“Oh, well. Okay. Okay, I see. Um. You’re really the psychic?”
“I am.”
“Excuse me, but you’re so young.”
“An old soul.” I always tried to smile in a certain way when I said this. Magnanimously. Patiently. Like I believed it. “The gift runs in my family. I come from a very long line of seers. Please sit.”
His fingers left a smeared sweat mark on the chair as he pulled it out, and he lowered himself gingerly, as though sitting down signified a commitment he wasn’t sure he wanted to make. He stared into the clear plastic sphere that passed for our crystal ball—something Des had bought out of a catalogue a decade ago. From the other side of the table I watched the way it distorted his face, made his eyes huge and extraterrestrial, his mouth puckered and small. I thought of the freak show at the end of the boardwalk, of the alien corpse they claimed to have, embalmed, and yours to look at for only $7. How I had saved up to see it when I was younger, but when I peered down into its casket it was clear that it was only a doll.
“So, please tell me more about what you’re hoping to find out today.” I noticed that his nails were clean and neatly trimmed. He wore a gold wedding band on his left hand. His hair was mostly gray and receding, but he looked like he took care of himself. Like someone who swam laps at the gym and had fruit for dessert and took walks around the neighborhood after dinner. He didn’t look like someone who spent his weekends in Atlantic City, gorging himself at bottomless buffets and snapping his fingers at cocktail waitresses to bring drinks to the poker table. It was what I wanted, too—to seem like a person who didn’t fit in here.
“It’s my niece,” he said. “She’s missing. She’s my sister’s girl. I helped raise her from the time she was ten or so. My sister, you see, had some … issues. So did the girl’s father. Sherri and I—Sherri is my wife—became her legal guardians. There were some, ah, difficulties at first. She had never had any discipline, any order in her life, but things got better. She did well in school, became the star of the track team.” He paused and rubbed another bead of sweat from his temple. “She was supposed to graduate from high school this month, but she … she ran away. She left a note, and then there was one charge on her credit card from a hotel here in Atlantic City, two weeks ago. But other than that, nothing. I have no clue where she is. I know you might not be able to help me, but because she was eighteen the only thing the police can do is file a missing person’s report. I just thought at this point anything is worth a try.”
I realized that I had seen her before, the missing girl. Or at least I assumed it was the same girl—not in person, but on the posters that this uncle, I supposed, had put up all over town. Stapled to telephone poles, hung at entrances of the bus terminals in the casinos. She was thin, dark-haired, with a rhinestone stud in her nose, a small gap between her teeth—same as her uncle’s. The picture looked like it might have been taken at a party or gathering. There was a glow underneath her face, like she was leaning over a bonfire or the lit candles of a birthday cake. It had caught my eye because whoever was looking for this girl—I still couldn’t remember her name—was offering a $1,000 reward for any information that proved useful. I had daydreamed about what I could do with $1,000. How far I could travel with that kind of money. How free I would feel. I tried to picture the poster again. J. The girl’s name began with a J. Jessica? Jamie? Jane?
“So, um, anyway …” He looked around the room again, as though he might still find an excuse to leave. “I don’t know how this works. But if there’s anything you can tell me, anything about where she might be, that would be appreciated.”
This kind of thing had happened a few times before—a client looking for another person who had slipped out of their life. Usually it was a boyfriend or girlfriend, a spouse who had left in the middle of the night. But this was different. No one had ever asked for my help finding a missing girl. Other times, there was something that could keep me from feeling too sorry for those kinds of clients—they were harsh and demanding. They were brusque or otherwise they were weepy, had a quality about them that made me understand why a person would want to pry themselves from their grasp. But this man in front of me, with his apologetic smile, his nervousness, and the sadness that hung over him like an extra layer of clothing—I felt sorry for this man.
“Do you have anything of hers with you right now? It isn’t crucial, but it may be helpful.” I was making things up, of course, and it seemed like some sort of a prop might make whatever I was about to do a little easier. I didn’t want to disappoint him with the truth: what I saw was limited, out of my control. I couldn’t just call up information from the universe as easily as plugging a question into a Google search. He shifted and reached into his pocket, produced a purple bandana, and smoothed it on the table.
Julie, I remembered, from the poster. The girl’s name was Julie Zale.
“She ran plenty of races, but her best event was the four-hundred-meter. She got a scholarship to University of Maryland and everything. But then she said she didn’t want to run anymore. Wouldn’t say why. She used to wear this for all her meets. Said it was good luck.”
“And how long has Julie been missing?”
A new attention worked its way into his posture, his face. He sat up a little straighter. “I—Did I tell you her name?”
“No,” I said. “You didn’t.” Maybe he would think of the posters eventually, but for now I could tell that he was surprised. His eyes met mine over the table and I almost winced at what I saw in them now, swimming along with sorrow: hope.
“May I?” I asked, gesturing toward the bandana.
“Of course, of course. Whatever you need. And it’s been three months. That’s how long she’s been gone.” His voice broke then and I didn’t look up, but I could tell he was using his handkerchief to dab at his eyes.
I picked up the bandana and ran it through my fingers. The cotton was a little stiffer than it had looked. It felt intimate, to touch an object that someone had loved. That Julie Zale had believed in, something she thought gave her power or strength. I thought about what it would be like to be her, running in a track meet—her legs burning, lungs heaving the air in and out, people cheering as she surged past them. I wondered what it would be like to have this man for an uncle, what could make someone be so cruel as to run away from him. Maybe Julie Zale and I were alike. Maybe she knew there was something bad, something grasping and greedy about her. And maybe it made her both love and hate him, for his gentleness, for the boundless kindness that she knew she didn’t deserve. It was how I had felt about some of my teachers at school before I dropped out. Mrs. Witz, who had recommended that I skip ahead from Geometry to Precalc. Ms. Connolly, who offered to loan me workbooks for the PSAT because she knew that I couldn’t afford to buy my own.
I closed my eyes. Where did I think Julie was? I had witnessed what happens to girls who run away and wash up here, like debris dragged in by the tide. She probably didn’t look like the picture in the posters anymore: Her once-smooth skin would be rutted with acne scars. Her hair dull and stringy. The piercing in her nose red and inflamed. I pictured her on a street corner, holding out a plastic cup, begging for change. Julie crouched in an alley, her skinny body swallowed up in a stained sweatshirt. Julie with a strap around her arm, feeling for the right vein, then her head lolling back on her neck. When I opened my eyes, her uncle was leaning forward, waiting. Everything about him made me feel guilty, sad. His polo shirt wrinkled from so many hours in the car. His thin, gray hair rearranged by the wind. Out on the pier, the roller coaster cranked up on its tracks. In a moment we would hear it plunge down the first drop, the few riders’ screams.