It was just a fluke that her dad spotted the car at the far end of the parking lot of the Connecticut Post Mall, out on the Post Road, not far from the theaters. The Mustang was backed up to the curb, and her father parked in front, blocking it in. She knew it was him instantly when she saw the fedora.
“Shit,” said Cynthia. Good thing he hadn’t shown up two minutes earlier, when they’d been making out, or when Vince was showing her his new switchblade-Jesus, you pressed this little button, and zap! Six inches of steel suddenly appeared-Vince holding it in his lap, moving it around and grinning, like maybe it was something else. Cynthia had tried holding it, had sliced the air in front of her and giggled.
“Easy,” Vince had said cautiously. “You can do a lot of damage with one of these.”
Clayton Bigge marched right over to the passenger door, yanked it open. It creaked on its rusty hinges.
“Hey, pal, watch it!” Vince said, no knife in hand now, but a beer bottle, almost as bad.
“Don’t ‘hey pal’ me,” her father said, taking her by the arm and ushering her back into his own car. “Christ almighty, you reek,” he told her.
She wished she could have died right then.
She wouldn’t look at him or say anything, not even when he started going on about how she was becoming nothing but trouble, that if she didn’t get her head screwed on right she’d be a fuckup her whole life, that he didn’t know what he’d done wrong, he just wanted her to grow up and be happy and blah blah blah, and Jesus even when he was pissed off he still drove like he was taking his driver’s test, never exceeding the speed limit, always using his turn signal, the guy was unbelievable.
When they pulled into the driveway, she was out of the car before he had it in park, throwing open the door, striding in, trying not to weave, her mother standing there, not looking mad so much as worried, saying, “Cynthia! Where were-”
She steamrolled past her, went up to her room. From downstairs, her father shouted, “You come down here! We got things to discuss!”
“I wish you were dead!” she screamed, and slammed her door.
That much came back to her as she walked to school. The rest of the evening was still a bit fuzzy.
She remembered sitting down on her bed, feeling woozy. Too tired to feel embarrassed. She decided to lie down, figuring she could sleep it off by the morning, a good ten hours away.
A lot could happen before morning.
At one point, drifting in and out of sleep, she thought she heard someone at her door. Like someone was hesitating just outside it.
Then, later, she thought she heard it again.
Did she get up to see who it was? Did she even try to get out of bed? She couldn’t remember.
And now she was almost to school.
The thing was, she felt remorseful. She’d broken nearly every household rule in a single night. Starting with the lie about going to Pam’s. Pam was her best friend, she was over to the house all the time, slept over every other weekend. Cynthia’s mother liked her, maybe even trusted her, Cynthia thought. Bringing Pam’s name into it, Cynthia thought somehow that would buy her some time, that Patricia Bigge wouldn’t be so quick to phone Pam’s mother. So much for that plan.
If only her crimes ended there. She’d broken curfew. Gone parking with a boy. A seventeen-year-old boy. A boy they say broke school windows the year before, took a joyride in a neighbor’s car.
Her parents, they weren’t all bad. Most of the time. Especially her mom. Her dad, shit, even he wasn’t too bad, when he was home.
Maybe Todd did get a lift to school. If he did have practice, and he was pressed for time, her mom might have given him one, then decided to go grocery shopping after. Or to the Howard Johnson’s for a coffee. She did that once in a while.
First-period History was a write-off. Second-period Math was even worse. She couldn’t focus, her head still hurt. “How did you do on those questions, Cynthia?” the math teacher asked. She didn’t even look at him.
Just before lunch, she saw Pam, who said, “Jesus, if you’re going to tell your mom you’re at my house, you wanna fucking let me know? Then maybe I could tell my mom something.”
“Sorry,” Cynthia said. “Did she have a fit?”
“When I came in,” Pam said.
At lunch, Cynthia slipped out of the cafeteria, went to the school pay phone, dialed home. She’d tell her mother she was sorry. Really, really sorry. And then she’d ask to come home, say she felt sick. Her mother would look after her. She couldn’t stay mad at her if she was sick. She’d make soup.
Cynthia gave up after fifteen rings, then thought maybe she’d dialed wrong. Tried again, no answer. She had no work number for her dad. He was on the road so much of the time, you had to wait for him to check in from wherever he was staying.
She was hanging out in front of the school with some friends when Vince Fleming drove by in his Mustang. “Sorry about all that shit last night,” he said. “Jeez, your dad’s a prize.”
“Yeah, well,” Cynthia said.
“So what happened after you went home?” Vince asked. There was something in the way he asked, like he already knew. Cynthia shrugged and shook her head, didn’t want to talk about it.
Vince asked, “Where’s your brother today?”
Cynthia said, “What?”
“He home sick?” Vince Fleming asked.
Nobody’d seen Todd at school. Vince said he was going to ask him, quiet like, how much trouble Cynthia was in, whether she was grounded, because he was hoping she wanted to get together Friday night or Saturday, his friend Kyle was getting him some beer, they could go up to that spot, the one on the hill, maybe sit in the car awhile, look at stars, right?
Cynthia ran home. Didn’t ask Vince for a ride, even though he was right there. Didn’t check in at the school office to tell them she was skipping off early. Ran the whole way, thinking, as she pumped her legs, Please let her car be there, Please let her car be there.
But when she rounded the corner from Pumpkin Delight Road to Hickory, and her two-story house came into view, the yellow Escort, her mother’s car, was not there. But she shouted out her mother’s name anyway when she got inside with what little breath she had left. Then her brother’s.
She started to tremble, then willed herself to stop.
It made no sense. No matter how angry her parents might be at her, they wouldn’t do this, would they? Just leave? Take off without telling her? And take Todd with them?
Cynthia felt stupid doing it, but rang the bell at the Jamison house next door. There was probably a simple explanation for all this, something she forgot, a dental appointment, something, and any second her mother would turn in to the driveway. Cynthia would feel like a total idiot, but that was okay.
She started blathering when Mrs. Jamison opened the door. That when she woke up no one was home and then she went to school and Todd never showed up and her mom still wasn’t-
Mrs. Jamison said whoa, everything’s okay, your mother’s probably out doing some shopping. Mrs. Jamison walked Cynthia back home, glanced down at the newspaper that still had not been taken in. Together they looked upstairs and down and in the garage again and out in the backyard.
“That sure is odd,” Mrs. Jamison said. She didn’t quite know what to think, so, somewhat reluctantly, she called the Milford police.
They sent around an officer, who didn’t seem all that concerned, at first. But soon there were more officers and more cars, and by evening, there were cops all over the place. Cynthia heard them putting out descriptions of her parents’ two cars, calling Milford Hospital. Police were going up and down the street, knocking on doors, asking questions.