If You Find Me(44)

Melissa gathers up her crochet bag, choosing colored balls of yarn for the night’s knitting.

“Five minutes with Shorty, okay, then bath, teeth, and homework,” she says.

Jenessa’s giggles are muffled by Shorty’s fur, but her hand waves in the air, giving a thumbs-up.

“Ouch. That’s unnecessary,” I say as Delaney elbows me hard.

“You didn’t think I was going to do this all by myself?”

“It was your idea,” I grumble.

With Melissa and Nessa in the other room and my father out feeding the livestock and chickens, it’s just the two of us in the too-bright kitchen.

“You bring in the dishes,” she orders. “I’ll rinse and stack.”

I glare at her, unmoving.

“Truce, okay? Just get the dishes. Or we’ll be here all night.”

I hand her plate after plate, and she rinses them under the steaming water. I watch, mesmerized, as I’ve been since the first day, by the convenience of inside faucets. She has no idea how good she has it.

“Marie said she saw you in the courtyard with Ryan today.”

I scrutinize her face, but it’s unreadable. I think of how Ryan sat next to me and the way my heart flipped over, and I almost drop a dinner plate.

“Careful with those. That’s part of a set that belonged to my great-grandmother. They’ll be mine, when I marry.”

Delaney grabs the plate from me roughly, almost dropping it herself. As always, I can feel her measuring me. Measuring me against herself.

“If I were you,” she continues, “I’d watch out for Ryan. He’s a player. And a junior. I wonder what your father would say about that.”

I think of the creek in the dead of winter—silent, rock-hard, impenetrable.

Be the creek.

I center on Melissa, who’s speaking to my sister, her words soft as a lullaby.

“We’ll have to ask Santa for crochet needles for you. Would you like to learn?”

Ness nods happily, playing with Shorty’s front toes.

“That’s your defense? You’re going to pull a Jenessa on me?” Delaney demands.

I shrug, hand her another dish. I’m not going to discuss Ryan with her. I can barely discuss him with myself. I peer out the window over the sink, the glass frosted by the cold outside and fogged by the warmth within.

Delaney reaches her finger toward the glass. I watch as she draws a large R, then a circle around it, then a slanted line through the circle.

“Just stay away from him, you hear?”

I don’t take well to people telling me what to do.

Never have, never will.

“Or what?” I demand.

What can she really do to me?

Delaney reaches into her pocket and pulls out a sheet of paper folded into squares. The blood drains from my face. I could kill her right there on the spot.

“Or this,” she says, “is going to end up taped to the walls at school.”

“That’s mine.” My voice cracks. “Give it back.”

Her eyes flash, and she begins reading to herself.

“To Whom It May Concern,

I’m writing in regards to my daughters, Carey and Jenessa Blackburn.

I removed Carey from her father’s home without his permission while she was in his legal custody.

His name is Charles Benskin, and you can find him through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

I have issues with methamphetamine and bipolar disorder, and can no longer care for the girls. You can find them at a camper in the woods of the Obed Wild and Scenic River National Park.

If you enter from the first scenic overlook and follow the river, you’ll find the camper in a clearing about seven miles out.

Please know I’m sorry for what I did.

Sincerely,

Joelle Blackburn


[page]
“Wow. Your mom is pretty effed up.”

I dart forward and rip the paper from her hands. She grins, the victor either way.

“That’s just a copy. I have more where that came from. You think Ryan Shipley could really like a backwoods freak like you? We only took you in out of pity.”

I stand next to myself—that’s how it feels—and watch helplessly as my arm pulls back and my fist balls, ready to hit her harder than I’ve ever hit anything.

“Go ahead—I dare you, freak,” Delaney hisses, not even trying to defend herself. “Show them who you really are—white-trash garbage whose mother didn’t bring her up right, let alone want her.”

To my horror, a dam breaks.

“You’re pathetic, you know that? I wish they’d never found you. I wish your crack-ass mother had taken you with her—”

“She was smoking meth” I hiss. “And I didn’t ask to come here.”

We’re both breathing heavily.

“What’s your problem with me anyway?” I say, the white heat filling my body. “I reckon you have everything a person could ask for. You even had my father. Why do you hate us so much?”

Delaney laughs, a hollow, bitter sound. “Are you kidding me? I never had either one of them. Not even my own mother! It was all about you. It’s always been about you! Were you alive? Were you dead? Oh, there’s another sighting. No, it’s not her. Were you hungry? Safe? Warm? Carey this, Carey that. It was always All about you.”