"Glad that's not my problem," I muttered and headed up the drive to ring the front doorbell.
As I pressed the brass button, I noticed one little light on in the back of the house. Someone might be up. I pressed my face to the cut-glass oval that took up half of the heavy wooden door, and tried to see into the house. At the same time, I kept my finger continuously pressed on the doorbell. Someone was moving toward me, shuffling slowly, half bent over, and weaving from side to side. Vernell.
"Where's the fire?" he called. He swung open the door and a loud voice startled both of us.
"Intruder! Intruder! Front entrance. You have twenty seconds to disarm!"
Vernell looked momentarily confused and worried, then disgusted. "Dag-blamed security system!" He turned away from me and began stabbing a pudgy finger at the keypad by the front door. "If it ain't one thing it's another with this place," he grumbled. He was wearing his blue polyester leisure suit, rumpled and stained from what looked like continuous wear without benefit of washing.
"Come in! Come on in!" Vernell's dark hair stood up in tufts across the top of his head. "I was just talking to you, anyway," he said. Vernell's breath and body smelled of liquor and I could see a bottle of Wild Turkey sitting out on the kitchen table.
I followed him into the kitchen, tempted a few times to reach out and grab him as he threatened to do damage to a fancy doodad or knock into a framed picture with his drunken body.
"Vernell," I said, "do you know what time it is?"
"You come all this way to ask me the time?" Vernell looked genuinely puzzled. "Well, I reckon it's coming up on ten o'clock."
"Vernell, it is two-thirty in the morning."
"Well, if you knew, why'd you ask?" Vernell eyed me suspiciously. "This is some kind of test, isn't it? You just want to know how much I been drinking. Just like Jolene-hellfire, just like any woman. That's the trouble with you people, always asking questions. Wanting to talk about your feelings." Vernell was on the verge of a sermon.
"Vernell, hush! Where's Sheila?"
Vernell's eyes cleared for one second. "Why, ain't she with you?"
"Vernell!"
"Well, honey, she called hours ago. Told Jolene she was going to stay at your place tonight on account of you had a headache."
My heart jumped up into my throat. "Where's Jolene? Let me talk to her! Wake her up!" I jumped up from the table and stood staring down at Vernell.
"Can't do it," he said slowly. "Jolene ain't here either. She's over to her mama's on account of her mama being sick. She's helping out." Vernell looked morose. "Well, that and maybe she got a little hot because I was drinking."
"Come on," I said, grabbing the shot glass out of his hand.
I was off, heading for the stairs, looking for anything that might tell me where Sheila had gone. Vernell puffed along behind me.
"Up at the top of the stairs to the right," he said. "When's the last time you talked to her?" Vernell's voice had changed. He sounded almost sober and definitely worried.
"About four or five this afternoon. She lay down in her room to take a nap. Vernell, last time I checked on her, she was sleeping." It's my fault, I thought. I shouldn't have fallen asleep. I should've done something, everything, differently.
I ran down the hallway, knowing without being told which room was Sheila's. I'd been sitting across that street for so many nights, watching that little light over her desk, trying to catch a glimpse of my girl, hoping to know for sure that she was home where she belonged. Where was she now?
Vernell pounded right behind me, stopping at the entrance to Sheila's room as I ran inside. I stood still and looked around. It was every teenage girl's dream. A beautiful brass daybed, piled high with lacy pillows. White carpeting and pink walls, thick crown molding, and a walk-in closet crammed with all the latest fashions from Sheila's favorite stores. A lot of the clothing still had price tags hanging from the sleeves. Sheila couldn't possibly have worn all those things.
"Vernell, my God, did you let her buy all those things?" I asked.
Vernell seemed as puzzled as me. "No, I guess Jolene must've done it. You know how she likes shopping." He peered deeper into the closet. He sighed. "Women. I don't recall you ever having that many outfits. Jolene says we gotta look the part. She says image is everything."
I could just hear those words dripping off her lips.
"Vernell," I said, "it don't matter if you paint the barn black or white, it's still a barn. Now let's get to it."
"To what, Maggie? She ain't here. Let's start calling her friends."
"Vernell, unless you've been spending a lot of time around her new school and know some things I don't, we don't know any of her friends. And think about it, Vernell, if your best friend ran off, would you tell where he was?"
Vernell spent too long pondering his answer, and I couldn't wait. I pulled open the drawer of her nightstand, looking for her phone book or anything that could help us.
"What about her boyfriend?" he asked. "Keith."
"I don't know his phone number," I said, tugging at Sheila's crammed bedside drawer. "We'll have to ride by, but I doubt she's there. He lives with his parents."
Sheila's drawer was full of letters and photographs, some of which spilled over and fell onto the floor as I wrestled to get the drawer all the way open. It was stuck on something, and I couldn't quite reach it with my fingers.
"Well, least we can do is ride by," Vernell huffed. "Let me get that." He pushed me aside, reached for the drawer, and gave it a mighty tug. The crystal lamp began to topple, the pink princess phone slid, and the drawer came flying open. Papers rained everywhere and a small clothbound book fell out onto the floor, its cover scuffed and bent from its tussle with Vernell.
"There it is," he said.
"This isn't her phone book," I said, picking the small journal up and flipping through the pages. "This is her diary."
I sank down onto her bed and started leafing through the purple ink-covered pages, looking for the last entry. I'd never gone through Sheila's things before and I felt slightly guilty for doing it now, but a crisis was a crisis.
I will carry flowers on the beach, she wrote in large loopy script. My heart froze. Red ones. And Keith says he knows a guy ordained by that mailorder Universalist Church of Higher Love that's gonna do the ceremony.
I read the words aloud as Vernell sank down beside me. "No," he moaned softly. "No."
It won't be that church wedding my mama wants. Sheila wrote, but at least we'll have the beach. Keith says our lives will be bonded together forever. We will share our future. What's his will be mine, and what's mine will be his. We won't ever get like Mama and Daddy did. Our love will last. True love forever.
Tears rolled down my cheeks, dripping onto the purple ink and leaving blotches of pale purple tears. Vernell, reading over my shoulder, reached out and put an arm around me.
"I'm sorry, honey," he said softly. "I really am sorry."
"We can't get into all that right now," I said, looking up and folding the book shut. "We've got to stop them."
"You wanna ride by Keith's place?"
I stood up and pulled a pale pink tissue from the box on Sheila's nightstand.
"Yeah, just to make sure," I said, "but then we'd better get a move on."
Vernell looked puzzled, and still sad. "Get a move on?"
"Vernell, don't you realize where they've gone?"
"To the beach?" he said. "Maggie, they could be anywhere. Hell, they could be in Daytona with all them bikers and-"