We Run the Tides(55)

She writes something down, underlines it, and quickly flips the page of her notebook.

“Well, he took us to this place,” Maria Fabiola says. “He made us look at horoscopes in old newspapers. The papers were from the Russian River. And he made us eat canned rabbit food.”

“Canned rabbit food?” Shelley Stine says.

“Well, it was canned lettuce,” Maria Fabiola says. “Like for rabbits.”

Shelly Stine has stopped writing. She turns to me. I’m instantly covered in flop sweat. I can’t keep up with whatever Maria Fabiola’s doing. “What did the man look like, Eulabee?” she asks.

“Long beard,” I say, and then stare at a swirling crack near the ceiling.

“He always wore the same tie-dye shirt and he didn’t have any scars,” Maria Fabiola adds. “And he had mandalas in the rooms,” she says. “And there was a weaving machine.”

“A weaving machine?” Shelley Stine asks.

“A loom,” I say. I know Maria Fabiola’s thinking of the looms we saw when we toured the California missions in third-grade social studies.

“Exactly!” Maria Fabiola says. “You saw it, too.”

“Where was this place the man in the tie-dye took you to again?” Shelley Stine asks. She flips her notebook pages back and I struggle to see what else she’s written down.

“Near Haight Street,” Maria Fabiola says, and again my body sweats all at once. She forges on, leaning toward Shelley Stine. “It was a Victorian house and he took us to the top floor.”

“Where near Haight Street?”

“Ashbury,” Maria Fabiola says.

“You know there’s also a boy that went missing from that area not very long ago,” Shelley Stine says, sitting up. “You may have seen his face on milk cartons.”

“Oh, he wasn’t there,” Maria Fabiola says.

“Were there any other girls there?” Shelley Stine asks. “Was Gentle Gordon there?”

“Why would she be there?” I ask.

Shelley Stine turns to me. “She’s been missing for a day now.”

“But Eulabee, didn’t you say you heard someone in the next room, a girl’s voice, and the tie-dye guy talking to her?” Maria Fabiola says. She looks at me, and her eyes signal to me Come on.

Instead of answering I ask Shelley Stine where Gentle was last seen.

“I’m going to leave it to the detectives to talk to you about that. I don’t think I want to say more about Gentle’s case right now.”

“Okay,” Maria Fabiola says. “Wait. Where are the detectives?”

“They’re coming by in a bit,” Shelley Stine says. “But in the meantime, I want to make sure I understand this correctly. So there was one male kidnapper and he always wore the same tie-dye shirt,” Shelley Stine asks. “What color was the shirt?”

“It was red and blue and white tie-dyed together,” Maria Fabiola says. “He was very patriotic.”

“I see,” Shelley Stine says, writing nothing down. The sweat I’m swimming in is now cold. I feel so cold. I decide I can’t talk anymore. Shelley Stine’s eyes are giving her away. She knows we’re lying. She’s having fun now, and I know I’m expelled. Spragg will expel us both and private high schools are out of the question. I picture Ulysses S. Grant High School. I think that’s the public I’ll be sent to. It’s enormous. Thousands of kids and no uniforms. I picture Gentle there, in her bell-bottoms, leaning against a chain-link fence.

“So,” Shelley Stine continues. “What do you think was the motive for this kidnapper who always wore the same patriotic blue and red and white tie-dye shirt and served you canned lettuce in a Victorian house and made you read horoscopes from a Russian River newspaper? Why did he want to kidnap you two, do you think?”

“Well, we’re like the city’s most glamourous flowers, right?” Maria Fabiola says. “We’re hothouse flowers.”

“Like you need to be kept in a greenhouse?” Shelley Stine says.

“Oh, right,” Maria Fabiola says, “you know about this from covering gardening. It’s not just that we’re kept in greenhouses—that’s maybe not what I meant.”

“What did you mean then?” Shelley Stine asks. She suddenly looks very tired.

“We’re the city’s most meaningful flowers,” Maria Fabiola says. “We’re glamorous and intriguing to the outside world.”

“The outside world?” Shelley Stine says. “You mean, like India? France?”

“No,” Maria Fabiola says. “Like the rest of San Francisco.”

“I see,” Shelley Stine says. “Well, I better get going if I’m going to—”

“When’s your deadline?” Maria Fabiola asks.

“I’m not sure,” Shelley Stine says as she gathers her notebook and pen.

“Well, can I write out what happened to us and give it to you? My thoughts are a jumble,” Maria Fabiola says. I look at her and do a double-take: at some point she’s started outright crying. “Yesterday Eulabee and I talked and our stories were the same but now I feel so flustered by recounting it all.”

Shelley Stine rummages in her bag for tissues and offers them to Maria Fabiola. “That’d be fine,” Shelley Stine says. “You can get the story to Mr. Makepeace and he’ll get it to me, I’m sure.”