My parents weren’t divorced yet, but my dad had moved to a ratty apartment building and spent all his free time searching for Jenny.
By now she would have been away at college. Probably getting straight As.
The night Jenny disappeared from Island Tan, my mom kept calling her cell after she didn’t come home, but my sister didn’t pick up. My dad’s the one who drove out there and found the place unlocked, all lit up, her car parked in front. Both the bank deposit and Jenny were gone. Later, the police checked the security footage from the bank, but the ATM camera didn’t reach far enough to show what happened to her. To show who had taken her, or if she had left with someone else.
Our whole life turned upside down. Home became where the craziness was. For weeks, our house was full of people. Cops, neighbors, my parents’ friends, reporters.
At first having cops at our house made me feel safe. But it wasn’t long before I got tired of them answering our landline, drinking out of our coffee cups, and never, ever leaving. I couldn’t walk around in my boxers anymore, because I might run into a police officer or even a reporter. Once I wandered out into the living room in my pajama bottoms and my parents were on the couch, lit up by bright lights on black metal stands, doing an interview for the evening news.
Just like with the cops, initially it was kind of cool, having people I’d only ever seen on TV in my house. They acted like they just wanted to help. They were friendly. Sympathetic. But as time went on, the reporters asked awful questions, like did I think Jenny was being sexually abused. Or they ran stories that turned out way different than I’d thought. I learned there was no such thing as “off the record.” Eventually I figured out that their real priority wasn’t finding my sister, but getting people to watch their shows.
After the first week came and went with no Jenny, my parents told me things had to get back to normal. That I had to go back to school. But things there weren’t back to normal either. Some kids acted like having a missing sister was contagious. And some acted like I was a celebrity. They even asked for my autograph.
At home, I felt like a ghost. You would have thought my parents would have been all over me, putting tracking software on my phone, insisting that I call them whenever I went someplace new. Instead, they barely seemed to notice me. After Jenny disappeared, I started eating dinner at Ian’s house and slept there most nights. Eventually, it was Ian’s parents who started getting uncomfortable with how much time I spent there, who started encouraging me to go home.
Instead, I just found other people to hang out with. All I wanted to do was drink beer and not talk about Jenny. When I was with my friends, it was easier not to think. Not to think about all the times I had yelled at Jenny, told her to get out of my room, out of my face, out of my life.
And then all of a sudden, she was.
The possession of anything begins in the mind.
—BRUCE LEE
SAVANNAH TAYLOR
Outside, the dog was still barking furiously. Trembling, I surveyed the living/dining area. In addition to the couch, it also held two swivel chairs, one of which faced a built-in table with a fixed bench on the other side. At the back, a floor-to-ceiling curtain hid what was presumably the driving area. Everything was made of polyester and plastic in the exact same strange shade of flat brown.
On the table sat a few magazines and books, as well as an old-fashioned silver boom box, with a half dozen CDs and cassette tapes stacked next to it. In my rush to get out, I hadn’t noticed the heaps of plastic boxes and bags mounded along the walls. They made the small space feel even more cramped.
I tried to take slow, deep breaths, like Sifu had taught us in kung fu, but they didn’t go very far.
Jenny stood with her arms wrapped around herself. “You just better hope that Sir doesn’t get mad and come back with the Taser.”
“To use on us or the dog?”
She raised an eyebrow. “What do you think?” Outside, the dog’s barks were gradually slowing down.
I thought back to what had happened in the upper parking lot. “Before he took me, all of a sudden, it felt like all my muscles tightened up, and I fell over. Is that what happened?”
Jenny nodded. “It shoots out these two darts. If both of them hit you, it makes a circuit that sends electricity through you. That messes up your muscles and nerves so you can’t even stand. But he can also press the end of it against you for a direct shock. That way doesn’t lock up your muscles—it just hurts like hell. Even more than being hit by the darts. And the longer he holds it against you, the worse it is.” Wincing, she rubbed her neck. “You don’t ever want to make him mad.”
“He must have used those darts on me. I got knocked out when I fell down.”
“That’s why he wanted you to rest. He said you might have a concussion from hitting your head. But being conscious when he does it is not really an improvement. You can’t move, you can’t think.”
She was clearly speaking from experience. With every word, it felt more and more like I was suffocating, like the walls of this tiny room were closing in. The air smelled of mold and dust, oil and cigarettes. It smelled like the man who had taken me.
But did it also smell like Tim?
“What’s this guy’s real name? Is it Tim? Tim Hixon?”
Jenny shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know. He doesn’t let me call him anything but Sir. And you’d better always call him Sir, or he’ll tase you too.”
“What does he look like?”
“Blue eyes. Balding. Bigger than me. Older. Maybe forty?”
Every word she said fit Tim. But my excitement dissipated even before it built. Because it was also kind of a generic description. If a guy shaved his head, you wouldn’t even know what color his hair was. And how many guys had blue eyes and were over forty?
The description also fit Mr. Tae Kwan Do, the guy from class who thought he didn’t deserve to be last in line. I didn’t know much about him, other than his moods ranged from annoyed to angry, and that he punched way too hard whenever we sparred. Had he watched me leave, night after night, and then decided the upper lot would be a perfect place to take me?
But Mr. Tae Kwan Do and Tim weren’t the only men I knew who resembled Jenny’s description. A couple of teachers at Wilson looked like that, as well as probably half a dozen random guys I crossed paths with each week. And what about Mr. Fryer, the dad whose five-year-old twins I babysat every couple of weeks? When he paid me, he always stood too close, and when he drove me home, he asked questions that made me uncomfortable. Once he had even asked if I had a boyfriend, which seemed a weird question for a married forty-year-old guy to ask a sixteen-year-old girl.
“I’m just trying to figure out if I know him. He came up on me from behind. I never saw his face, and I only heard him swear. Is there anything else distinctive about him? Is he overweight or skinny, or does he have a scar or tattoos?”
“He’s the kind of guy you wouldn’t look at twice.” Jenny’s laugh sounded rusty. “You certainly wouldn’t look at him and think he liked to kidnap girls and hold them hostage in motor homes.” She pressed her ruined lips together and then said, “So who’s Tim?”