Set You Free (7 page)

I turn the corner onto Spruce Avenue and find myself across the street from the Carters’ house. I can see the bench where Tom sat the night before. The driveway is filled with cars. The curtains are all drawn, but the house is awash with light.

Steph’s little red Jetta—a gift from her father—is in the driveway. Steph and JJ live with their mother in a big house in a different part of town. JJ used to have a Ford Taurus, which looked completely ordinary on the outside but had been tricked out for street racing. It was stolen right out of his mother’s driveway. From what I heard, whoever took it must have known a lot about alarm systems, because the only way to actually steal it without setting off sirens and having the engine lock down would’ve been to load it onto a flatbed and drive it ever so gently away.

I get up before anyone can notice my presence and round the next corner, figuring I’ll do a quick block and go home. I stare at the ground as though I might be able to see
Tom’s footsteps glowing on the ground. As if I can follow them and find him at the end, safe and sound.

I snap out of my daze and remember that this street is a cul-de-sac. I turn around to discover a guy walking toward me. He immediately changes direction and crosses the street.

I move as quickly as possible back to Spruce Avenue, which is, thankfully, well lit. I take a quick look in the direction the guy went but can’t spot him.

When I turn the corner to the street behind my house, I start running and then jump through the hedge and into my yard. I sit there for a moment, trying to calm my breathing and watching to see if anyone was following me.

As I’m about to give up, a figure detaches itself from behind a tree across the street. Whoever it is crosses the road, takes a quick look toward where I am crouched behind the hedge, then walks away.

A moment later a cruiser passes and circles the block. As I cross the yard, I can see the cruiser moving slowly past the front of my house.

I climb back into my bedroom and replace the screen. I stand for a moment looking out on the dim lawn before closing the window and securing the lock.

I change into my pajamas, turn off the light and crawl beneath my covers. “It was a journalist,” I say into the darkness. Someone out to get a story. Trying to break some big story of a child abduction. It had to be.

I inhale and wait for my heart to slow. The moon shines in my window. My family is under a microscope now. That’s a fact. It’s something I’m going to have to live with.

I close my eyes and try to sleep.

TEN

MONDAY

It’s always difficult to pay attention to Mr. King’s history lessons, but this morning it feels absolutely mission impossible. Almost everyone has a cell in his or her hands and is slightly hunched over, reading from the screen, while Mr. King endlessly writes things on the board.

I’m staring out the window to where kids are running track and throwing balls on the football field. For a brief moment it almost feels like a normal day.

Mr. King talks about a declaration that isn’t the Independence one. I have no idea what this class is even about.

I turn around to find JJ Carter staring at me. By the angle of his body, it seems as though he may have been in this position since he arrived. His face doesn’t change as I
look at him. I have often felt invisible to JJ. So much so that now, when he finally sees me, it’s as if he doesn’t know how to pretend I exist. I’m still nothing but a thing in the world, but now I’m a thing he has to deal with.

I turn back around and do my best to pay attention to Mr. King. Honestly, though, it’s been too long gone. I swear I’ll pay more attention when he gets into whatever is next in this course. Soon enough, class ends. No one speaks to me as I gather up my books. I do get a lot of looks. Sideways looks, full-on stares, quick glances that settle and then scoot around the room.

The hallway is filled with people changing classes, opening and closing lockers and yelling ridiculous things at one another. A trail of whispers has been following me since I entered the school. A hush pulses out before me as I move through the hallway.

“There she is,” JJ Carter says. I hadn’t noticed him standing there in a pack of his friends, but soon he is beside me. “Where’s your brother at?” he demands.

He’s got himself all puffed up. I’m not sure how he managed to make the basketball team—he’s slightly shorter than I am. “I don’t know,” I say.

“Bullshit. How can you not know?” JJ says.

“I haven’t seen him in a couple of days.”

“How’s that possible? Don’t you, like, live in the same house?”

“Sure, but—”

“So where is he?” JJ moves forward, and one of his friends, Ralph “Mac” Mackenzie, leans into him a bit.

“Dude, relax. She says she doesn’t know, so she doesn’t know. Let it drop.” Mac’s always been kind to me. Before he made the basketball team, he was like me: a tall, lanky outsider. Now he’s a star point guard, and people look up to him in a different way.

“She has to know.” JJ turns to me. “He’d better not’ve hurt Ben.” His eyes are on fire, and his breath is awful. He’s made a little gun of his fingers and is pointing it at me.

“Tom has nothing to do with it,” I say.

“What makes you so sure? What was that creep doing outside my house? Huh?” A disgusted look overtakes his face. “If you were a dude, I’d beat the information out of you right here, right now.”

“Guy,” Mac says. “You have to chill out.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” JJ says, pushing Mac aside. “I swear to God, if he’s done anything to my brother, I’ll kill him. Let him know that the next time you don’t talk to him.”

Mac watches him go, then looks at me. “He’s freaked out that his brother is missing,” he says.

People are staring at us, but I don’t care. “I don’t know anything,” I say to Mac, as if it will make any difference.

He shrugs. “If I were you, I’d keep my head down for a while.”

And then he’s gone, sucked into the river of kids moving through the hall. And I’m left standing here alone.

I spend the rest of the day wishing I were anywhere else.

As I near my house after school, I notice a circle of journalists outside. I turn quickly down the side street that runs behind my house, pulling my sweatshirt’s hood up as I go. I feel like some kind of criminal. There’s a car idling at the back of my property. Unfortunately, thanks to the neighbors’ fences, there’s no other way into my yard.

Keeping my head down, I walk straight at the car. As I’m about to cut into the hole in the hedge, the door opens.

“Lauren.” Detective Evans swings out of the car, pulling her sunglasses on as she comes toward me.

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

“I was hoping that maybe you’ve heard from your brother.”

“I haven’t.”

“Suspicious, isn’t it?”

I stop and look at myself in her glasses. “No, it isn’t.”

“Does he often stay away from home for days on end?” she asks.

“Maybe he does,” I say. “But why would he show up here right now when it seems as though everyone thinks he’s abducted Benny?”

“Possibly to let us know he had nothing to do with Benjamin’s disappearance.”

“And you’d just believe him?”

“We’d simply like to ask him some questions,” she says.

I swing my backpack off and set it on the ground. “He’s not here. I don’t know where he is. He hasn’t contacted me.
Now, can you leave us alone?” She doesn’t respond, so I go on. “And could you get those reporters away from the front of our house?”

“The journalists are on public property. Nothing I can do about them,” she says as she gets back in the cruiser. “This would all be easier if Tom contacted us.”

I pick my pack up and cut through the hole in the hedge. When I look back, Detective Evans is still sitting there.

My mother is in front of the television.

“Did they bother you?” she asks.

“The journalists?”

“Yes.”

“I came in the back.” I decide not to tell her about Detective Evans. “What about you?”

“I came home from work early, just in case.”

“Just in case Tom was here?”

“Yes, but of course he isn’t. I think they’ve been out there all day. They’ve even bothered Joanne.”

Joanne is our elderly widowed neighbor. “What did they do?”

“Asked questions about us. About Tom.” My mother shakes her head and holds her temples. “This is all so awful.”

“I know, Mom,” I say, sitting down beside her. We’re not a really huggy family, so this is about as consoling as it’s going to get.

I lean against her.

“When is it going to end?” she says.

“When Benny comes home,” I say.

“Or Tom comes back,” she says. “Where is he, Lauren? Where could he have gone?”

I put an arm over her shoulder and pull her to me. “It’ll be okay,” I promise. As if I can see into the future. As if I know anything at all.

ELEVEN

The screen bangs against the wall as I drop it to the ground. A breeze pushes through the empty space. I climb out the window and onto the lawn. This time I slide the window closed behind me, checking to make certain it didn’t somehow lock. I pass beneath the tree house and go directly to the hedge. I’ve decided on a black hoodie, jeans and thin sandals. I try not to think of anything as I walk. The chilly night air washes over me. Whenever a thought rushes to the front of my mind, I visualize exhaling it in a long single breath. It works for a time, but soon enough there are too many thoughts elbowing one another for space, and the minute I expel them they rush back into the lineup.

About Ben and my brother.

About Erin and how she must be feeling.

I’m five blocks from home when I sense a car behind me. It could have been there for a while—I’ve been so deep in thought, I might not have noticed. It’s a block away, moving slowly.

It has to be Detective Evans again. Following me, hoping I’ll lead her to Tom. It bothers me how crafty she thinks she is. Also, how single-minded she is about Tom’s guilt. I get angry as I think of all the other things she could be doing with her time. But I guess she’s already made up her mind. Tom is guilty.

Period.

I stop at the edge of the park on Helpern. I wait a second, gauging whether the car’s driver is watching me. I quickly dart into the park, dashing across the grass and sand toward the woods and down to the ravine.

The little forts have been torn down, leaving nothing but clumps of sticks and dirty blankets that have been tossed in the creek. I find myself beside the massive oak with the climbing boards leading to the lowest branches. I grab a board and pull myself up. It only takes a few seconds to get to the first crotch of the tree. I hold on tightly and wait.

My breathing slows, and I can feel the shot of adrenaline seeping through my neck and shoulders.

A minute later, a figure appears on the cusp of the rise. From the distance, I can’t tell who it is. I am trying my best not to move, but the way I am crouching is uncomfortable, and I can feel my thighs cramping.

The figure moves toward me, then stops, and suddenly there are voices.

“Yes, Detective Evans here. Go ahead.” Her voice crosses the distance with ease. A cloud shifts, and in the bright moonlight I can see Detective Evans holding a walkie-talkie near her ear. “Affirmative,” she says. She turns and starts back up the rise. “Yes, send an officer to my location.” She stops, looks back, then goes on.

When I figure she’s gone, I climb down. The ground is uneven beneath my sandals. I look up the hill to find a pair of flashlight beams illuminating the trees on the edge of the ravine.

You could have stayed at home
, I tell myself as I run across a plank that straddles the creek. I scramble up the bank as the flashlights light up the creek. I slide in behind a tree and then, for some reason, take off running on the other side of the ravine.

My sandals slip from my feet, and I’m about to stop to retrieve them when someone calls out, “Lauren Saunders, is that you? Can you come here for a moment, please?” and I decide to leave my sandals and keep running.

It’s stupid. I feel like an idiot, clambering in the dark for no reason. There would be too much explaining to do. Honestly, I’m tired of saying the same thing over and over again.

I don’t realize where I am for a moment. A car drives past with a deep, thudding bass rattling its windows.
The clouds part again, and I see the West Tower to my right, know the East is just in the distance over my shoulder, and figure out exactly where I am.

I never come here. Anyone who doesn’t live here avoids this area. It’s called Maple Grove and was supposed to be an “ideal community.” Somewhere in the process the builders changed their minds and threw up a bunch of two- and three-story co-op places with a scattering of row houses, then disappeared. A few years later someone else came along and erected the two largest towers in the city on either side of the community, making it feel like something dark and evil from Middle Earth.

The whole area is rental units. There were supposed to be gardens in the center of each block, but all that grows in this area is weeds.

Speaking of which, weed is also the number-one export from Maple Grove. One industrious seller packaged his baggies with a Maple Grove sticker left over from when the towers were first built. They say,
Maple Grove, high above the ordinary
.

I cross my arms over my chest, tuck my head into the collar of my hoodie and start walking.

I’ve made it two blocks when a police car crosses the street ahead of me and slows. Without thinking, I turn onto a walkway that runs between two of the housing units and take off down the path, dodging garbage cans and abandoned tricycles.

“What were you doing?” I say out loud. My thigh muscles are twitching from the run. At any moment I could step on something sharp and slice a foot open, but I’m too scared to care. I turn in the direction I think will get me back out toward a main road and then slow to a walk.

As I’m passing a doorway, a group of guys comes barreling out, laughing and punching one another. I walk faster but not so fast as to seem intimidated.