Last Seen Leaving (7 page)

The front window was cheerfully decorated for the holiday with cutesy jack-o'-lanterns and stuffed animals dressed like mummies, witches, and vampires, all gathered around a pyramid of Old Mother Hubbard's “spookiest” toys and children's books. A bell jingled as I pushed through the door, leaving the chilly outside and entering the oddly sterile inside. The place smelled antiseptic, like a new car, and the displays of shining, pristine toys ranged around the room seemed somehow uninviting, very
look but don't touch
. There was only one other person in the store besides me, an employee, and he was probably the hottest guy I had ever seen in person.

Lanky and square-jawed, his hair a carefully arranged crown of messy black spikes, he had at least five inches on me. Veins bulged like ropes under the olive skin of his obnoxiously toned arms, and the douchey-fratty lavender polo shirt he was wearing only made his startling hazel eyes even more striking. He was just about my age, not that it meant much. Pigs can live to be like twenty or so, but put one next to a male model who's
also
twenty or so, and the accomplishment begins to look less and less impressive.

In this particular analogy, in case you hadn't figured it out, I was the pig. And the male model who was smiling at me with teeth that gleamed like a freshly whitewashed picket fence—I was sure even before I saw the letters on his official employee name tag—was Fucking Kaz.

“Hey, man, can I help you with something?” His cheekbones were sharp enough to cut glass, and for a moment I had to remind myself that I hated him.

“Yeah,” I answered curtly, “I'm looking for January.”

His smile dimmed a little. “She's not here.”

“I know that,” I returned, even more curtly. “I'm asking if you know where she is.”

His smile vanished completely. “Why would I know something like that?”

“You guys are pretty close, aren't you?” I couldn't stop it from coming out as an accusation. Everything about this guy bugged me, from his perfect face and body to his habit of inserting himself in other people's business, and I had to work to keep my temper under control. “I figured maybe she told you where she went.”

“Who are you?” he asked, crossing his arms over his annoyingly defined chest.

“Flynn.”

“Oh. The
boyfriend
.” His voice dripped with contempt, and I felt my body temperature starting to rise.

“Yeah, I'm her
boyfriend
,” I snapped, “and I'm worried about her. So if you know where she is, just tell me, okay?”

His almond-shaped eyes narrowed, and one corner of his mouth tugged upward. “If January's trying to duck you, she's got her reasons, so what makes you think I'd rat her out?”

“Maybe I'm counting on you being at least half as smart as you've been telling my girlfriend you are, and you'll figure out that I'm being fucking serious here.” I tried to stare him down, but it's hard to intimidate a guy who stands nearly half a foot taller than you.

Kaz actually laughed at me. “Get a load of you, the high school badass! You can't push your girlfriend around, so instead you come in here to push
me
around.” He spread his arms out, and I could see the edge of a tattoo peeking out from under his sleeve. “Sorry, but the Skinny Little Tough Guy act doesn't really do it for me.”

I was so surprised I just stared at him for a moment. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I'm saying that if January's avoiding you, then good for her. She should've done it a long time ago.”

His tone was filled with genuine distaste, and I just stood there, openmouthed, for what felt like about a year. Finally, I managed to reply, “You don't know dick about me! What the hell is your problem, dude?”

“My ‘problem'? How about the fact that I've spent two months listening to January complain about what a shitty boyfriend you are? About how you make her feel unattractive, how you guilt-tripped her for having to go to a different school than you, how you make fun of all her new friends—”

“
What. The hell. Are you talking about?
” The things he was saying were so absurd that, for a moment, I was sure there'd been some kind of mistake; I'd walked into the wrong toy store, found the wrong Kaz, and was discussing the wrong January.

I was forced to admit that, in retrospect, maybe my unusually strong aversion to even the PG-13-rated physical aspects of our relationship might not have had the most positive effect on January's self-esteem; but I
always
told her she was pretty, and I never once let her get away with calling herself basic or ugly or any of the other insults she hurled at her reflection. And as for making her feel bad about going to Dumas,
I
was the guy who'd held her hand for an hour while she cried, promising her that she would rule that snooty prep school like a dictator by the end of her sophomore year. The only snappy comeback that sputtered out of my mouth now, however, was, “I've never even met her ‘friends' at Dumas—how could I possibly make fun of them?”

“I don't know, but I guess you found a way. She said you called them all ‘spoiled, rich brats with disposable ponies' or something.” Kaz glared at me. “Do you have any idea how that made her feel? Like she couldn't make any new friends because you'd hate them and think she was a sellout! You've got a chip on your shoulder about rich kids, and she
is
one now. It made her feel like absolute shit!”

I blinked in astonishment, the attack on my character landing like a barrage of grenades as I recalled the only exchange to which Kaz could possibly be referring.

“You have no idea what these bitches are like, Flynn,” January had huffed incredulously after her first day at Dumas. She'd texted me during every break throughout the afternoon, giving me a progress report on her growing hatred for her new school and everyone in it, jokingly threatening to kill herself in increasingly elaborate ways to get out of having to go to her next class. Mimicking a blue-blooded accent, she whined, “‘Mummy bought me the Lambo in eggshell instead of cream, like, why is she trying to ruin my life? I am totally gonna go Menendez on her!'”

Laughing, I'd echoed her accent, replying with, “‘Pa
paw
, my pony got dirty and I had to get rid of it—I need a new one!'”

How had that gotten twisted into me making January feel bad by deriding her so-called new friends? I'd been
commiserating
with her, for fuck's sake!

“Look, not that my relationship with January is at all your business, but I didn't do any of those things you said!” I seethed. “And if you've talked her into believing I did, then you're an even bigger asshole than I thought!”

“
I'm
the asshole?” It was Kaz's turn to be incredulous, his impossibly long black eyelashes fluttering dramatically.

“Yeah! Telling her she should break up with me because we weren't going to the same school anymore, telling her she should be dating an ‘older' guy—like
that
isn't a fucking obvious douche move—and telling her that I probably have a
tiny dick
? Yeah! You're the asshole!”

To my satisfaction, that little counteroffensive took some of the wind out of his sails. Kaz's eyes widened and his lips parted just a little, his expression morphing from scorn into something like surprise. “Hey, look, I—”

“You know what? I don't even care. January already broke up with me, so I guess you got what you wanted. If she honestly thinks I was a shitty boyfriend all this time, and she's trying to punish me by disappearing, well, you can tell her she's succeeded and she can stop it.” I was so worked up I was almost tripping over my words, seeing Kaz through a red haze of anger, and I could feel my throat tightening.
Great
. That's what I really needed: to start crying in front of Fucking Kaz. “And while you're at it, remind her that she's punishing a bunch of people who don't deserve it, too. Her parents are worried,
my
parents are worried, Tiana is completely freaking out, and now the police are involved, so wheth—”

“Waitwaitwait,” Kaz interrupted, throwing his hands up, his eyes wide. “What do you mean ‘the police'? What are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about the fact that January has been missing for three days and we've all been shitting our pants!” Swinging around to march out, to exit on a strong note, I snapped over my shoulder, “She's made her point, okay? And so have you. I hope you guys are real happy together.”

It wasn't a very sincere wish. I actually kind of hoped that at the very least, Kaz got mowed down by a fire truck. I was halfway to the door before I felt his hand on my upper arm. “Wait a minute!” he implored, and this time he looked genuinely stunned. “What do you mean she's missing?”

“I mean she didn't come home from school on Tuesday and no one knows where she is.” I gave him a pointed look. “At least, no one who's said anything.”

He stepped back. “You think
I
know something?”

“Don't you?” I challenged bitterly. “You're her big confidant, the one giving her tons of relationship advice and apparently making her think that disappearing to get away from me was something she should've done ‘a long time ago.'”

“I didn't—” He checked himself. “That's not what I meant by that.”

He looked shaken, and even though his alarm didn't seem to be an act, I was feeling vengeful and didn't want to believe in it. “She's still a minor, you know, and if you're helping her hide, that's, like, aiding and abetting or something.”

“I'm not,” he said, quickly and convincingly. “I don't know where she is, man, I swear. I don't know anything about this!”

He looked me straight in the eye when he said it, and so help me, I believed him. Just like that, another crack spread across the already fragmenting surface of my hope that January was okay somewhere. I hadn't wanted to find out she was shacking up with Kaz, but I also realized that in a perverse way, I'd kind of been hoping for it, too. It would have meant that she was technically safe, it would have meant that the mystery was officially over, and it would have meant I was entitled to a little righteous anger rather than just confusion and guilt and fear.

“She didn't tell you she was planning to run away or anything?” I asked.

Kaz shook his head emphatically. “Is that what they think happened?”

I shrugged, my gaze dropping to the shallow vee of his polo shirt's open collar, to the little U-shaped dip where his collarbones met. His earnest concern was making me feel awkward; I wasn't ready to be nice yet, to have a serious and sympathetic conversation with him about January's disappearance. “They don't know. She didn't leave a note, or anything. I thought maybe … Did she call in today?”

It occurred to me for the first time, right then, that if January had planned her disappearance in advance—and intended to come back—she might have requested the time off from work so that her position would be waiting for her when she returned. Of course, she didn't need the money anymore, now that she was rich; gone were the days when Tammy couldn't afford to buy January anything that wasn't on clearance. But that wasn't the point. When she'd been forcibly enrolled in Dumas, her parents had pressured her to quit Old Mother Hubbard's so she could focus exclusively on her studies, and January had flatly refused.

“I'm not going to let Jonathan Walker fucking own me!” she'd shouted at me once, after I'd foolishly asked why she
didn't
just quit and enjoy not having to work, like anyone else in her position would do. “Don't you get it? He already owns my house, my phone, my
mom!
I'm not going to let him start bankrolling my clothes and my movie tickets and my fucking Taco Bell, too, and let him control every single part of my life. Maybe I have to live with him, but I don't have to live
for
him!”

Frankly, it wasn't a position I totally understood. Jonathan Walker wasn't exactly a warm and jovial father figure, but he didn't seem like one of those dead-eyed, militaristic tyrants from the after-school specials, either. The truth was, sometimes January was determined to cut off her face to spite her nose.

Kaz was shaking his head, though, still looking confused. “Well, no.”

“So … what? You didn't think that maybe there was something wrong when she just didn't show up for work today?”

“No, you don't understand,” he said, waving his hands agitatedly in the air. “She didn't call in because she didn't have to. She doesn't work here anymore, man.”

I blinked. “What?”

“She quit a few weeks ago. Called in sick one day, didn't show up the next, and when I asked, the owners said she wasn't coming back to work.” He turned his palms up to the ceiling, bewildered. “No reason, no notice—nothing. I don't know what to tell you, man. She hasn't worked here for nearly a month now.”

 

SEVEN

I WAS STILL
staring at him. Once again, nothing he was saying made any sense.
January quit her job?
It didn't compute.

I thought back to three weeks ago, Saturday, when Tiana and some of the drama kids at Riverside had organized a hayride at one of the many apple orchards in Washtenaw County. It was kind of a hokey fall tradition, but it was also kind of a
fun
hokey fall tradition. You sat on bales of gamy-smelling hay, bumping around on dirt roads in frigid air through row after identical row of trees; you picked shit-tons of apples, drank shit-tons of cider, and ate more powdered-sugar doughnuts than the human body was designed to withstand; and then you capped it all off with a bonfire where you made s'mores and sang dumb songs and somebody distributed crappy beer or wine coolers or a flask of bottom-shelf booze they managed to smuggle in under their coat, and someone barfed. It was awesome.