I don’t hold it against Maggie that twenty-four hours after Odette disappeared, I was sitting in a social worker’s office, getting slotted for a place that specialized in bullies and fish sticks and spider carcasses.
I made three good decisions that day—all based on what I thought Odette would want me to do.
I checked the box for perfect eyesight.
I started talking.
I told the social worker I was afraid of my father.
The social worker didn’t stick me in witness protection, but my new name, Angelica, is official, certified by a judge. Angelica Odette Dunn. Angelica for Angel. Odette for Odette. Dunn because I was done with my past life, was born again with my magic green eye, and because it seemed just anonymous enough that my father would have to hunt through a lot of Dunns to get to me.
For the last five years, I have outwitted him.
For the last four years, I have lived with a foster mom named Bunny who has believed in my heart and mind so much that a full-ride University of Texas scholarship is waiting for me in the fall.
For the last twenty minutes, I’ve been sitting outside the Blue House, trying to make up my mind about whether to risk all of the above.
The old lady was right. The Blue House has gone to hell. The lawn is half dirt. Two of the branches of the big oak out front are dragging the ground. Around its trunk, a giant yellow ribbon no longer makes a bow. The front door is boarded up, graffitied with We’re Blue W/O You.
All of it tugs at a deep, sad place inside me. Odette is never coming back.
It’s just the first day, and I’m already not sure what to do.
I wish Mary were here. Mary and I made a lot of tough decisions together. Mary, who is so pretty, even with a livid red scar down her cheek.
She slept in the bunk below me at the group home for 363 days. Every night, we smoked pot and she sung us to sleep with “I’ll Fly Away,” even though goddamn was her every other word in the daytime.
I took out my eye for Mary once, the only time I ever have for a friend. A boy had brushed by her on the sidewalk at the park and whispered, “Scarface.” When I wanted to hunt him down, all she could remember were his green Nike shoes. Mary was the toughest person I ever met, and I’ve never heard anyone cry like that. He ripped her soul like it was nothing. People don’t understand that words can rape.
I wanted Mary to know that I knew exactly what she felt like, that I wasn’t just another person saying Sorry for your loss. Pitying a girl for something wrong with her face is just one rung up from bullying her for it.
Mary is living on the street now. I wire my birthday money to her if I can figure out where she is. When I blow out the candles on my cake, I wish for her to stay alive until I can afford to get her to a plastic surgeon because a surgeon is one of the few things I can’t become with one eye.
If Mary were here, her heart would not be pounding like this.
She would say go ahead.
Break in.
40
The side door, with a cheap lock, is a nice surprise. It’s a pin-and-tumbler lock, my specialty. I talk to it in encouraging whispers while I work its insides and glance over my shoulder every three seconds. I encourage myself, too, just like I have since I stared at that spider carcass on the ceiling.
I recite in my head. Malala Yousafzai won the Nobel Peace Prize at seventeen. Louis Braille invented Braille at sixteen. Blind.
Strong. That’s what Odette thought I was when I was only thirteen and a half.
I am using the very same hairpins—bent and ready—that I used to break into the office at the group home to erase disciplinary files on my friends. The same kind of bobby pins, I think, that Trumanell used to put up her perfect bun.
I know almost as much about Trumanell as I do about Odette. I admire her almost as much. This is in part because I religiously follow a blogger who calls herself Trudette. She is a self-described conspiracy factualist. Her website is the most comprehensive of them all, linking to every single story and video on Odette and Trumanell, from the Times of London to Fox News to this town’s crappy weekly.
I like that I never know what to expect from Trudette’s blog. Did aliens snatch them? Were they Raptured up early? Would you like a step-by-step on how to achieve the perfect Trumanell bun?
Trudette’s clickbait keeps these cases alive. I picture her all sorts of ways. A soccer mom with a laptop. A reclusive high school kid who does this instead of shooting people. An FBI agent playing games, recording every visit I make.
That didn’t stop me from paying $15 to download a “new and exclusive” map of the town complete with cold case trivia and Google directions. That was the same day that I watched the five-year-old documentary on Trumanell for the seventh time. The same day I lied to Bunny and told her I was taking a last-minute senior trip to Mexico with some high school friends. I even bought the tiniest of pink bikinis to prove it.
Instead, I’m listening for the tiniest of clicks. The very last pin in the lock. When it drops, I feel it in my chest.
I slide through the door and shut it quickly. Musty with a hint of lemon. Death with a touch of perfume. That’s what Odette’s kitchen smells like.
My eye adjusts to the shadows. Tidy. A table. Chairs. Cuisinart coffeepot. A pistachio-colored KitchenAid mixer. Cups, saucers, and plates in glass-fronted cabinets. An old pink gas stove and a new stainless steel refrigerator.
This house watched Odette grow up. Saw her limp through its door with one leg. Still holds her crying in its walls.
I tell myself she wouldn’t mind me touching things. That she spit into the lock and guided my bobby pins. I shake a little salt into my hand. Run a finger over the smooth Formica counter, which reminds me of the one I sat on in the mobile home, swinging my legs.
I pull a glass out of the cabinet and turn on the faucet. The water runs. It tastes slightly off, familiar, just like every glass of small-town water I’ve ever swallowed. I flick on the light without thinking. I just as quickly flick it off, nervous, even though the yellow curtains with a hundred tiny pineapples are pulled shut and bright sun is on the other side.
The refrigerator is a nice blast of chilly air, clean and stocked with an open box of baking powder and a six-pack of beer called “Bridesmaids’ Tears.” One is missing. The label has a cartoon of a weeping woman holding a diamond ring and a bouquet of flowers. Tattoos of men’s names are crossed out on her shoulder. It’s a lot of detail for a beer can. I roll one across my forehead for a second, cooling off, before I put it back.
I drop into a chair and let my eyes wander—to an empty nail on the wall, to a message chalkboard with half a stick figure, to the old cookbooks crammed in the shelf under the sink.
A familiar red book catches my eye.
Betty Crocker.
My mother used that same old edition, inherited from my grandmother. She was a low-budget comfort food kind of cook—a comfort food kind of person.
Tuna Casserole with Potato Chip Topping. Hamburger Noodles. Brownies with Milk Chocolate Icing.
Get Betty, she’d say, when I was sick or sad or happy.
It almost felt like somebody died when I learned Betty Crocker didn’t exist—that she was just a pleasant dream pulled together by a marketer. The death of Santa Claus was easier to take.
I’d sit with that red book on the gold Formica counter, thumbing through all the penciled notes, sometimes in my mom’s crazy scrawl, sometimes in my grandmother’s elegant cursive: Use half as much sugar! Cook twelve minutes longer! Good for company! Montana’s favorite cake!