Finding Hannah (4 page)

A blaring TV greeted us as we stepped inside. It looked like a tornado had gone through the living room. Newspapers, dirty clothes, and empty fast-food containers were scattered everywhere. A woman slept on a recliner in front of the TV. Four prescription bottles and a bottle of whiskey sat on the table next to her.

“Oh, God,” Molly said, as she found the remote and turned off the TV.

“I was watching that,” the woman mumbled, without opening her eyes.

“I’m sure you were, Mom.”

Molly’s mom turned her head and squinted at me. “Who … who’s this?”

“Mom, this is Dylan.”

“Hello,” I said.

“Why, Molly,” she turned her head away from us, “he’s cute.”

“He can hear you, Mom.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” I said, but she’d already gone back to sleep, or passed out. I wasn’t sure which.

Molly’s embarrassment showed on her face. “Come on.” She grabbed me by the hand and led me down a hallway with stained and torn carpet.

“It’s not as nice as Wiz’s room.” Molly sighed as she opened a door missing half of the wood laminate.

She was right. Wiz’s walk-in closet was bigger than Molly’s room. The bed, desk, and dresser crammed into it left little room to move around.

“Please, sit down.” She motioned to her desk chair.

As I sat I noticed the whole floor noticeably slanted toward the back corner, as if the house was sinking. A bare light bulb and socket hanging from the ceiling by electrical wires illuminated the numerous cracks in the sheetrock that made her wall look like a jigsaw puzzle.

“Do you like to swim?” I asked, pointing at the signed poster of the U.S.A. Women’s Olympic Gymnastics team and another of a woman diving off a ten-meter platform, both hanging above her bed.

“I love swimming,” Molly said.

“Hannah is on the swim team and works as a lifeguard during the summer. She even has a few school records.”

“Cool. In what events?”

I had to stop and think. “Um, I know one of them is the fifty freestyle, and another is a relay of some kind.” I knew she had two more, but I couldn’t remember in what events. I felt like an awful brother for not knowing this.

“I plan on joining the swim team,” Molly said.

“You and Hannah will be teammates.” I realized as I said it that Hannah needed to be found in order for that to happen. I wondered if Molly was thinking the same thing.

“I can’t wait,” Molly said. “I need to get back in the water soon. It’s been too long.”

Molly’s room was remarkably clean, especially when compared to the living room. An old laptop sat on Molly’s small desk, and about twenty porcelain penguins of various sizes decorated the top of her dresser.

I pointed at them. “I like the penguin collection.”

“I love penguins. All of those were from my dad. Sometimes he’d bring one home when he was gone on business trips.”

“Your dad sounds like a pretty cool guy.”

Molly flopped on her bed. “He was. He died about two years ago, when I was thirteen.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” I looked at the only framed picture on her dresser among the penguins and saw a much younger Molly being hugged by a smiling bearded man. I pointed at it.

“That’s him,” she said. Molly stood up and grabbed one of the penguins and handed it to me. Someone had hand painted it with great care. The bright yellow, black, and white colors matched what I had seen on the Discovery Channel.

“My dad brought it back from Sweden, where my grandparents are buried.”

“It’s beautiful.” I handed it back to her.

“I’m going to Sweden someday. That’s where my dad was born.”

“Cool.”

Molly pulled her sleeping bag from her small closet. “I know it’ll be great. My mom told me she’d take me there someday, but now I think I’ll have to do it on my own.”

“I’m going to hike the whole Appalachian Trail someday. Maine to Georgia.”

“That’s awesome.”

I sat in the desk chair as Molly tried on an oversized raincoat. She held her arms out. “How do I look?”

“Like you’re ready for a monsoon,” I said.

“It used to belong to my dad.” She took it off and dug in her dresser.

A huge man with biceps bigger than my head appeared in the hall. He had to turn sideways just to make it through Molly’s doorway.

“Ah, I see our little arsonist has made a friend,” the man said.

The man’s white tank top had yellowed badly. The ace of spades was tattooed on one shoulder, and a broadsword with an engraved snake slithering down the length of the blade was on the other. My eyes were drawn to the large hunting knife hanging from the belt around his worn jeans.

“Leave us alone, Tony,” Molly said.

“And who might you be?” Tony asked, looking at me as if my presence had somehow offended him.

“I’m Dylan Beachley.”

Molly pointed out her window. “He lives down the road across the highway.”

“Well, Dylan Beachley from down the road across the highway, since this is my house, the next time you want to come inside, I’d better know about it first. You got that?”

I could see Tony was serious, and he stared at me, waiting for an answer. “Yes, sir,” I said, trying to put this fire out before it got worse.

“Yes, sir,” Tony said. “You hear that, Molly? That’s the sound of respect. Dylan may be smart after all, except, of course, for the fact he’s hanging around a criminal like you. Wait a minute, maybe he doesn’t know about you yet.” Tony smiled, “Well, he does now.”

Molly glared at him. “You are the biggest jerk I know!”

“Keep up that tone with me, young lady, and you’ll be out the door.” Tony pointed at her. “Don’t think I won’t do it. And you,” he pointed at me, “if you’re half as smart as I think you might be, you make sure and keep your junk in your pants.” He pulled out his hunting knife and pointed it at my crotch. “If I catch you messing around with Molly,” he made a slicing motion, “I’ll remove it for you. The last thing I need is a pregnant teenager walking around my house.”

Tony put the knife back in its sheath and looked at his watch. “I want both of you out of here in twenty minutes. And don’t start any fires while you’re out, either.”

Molly’s mouth was wide open as Tony left.

I’d known Tony for all of one minute and I already feared for Molly’s safety. Living here would be awful.

Molly flopped down on her bed and buried her head into the comforter. The floorboards creaked as Tony walked back into the living room.

She turned her head to look at me and spoke softly. “I shouldn’t have brought you here.”

“You want to get out of here?”

“Yeah.”

Molly finished packing and strapped her sleeping bag to her backpack. We walked into the living room, where Tony was opening his mail. Molly’s mom still appeared to be passed out on the recliner.

“Claire invited me to stay overnight at her house,” Molly said.

“Good riddance,” Tony said. “See if you can stay another night while you’re at it.”

“I’ll ask. We’re leaving.”

Tony returned to his mail. “Stay out of trouble. And Dylan …”

Tony held up an envelope that he skillfully sliced open with his knife, then held up the knife and glared at me like I’d just insulted his mother.

“Come on.” Molly grabbed my arm and pulled me out the front door.

When we were alone I asked, “Who is Claire?”

“She’s a friend I’ve made up so I can get out of the house anytime I want.”

“Does it work?”

“It just worked, didn’t it? Besides, with a mom who is always drugged up and Tony, who would be thrilled if I never came back at all, I don’t even need Claire.”

* * *

Molly and I stared at the map on the wall in my room. We picked an area outside the ring around my house that had already been searched by the volunteers. We’d hike the trail to the northeast and set up a base camp. Each day we’d loop in a different direction from camp. Once we searched the area, we’d move our base camp to a new location. I figured it would be about a three-hour hike to reach our starting point.

I left a note on the dining room table: “Out searching. Be back in a few days. —Dylan”

I marked the location of my house on the GPS as we left with our backpacks full of food, clothes, and supplies. I had a jackknife, tent, clothes, rain gear, spotting scope, Wiz’s night-vision goggles, and my sleeping bag. My baseball bat handle stuck out the top for easy access. Molly’s slightly smaller backpack had her sleeping bag bungeed under it.

We’d been on the trail for an hour when we came upon the first of many streams, which were small, thanks to the lack of rain from the three-year drought we were experiencing. I was amazed at Molly’s determination as she methodically picked her way across the stream, stepping on stones, then jumping to the far embankment.

We climbed to one of the many peaks on the trail overlooking the forest. This was one of those views I’d longed to see when I’d been sitting in class trying not to die from boredom, but now it brought no joy. The view gave a glimpse of how much ground we had yet to cover. I felt like it would take forever.

“Hey, are you all right?” Molly put her hand on my shoulder.

“There’s so much to search.”

“Don’t lose hope, Dylan.” Molly gave me a hug. It felt like I’d just walked into a warm room after being out in the cold. I stood in her embrace for a moment, and then she placed her hands on my shoulders. “We’ll find her.”

I returned her determined smile.

We ate granola bars for lunch as we hiked. Every time we came upon hikers, Molly stopped them and gave them a flyer with Hannah’s picture and description. By midafternoon we reached the northwest corner of our search area.

“Which way do we go?” Molly looked eager to continue searching.

“Molly, there’s one very important rule we’re about to break when it comes to the Appalachian Trail.”

“What?”

“Don’t ever leave the trail.”

Molly smiled at me. “Are you ready to start breaking some rules?”

“Oh, yeah!”

I marked our location on the GPS unit. We walked west into the vast forest, leaving the trail behind. We wound our way around huge maples and dogwoods and then entered a valley full of birch trees. We spent the next few hours walking, dodging branches and stepping over logs. Our eyes kept searching for any signs of Hannah, just as we’d done with the search party the past few weeks.

“Look at that,” Molly said, pointing at a moss-covered rock wall that came up to our knees. The wall formed a partially broken rectangle. A large tree grew inside it.

“It must have been someone’s house a hundred years ago,” I said.

“Out here? In the middle of nowhere?”

“People used to settle here.”

“But there’s nothing here but forest.”

“Back in the day they came out here to log this place.”

Molly looked around. “How much farther do you want to go before we set up camp?”

“It’ll be dark soon. We can stop whenever.”

“Then let’s set up our tent here, inside the walls. We can be the first people to stay in this house in years.”

“Let’s do it.”

“It’s our house now,” Molly declared.

We set up the tent and then sat on the wall of our new house and ate beef jerky and dried bananas. I pulled out the map and the GPS unit. Molly leaned toward me and the pain in my joints lessen as our shoulders touched.

“You see that peak?” I pointed off in the distance. “That’s right here on the map, and we’re here,” I said. I pulled out a pen and drew a dot on the map for our camp.

“So that’s our house?” Molly asked pointing at the circle.

“That’s right.”

“I’ve never owned a house before.”

“It’s my first, too.”

“Which way do we go tomorrow?” Molly asked.

“I say we leave our stuff in the tent, head north, and loop back here by nightfall. We can take lunch with us. I’ve marked our location on the GPS unit so it’ll guide us back here.”

“That works for me.”

“We’ll need water. There’s a stream about two miles away.”

“Is it big enough to go swimming, or at least wash off? I’m so gross right now. I brought my swimsuit.”

“It should be. With no rain the past few weeks, who knows? We’ll see when we get there.”

“What if we find houses?”

“We’ll mark them on the GPS and return to watch them at night.”

I built a fire to boil water for chicken noodle soup. When we finished eating, I put all the food in a green canvas sack. It took a few unsuccessful tries before I got my rope to catch on a high branch of a maple tree not far from our new house.

“What are you doing?” Molly asked.

“Tying up our food,” I said, pulling on the rope till the green sack was about fifteen feet in the air.

“Why?”

“Bears.”

“There are bears out here?”

“Lots of bears.” I tied the rope to the tree trunk.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Bears freak me out.”

“Oh, then I probably shouldn’t mention one of them has been tracking us since we left the trail.”

“What?”

“Oh, don’t worry. It’s just a harmless polar bear.”

Molly glared at me. “That’s not funny. Will they stay away from us?”

“Maybe. The North American black bear has been known to dine on teenage girls from time to time.”

“You’re just making up all this bear stuff. There’re no bears out here.”

“Yes, there are.”

“Are you serious?”

“That’s why I tied up the food.”

Molly looked up at the food bag. “What are you supposed to do if a bear attacks?”

“Just rub its belly,” I said, motioning with my hands.

“Dylan, I’m serious!”

“Most of the time you can scare a bear away with loud noises. Black bear attacks are rare. If one ever does attack, fight back with everything you got.” I smiled and added, “You really don’t have to worry. They’ll leave us alone.”

“Good.”

“Unless they have cubs,” I said. “Then you run as fast as you can in the opposite direction!”

“Stay away if they have cubs. Got it.”

* * *

We left our packs at the tent and walked to the top of a large hill about a quarter mile from our camp. From the peak we could see the sun disappearing below the horizon and the vast stretch of forest surrounding us. Molly and I decided that since we hadn’t come across any houses to watch during the night, we’d get some sleep and start searching again in the morning.