Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)(64)

She thumbed through it as she idled her way up the driveway, then turned it over. On the back page there were forty or fifty photographs not much bigger than postage stamps, most in color, a few in black and white. Above them was this heading:

HAVE YOU SEEN ME?

A Weekly Service Of Your Anniston Shopper

For a moment Abra thought it was some sort of contest, like a scavenger hunt. Then she realized these were missing children, and it was as if a hand had grasped the soft lining of her stomach and squeezed it like a washcloth. She had bought a three-pack of Oreos in the caf at lunch, and had saved them for the bus ride home. Now she seemed to feel them being wadded up toward her throat by that clutching hand.

Don’t look at it if it bothers you, she told herself. It was the stern and lecturely voice she often employed when she was upset or confused (a Momo-voice, although she had never consciously realized this). Just toss it in the garage trashcan with the rest of this gluck. Only she seemed unable not to look at it.

Here was Cynthia Abelard, DOB June 9, 2005. After a moment’s thought, Abra realized DOB stood for date of birth. So Cynthia would be eight now. If she was still alive, that is. She had been missing since 2009. How does somebody lose track of a four-year-old? Abra wondered. She must have really crappy parents. But of course, the parents probably hadn’t lost her. Probably some weirdo had been cruising around the neighborhood, seen his chance, and stolen her.

Here was Merton Askew, DOB September 4, 1998. He had disappeared in 2010.

Here, halfway down the page, was a beautiful little Hispanic girl named Angel Barbera, who had disappeared from her Kansas City home at the age of seven and had already been gone for nine years. Abra wondered if her parents really thought this tiny picture would help them get her back. And if they did, would they still even know her? For that matter, would she know them?

Get rid of that thing, the Momo-voice said. You’ve got enough to worry about without looking at a lot of missing ki—

Her eyes found a picture in the very bottom row, and a little sound escaped her. Probably it was a moan. At first she didn’t even know why, although she almost did; it was like how you sometimes knew the word you wanted to use in an English composition but you still couldn’t quite get it, the damn thing just sat there on the tip of your tongue.

This photo was of a white kid with short hair and a great big goofy-ass grin. It looked like he had freckles on his cheeks. The picture was too small to tell for sure, but

(they’re freckles you know they are)

Abra was somehow sure, anyway. Yes, they were freckles and his big brothers had teased him about them and his mother told him they would go away in time.

“She told him freckles are good luck,” Abra whispered.

Bradley Trevor, DOB March 2, 2000. Missing since July 12, 2011. Race: Caucasian. Location: Bankerton, Iowa. Current Age: 13. And below this—below all these pictures of mostly smiling children: If you think you have seen Bradley Trevor, contact The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

Only no one was going to contact them about Bradley, because no one was going to see him. His current age wasn’t thirteen, either. Bradley Trevor had stopped at eleven. He had stopped like a busted wristwatch that shows the same time twenty-four hours a day. Abra found herself wondering if freckles faded underground.

“The baseball boy,” she whispered.

There were flowers lining the driveway. Abra leaned over, hands on her knees, pack all at once far too heavy on her back, and threw up her Oreos and the undigested portion of her school lunch into her mother’s asters. When she was sure she wasn’t going to puke a second time, she went into the garage and tossed the mail into the trash. All the mail.

Her father was right, it was junkola.


5

The door of the little room her dad used as his study was open, and when Abra stopped at the kitchen sink for a glass of water to rinse the sour-chocolate taste of used Oreos out of her mouth, she heard the keyboard of his computer clicking steadily away. That was good. When it slowed down or stopped completely, he had a tendency to be grumpy. Also, he was more apt to notice her. Today she didn’t want to be noticed.

“Abba-Doo, is that you?” her father half sang.

Ordinarily she would have asked him to please stop using that baby name, but not today. “Yup, it’s me.”

“School go okay?”

The steady click-click-click had stopped. Please don’t come out here, Abra prayed. Don’t come out and look at me and ask me why I’m so pale or something.

“Fine. How’s the book?”

“Having a great day,” he said. “Writing about the Charleston and the Black Bottom. Vo-doe-dee-oh-doe.” Whatever that meant. The important thing was the click-click-click started up again. Thank God.

“Terrific,” she said, rinsing her glass and putting it in the drainer. “I’m going upstairs to start my homework.”

“That’s my girl. Think Harvard in ’18.”

“Okay, Dad.” And maybe she would. Anything to keep herself from thinking about Bankerton, Iowa, in ’11.


6

Only she couldn’t stop.

Because.

Because what? Because why? Because . . . well . . .

Because there are things I can do.

She IM’ed with Jessica for awhile, but then Jessica went to the mall in North Conway to have dinner at Panda Garden with her parents, so Abra opened her social studies book. She meant to go to chapter four, a majorly boresome twenty pages titled “How Our Government Works,” but instead the book had fallen open to chapter five: “Your Responsibilities As a Citizen.”