Last Seen Leaving (6 page)

The three of them were closer to me than anyone on the planet, outside of my actual family, and for a moment my face burned and my heart twisted as I thought of them gossiping about me behind my back.

Over the rush of chaotic foot traffic, I finally asked, “Ti, what do
you
think happened to January?”

She didn't answer me right away—she didn't even
look
at me right away—and I felt a weird thrumming start up in the pit of my stomach. I wanted her to tell me not to worry, that it was no big deal, but her silence stretched out, unnervingly. Finally, Tiana sighed. “I don't know, dude. I want to believe she disappeared on purpose, and that everything's okay, but … I can't stop thinking about how rich her stepdad is. I mean, guy's
money
has money. That freaking palace they live in isn't even the biggest house he owns!”

“You think she was kidnapped?” Even though I'd thought of it already, it sounded almost surreal spoken out loud, a plot point from a soap opera, and I didn't like the way it made my palms feel cool and slippery. “The police didn't say anything about a ransom note, though.”

“Maybe there hasn't been one,” Tiana said, as if it were a significant point. “Don't forget her stepdad is probably on his way to Washington. People might want things from him that aren't money, and maybe he doesn't want the police to know what those things are.”

“You think it might be political?”

“Maybe. I don't know. I don't know what I think.” She looked like she did know what she thought, however, because her expression was even bleaker than it had been a minute earlier. Just then, the second bell rang, and Tiana straightened up, grabbing her bag from the floor. “I gotta get to class. Let me know if you hear anything, okay?”

“Sure, yeah,” I answered mechanically as Tiana started down the emptying corridor, but I was distracted, thinking. January's classmates at Dumas came from families that Jonathan Walker had been eager to exploit for political gain; couldn't that street run both ways? As far as I knew, January had last been seen at school. An adult might have offered her a ride home on Tuesday, and then made demands of Walker after the police had already been called.…

I was so lost in thought that I didn't realize Tiana had doubled back until I turned and almost ran right into her. Her mouth tensed and her eyes troubled, she blurted, “Look, I didn't want to say this before, but you asked what I think happened to January, and the truth is … Flynn, there was something going on that she wouldn't tell me about, I know it. I could feel it in the way she responded to my texts. The way she
didn't
respond. She was keeping something from me. If she ran away, maybe she had a reason. And if she didn't … I think something
bad
happened.” Tiana was shaking now, her voice a whisper. “And I have this awful feeling that … that we're never going to see January again. That she's just … gone.”

And with that, Tiana turned and fled down the hallway.

 

FIVE

I SPENT THE
rest of the day with Tiana's words ringing ominously in my ears, even while I tried not to let them get to me. I couldn't just give up and believe that January was never coming back. Like the cops, Ti had avoided using the M word—
murder
—but I knew she must have been thinking it. Kidnapping only ends one of two ways. I was still convinced that January had run away to freak out her parents, and that she hadn't bothered to let Ti and me in on the plan for two very good reasons: First, we would have spoiled it by telling the police, and second, she had obviously not felt like confiding much of anything in either of us lately.

I told myself this over and over, and by the time my mom was clearing dinner from the table, I had started to believe it. I met Micah at the skate park after, where we spent a couple of hours working on kickflips in relative silence. Micah had perfected his ollie the previous summer, and even though mine was still only about sixty-forty, my pride forbade me from letting him move on ahead without me. As a result, I spent more time rolling around on my ass than I did on my board, but the pain felt good in an elemental way.

The dark, portentous mood that had been gripping me all day refused to release its hold, though, even after Micah and I split the last of the weed that had been stashed in my desk. We ate Doritos to cover the smell, called it a night, and went home. My mom was still up when I walked in, sitting in the living room and flipping channels on the TV, and we had a short conversation while I rooted through the fridge for leftovers. I was too impatient to reheat stuff, but I'd discovered that almost anything can be eaten cold if you're open-minded enough. As I loaded a plate with chicken, potatoes, and macaroni that clung together in a congealed lump, my mom prattled on about “the decline of Western civilization,” which meant she'd watched an episode of
Real Housewives
.

Finally, as I tried to leave the kitchen with my munchies, she moved in for the kill. I had a plate in one hand and a glass of water in the other, and no way to ward her off. She hugged me, hard, pressing her face into my hair for a long, awkward moment, and I tried to will any lingering trace of pot smoke to retreat into my scalp. If she smelled anything, though, she didn't mention it. Instead, she pulled back, looked me in the eye, and said, “I love you, Flynn.”

“I love you, too, Mom,” I mumbled. It's not like I was uncomfortable with the sentiment, but the way she was looking at me—like one of us was about to be dragged away by armed guards—made me feel a little put on the spot.

“I don't know what I would do if something happened to you.”

Oh.
“Nothing will, okay?”

“I'm sure Tammy thought the same thing,” my mom said quietly, and then face-palmed herself. “I'm sorry, that was a low blow. I just … you hear about a thing like this and it turns you into … I don't know, a crazy person. The kind of hand-wringing helicopter parent you always swore you would never be.” She sighed and rubbed her eyes. “Just … promise me you'll always be careful, okay?”

“I promise.”

“Don't just say that to humor me, smart-ass.” My mom gave me a shrewd look. “Promise me.”

“Okay, I
promise
,” I muttered again.

She didn't let me go. She was looking at me super seriously now. “You can tell me anything, Flynn. You know that. You're my son, and I will always love you and support you, no matter what. You know that, right?”

My breath caught, and I could feel the paranoid mayhem of nerves shimmering through my high.
Was she talking about what I thought she was talking about?
I squeaked out some kind of acknowledgment, and then rushed ahead before she could continue, “I really wanna go up and change my clothes, okay?”

“Okay, okay,” my mom allowed, stepping back. “Just don't leave your dirty dishes in your room this time? You don't even have to wash them yourself, that's why we have that expensive machine.” She gestured to the dishwasher while I sidled quickly for the hall leading to the foyer. I made it halfway before she called out, “Oh, and by the way, Flynn? If you're going to smoke pot, just
please
don't do it somewhere you could be arrested, okay?”

When I got up to my room, I texted Micah immediately about getting busted for the weed. I knew I hadn't heard the last of it from my parents, but I was hopeful that the punishment wouldn't be too draconian; Will and Kate Doherty were hugely pro-marijuana types, and there was a chance I'd get off with just a slap on the wrist. Still, I wanted to share the panic sweat with Micah a little bit.

I scarfed down my food while watching an episode of
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
online, checked Facebook, jerked off, and went to bed. That last step usually knocks me out, but that night, I couldn't get to sleep. Once again, January hovered in my thoughts, crowding her way into every corner of my brain like a catchy pop song, until I finally gave up and turned my attention fully to her.

Someone out there knew
something
. January hadn't been vaporized, or abducted by aliens or whatever—but who could I ask if not her friends? If her old clique at Riverside knew nothing, and I knew nothing about her associations at Dumas, who else was there for me to turn to?

And then it hit me:
Kaz
. Fucking Kaz. A freshman at the University of Michigan, Kaz was eighteen, gorgeous, and apparently right about every fucking thing he ever said. That's all I knew about him, and every bit of it was secondhand information from January, since I'd never set eyes on the guy myself. They'd met when he started working at the same downtown toy store where January had been employed part-time since the eighth grade, and from his very first day on the job I had heard stories about him.

“Kaz is
soooo
cute! Girls are
always
coming into the store just to flirt with him, which is actually totally annoying because they never buy anything. He usually has to pretend that I'm his girlfriend, just to make them leave. Isn't that hilarious?”

Yeah.
Super
hilarious. The stories were more pointed whenever January and I had been arguing. Like the time she'd bailed on a concert we'd been looking forward to for months, because Tiana's family was going to Chicago for the weekend and they'd unexpectedly invited her along.

“It's just a
concert
, Flynn! I can't believe how immature you're acting,” she'd snapped. “You know, Kaz was right—I really should be dating an older guy.”

Gee, I wonder if he might have had a particular “older guy” in mind?

“Kaz thinks we're going to break up,” she'd announced on another occasion, completely out of the blue. “He says it's really hard to maintain a relationship when you can't see each other regularly, and since I'll be going to Dumas and you'll be staying at Riverside, we probably won't last.”

Like, what the fuck was I supposed to say to
that
? That little pronouncement had come right at the time I was starting to realize that the all-important hot-sexy-time feelings I was supposed to have for my girlfriend were simply never going to develop—right at the time that I was beginning to really worry that I would never develop hot-sexy-time feelings for
any
girl—and I didn't react too well.

“Are you refusing to sex me because you have a micropenis? Kaz said that the reason you don't want to sex me is because you probably have a micropenis.”

Okay, so the last one was paraphrased, but you can see why I disliked this guy whom I had never actually met. Even if I wasn't the most satisfying boyfriend in the world, I was
still
January's boyfriend, and it drove me insane that she'd take self-serving and manipulative advice from a dude who clearly had a thing for her, and that she used his words as a bludgeon whenever we argued. She was constantly reminding me that he was in her life, an enigma who was smart, cute, and supportive; an eager Prince Charming in the wings, ready and waiting to sweep her off her feet the second I screwed up. The fact that this dude was just trying to get into her pants was completely obvious, but January always became totally offended if I so much as suggested it.

The anecdote Detective Moses had shared with my mother came back to me as I lay there and stared at the moonlight angling across my feet:
A boy about Flynn's age got in a fight with his parents, took the car, and vanished. The East Lansing police found him a week later, sleeping on the floor of a friend's dorm room at Michigan State.
Sub Michigan for Michigan State, and maybe I'd just divined the solution to January's disappearance. Kaz was just the kind of douchewaffle who would encourage a high school sophomore to crash at his place for a week to teach her parents a lesson.
Nah, it's totally cool, babe! You can sleep in my bed, and I'll take the floor! Unless, like, it gets cold or something and you need a snuggle buddy. Did I mention the heater's broken?

It wasn't until I resolved to track down Kaz and choke some answers out of him that I was finally able to drift off to sleep.

 

SIX

THE NEXT MORNING,
I was treated to a pot lecture from my parents. It was awkward. They'd both campaigned pretty actively for the legalization of medicinal marijuana in Michigan, and they openly recognized that the situation with January's disappearance was a mitigating factor in my transgression, but they couldn't just let me get away with it. Ultimately, they said a lot about “respecting the law,” and my punishment was a suspended sentence: If I did “community service” in the form of raking the yard and helping Mom with dinner, and I didn't get into any trouble of any kind for at least a month, they were going to let me off the hook
this time
.

After that, my mom dropped me off downtown with my skateboard, and I told her I'd take the bus home—a sword I was only willing to throw myself on for the sake of my missing girlfriend—in time to help with dinner. As soon as she drove off, I made my way to Old Mother Hubbard's, the toy store where January worked. Housed in one of the numerous nineteenth-century brick buildings on Fourth Avenue and just a couple of blocks from the municipal complex that functioned as Ann Arbor's civic center, the place was independently owned—which meant the prices were ridiculously high. Ergo, it was only a fierce commitment to buying local, on behalf of the city's fiercely loyal inhabitants, that kept the store in business.

Or so I was told. January had forbade me from visiting her at work, and I had no other excuse for going to a toy store, so I had never been inside. But I did know that she worked eight-hour shifts every Saturday and Sunday, as well as occasional weeknights after rehearsals.