The Wrong Family(51)

Enough is enough, she told herself. Get your chores done and crawl back into your hovel.

Or maybe that can wait, Juno thought as she spotted the family computer sitting dormant on the desk. It was the grass that made her want to do it, remembering how she’d blinked a few times, gained perspective and had seen the right thing: an inch-long blade of grass with two little drops of water balancing on its tip; something simple that her feverish brain had made ugly. You’re doing the same thing with Winnie that you did with that grass. You’re making her the enemy.

Yes, that was what she was doing. But still. She couldn’t leave without checking Winnie’s search history. Maybe that would give her some answers.

Juno scanned over the last few days of internet search history. Just a lot of normal shit like vegan recipes and celebrity gossip...and there it was. On Thursday night, Winnie had searched for a Josalyn Russel at 11:30 p.m.—hours after she usually went to bed. What she’d seen in the envelope must have left such a sour impression on Winnie’s mind that she’d lain awake for two hours before finally going to her computer. That’s what Juno imagined, anyway.

So there it was: Winnie had received Juno’s envelope in the mail, and then, when Nigel was in bed, had searched for this woman on the internet. She clicked on the link, the last website Winnie visited, and it took her to the article that Winnie had been reading.

Juno rubbed a square of her shirt between her thumb and index finger as her eyes scanned the article. She was braced for something, but she wasn’t sure what. She had always prided herself on excellent gut intuition. What she felt about people was usually right, and from the moment she’d moved in, she’d had a feeling. She read through the article twice, making sure she didn’t miss anything.

The article was about Tent City. Juno’s eyes stretched to their full capacity. She’d spent some—but not a lot—of time in Nickelsville, Seattle’s portable, self-managed tent community. Intended as a temporary answer to the lack of bed space in shelters, they got by. Their purple tents were donated by the First Methodist Church of Seattle, and a rotating security guard kept loose order. She’d been there a few weeks when a rogue band of meth-heads staged a coup and took control. In the words of her mother and Ray Charles: hit the road, Jack. She did, but her options were either finding a bench, or joining those who set up camp in wooded areas along I-5. Juno chose the latter. But why would Winnie be interested in a homeless camp?

Juno devoured the article, looking for something that could possibly be of interest to Winnie. Thousands of teenage runaways go missing every year, the article said, their families never hearing from them again.

And then Juno found it: a quote from Winnie Crouch, an employee at Illuminations for Mental Health at the time.

“There are women in these camps, very young women like you and me who are living hand to mouth, with no sanitation or access to medical help. In fact, one of the young women I work with was pregnant and living in a tent when she disappeared.”





      22


WINNIE

She lay in bed, listening to the sound of the crickets in Greenlake Park, drifting toward sleep. The trip to the cabin had been as horrible as she had anticipated—worse even. She couldn’t wait to get home. But now here she was, back in her own bed, feeling just as horrible as she had then.

Someone was working against Winnie. At first she thought she was being paranoid, which was her MO anyway—poor, paranoid Winnie. But there was no way to explain the notepad, or the library book, or the envelope that had come in the mail with those clippings inside it. Deep down, she knew she’d told Nigel only half the story, established a firm villain all those years ago—Josalyn Russel.

Josalyn Russel hadn’t left her home and family because she was a drug addict; she’d become one as a result of what they’d done to her. Josalyn had run away from home three months shy of her eighteenth birthday. She stayed under the radar for those three months, and then, when she turned eighteen, came forward to access social services. She was bipolar and in need of medication. When Winnie was assigned her case, Josalyn had been a wisp of a girl, no more than a hundred pounds. She kept earbuds in her ears at all times, her message clear: she was not offering conversation. Winnie didn’t push her, she never pushed them. She was there to be an advocate for Josalyn in a world that didn’t understand her. On her arms were delicate tattle-tale scars of years of self-harm. She was a runaway: defiant, nonverbal, and had severe trust issues. She liked junk food—Funyuns and drinks that were blue. Winnie paved an avenue for trust with snacks.

Josalyn began talking a little. First, it was about home—her parents divorced, and her mother remarried a younger man. Then one day, she told Winnie her stepfather had molested her. “His friends, too,” she’d told her, looking at the floor. “He passed me around, and when I cried, he acted like it had been my idea.”

Josalyn wanted to stay under the radar; Winnie saw genuine fear in her eyes when she spoke about her stepfather. Her family had money—a lot of it, she claimed—and they used it to get what they wanted. Winnie now understood the rainbow curtain of hair she wore around her face; she retreated behind it when she needed space. So Winnie bought her more hair dye—pink and green and blue—and they developed a mentorship. Winnie was fond of the girl, protective. She’d seen what the world did to women like Josalyn and was afraid for her.