The Missing Read online

  Then they went into the woods, which she was startled to discover weren’t woods anymore. Since the EPA last visited, the trees had died. Desiccated husks and branches lay like fallen soldiers along the forest floor. There was less moss, and she didn’t see any squirrels or birds.

  She looked at Janice Fischer’s worried expression, and she knew she should take the children and get back on the bus, but she didn’t. She was going to teach them something important today. Something they’d carry with them long after they forgot her name. A lesson about what happens to places left unattended. Places guided by all the wrong instincts.

  She stopped them at the foot of the woods and made a speech. “Boyth and girlth…do you know what happened here? When the paper mill closed the people who worked for it got mad. They burned it down. They burned down their own town, because they were mad. Now does that make any thense? If you were mad, would you hurt yourselves?” she asked.

  In unison the children shook their heads. Caroline Fischer was the most vocal: “No, Miss Lois!”

  Lois nodded. “Good. I’m proud of you. Now, everyone thay—stay—with their partner. Don’t wander farther that that oak tree right there.” Then she opened her arms, signaling that they could go, and they tumbled into the woods.

  For an hour the children searched under rocks and beneath moss for signs of life. The boys threw bugs at the girls and the girls screamed, not, it seemed to Lois, because they were afraid, but because it was just more fun to scream.

  For lunch, they ate at the wooden picnic benches on the edge of the woods. She’d forgotten to pack her own sandwich, and her stomach rumbled. Janice Fischer walked behind the bus to smoke one of her hippie American Spirit cigarettes, and Lois found herself thinking about Ronnie.

  Maybe the article in the paper was a hoax. Noreen had submitted it as a mean joke, and right now Ronnie was on his way to find her. Any minute he’d come driving up to the edge of the woods at eighty miles an hour. He’d get out of that cheap heap of bolts he thought was such a chick magnet, and in front of the kids, the bus driver, Janice Fischer, and the whole world he’d shout, “Noreen’s a hog. I love you, Lois. I’ll always love you.”

  Lois blew her nose so hard that her tissue broke and her hand got slimy. This trip right now wasn’t fun. This trip really sucked. She noticed the children watching her. They seemed sad, and a few were hugging themselves. Only James Walker was not paying attention. “My eyeth,” she told them. “They’re irritated, do you underthand?”

  They looked at her.

  “I’m very allergic.” These kids, she really did care for them. She loved them as if they were her own, even James. She was so upset she’d forgotten that, but it was true.

  Caroline Fischer slid her package of Crackers ’n Cheez along the table until it reached Lois. “I have extra,” she said.

  Then crayon-eating George Sanford rolled a Granny Smith in her direction. Michael and Alex Fullbright gave her their oranges. Donna Dubois handed her the half-eaten segment of a Kit Kat bar. Lois sighed. It became a competition among them, until all the children donated their snacks or half sandwiches, and a mound of food rose in front of her. The gesture was too much to endure. She drew a ragged breath, terrified that it would end in a sob right in front of these wonderful children, but it did not. “Thank you, boys and girls,” she said, biting into a tart Granny Smith.

  After she admonished them all to empty their pockets full of sticks and rocks, they boarded the bus. She started roll call, but noticed Caroline waving an empty Rough Rider condom wrapper at the boys sitting behind her. She’d probably found it in the woods, though Lois doubted she understood its use.

  “Thath garbage,” she said to Caroline, taking it out of her hand. Then she held it up for the class to see. “Don’t touch garbage, boyth and girlth, you never know where it’s been.” This reminded her of Ronnie. Was he with Noreen right now? Were they working on a family at this very moment? And what about her own period, six weeks late?

  She headed for the front of the bus and looked out the window. No red Camaro in sight. There would not be a red Camaro. These people, her friends, they’d betrayed her. They hadn’t even called to say: Uh, look, Lois, you’ll hear about this anyway, but we went and did something nutty. And there was one simple explanation: She’d effed up. She’d surrounded herself with the wrong people, because Ronnie, Noreen, and even her mother were no good.

  Worst of all, she knew she was better off without them, but in the end that didn’t matter. After school today, she’d stop by Ronnie’s house and beg him to take her back, but he’d never do it because Noreen was too damn scary to cross. After a month or so of a broken heart, she’d swallow it all down and stop by the Dew Drop Inn, where Noreen would say something mean, and Ronnie would smile like a milksop, and she’d pretend like nothing was wrong. She’d forgive them even though they hadn’t asked for it, because being their friend was better than watching Regis Philbin with her drunk mother. She’d eat shit like always, because she was Lois Larkin, and she didn’t have any goddamn sense.

  “Drive,” Lois said, while Janice Fischer slathered her daughter’s condom-tainted hands with gobs of green antibacterial gel. They pulled away from the woods, and Lois started crying all over again.

  It was only after they got back to school that she realized that the lump in the seat across from her was not a little boy, but a book bag and jacket. James Walker was missing.

  TWO

  The Monster in the Woods

  The ground under James Walker’s feet went crunch, crunch, crunch, like the bamboo xylophone from music appreciation. There were leaves and sticks and rocks, all dried up and hollow. Overhead, leafless branches poked the bright blue sky. He jumped up and down, and listened to things break. It was dead as a rabbit in here!

  Instead of boarding the bus when Miss Lois called, he’d pretended his big brother, Danny, was chasing him. He ran until he was panting and sweaty and couldn’t see his way out. He knew he wasn’t supposed to wander off, but he hated Miss Lois. When she said his name her upper lip curled like somebody was trying to feed her yellow snow. He figured if he ran away today, maybe his dad would get mad enough to have her fired.

  It wasn’t Miss Lois’s fault he was a left-back, though. First his mother started him a year late for kindergarten because he was small for his age, and then Mr. Crozzier flunked him, and wrote in his Permanent Record that he was “emotionally and mentally stunted.” That’s why he was the only eleven-year-old in the fourth grade. Once a month during recess he had to meet with a social worker and talk about his feelings. He didn’t usually have any, so mostly they played Iron Man on the Xbox.

  James’s parents wanted him to be more like his big brother, Danny, who got straight A’s and played lacrosse. Danny and Dad shot eighteen holes at the Corpus Christi Golf Club once a month. They wore matching polo shirts and khakis like they were members of Team Jerk America.

  Danny liked to take James’s hands and hit him in the face with them. Why are you hitting yourself, James? Why are you hitting yourself? he’d ask. One time he stuffed James’s mouth and nose with salty yellow snow and even after James cried, “Mercy, Master Daniel,” Danny had held his lips and nose closed tight until he swallowed. When stuff like that happened, James imagined poking Danny’s eyes out with a fork and then eating them like a couple of meatballs so nobody could sew them back into his empty sockets.

  James walked deeper. Crunch, crunch, crunch. The fallen trees were hollow inside, like corn husks. An idea came to him, and it made him jump with delight. The Incredible Hulk pretended to be strong, but he probably threw hollow trees. In the movie on HBO the trees had looked real but the camera had played a trick. James grinned, because he’d thought of something smart all by himself, which meant he wasn’t totally retarded.

  To test his theory he lifted a hollow log, which was light as a cardboard box. Underneath he found a slug, so he took out the matches he’d swiped from his mom’s kitchen and set it on fire. The s
lug’s skin glowed, and then got wrinkly. A plume of smoke that smelled like burnt tires whirled over its long body. Then the slug’s skin split open and white crud oozed out. Even though he’d killed it, he didn’t want it to suffer, so he stepped on it to make sure it was dead.

  When he was a kid, only eight years old, he’d sneaked into Mr. McGuffin’s backyard to play with the newborn baby rabbits in the hutch. They’d been gobs of fuzz with red eyes that were smaller than his fists. His favorite was Gimpy, who’d been born with shriveled hind legs. Gimpy couldn’t run like the others, which meant he never left James’s lap. Mr. McGuffin said James could adopt Gimpy as soon as he grew big enough.

  So one day he was holding Gimpy. The silly rabbit licked his fingers, and he wondered if he loved it, even though it was just a dumb animal. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d loved something. Maybe never. Gimpy kept licking. His big red eyes were all innocent-looking, and James decided that Gimpy was a liar. He was like Danny, who was nice on the outside but bad on the inside. So he squeezed Gimpy just a little.

  Gimpy didn’t screech. He didn’t shout for James to stop (now that James was eleven, he knew rabbits couldn’t talk, but back then he’d thought maybe they secretly could; they just didn’t want to). Gimpy’s eyes got all big like they were going to pop out, which was kind of funny. James had wanted to let go, but instead he held on tighter. Squeezed harder. The reaction was all wrong, even though he’d wanted it to be right. He couldn’t help it! Sometimes he forgot the right thing.

  Gimpy’s eyes looked like they were going to fall out. Something popped, and one of his sockets was bleeding. It was just a hole, drippy and red. Not funny like a meatball. Bad. So bad he gagged, only nothing but spit came out. Still, even while Gimpy bled, James squeezed tighter. He didn’t know what else to do. He wanted to make it un-happen, but he didn’t know how.

  Gimpy tried one last time to get away, and James knew he should let go, but he got scared. The rabbit was broken like a toy he couldn’t fix. What if Mr. McGuffin found his missing eye, and figured out what James had done? His hands were like a metal vise that wouldn’t open. The rabbit started kicking—not real kicks. Spazzy, jerky shivers. Then Gimpy screamed this low-pitched, terrible scream. A mix between a grunt and a cry. It lasted for a long time, and it was the kind of sound that hurt to hear. It didn’t hurt his ears; it hurt his insides. It hurt his heart, hearing Gimpy cry like that.

  After Gimpy screamed everything inside James got quiet, like he wasn’t there anymore. Like he was sleeping. Everything went black. His body kept going, but he wasn’t in charge of it. He was someplace safe where he didn’t have to think about Gimpy. If he tried, he could see what was happening, but he didn’t have to feel it. He didn’t have to feel anything. It was like falling asleep.

  When he woke up Gimpy wasn’t moving. The bunny was floppy and cold in his lap, which made him wonder how long he’d been sleeping. The funny thing was, he knew it was bad to hurt an animal, knew that he’d loved Gimpy, but still, a part of him liked it. Even if he wasn’t smart, killing Gimpy had been brave. Most people wouldn’t have had the guts.

  He dug a hole for Gimpy behind the hutch and buried him there. He was so sad about cold Gimpy that he couldn’t remember his prayers, so instead he asked God to let him into heaven, even if it turned out that pets aren’t normally allowed. Unless Gimpy was going to haunt him, and then he wished Gimpy permanently dead. He covered the filled-in hole with leaves so Mr. McGuffin wouldn’t notice the fresh dirt, and then ran home, took the phone off the hook, and told his mom he had to go to bed because he felt sick.

  When the front bell rang, James prayed to God it wasn’t Mr. McGuffin. He prayed he could undo what he’d done. But it was Mr. McGuffin at the door, and James heard him talking to his mother in the front hall. Their voices were soft, and then his mother was shouting, and Mr. McGuffin started shouting, too. He listened, even though he didn’t like what he heard. “That’s maniac’s gonna kill a man one day,” Mr. McGuffin yelled.

  He pulled the covers tight over his body and wished he was asleep. He was so scared he couldn’t even cry. How had this happened? Because he was bad. Those teachers at school, and the kids who didn’t invite him to sleepovers because he was too rough, and Danny, and even his parents, who didn’t touch him unless he asked, they all knew what he’d just figured out. He was bad inside. He’d killed his own rabbit.

  Mr. McGuffin didn’t come storming up the stairs and into his room like he’d expected. The front door slammed, and then there was silence. A little while later his mother arrived, carrying a tray of orange juice and cinnamon toast. She laid it across his bed and pulled up a chair. (She never sat on his bed when she wanted to talk. Only Danny’s.) “Feeling better?” she asked.

  She was fugly. Once he’d punched her in the stomach and told her so. He hadn’t counted on her crying about it the way she did. “I feel bad, Felice,” he told her, because for as long as he could remember, she’d never answered to “Mom.”

  She didn’t pet his hair or hold him or anything. “Mr. McGuffin was over here,” she said. He got scared. But instead of feeling scared, a fire made of ice spread in his stomach. It burned so blue and aching that his skin shivered. It froze his insides and then broke them into little pieces until he didn’t feel bad anymore. Like the deep sleep, he didn’t feel anything anymore.

  “He said he found your favorite rabbit. Someone killed and buried it. He thinks it was you, but I told him that was impossible. I told him you were in the yard practicing the T-ball. That’s what you were doing all morning, isn’t it?”

  He didn’t know what to say. Her eyes were narrow, like she was looking at him, but doing her best not to see him. Why was she pretending he’d been in the yard?

  “I’m sick,” he said.

  “You’ve got a virus, probably,” she told him. Then she patted the side of his leg, but her hand didn’t linger. “I’ll leave you to sleep.” She shut the door, and he heard a lock turn. Ever since that day, she didn’t look at him the same. Even when her mouth smiled at him, her eyes never did.

  James overheard his dad on the phone that night with Mr. McGuffin. He said that if Mr. McGuffin started telling stories about the rabbits in his yard, he’d get sued for slander, and then he wouldn’t be able to afford his mortgage, let alone vermin for pets. And by the way, what was a single man doing inviting children to his house to play with rabbits?

  Hurting Gimpy was the worst thing James had ever done. It had been wrong, and he didn’t want to do anything like it again. But then again, sometimes he did.

  James stopped walking. It was dark out here. He’d been thinking about Gimpy coming back from the dead and haunting him in these woods, which had made him forget where he was going. He couldn’t see the blue sky overhead anymore. Just dead branches and dry leaves so thick that everything was sort of shadowy, even though it was daytime.

  The kids in his class said this place was full of ghosts, which was why the trip to Bedford had sounded like so much fun. But nobody had seen anything special out here, except for Miss Sad Sack Larkin, crying.

  He sat on a rock that hung high over a shallow stream, and suddenly felt bad. He didn’t like being alone all the time. These woods were too quiet. Sometimes he thought about sneaking into Danny’s room and putting a pillow over his face, and then doing the same to his parents. Then he could have a new family that didn’t frown when they looked at him.

  James climbed out on the overhang and laid across the rock. In the water he saw his reflection. A boy with blond hair and blue eyes. A good-looking boy with a mean streak. He threw a stone, and the water rippled. When it got clear again, his reflection was different. His skin was pale, and his eyes were black. It looked familiar, and James thought for a second that it was the bad thing that lived inside him. The thing that liked to do harm.

  It is always hungry; it is never satisfied, he thought, even though he didn’t know what that meant. His reflection winked at him, and he jumped. It w
as alive, even though it was just a reflection.

  “Who are you?” he asked. “Do you want to play?”

  The woods got darker suddenly, like it was going to rain. The reflection went dark, too. James, a voice whispered. The sound echoed through the dead trees.

  He looked around, but he couldn’t see anyone. In his pants, he got what his brother called a stiffie. You were supposed to get them when you looked at girls, but James only got them when he was scared or doing something wrong. If he tried to wish them away they got worse, so mostly he just ignored them.

  I’ll play with you, James. The voice was watery, like it had slithered up from the bottom of the river and wasn’t used to being on the surface. He didn’t know if it belonged to a man or a woman, which was doubly bad, because that meant he was getting stiffies from men’s voices, too. But he couldn’t help it!

  He jumped off the rock and peered in the direction of the voice. Another breeze blew, and he saw a trail. Birch tree branches jingled as they opened before him. The branches were pointed like fingers showing him the way. It reminded him of a cartoon he’d seen on television when he was little—the enchanted woods leading Little Red Riding Hood to Grandma’s house.

  He followed the sound of the voice down the path. It opened into a clearing, and when he reached it, the path closed behind him with that same jingling sound. His heart pounded: There was no way he’d find his way back.

  James, the thing gurgled.

  The chiggers had stopped biting all of a sudden. The animals were missing, too. Even the worms and moss and mushroom fungi were gone. Maybe the thing in the woods had hurt them. He could understand that.

  The dirt was as black as squid ink, and the hot ground warmed his toes even though he was wearing rubber-soled Nikes. It was the same kind of warm as the fire that had been in his stomach when Gimpy died. So cold it was hot, and it burned in all the wrong ways.