We Run the Tides(54)

Shelley Stine not only swivels her chair in my direction, but scoots it toward me.

“Can you elaborate?” she says, her pen upright and bouncing on the pad of paper like a marathon runner waiting for the gun to go off.

“I can,” Maria Fabiola says, and Shelley Stine swivels her chair back toward her. “We have this class called Bathing Suits Your Body.”

“Excuse me,” Shelley Stine says. “Bathing Suits . . .”

“It’s a pun,” I add, “like bathing suits your body.”

She scribbles. “Puns. Good,” she says.

“Anyway,” Maria Fabiola says loudly, bringing the focus back to her. “In the class, we have to weigh in at the beginning of the week and then at the end of the week. The point is to look good in bathing suits.”

“Bikinis or one pieces?” Shelley Stine asks.

“Well, it wasn’t really specified,” Maria Fabiola says, and seems momentarily puzzled by this oversight. “But the point is to look better at the end of the week than you do at the start. We weighed ourselves at the start of the week and the numbers were written down on our instructor’s clipboard. Then we spent our days doing jumping jacks, running to the beach, and biking to a hostel in the Marin Headlands where we spent the night. At the hostel we were only allowed to eat salad while all the other kids around us had hamburgers and s’mores.”

“That’s all you were allowed?”

“Well, the instructors packed the food, right? And they just packed salad for us. They had steaks for themselves.”

“Weren’t you hungry?” Shelley Stine asks.

“So hungry!” Maria Fabiola roars. “But the whole bike ride to the hostel, they were telling us our bike seats were close to grazing our back tires! So that kind of made us feel bad about eating.”

“Who were the teachers?”

“They all happened to be male,” Maria Fabiola says. “Not Mr. Makepeace, but all the other male teachers. Every one.”

“I can’t believe it!” Shelley Stine says, seeming desperate to believe it. “Why weren’t there any female teachers?”

“They all stayed home with their families, I guess,” Maria Fabiola says.

This is not true. Ms. Livesey was on the trip with us.

“What happened at the end of the week?” Shelley Stine asks. Her pen can barely keep up with Maria Fabiola.

“Well, I mentioned that we had to get on the scale at the start of the week, right?”

Shelley Stine nods. “Yes, but I want to be clear—it was men who weighed you?”

“Yes,” Maria Fabiola says. “Then they weighed us at the end of the week. And the differences in our weight from the start to the end of the course were tabulated.”

“Like grades,” Shelley Stine says.

“Exactly,” Maria Fabiola says.

“You say it,” Shelley Stine suggests.

“Like grades,” Maria Fabiola says, and Shelley Stine writes this quote down.

I’m listening to everything Maria Fabiola is saying and I realize it’s almost accurate, and yet it sounds so different when she tells it than what we experienced. The truth was that Maria Fabiola and I ranked the Bathing Suits Your Body class as our first choice. We were the ones who wanted to lose a few pounds so that we could impress Madame Sonya. We were the ones who wanted to get in better shape for climbing the cliffs at China Beach. We wanted to spend time with Ms. Livesey because she painted at night and her son was cute. With profound clarity I realize now that Maria Fabiola has talents I will never have.

“Just checking to make sure everything’s going okay in here,” Mr. Makepeace says, sticking his head through the door.

“It’s just great!” Shelley Stine says, her smile incandescent.

“Happy to hear it,” he says.

No, you won’t be, I think.

Mr. Makepeace gives her the thumbs-up sign and closes the door. Shelley Stine’s mouth drops into a frown.

“Okay. Now I have to get into the hard part. I don’t want to re-traumatize you, but of course our readers will be interested in your disappearances.”

“Kidnappings,” Maria Fabiola corrects her.

“Okay,” she says. “Tell me what happened first.”

“It was a Thursday,” Maria Fabiola says.

“I thought it was a Wednesday,” Shelley Stine says. “December 12 was a Wednesday.”

“Oh right,” Maria Fabiola says. “I was thinking of Eulabee.”

“But she went missing on a Tuesday,” Shelley Stine says.

“Well . . .” Maria Fabiola says, and her eyes are suddenly wet. I’m certain she’s willed them to be. I am in awe. “The kidnappings were very traumatic for both of us. And the kidnapper had a thing about trying to confuse us about our dates. The place where he kept us was full of calendars, and all of them were different. Like from different years.”

“Can you elaborate on that, please?” Shelley Stine says.

Maria Fabiola nods with her whole body. “I can, Shelley. I think the kidnapper wanted to be the Zodiac Killer—he was like a Zodiac copycat—so he was very into horoscopes as you can imagine.”

Shelley Stine pauses for a moment. “Yes, I can imagine. Please go on.”