ALL THE RAGE (writer: T.M. Frazier)(83)
The small portable television sits on the kitchen counter, switched on to the local news, filling the kitchen with static-edged chatter. I hear the words missing girl and my ears prick up, something to take my attention away from this kitchen and the uncomfortable tension that fills it. You should be nicer to Damon, more than one person has said to me. He’s doing the right thing, taking care of you while your mother is sick. Fuck those people and their well-meaning noise. My mother isn’t sick—she’s dying. I’m seventeen years old with a dying mother and a boyfriend in prison. I’ve got nothing. And I don’t give a f*ck about being nice.
The news. It draws me in, greedy moth to overhead light. Missing Girl. Her name is Jennifer Thomas, and I go to school with her. At least, I did before she went missing. A picture of her flashes up, her smile dazzling, dressed in her cheerleading uniform. I have a matching one upstairs, though I haven’t worn it in a year. The reporter keeps talking about Jennifer, how she vanished after cheerleading practice on Friday evening, how there are no suspects. The police weren’t sure if it was a kidnapping, or a runaway teen. She’d been fighting with her parents.
“They used to put missing kids on milk cartons,” Damon says, gesturing at the television. “Now everybody’s got a TV and a cellphone.”
He’s right. I imagine everyone will be glued to their phones today, Facebook and Snapchat, sending frantic messages. Did you see Jennifer on Friday? She will be revered, her cheerleading photo plastered across town. I already know this—I’ve lived it once before, two years ago, when another girl went missing. She was a couple years older than me, and they found her body floating face-down in Gun Creek a week after she disappeared. I can’t remember her name now, in my hungover state. Karen? Carolyn?
There are so many people passing through our tiny town that her death was blamed on a passer-by; a trucker, probably. It made everyone in our town feel safer when all we had to do was watch out for the people we didn’t know. Nobody wanted to believe that one of us was capable of such a horrific crime. But now, two years later, it’s happening again.
Predictably, the reporter shifts to talking about Karen’s case—I was right, her name is Karen, Karen Brainard, seventeen years old, dead before she’d ever lived. She f*cked anything that moved, including the entire football team, and she smoked meth more days than not, but in death, she is a hero, she is tragic, she is perfection.
People will be talking about Karen Brainard today.
The report switches back to Jennifer, urging the public to call a special hotline if anyone knows anything. 1800-JENNIFER. I feel sorry for the operators. I volunteered for Karen’s hotline two years ago. I was only fifteen, but there were so many calls that they let me take a couple shifts. My mom and I answered calls, side by side, and the weird f*ckers who get off on things like missing girls astounded me back then.
“Are you looking for her?” I ask Damon. He scowls at me. “What do you think? I’m the Sheriff. Of course I’m looking for her. Whole town’s looking for her. Where have you been?”
He looks me up and down, as if reminded of my drinking. “Oh. Of course. You keep doing you, darlin’. The rest of us’ll look for your friend Jennifer.” He reaches across and snaps the dial on the TV to off, the screen going black as a familiar silence settles around us once more.
She’s not my friend, I want to say, but I don’t, biting down on the tip of my tongue instead.
I lick my chapped lips and drink more coffee.
“Do you think she’s dead?” I ask, my tone almost casual.
Damon sits across from me, eyeing my unbrushed hair and my bare cheeks.
“You look like shit,” he says, ignoring my question.
I dig my spoon into the bowl and suppress a gag. The last thing I want to eat is something full of milk and carbs. My churning stomach needs dry toast, or saltine crackers, or preferably nothing at all.
“You smell like a f*cking pine forest,” I mutter around a mouthful of frosted flakes. Damon’s aftershave situation definitely isn’t helping my stomach.
“Don’t swear at me,” he says, his eyes narrowing to slits. “It’s very unladylike.”
Getting drunk-f*cked in the middle of the night and not being able to remember is pretty unladylike, too, but I don’t mention that. My life wouldn’t be worth living if I started talking about that. I throw my spoon down after two mouthfuls and stand up, in search of coffee. The pot’s been brewed a while ago, and the treacle brown liquid inside is lukewarm at best, but it’s better than nothing. I take another mug out of the cupboard and set it down on the sink, watching a moose wander by outside as I pour my liquid crack and take a sip.
“You’re skin and bones,” Damon says, interrupting my daydreaming and moose-watching. “Finish your food.”
I sit back on my chair with great reluctance, washing cereal down with giant mouthfuls of coffee. I drink two cups of the stuff just to get through my tepid breakfast, all the while being watched carefully by Damon’s bright blue eyes.
“Thanksgiving tomorrow,” Damon says. “Did you get the turkey organised like I asked?”
I nod. I’m lying. I haven’t. I will. Damon’s a traditional guy, wants the roast turkey and all the trimmings. I’ve got no clue how to make it, but Google will help me, no doubt.
“Are we going to see mom?” I ask, probably a little too hopefully. But it’s a holiday tomorrow. School is out for the weekend. I haven’t seen my mom in over a week, and I miss her. Apart from Damon, I’m the only person who ever visits her at the hospice three counties away. I’m not allowed to go without him, and as the sheriff of Gun Creek, Damon barely has time to take off and visit a woman who probably doesn’t even know we’re there, each holding one of her hands as a machine breathes for her.