not a panicked, traumatized, teenage girl.”
“What was your response?”
“I denied it—said no way. For the last six months, my sister had been hanging with a church crowd. She spent weekends going to youth group and Bible study. If anyone was going to do drugs at that point, it would have been me.”
He writes something down on his notepad. Later I’ll try to imagine what it was, but for now I am focused.
“They thought I was lying—I don’t even know about what, just lying. The manager of the theater came outside to see what was going on, and he brought one of his employees out to confirm to the police that I had indeed come in with a girl who looked just like me, and three men. I asked if I could call my gran, who had custody of us.”
“Did they let you?”
“Not at first. They ignored me and just kept asking questions. The bald one asked if I lived with her, but before I could answer his question, the other one was asking me which way the car went. It was like being
shot at from two different directions.” I lean forward in my seat to stretch my back. I’m so emotionally spiked, both of my legs are bouncing. I can’t make eye contact with him; I’m trapped in my own story—helpless and fifteen.
“The men who took my sister—they took my phone. The cops wanted to know how I called 911. I told them the manager let me use the phone inside the theater. They were stuck on the phone thing. They wanted to know why the men would take my phone. I screamed, ‘I have no idea. Why would they take my sister?’”
“They weren’t hearing you,” he interjects.
I stare at him. I want to say No shit, Sherlock, but I don’t. Shrinks are here to edit your emotions with adjectives in order to create a TV Guide synopsis of your issues. Today on an episode of Iris in Therapy, we discover she has never felt heard!
“I was hysterical by the time they put me in the cruiser to take me to the station. Being in the back of that car after just seeing Piper get kidnapped—it was like I could feel her panic. Her need to get away. They drove me to the station...” I pause to remember the order of how things happened.
“They let me call my grandmother, and then they put me in a room alone to wait. It was horrible—all the waiting. Every minute of that day felt like ten hours.”
“Trauma often feels that way.”
“It certainly does,” I say. “Have you ever been in a situation that makes you feel that way—like every minute is an hour?” I lean forward, wanting a real answer. Seconds tick by as he considers me from behind his desk. Therapists don’t like to answer questions. I find it hypocritical. I try to ask as many as I can just to make it fair.
He leans his chin on a hairy fist and assures me again that most people feel similar in situations such as mine.
I yawn and check the time on my phone.
I was still in a state of shock when the detectives came in to take my statement that day. The man introduced himself as Detective Audrain without looking at me. The woman—in her early twenties and named Poley—was the object of his attention. I’d caught them on the end of a story or joke they were still recovering from before they walked in the room. They spent the first ten minutes of the interview half laughing, half listening. I hadn’t understood the dynamic when I was a fifteen-year-old girl. The story of their affair only came out three years later; the scandal forced Audrain into early retirement.
My ankle looked like rotted fruit—bloated purple and oozing blood beneath the cuff of my jeans. I was surprised that it didn’t hurt—it didn’t feel like anything. The hurt was in my chest, crushing my lungs.
“They didn’t believe me. Kind of blew me off and insinuated Piper went with those guys of her own volition. Just like the other two cops.”
A knot forms behind my breastbone and floats up to my throat, lodging. I swallow but can’t get it down. There were so many things that went wrong that day.
Audrain would give Poley a look like, You’re up! and she’d smile at him and bat me
another question. If she asked me a question he was impressed by, he’d nod in appreciation.
“I told them over and over that she didn’t get into the car; she was forced into the car. They’d wanted to know how we knew the men. What they looked like. What Piper was wearing. I was trying to answer their questions, but I felt weird, like my thoughts were thick. Eventually they came to the unanimous decision that I was in shock.”
I remember Poley leaving the room and coming back with a doughnut, four chocolate Kisses, and a bottle of Dr. Pepper. She lined them up in front of me one after the other—plunk, plunk, plunk. I wanted to throw up when I saw the scrounged picnic, but my hand mindlessly began unwrapping the Kisses.
Poley eyed my green face and said to Audrain, “Hey, screw off that cap for her, won’t you?”
I’d taken a sip of soda to wash away the chocolate sticking to the roof of my mouth, and that’s when I remembered. “It was the soda!” I’d cried out.
And then Gran walked in and I’d dissolved against her, crying so hard my words wouldn’t come out. She cradled me in her arms, and I folded up in shame against her pink sweater. I’d lost my sister. Gran told me to take care of her, and now she was gone.
He’s listening hard. I have his attention. The novelty of being an adult is that you can pay for what you didn’t get as a child. I get high on therapy, the nurture drug.
“Time’s up.”
He startles. “What?”
I point to the clock—his clock. “Our session is over.”
He looks momentarily lost, and then he sits up straighter in his chair. I’m a pretty good storyteller after all these years.
Setting down his pen, he frowns. “It’s my job to say when time is up.”
I nod. Of course, of course. Men like to feel that they are in control. I wonder who has more issues: me or him.
I gather up my things. “See you next week,” I call over my shoulder. I don’t wait for him to respond.
I navigate my beater out of the almost empty strip mall and head south on 405. It’s a pretty okay day; the October sky is still bright and blue, but that will be short-lived. In two weeks, the cloud cover will blanket the sky in dismal shades of gray. Gray, gray, every day, my sister used to sing. It’s not that I don’t like gray, it’s just not my best color...
Memories of Piper should make me smile but they hurt instead. Once I start thinking about her, I can’t stop. Piper’s case is so cold it has freezer burn. I turn up the volume on the radio to drown out my thoughts; Lana Del Rey reminds me that I’m born to die.
***
I pull into my grandmother’s driveway around six. The garage door is in front of me, plump azalea bushes springing from either side. I need to trim those back soon.
The house is cute as a button: white with black trim and a black front door. I grab my bag from the backseat as the engine putters out. I don’t know who’s more broke, me or my car.
Three years after Piper went missing, Gran’s aunt, a widow with no children, died and left her house to Gran—a nice surprise after all the sadness. The house, which is located in an upscale neighborhood in Seattle, is just a short drive to where she works at the Seattle Public Library. Cal and I have lived with her on and off over the years. I tried to live on my own twice and failed miserably when I couldn’t keep up with Seattle’s rent crisis. Gran was gracious enough to offer her spare bedrooms for free until I completed my work-study, so Cal and I packed up our little apartment and moved in with her three months back.
Walking the path around the side of the house and to the front door, I feel the peace of being in a safe place. Everything is quaint and pretty, not like the apartment we lived in when it happened nine years ago.
As soon as the front door closes behind me, Cal flings himself across the living room and into my arms. He’s small for eight, sweet and softhearted. Everyone says he looks like me, and that’s mostly true. He has my blue eyes and rosebud mouth, but his hair is dark and wavy. My shaggy, smart boy. I wrap my arms around him, glad to be home. It’s the same greeting I get every night—pure joy.
“You got a letter,” he says. “It’s on the table in the kitchen. Gran keeps picking it up and looking at it.”
“Uh-oh,” I say, glancing into the kitchen. Gran is at the sink, washing the dinner dishes by hand even though we have a dishwasher. I eye her tense little shoulders and feel a surge of hope. Could it be? I applied for four internships at the prompting of my professor, but there was only one I was interested in taking. It was the internship Gran had begged me not to apply for.
“Is she upset?” I whisper.
Cal nods, he’s wearing his most serious expression. “She called off work tomorrow.” His voice is low. “She wants you to take her to see the island where you’re going to work.”
The island? Did I hear that right? My heart speeds up. I’m shaking as I reach out to ruffle his hair. I lean down to give him a kiss.
“Thanks, little informant.” He darts off—probably back to his iPad. I hang my things on the hook by the door and slip into the bathroom Cal and I share to wash my hands. By the time I step into the kitchen a few minutes later, Gran has my dinner on the table and she looks ready to argue. Propped against my water glass is a business-size envelope, crisp and official. The return address: Shoal Island.
“Oh my god.”
Gran leans against the counter, pale and staring. I rip it open, too afraid to blink.
“I’m in...” I say.
“Gran...”
When I look up, she has her eyes closed like she’s on a ride she wants to get off.
“Don’t do that, Gran, this has always been the plan.”
“Your plan,” she snaps.
“The only plan...” I shoot back.
“I don’t want this for you. You are living her life, not your own.”
We glare at each other with identical pond-scum eyes, refusing to blink. I will never have to wonder what I’ll look like when I’m older; I look just like Gran. We have the same heart-shaped face and heavy bottom lip. She knows I’m right. That’s the only reason she’s not arguing back.
“Everything is going to be okay,” I tell her. “I have things under control...” It is a bold statement but I believe it. Gran nods at the floor, turning back to the dishes. When she lets it go, I sigh in relief. My body relaxes back into the chair and I pick up my fork.
The truth is, I don’t want Gran getting close to that place. Not because it is evil. I don’t believe places can be evil. He is evil, and he is there, tucked away like a rotting tooth. It took me a long time to find him. The nights when Gran wanted to know why I wasn’t on a date or out with friends, I was stationed in front of my laptop, looking for him. Searching, always searching. And then I had found him. He was in a private facility, a hospital for the mentally ill.
Living out his days on an island didn’t sit well with me. I needed to lay eyes on him—hear him speak, feel his vibe. Did he care? Did he think about what he’d done?
I liked to imagine another version of myself: wholesome and hopeful. A woman who had a sister. I imagine she’d have outgrown her annoyance with me by now. Maybe we’d go to concerts together, or the movies—we never had time to find common ground. And now I’d never know.
I wash my dishes in the sink this time with Gran watching me from the table. Cal’s TV shows are playing in the living room; he’s pretending to listen, but I know it’s our conversation he’s after. I can feel Gran’s eyes on my back.
“Thanks for the dinner.”
“Iris,” she says as I’m walking out. “Cal needs his mother.”
I pause.
“He’ll get her. I’m almost finished with this.”
2
“YO, PIPES, MY cousin’s friend thinks you’re hot.”
Piper glanced up from her phone, her eyes glazed over. She was texting, but when Dupont didn’t go away, she slid her phone into the back pocket of her jeans and sighed. “What now?” Her eyes bounced off of him and to the crowd of students making their way out the front doors. The burden of having a popular sister...
Dupont stepped in front of her, blocking her view so he could have her full attention.
“My cousin’s friend. He wants to know if you want to hang out at the mall sometime.”
I finished loading my books into my backpack and slammed my locker, making them both jump. I gave Piper a look, and we started walking. It was three o’clock on a Friday, the bell had rung, and it wasn’t raining. We could make it home dry if we hurried.
“Why would I want to hang out with your cousin’s friend?”
Dupont shrugged like he didn’t really care, but I could tell that wasn’t the case. He was stuck to Piper’s side, hedging her like I’d seen him do on the basketball court.
“Shouldn’t you be at practice?” I asked. He ignored me.
Chris Dupont was a hustler in a beanie. Piper felt comfortable giving him an attitude because she was higher on the food chain; if she didn’t laugh at his jokes, no one would. I, on the other hand, was afraid of him. He had a way of knowing your weakness and using it against you.
“Stop acting like you’re too good for people, Piper, damn! You want to hang out with him, trust me. He’s a senior. Not at this school...”
I rolled my eyes, anticipating how long this would take. I’d skipped lunch to finish my algebra homework, and I was hungry.
“Pipe, let’s go,” I nagged, tugging on her arm. Her phone buzzed in her back pocket. She took it out, frowning at the screen. For a moment, her face looked so distraught, I wanted to ask her what was wrong. My hand was still on her arm, and she shrugged it off, annoyed. I felt stupid. She’d been like this with me lately—vague...distant.
“Who’s your cousin’s friend?” My sister looked pointedly at Dupont. “And how exactly does this creeper know me?”
She started walking, long rose-gold waves bouncing against her back. I kept mine short and used gel to mat it down—which made my hair look darker than hers. We launched after her like minnows, darting through bodies to keep up. I looked over at Dupont resentfully, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Come on, Piper, everyone knows you. At all the schools. Before you danced for Jesus, you danced for us!”
That earned him a scalding look. Piper quickened her pace, but he slid into step beside her, knocking me out of the way. I harrumphed but hung back while he finished his appeal.
“I didn’t know you were matchmaking now,” she smarted without looking at him. I was endlessly impressed by how cool she was without even trying. How did we share a womb?
We were fifteen feet away from the door and freedom. I could practically taste my sandwich...
“He’s on the Wildcats football team, but that is all I’m saying.”
That’s all he had to say. Piper was interested. I stepped over someone’s lunch, bologna and mayo ground into the concrete. She was barely fifteen, but she had a definite type. Lately, my formerly boy-crazy sister’s type had been Jesus.
The school was behind us now; we walked with the flow of traffic, me holding the straps of my backpack as I trailed them.
“Why can’t he ask me himself?” Her voice was different—Dupont owned her in that moment. He seemed to know it too because he danced around, giving her the finger until she pinched him playfully on the arm. He had her full attention.
“Ouch! Okay! I’ll tell you!” he said, laughing. “His parents took his phone away, that’s all I know. He saw you at the game and asked about you.”
“What game?” I heard her ask, though she knew exactly which one. Piper liked that the chase was her game.
“His last name is Crimball.”
Dupont had just dropped
her crush’s name, and she looked bored. Piper had no reaction. I had to give it to her, girl was hard-core.
“Why would I want to meet him?”
Dupont started laughing. He bent over like one of those dancing sock puppets and slapped his knee twice before straightening up. “Because every bitch in that school would spread for Crimball.” Lifting his arms straight up, he twisted his torso left, then right, then left again. His back cracked, and I frowned. He was right, but Piper was a sophomore and Matt was a senior. My sister was beautiful but so were plenty of juniors and seniors.
“I have to give him an answer,” Dupont said. “Don’t shoot the messenger... How about Saturday?”
We stopped at a red light as Piper considered this. “Oh, all right then, I guess I can.” She looked back at me like I was her personal assistant. ...
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