Now You See Her (14 page)

Even if Logan had changed The Idea, people all over the country were still going to see
my
face when I was found! All I needed was one casting director to see my

face and think I was the one. The Idea might have been stupid, but nobody was going to be paying attention to little Starwood’s production of
Romeo and Juliet
. They were going to be searching for me! I thought of all the girls who had ignored me, who were now standing out- side the dorm and singing and holding candles.

And if they were cold standing out there, it served them right.

Reading about your own kidnapping is like going to your own funeral. I told Em that, and she wrote back that she always thought angels could look down at their own funerals, which was sort of random. But I knew what she meant.

Anyhow, there was no way that even morons could have failed to find me that day. The news stories all said the searchers were going out in wider and wider circles. So I had to make it look real, or I would be the one who got in trouble.

I went to lie down in the little gully and I used the tape to tie up my hands yet again. I filled up with water before I did it, and I made sure the gag was a clean wet handkerchief, so I could suck on it if I got thirsty, which I would.

Then came the cold night. No one had predicted that it would get down to ten degrees. No one had said it would even get below freezing.

It was the most terrifying thing that ever happened to me. Probably it was the most terrifying thing that ever happened to anyone.

I could hear the searchers tromping right past me. And I was so sure that they would find me right away that when I heard them going away, I got hysterical. I made noises, but they were making so much noise them- selves they couldn’t have heard me if I had been playing the tuba! I cried so hard that the lashes on my eyes froze. It was even too cold to snow, which was good I guess, because at least I didn’t get wet. I had tied myself up so well, I couldn’t get loose. I kept falling asleep and had to wake myself up. I knew if I didn’t, one of those times I would fall asleep and never wake up. Carter would never see me again. My parents would be scarred for life! But I fell asleep anyway.

It got warmer during the morning. After a while I stopped shaking. But I couldn’t stop crying.

I realized that drinking all that water was a big mis- calculation.

I had peed myself and I was in total agony, itching and burning. The gag was making my mouth bleed at the corners. I didn’t know anything about gags! I didn’t know they could be tied too tight. I couldn’t even bite down on the tape on my wrist because this last time I had taped my ankles and then my hands, and then

jumped through my arms so that they were behind me. There was no way I could jump back. So I couldn’t even get to my knees.

I semi-knew I was going to die on the fourth night. I sort of half wanted to die, or at least get really sick.

People had to feel
something
when they found me after all I had been through. No one understood, even afterward, that I was the one who did the suffering. How could they not feel sorry for someone who’d been aban- doned in a ditch all night, all because she listened to someone older who was supposed to love her? They should have been saying I was the bravest girl they’d ever met. I comforted myself for a while with picturing the spread in
People
magazine, with some police officer standing next to the little bridge, an arrow pointing to the place “where Hope was left.” I practiced what I would say: “I knew that I was going to live. I had to live. People can do wrong to you, but you have to listen to that little voice inside you that says you’re meant to do something in this world, no matter who tries to throw you off track.”

Finally I told myself, Hope, you’re a survivor. You’ve survived starving yourself and seventeen performances of
Annie
, even when you had to go on with the flu. You survived all those rejections when you auditioned that summer.

I thought about Alyssa Lyn. I knew some people are evil. But I never knew a really evil person. She was just evil. Like in the play: “Was ever book containing such vile matter So fairly bound?” That’s Alyssa Lyn. Alyssa Lyn is pretty. Some people would say she’s beautiful. And she is totally experienced. Much more than me. She must have slept with half the guys at Starwood. I mean, totally perverted. I was innocent, except for Logan, and he loved me. She knew that. She could never have that same quality of innocence I had, no matter how much like Alice in Wonderland she looked. Why do guys get taken in by these girls? Like, Alyssa Lyn might someday be a B movie actor or even a model for a chain depart- ment store. But she is not the real thing, as an actor or as a person. Why don’t men see that? Why don’t they see inside women the way we see inside them?

And dedicating her performance to me, in the role she stole.

What a complete pig. What a phony. And what about Logan?

Was he really as bad as she was? I knew if I could just talk to him, just once, he would see that what he did was more than cheating on me. He would get it. I was too good a judge of character to fall for a phony. I might have been young, but I had known a lot of people. A
lot
of people. And I could spot phonies right away. I could tell

people were lying even when they didn’t know it them- selves. I could always spot the people making excuses for why they were fat or why they didn’t get a role. They were all afraid. So they didn’t even try. They couldn’t let their real selves show. It was uncomfortable for them to be around someone who did, like I did.

I have to be rational about it now, even though it still hurts.

My pride is hurt.

Not the real me. The real me knows the truth.

It’s totally possible that on some level, Logan was threatened by me. Yes, we would have been perfect together, but eventually, I would have gone farther than he did. I see it all so clearly now. He was the real loser. He lost me. He’s going to have a smaller future because he won’t have me.

He can never admit what he did. He’d go to jail. He’s eighteen. Kidnapping is a crime you can get the death penalty for. Even so, I felt sure that eventually someone would find out the truth if I died.

Then I realized if I died, I would never be a star. I would just be a beautiful face in a newspaper.

So I reached down into the bottom of my soul and I called on all my strength and I started to fight.

I struggled against the tape, but my hands were swollen from the cold, and the tape was wrapped so

tight that they were practically numb. It wasn’t going to work. Finally I used my hands like a snowplow to push me out from under the bridge, even though they got all scratched up from the brush and started bleeding in a couple of places. It was nearly impossible to go on. Someone else might have given up. But I’m not someone else. There may not be much of me, but what there is never gives up.

I kicked and pushed my bottom half out of the little trench under the bridge. I pulled myself with the heels of my shoes until most of my legs would be visible—that is, if it weren’t dark. I cried and I promised God that if I got rescued, I would give Carter back his ring.

And finally, they found me.

Early in the morning, a dog came up and sniffed me and started to walk away, but then the owner, this tall lady with a Sherlock Holmes hat on, came running along, yelling, “What is it, Lurcher? What is it, boy?” Like the dog was a genius. The idiot mutt had practically tripped over my feet. Then she started screaming into her radio, “Central! Alert! This is Whooping Crane. We have located the girl! I have her!”

I don’t remember much about them rushing me to the hospital, the warming blankets, the ambulance, my father’s face. Because of my insulating underwear, and two pairs of socks, I didn’t have frostbite at all. They gave

me fluids in an IV and put some ointment on my scratches. Then they let me go back to the bed and breakfast with my parents.

My parents got me my own room, though my mother insisted on sitting in the chair by my bed all night, which meant I couldn’t use my cell phone.

I just wanted some food and some privacy. A cheese- burger and fries.

I got my mother, tomato soup, and an old, stale cookie. The next morning detectives were all over me.

Could I describe the kidnapper?

I told them he knocked me out. So, uh, no? Like, I was unconscious? This was going to be easy, I thought at first.

Well, then, they asked, why didn’t they find any bruises on my head?

I said, “How the hell should I know? I was knocked out.” I told my mother, “Make them leave.”

But she didn’t. She said they wanted to find the man.

They told me that I
had
to have seen the man before he knocked me out. If he dragged me all the way from my dorm, like I said. I said he had on a ski mask. They asked if it was like the silk ski mask that I had on. They brought in a sketch artist. Finally, my parents said I needed to rest, to recuperate from the shock, that we needed some time alone.

But the police told them that they had a narrow win- dow of opportunity to catch this guy, and all they needed was my description of what happened right then. I got so panicky that when I finally got some real food, I could only eat half of my toast and omelet, and except for the power bars and the crummy canned soup, I hadn’t had anything to eat in four whole days! If I said anything, I would get Logan in trouble. I don’t know why I cared! But then things got weird.

The police had searched my dorm room. They’d found the receipt for the duct tape and underwear. I told them that the tape was for sealing the windows because my room was drafty, and the longies were for running.

Then they said that a jogger had passed a young woman my size running in the woods when I was sup- posed to be tied up. Was that me? The clothes were the same as the clothes I was wearing. . . . Christ! How did
they
know this stuff? So fast?

So I described the guy who cleaned off the tables at Chatters. I said he was short and had a Mexican accent and had big shoulders and long hair in a ponytail.

I thought he was probably illegal anyhow. I asked to see Logan.

They called him and they put him on the phone. He told me he was so glad I was okay.

That was it.

He was so glad I was okay?
What the hell did he mean by that? I practically begged him, “Can you come and see me right now?”

He said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Hope. Just rest and get better.”

I asked him, “Is
Alyssa Lyn
going on in the show in my place?”

He said, “Your place? That doesn’t even matter. Don’t worry about stuff like that, Hope. Just . . . get bet- ter. Jesus, if I thought I had anything to do with this . . . Hope, you could have died out there!”

That’s when I knew.

He wasn’t going to admit to anything.

I later found out that they only let me talk to him in the hopes that whatever he said to me would make me admit to something. Me! Not him!

When I got off the phone, I started to cry.

My father said to the police, “Can’t this wait?”

But this one detective who was really weasly looking, like the actor who always plays the killer, said, “We don’t have time for a bunch of tears right now, Bernadette.”

I said, “It’s Hope.”

He said, “It’s Bernadette according to your birth cer- tificate. Bernadette and I are going to need to talk for quite a while. You guys can go and put your feet up if you want.”

My father said, “I’m a lawyer. My daughter’s a minor.

You can’t interview her alone. You know that.”

The stupid, skinny cop who looked like his gun weighed more than he did shrugged. “Does she need legal counsel?”

My father said, “I hope not. I think I’ll stay right here with my child, if that’s okay with you. And so will my wife.” Joe Ed Hick cop shrugged, and said, “My concern is that with you here, she’ll try to cover up anything she

may have had to do with this.”

“You’re joking,” my father said. “No one would will- ingly go through what Hope went through.”

“You’d be surprised,” said Joe Ed Hick asshole. “For example, did Hope tell you at first that she had been cast in the role of Juliet, that she was going to alternate per- formances with Alyssa Lyn Davore?”

“Yes, and that’s what would have happened if—” “Well, she didn’t, Mr. Romano. She was just Miss

Davore’s understudy.”

He
had
to say “just,” the asshole.

“Yes, but she was going to be in several of the performances. In some of the high school shows and matinees, she was going to play Juliet,” my mother explained. “And she was definitely going to alternate the evening performances . . . I think. That’s what she said.” Even my mother didn’t get it! Alyssa Lyn was really
my

understudy! That was why Logan fell in love with me
. He saw that I was the true Juliet
, not Alyssa Lyn! I just did the school show for . . . well, I didn’t remember right then, and I don’t remember right now, why she didn’t do that school show. All I knew is that this guy had it totally messed up.

But he kept right on, and said, “No, she wasn’t. She wasn’t going to alternate performances. She would only have played the role during the evening performances if Alyssa got sick. . . .”

“We never—” my mother began.

“We can’t imagine any of this. Lying about her role.

Hope is an honest girl,” my father said.

“Did you plan to do this with anyone, Hope?” Joe Ed Hick cop asked me.

I started to cry. “Mommy!” I said. “Get him out of here!”

The cop said, “I’m not saying she did anything. I’m not saying she didn’t. But if she did, she’s in serious trou- ble. Miss, you could be charged as an adult for something like this. You could be looking at jail time for fraud.”

“What do you mean? What did I do?”

“I mean if you had any part in this abduction, or supposed abduction, you cost the people of Mesquakie County hundreds of thousands of dollars. Is your daddy ready to pay for it?”