Come Back (10 page)

Paul takes the phone out of my hand and looks at me anxiously.

“We’re losing her, Paul.”

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I hated it there for a long time. You go through some serious emotional shit and the other girls won’t let you fake your way through. You can’t lie to a liar.”

“Zat model” has met us at Yvette’s for dinner. I recognize her from magazines. She’s candid, poised, kind. She’s spending the little time off she has on this shoot with two miserable parents she doesn’t know.

She tells us the first three levels in the school are more internal, about getting you to recognize how you got there. Levels four, five, and six are more about how you interact with the world, with peers and family.

“You become a mentor to newer girls and there’s a lot more contact with parents.”

“What prompted you to start changing?”

“After a while, you see that the kids who’ve moved up to higher levels in the school really are happier. You just get sick of your own bullshit, you know? I still use a lot of what I learned, it really does change you for the better, long term. I do occasionally have a drink but I haven’t used drugs since, which is saying a lot in my profession.”

Of all the schools, the parents from her school or their sister facilities are the most ardent in their support of “the program,” as they call it,
which surprises me given it’s the strictest of the lot and the one the media slams the most. One woman returns my call after midnight. I knew you’d be awake, she says, I’ve been there. She’s right, I’m wide awake, studying a map of Larkin.

Parents are honest about what they don’t like—the food’s lousy, communication isn’t always good, academics are mediocre. They’re also blunt in saying that Paul and I will be doing some behavior modifying of our own; the program involves the entire family.

The last woman I talk to, Trish, feels most like me in terms of personality and philosophy. She’s a banker who also teaches yoga, with a happy marriage and a daughter much like Mia at their newest facility.

“I think it’s actually the extremity of the program and location that works. They have to be stripped of everything familiar and comfortable, so their only comfort becomes internal. I especially like that the program includes visualizations and affirmations along with the strict rules. The balance is quite remarkable; it changes the way they think. The director, Glenn, is amazing. The girls adore her.”

“You’re sending her where?!” everyone says.

Morava Academy. In Brno, Czech Republic, near the Slovak border. The other side of the world. Locked doors
and
windows. A tracking dog trained by the German military. Only twenty students, a student-to-staff ratio of 2:1. Peer group daily, personal growth seminars regularly. The teachers speak English, many have PhDs. Students earn the right to take trips to Prague, Vienna, and Budapest. My mother’s from Hungary, she and I can visit together and show Mia her heritage.

It couldn’t get any better. All we have to do is find her. She hasn’t called in a week.

“For heaven’s sake, tell the police and your sister to stop looking for her. If anyone notices, she’ll take off. I’m a former police officer, I’ll coordinate with them when I get there. Try to get me a name, that’s best in rural areas.”

Jack Tyson is an escort. I had no idea there was an entire profession devoted to finding and snatching seriously wayward teens. When he finds her,
if
he does, he’ll take her to a holding facility in Utah where she’ll get
a medical and psychological evaluation before being escorted to the Czech Republic.

Melanie hasn’t called but I try her again, telling her that Mia is sick and we want to send money and medicine. She says she’s sorry but doesn’t sound like it and doesn’t offer more. I think her tone’s changed because she hears the desperation in my voice. She knows my small talk is begging and she’s enjoying it.

I hear her light a cigarette. I hear her inhale.

“Well, you know,” she says languidly, “I do remember her saying something about camping with some guy.”

I can picture her narrowing her eyes as she blows the smoke out in her own sweet time. Then she sighs the words out slowly, “I think…it was…Brian…Briiiian Starcher.”

She always knew. And she never would have called to tell me. I had to go to her, do a dance, wheedle. There’s a learning curve to this that could cost Mia her life.

I find the Starcher’s number easily enough. Fortunately, Brian’s brother is young, polite, and intimidated by me. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know where he is. But he does know where he works. Jack’s on a plane within hours.

“He filled the door, Claire, literally. He could kidnap a gorilla.”

It’s late at night and Jack’s just left Vivian’s. She gave him and his partner, Beth, names and locations, local hangouts. They’ll start their search early tomorrow at the campground. It’s the first night I feel any kind of hope.

I’ve been wanting to go camping ever since we got here. I love being out at night like this, out in the wild. I look up at the stars. They make me feel alive. It’s a welcome change from that dead feeling that only drugs or raw physical sensation like cutting wakens. I feel connected. I don’t know what to, but I feel less alone. I didn’t grow up religious and I’ve always been somewhat envious of people who are. I felt dumb whenever I prayed, like I was talking to a wall. I could just picture God sitting up high looking at his answering machine and seeing six billion unheard messages and then deleting them all. But tonight’s different. I don’t feel alone, even if it is just the stars up there watching me.

I wake up today so weak I can barely move. Or breathe for that matter, my voice is almost totally gone and I’m wheezing like crazy. I have no appetite even though I haven’t eaten in days. I literally don’t even have the energy to pull myself up to the glass to signal to Brian as he starts the van. He’s helping a friend move some stuff into his shop, a friend he says can give me a part-time job to pay for food and smokes. What he doesn’t know is that it’s also going to buy me a ticket out of here. New York’s not far and it’s full of other street kids.

I lay my head down and pass out.

Jack and Beth cruise Larkin on the way to the campground. The van isn’t there, but a girl remembers seeing it. They hit the gas stations, the bars and pool halls, the convenience stores, cheap diners. He checks the parking lot of Brian’s job twice, but he must be off today.

The convenience store nearby is run by someone Jack feels he can trust. The man recognizes Mia, says she comes in for cigarettes. He promises not to alert her.

Jack returns to the campground but the van never shows up.

My coughing wakes me after it’s dark. I pull myself up to the window. We’re still at Brian’s friend’s; they’re probably all inside the shop partying. I just want to sleep. I’ll figure out what to do tomorrow.

Jack focuses his last day on Brian’s job and places near it. He pulls into the lot of the plant, drives up and down the aisles, then stops.

The van sits parked in the hot June sun. He gets out one aisle over and walks toward the front of the van. Beth pulls up behind it, blocking the path out the back. Jack walks along the front bumper. The front seat is empty. He turns down the side. No curtains on the back window—good. Jack moves silently down the side of the van, stops at the window and looks in.

There’s a dirty mattress and pillows. And no Mia. He looks around the lot, gets in his car, and tells Beth to drive to the convenience store. They’ll come back to the lot and wait for Brian to leave and follow him.

They pull slowly out of the lot, passing a grassy area that slopes down to a river. And in that river, just below his sightline, a sick, emaciated girl is cooling off.

On my back, in my underclothes, the cool water feels like heaven. I was so hot I dragged myself to the river behind the plant. I had to stop to rest twice. Now, submerged in water, I look up at the wavering sky from underwater and for a blissful moment forget where I am.

An hour later, Jack returns to the plant lot and cruises up the aisle. The van is gone. Gone! Brian must have gotten off early. They search everywhere else she could be until late into the night, with no luck. He leaves early tomorrow.

My God, he was so close! I’m so upset I can’t stop pacing. I have such a strong foreboding that she’s about to run to somewhere else or overdose or she’s sick.

I slap open the back door and stagger out into the night, barefoot and in pajamas, like a loosed asylum inmate with her robe flapping behind her. I burst into tears and stop in the street and beg—

“Dear God,

Please help me find Mia.

Sincerely,

Claire.”

A letter? My first prayer in my adult life comes out like a letter? Like it was to Santa Claus?

God must have checked his mail. An hour later the phone rings. It’s Mia. Can Aunt Vivian bring medicine and groceries? Yes yes yes! Antibiotics, antipsychotics, money, whatever you need, help is on the way, Mia, we love you please come home!

“Mother, I just want some money and antibiotics. Tell her to meet at the convenience store tomorrow at eleven. If she says one word to me, I’ll take the stuff and I won’t call you again.”

I promise Mia she won’t, trying to keep the happiness out of my voice. Jack generously agrees to stay an extra day to pick her up.

I think I’ve found a new pen pal. I send a Him thank you card immediately.

My mom finally did something right. My aunt’s van is there, and there’s a grocery bag sitting in front. I go to open the door and grab the bag, but it’s locked.
Aunt Vivian gets out and walks around to where I’m standing. Shit, I didn’t want to talk to her.

She unlocks the passenger door, reaches for the bag, hands it to me and hugs me, saying something about how much my family loves me. Just then I hear a door open behind me. I go to turn around but my arms are grabbed and I’m lifted in the air. My heart skyrockets out of my chest and I start looking around in every direction, panicking.

“Aunt Vivian, help me!”

She’s saying something and looking at me sadly but isn’t doing anything to stop this. What the FUCK is going on? Who is this guy? I vaguely hear him say, “It’s okay, your mother sent us.” Right! I’m sure those are the last words heard by every abducted girl from here to LA.

I’m pushed into a car, which speeds off immediately. My hands reach everywhere, the window, the handle, I’m trapped. They keep repeating that it’s okay, I haven’t been kidnapped, my mother sent them.

“Prove it, you fucking assholes!” I yell, on the verge of tears.

The guy turns around to me and says with a smile, “Twinkletoes.”

I freeze. That was our secret family password when I was little.

Everything falls into place, the sad look on my aunt’s face, my mom’s willingness to send me money, the locked door. I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. My own mother had me kidnapped.

“Our ‘A’ student was drug addicted…. Renee graduated from the program having rediscovered self-esteem, respect, love for her family and her incredible talents.”

“…Jonathon is loving, patient, respectful, powerful, truly the magical child he was many years ago. This has been the greatest gift we’ve ever received.”

I’m addicted to them, the testimonials. We’re in a frenzy trying to find Mia’s passport but every time I pass the dining room I have to stop and read some more, like a gerbil hitting the food lever. I can’t get enough. My child will be saved, they say to me, they’ll return her to me, to herself, to happiness!

Paul’s been swamped with work, so our friend Karin has been staying a few days to help me through this. She’s sunny and optimistic, a boon to our spirits. She’s also extremely practical and organized, which is a huge help to a frazzled mother trying to get everything together to send her daughter halfway across the planet.

“I’m going where?”

The “escorts” dropped me off and now these people are telling me this isn’t rehab and I’m going to the Czech Republic! They might as well have said I’m going on an expedition to Jupiter—do I prefer a blue or pink jumpsuit?

“But Jack said I’m being sent to rehab for two weeks,” I repeat, praying they have me mixed up with some other kid.

“He lied because your mom said you might run.”

That bitch!

“But what does the Czech Republic have to do with rehab?”

They explain it to me again. Behavior modification program. Typical stay is around one year. The rules will be explained when I get there. Held here until I have my passport. That last part is the only useful thing out of their mouths.

“How long does that take?”

What I’m really asking is how long I have to plan an escape. The answer: about five days.

If I wasn’t so tired last night, I would have noticed this wasn’t rehab. No “rehab” is a log cabin in the desert, with dead mounted animals on every surface. Monkeys, elk, a leopard, the entire front half of an impala. The table we play cards on is an elephant’s ear perched on its own foot.

There are eight kids here, some going to Samoa or Jamaica. Three of us are going to the Czech Republic. Two once I get out of here.

The next couple of days go by really slow. I have so little energy I pretty much sleep through most of it. They gave me some medicine so at least my fever’s gone. The worst part is I can’t smoke. Not having any dope is bad enough but quitting smoking at the same time is a bitch. I’m not the only one. It’s amazing no one’s killed anyone else.

I’ve decided to wait until Sunday to run. I’m still weak, and I need more time to figure out the pattern of the place. I’ve been pocketing food, but all the windows I’ve checked are alarmed. Plus, my mom obviously said something to the staff, because they’ve been watching me like a hawk.

When I wake up this morning, it’s still dark out. I got to the bathroom and bump into someone. It’s the new girl, Hollie, the tiny, redhead that came in last night. She’s at the window with her arms up. I quickly go in and shut the door.

“Hey,” I whisper, “are you trying to run?”

She starts to deny it but I cut her off.

“It’s cool, I am too. I have some food saved up but so far all the windows I’ve checked have alarms on them.”

She looks at me a second and then opens up her palm. There’s a battery in it.

They fax us Mia’s psychological test results. On the Incomplete Sentence Blank section: My nerves—are fried, My mind—is fried, The future—seems bleak, People—piss me off. They report her attitude as demanding and contemptuous, with a general disdain for people. Gee, d’ya think?

They’ve started her on antibiotics and she was found to be clinically
malnourished. She’s jittery with withdrawal, but is cooperative, which makes me nervous.

“That’s her MO,” I warn Loren, the owner of the holding facility. “If she’s behaving well, she’s thinking of running.”

They assure me she’s being watched constantly, even at night. She’s leaving in the morning. Thank God it’s over. I sing to myself as I get ready for bed, my voice resonating with joy and relief. It’s the first time I’ve sung since the night I sang her lullabies over the phone. The night before she vanished.

It’s become my frame of reference, that night. It is my Before and After.

The night watch person just shined his light over the beds. When he leaves, I look over at Hollie and nod. We pull off our pajamas and stuff them under the blanket, along with some other clothes. He shines the light around so quickly that as long as it looks like a body, we’re fine. But there’s a motion sensor that’s going to be tricky.

We pull socks over our flip-flops to make running easier and quieter. Then we slide of four beds and crawl on our bellies VERY slowly, to the bathroom.

The bathroom window opens soundlessly. Hollie goes up with a boost from me and I follow, hoisting myself up and over before jumping outside. We take off running as fast as we can in sock-covered flip-flops. Suddenly, Hollie stops short. There’s an enormous, cactus-filled ditch. We climb down, plow through the brush, climb up the other side of the ditch, and see three more ravines just like this one. Shit! Just that one cost us an extra ten minutes! An hour later, we finally spot the road.

Out here, all roads lead to Hurricane, a town the size of a tumbleweed and equally exciting, I’m sure. By the time we reach town the sky’s changed from black to gray. My socks look like
Hellraiser—
thorns and bristles stick out from every angle and my legs are a bloody mess.

While Hollie calls her boyfriend in Salt Lake from a pay phone, I notice a small house across the street with a For Rent sign. Enough slats are missing from the pulled blinds for me to guess that it’s vacant. Two narrow rectangular windows by the ground around back will be easiest to break. I motion for Hollie to come over, pick up a rock, shatter the window, and crawl in.

By the time she climbs down, any fear about someone living here is gone. An inch of dust covers everything and cobwebs are everywhere. If I hadn’t just walked five hours in thorn-covered flip-flops, I’d probably be weirded out. But right now, all I can focus on is a sofa at the end of the room. The last thing
I remember hearing is that her boyfriend is sending two of his friends to come get us.

“Ms. Fontaine, there’s been a staff error.”

It’s the supervisor, Monty. He’s spent extra time with Mia and called many times to reassure me.

“Staff error, what, on her application, do you need me to send something?” It doesn’t occur to me that it’s too early for anyone to be doing any paperwork there. Paul’s sound asleep, so is Karin.

“No, Ms. Fontaine. Mia has fled the facility.”

Karin will tell me later that I kept screaming. All I will remember of this moment is the color red. Karin will tell me later that she had been trying to grab hold of me and she had on red pajamas.

“How long has she been gone?” I yell into the phone.

“Seven hours, we didn’t know they were gone till wake-up.”

“Seven hours?! Who’s they?!”

“She ran with another girl named Hollie who has a boyfriend in Salt Lake; we think they’ve contacted him. We have people checking it out. It’s our fault, I can’t apologize enough. It was a new employee on night duty. We’re all out searching, people in town, the sheriff.”

Karin grabs the phone. “The FBI’s looking, too. I’ve told them the girls are underage and we’re worried about prostitution. You’ll be hearing from them.”

She’d called the FBI, thinking it would put extra pressure on them. It did. Loren, the owner, calls back angry. Tough shit, Karin tells him, you should take better care of your charges. He argues with her, saying that
he’s
annoyed with our daughter, what a bad girl. As if he’s running a Girl Scout camp.

I put the Larkin police on alert. We contact all the trucking companies who travel Utah, who put out bulletins to all their drivers. We fax missing person flyers to the Salt Lake Greyhound station, then throw together a suitcase and head to the airport.

Before we leave the house, Jack Tyson calls. Turns out Hollie is Jack’s niece; he’d just escorted her two days ago. It also turns out Karin wasn’t far off about prostitution. Hollie is a crack addict whose pimp/boyfriend forces her to prostitute. Jack’s found out that Hollie’s boyfriend paid a couple of guys to get the two girls and sneak them over state lines into
Kentucky or Tennessee, where it’s easier to prostitute them. He’s already done time for transporting minor girls over state lines.

My God, what else? How much lower, how much worse, can she possibly end up? Turning redneck tricks in some shack at the end of a dirt road. Mia, what have you done to yourself now?

Sunrise wakes me up. I get up and look around while Hollie sleeps. We’re in a basement with a kitchen. On a wild hope, I check the cabinets. There are some cans of beans and a box of cereal—cornflakes with a picture of a groovy black kid sporting a huge Afro. I look at the expiration date. 1979. I’m not that hungry.

The morning crawls by. We take out some knives from a drawer and make a game of throwing them at the big orange flowers on the wallpaper. Whoever hits the center first wins.

“When Aidan finds out where I’ve been he’s gonna be so pissed,” Hollie says, grinning. “He would have killed them. No joke. He’s the most amazing person I’ve ever met.”

Something about her smile, I don’t think she’s joking about the killing part. Whatever, it’s just a ride out of here and then I can go my own way.

Every flight to Salt Lake is full. We blubber out our plight to a Southwest supervisor, whose eyes tear up. His fingers fly over the keyboard and he makes calls till he all but orders passengers to be bumped for us. We’re over the Mojave in an hour.

Within another two hours we’re speeding down I-15 south of Salt Lake City to meet Jack and his wife Rebecca. We’re going to stake out the boyfriend’s house and the apartment of the guys who have the girls. Paul will go undercover as a cowboy in the bus station at sunrise before the first bus leaves. This feels like a really bad cop drama, the episode where “angry parents take the law into their own hands.”

The cell phone rings and my heart jumps—maybe they’ve found her!

“Bubbie?”

“Vivian told me what happened. Listen to me, Mia’s got no money, no food, and right now no brains. She’s either going to steal something or do something else stupid and she’ll get caught. Girls that age think they’re smart but they’re not, they’re full of shit. I had four of you, I know. So, don’t worry, you’ll find her because sooner or later she’s going to get herself arrested. And I’m not your bubbie.”

Oookay, I’m flying down a freeway in Utah listening to my mother reassure me and scold me at the same time with her Boris-and-Natasha accent. She’s normally about as demonstrative as Clint Eastwood, so coming from her this is not only incredibly supportive, it’s positively mushy and it does comfort me.

We’re being pulled over for SPEEDING. I look over at the idiot driving.

“Hey man, I’m high!” he tries. Two friends of her boyfriend picked us up about an hour ago. It was probably dumb to get high but I was already getting the shakes and have been irritable enough to kill someone.

We smile real big at the cop, all four of us in this two-seater. It doesn’t work. Besides going 100 mph, there are cigarettes on the dashboard. And in Mormonville, you have to be nineteen to buy smokes. The oldest of us is eighteen, which means the cop is now searching the car for other “contraband.” I remember these guys saying they had to make a drop-off on the way and suddenly I get that you-know-you’re-fucked-beyond-belief feeling.

I’ve never seen this many drugs in one sitting. They pull them out of the glove box, from under the seats, in the seats themselves. And the weed’s in little plastic baggies. With names on them. And scales, he’s pulling scales from under the backseat! Their license might as well say DEALERS in big red letters.

Somebody please tell me I’m not standing on the side of a freeway, handcuffed and leg-shackled, watching this fat fuck of a pig laugh as he adds scales to a stack of drugs the size of a small child.

It was odd enough finding myself happy that Mia was
only
smoking pot. Now, I’m turning cartwheels because she’s been arrested.

Paul and I stagger into a Provo convenience store, pick out some frozen burritos, and stand in front of the microwave studying the buttons like two complete morons. We’ve never used one. I have just mobilized truckers, bus employees, and police in two states within a matter of hours. But, right now, that the only thing between me and a dead faint is a metal box with a few buttons is suddenly a catastrophe of such proportion that I burst into tears.

A group of teenagers immediately comes over to help. They are all so rosy-cheeked, sober, and friendly they seem like another species.

“Here, ma’am, I’ll do it for you,” says a boy Mia’s age. They help us microwave, they help us get drinks, they point out the direction of a hotel, and two boys offer to drive us there and walk back.

I notice most of them have on bracelets or rings with CTR engraved on them. What’s that stand for, I ask. Choose The Right, ma’am. Choose the right what, I ask.

“Always choose the right thing to do, take the higher ground.”

I want one of
them
for a child!

An hour later, I’m sitting on the edge of the hotel bathtub, murmuring, “Please forgive me for saying that, God. I’m so mean and—”

Hey, wait a minute—I never
said
the words, I just
thought
them. So what, Claire, you think God doesn’t know what people think? This is a Disturbing Realization.