Last Girl Ghosted(28)

It’s not hard for Kirk to gain access to the eleventh floor—with his ID and the swagger he has about him. He seems to have a way of getting people to do what he wants, including me.

A burly, middle-aged security guard escorts us up in the elevator to a posh advertising agency—all gray and white, with large screens showing slick ads for beauty and clothing, models preening, glossed lips, shiny cascades of hair, flowing fabrics. There’s an ambient soundtrack playing that reminds me of a South Beach hotel, low, soothing electronic beats.

Everyone seems impossibly young and well-coiffed.

I twist at my hair, glance down at my distressed jeans and leather jacket, my cross-body bag. My urban warrior look. Jax calls it my bike messenger look, which sounds somewhat less cool though probably closer to the truth. But I haven’t mastered fashion the way she has. I can’t rock a muumuu on a nearly six-foot-tall frame or slip my elegantly thin form into a long black shift that clings to my perfection.

Bailey shows your picture around, but no one recognizes you, glancing up from their screens disinterested, heads shaking. I walk into the space and venture to the place where I think I saw you. People sit at silver laptops, talk into head pieces; there’s a hum of voices, ringing phones. Some stare as I walk by, a raggedy stranger in their well-heeled midst.

I find my way to an empty office. From the window, I can see the place where I just stood across the street.

What’s happening? What kind of game is this? Something comes back to me, a memory I don’t want. I push it away.

I hear Bailey’s voice; it’s measured and calm. I’m searching for a missing girl.

He enters the room and I turn to him; the security guard is still shadowing us. He has a serious face, lots of worry lines in his brow. Wedding ring. Looks like the kind of man who commutes on the train to work, lives in the outer boroughs, married, lots of kids, watches the game on Sunday. He’s getting impatient, seems suspicious now of our errand.

“What was the name of your firm again?” he asks.

“Turner and Ives,” Bailey answers. I make a mental note to research them further.

“Are you sure it was him?” asks Bailey, coming up close.

I am, but I’m not. The encounter has taken on a strange patina.

“I don’t know,” I admit.

“You don’t know what you saw, what you heard?” I see why he has the furrow in his brow; it deepens with his frown.

When I don’t answer him, he puts an arm around my shoulders, starts shepherding me toward the door. It’s an oddly manly gesture, one I’m sure some women wouldn’t like. Like he’s the strong one, and I’m the fragile waif who needs to be helped away. But there’s something about his scent, about his aura. Or maybe it’s me. I am shaken and confused. I let him move me toward the door.

“Let’s go,” he says. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“That’s the second time I’ve heard that today,” I answer.

He frowns at me again, but there’s a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. His gaze is as clear and green as a river, rushing over me, through me. We leave with no answers, no closer to you, only more questions.



fourteen


Then


Rewilding.

That was my father’s word and what he wanted for us, why he moved us out into the middle of nowhere. He wanted us to disconnect from the toxic modern world, and return to nature where we belonged.

After Jay showed me the tree house, he went back to ignoring me. So while my mother tried to get us settled, cleaning, stocking the kitchen, unpacking boxes, and my father, Jay at his side, worked on repairs, I lay on the stiff bed in the unfamiliar room and quietly wept—missing my life back home, my friends who I had no way to contact, even my school.

When the tears dried up, I explored the house. The master bedroom, which now belonged to my parents, had been my grandparents’ room. There was a big brass bed, and a rocking chair beside a window with a view of the trees. Jay had the room that belonged to my father. Old model airplanes hung from the ceiling, some football trophies on a shelf. In the desk drawer, I found a picture of someone who looked like Jay standing on the porch, looking smart in a suit, his arm around a pretty girl in a flowered dress.

“Who’s this?” I asked my mother, bringing it to her.

“That’s your father,” she said with smile. “Wasn’t he gorgeous?”

I couldn’t reconcile that boy—carefree, smiling—with the man he was now. It seemed impossible.

There were lots of pictures, albums stored in a chest in the living room. My father pored over them, sharing stories about his childhood, people long passed. But I didn’t really listen. And the people in the pictures looked pinched and joyless, hardened by life and circumstance. They looked like the kind of people who would yell at you if you made too much noise.

Then I discovered the study, a room with just a desk, a big chair, and shelves and shelves of dusty books. Books about trees, about flowers. Volumes about birds, and local fauna. There were guides on tracking, hunting, storing and preparing food. There was a big book about guns, about bomb making, about survival. Bush Craft 101. The Survival Medicine Handbook. When the Grid Goes Down.

Sitting in the creaking chair, I disappeared into Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Yeats, Thoreau. And, of course, Rilke. I was a gifted reader. Even if some of the concepts eluded me, the words resonated.