“Nothing. I mean, something happened, and I need advice.”
“Another episode?”
“No—nothing about that. It’s Jeremy…you know, the guy who—”
“You’ve had one human interaction in three years, I know who you’re talking about. What happened?”
“He left me a note. Outside. With my package.” I read him the note, trying not to add inflections that probably don’t exist. When I finish, there is silence—silence that stretches out so long, I find myself fidgeting.
“What do you want from me, Deanna?”
“I want you to tell me what to do! I don’t know how to handle this shit.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I—I don’t know what I want. I just need you to tell me what to do.”
“What was it like when you were with him?”
I stand, pacing the expanse between my two bedrooms. Crossing and recrossing the division of space feels like moving between my two selves—sex kitten to lonely woman. JessReilly19 to scheming murderess. I pushed against his hard chest, and then he was there, in my mouth, his tongue pressed gently against mine, and my own traitorous mouth responded, my heart rate increased, my hands moved of their own accord to his strong arms. Shoving the blade of the box cutters deep into his skin, the blood bursting from the movement, spraying gently upon my hand. I tasted him, greedy for everything; my hands roamed everywhere, grabbed at his shirt, hastily undoing the buttons. If he came back, if he came inside, I could be more prepared, could succeed in my quest for death.
“Deanna?”
I halt, trying to focus. “I’m sorry—what was the question?”
“What was it like when you were with him? How did you feel?”
“I wanted him.” On me, in me, dead beneath me.
“In what way?” Derek’s voice is so sensual, so soothing, so male. I make a decision, moving to my pink bed, and lie back on the sheets that smell of lube and latex.
“Every way. I wanted him to continue, to touch me, to run his hands up and down my body. I wanted to feel the warmth of him against my skin. I wanted his cock, hard and firm, fucking me in and out—” I stop, my fingers inside of me, my pussy soaking wet, my back arched—posing for the camera that isn’t on me. I have done it. I have slipped into the Jessica role, into my habit of graphically describing sex, the habit that my clients love, the habit that makes them hard and causes them to come. With Derek. What the fuck is wrong with me? Is any part of me left? Or have my two egos claimed it all?
There is silence on his end. Silence and breath.
“I’m sorry,” I say quickly, sitting up and trying to resume some semblance of a professional tone. “I wanted him to fuck me, but I also wanted to kill him. It was exhausting—an inner battle that, at one moment, would have the sexual side dominating, winning the war—but then I would lose control and want only to hurt him. I don’t want to go through that again.”
“Then you have your decision.”
“Kind of.”
“Kind of?”
I glance at the clock, waiting, willing the numbers to change. They behave, dutifully changing as my eyes watched. “It’s been thirty minutes. I’ll talk to you on Monday.”
“Deanna, we need to finish this—”
I hang up, pressing the “end” button longer than necessary, watching the phone dim and then go black. Then I roll, coming off the bed, and yank open my right top drawer, pulling out black leather and silver studs. Today is definitely a dominatrix day.
CHAPTER 48
CAROLYN THOMPSON
THE UTILITY BILL is due. Actually, it is overdue—by two weeks now. They owe $124.55 and can’t get another extension. Carolyn Thompson walks down the narrow hall to Annie’s room, trying to think of a solution. Henry’s disability check won’t arrive for another two weeks, and it barely covers his medication, let alone the mountain of bills. She pushes on Annie’s door, and the thin wood slides open soundlessly. Annie’s bed is empty, the light from the window filling the room with bright sunshine.
“Annie…” Walking forward, she speaks quietly, not wanting to wake her husband, asleep in the next room. She picks up a discarded sock and the remnants of a popped balloon off the floor, moving to the clothes hamper and then the trash. Always something. Never enough time or enough money. “Annie, I don’t have time for this. We’ve got to get you ready for school.” She returns to the hall, moves to the bathroom and opens the door, looks behind the shower curtain. “Annie!” Irritated, she gives up the attempt to be quiet, too short on time. “Annie! Come out, I’ve got to get you dressed! I don’t have time to look for you!”
There is a noise from the back bedroom. Great. Her husband is awake. She opens the door to their bedroom. “Honey, Annie is hiding. Let me find her and get her dressed, then I’ll come and help you.” He nods from the bed, and she closes the door, then moves past the wheelchair in the hall and heads for the living room, her voice now at maximum volume. “Annie Thompson! I am not playing with you! Get out here now!”
Annie is not in the trailer, a fact easily discovered in the five minutes her mother spends searching. It is one of the few benefits of three people living in eight hundred square feet. She moves outside, her stride purposeful, the utility bill forgotten. She is not yet worried.
Henry Thompson sits upright in bed, cursing his useless legs. He heard Carolyn search the home, heard her calls to Annie, saw her come in the bedroom and search the small space, hoping that she hid under their bed or in their closet. Now she is outside, her calls increasing in volume and frequency. Something is wrong. Carolyn might not yet realize it, but something is definitely wrong. Annie wouldn’t do this to them. She wouldn’t bring worry to Carolyn, a woman who already carried too much stress. He lifts his legs, sliding his body to the edge of the bed, and reaches out for the nightstand with his hand.
Carolyn stands in Georgia dirt, cotton fields surrounding her—the plants small, in early stages of growth, too short and puny to hide a child. And she realizes, as sun warms her back and gentle wind rustles empty fields, Annie is gone.
He feels her despair, feels the moment that she comes to the same realization he does. He hears her inner wail before it leaves her lips. And in that moment, that breakage, when Carolyn sinks to her knees in the Georgia clay, his hand slips and his body tumbles to the ground, legs helpless to catch him.
Somewhere, in darkness, Annie begins to cry.
CHAPTER 49
HAP0972 IS IN love with me, or rather JessReilly19. His real name is Paul. Paul Something-or-other that is long and complicated. He lives in Alaska and works on an oil pipeline there. Either oil pipeline workers get paid really well or he uses 80 percent of his income on me. I hope it’s the first possibility.
Paul is one of those nice guys destined for heartbreak—too nice to be sexy. We chat for at least an hour a day. Typically, he doesn’t even watch me; he just logs into my site, starts the clock, and then wanders around his house, talking to me on his cell. It’s the easiest part of my day.
I get heartburn about it sometimes. I feel like I’m stealing from him. But I know if I left him, if I refused to chat, he would find another cammer—one who might accept the gifts he always tries to push on me, the money he always offers to send. That’s how I justify it in my mind. I know he used to chat with a cammer named Brooke. He mentions her sometimes; I think he still has feelings for her. Two years ago, he logged online for a preset appointment, pulled up her website, and she was gone. He looked for her for four months, signing up at every camgirl website he could find, searching through millions of profiles, desperate to find her. And that was how he found me. And now I am his new Brooke, and he is terrified that one day I will disappear.
He seems lonely in Alaska. The pictures he sends me are of whiteness: white snow, his white dog, a polar bear that lumbered by his home one day. Out of the hundreds of photos that he has e-mailed me, I have gotten very few pictures of him. Two, to be exact. Both
of them were photos that hide his looks. In one, he has a hooded jacket with thick fur around the edges, pulled tightly closed, only his eyes and part of his nose visible. I think he is part Eskimo—from what I can see, he has dark skin. Someone else took the second photo I received. It was taken in a blizzard, a faint outline of a person, barely perceptible behind a wall of white flurries. Maybe he is deformed. Or maybe he is a Paul Walker shoo-in who worries that I will love him only for his stunning good looks. Whatever he looks like, he is nice, too nice. Too nice for me to love him back. Which is good for him. Lowers his risk of death significantly.
We talk about everything, and I lie about everything. The bad thing about Paul is that he wants to know everything about me, everything about my day. Keeping up the facade to that degree is exhausting. And he doesn’t just ask questions; he really listens to and digests my answers. I have a calendar I keep just for Paul. It is one of those big desktop types, and I have it propped up to where I can see it from my fake bed. On it I have my fake class schedule, my fake professors’ names, and any fake events that I have mentioned on our calls. I am very creative when it comes to my daily activities. Sometimes I have to curb that creativity—too much detail breeds suspicion.
Paul likes to read. He has gifted at least twelve books to my Amazon account. They are all stacked beside my bed, and I am really, really trying to get through the first one, The Alchemist. I’ve been trying to read it for six months now but just can’t get into it. I should probably give up on it and move to the next book in the stack. But Paul is patient. He doesn’t rush my reading; he just keeps ordering me more damn books.
His dog is named Whitehorse. It’s the weirdest dog name I’ve ever heard. I told him that and he laughed. Whitehorse is pregnant, and Paul wants to send me one of the pups. I’d love to have a dog. I need something to comfort me sometimes. I know I’m twenty-one, but at times I get homesick. Not homesick in that I wish I were at my childhood home, but homesick in that I want to crawl into someone’s arms and have them comfort me. I want them to rub my back and tell me that everything is going to be okay. You don’t realize how much you miss human interaction until it is removed from your life. Simple touches go a long way toward providing comfort.
I’ve tried to get a dog online but haven’t found a way to make that happen yet. You can order dogs through the Internet and have them shipped to you, but you always have to pick them up at the airport. I could find one through Craigslist and have the person leave it tied up in the hall, but that sounds sketchy even to me. Besides, a dog needs to be walked, and that’s impossible for me. And I hate cats.
Paul would bring me the puppy. All I’d have to do is ask and he would move heaven and earth to force Whitehorse’s delivery, scoop up the puppy, and hop on the first flight to bring it here. Like I said, Paul is too nice. Too helpful, too sweet, too good, to be anywhere within a five-state radius of me.
CHAPTER 50
CAROLYN THOMPSON
POLICE TYPICALLY WAIT twenty-four hours before a child is considered missing, an archaic rule that has led to countless unnecessary deaths. That rule doesn’t exist in Bulloch County. In a town with two deputies and one desk clerk, where everyone knows everyone, Annie’s disappearance was instantly and immediately taken seriously.
Carolyn and Henry Thompson sit in the small office that makes up half of the Brooklet police station—she in a metal chair, he in his wheelchair. Across from them is Deputy John Watkins, a man who went to high school with Henry, sat in church next to Carolyn, and held Annie’s hand as she crossed Brooklet’s Main Street. His face is long, the lines enhanced by years of tobacco use and sun, aged even further by the morning’s events.
Carolyn had called their station at seven thirty-five a.m., speaking with Maribel, the department’s secretary. Maribel had radioed John, who had been across the street at the Old Post Office Café, having coffee with Hank, the department’s other deputy. Hank is now sweeping the Thompsons’ house, along with a few uniforms from the sheriff’s department. The radio on John’s desk, set to channel 8, kept them abreast of their findings—which have been absolutely nothing. There was no sign of forced entry, no sign of foul play, no blood, no strange items, and no tire tracks or witnesses. The window leading to Annie’s room is too small for anyone to fit through, and the flimsy desk beneath it shows no signs of being disturbed. She either vanished into thin air or got out of bed and just walked right out.
“I am certain I locked the front door when we went to bed last night.” Carolyn’s voice is steely, though her face looks as if it will crack at any moment.
“Carolyn often worries about the door,” Henry says. “She’ll usually get up and check it. She worries, you know, about us living out there all alone.” With a defenseless husband. The thought hangs, unspoken, in the air.
“You think Annie could have walked to the Bakers?” John leans back, looking at the couple over the pen in his mouth.
“Annie could have walked to town if she wanted to. You know that girl—she’s got enough determination to accomplish whatever she puts her mind to.” His raspy voice wobbles slightly but remains fierce in his pride. “But she is terrified of the dark. She wouldn’t have left the house in the middle of the night to walk down that dark road. And Carolyn checked her shoes; they’re all at the house. So she was barefoot.”
John nods, understanding the unspoken thought process. “I’m going to call the Feds. Have them go through the process of issuing an AMBER Alert. Can’t be too cautious.”
Carolyn stands, gripping her husband’s shoulder. “I’m going to call the store. Let them know I’m not coming in.” He nods, looking up at her, their tight eyes meeting.
“She’s gonna be okay, Carolyn,” he whispers. “I promise you, she’s gonna be okay.”
She blinks rapidly, smoothing down her dress. “I’m gonna call the store.”
CHAPTER 51
IT’S BEEN SO long since I’ve lived a normal life that I don’t know if I could do it again. If all of my dark fantasies—poof!—went away, could I function in normal society? I say that I want a normal life, but everything now is just the way I like it. I eat when I want and how I want, assuming that I want to eat nuked chicken pasta primavera the rest of my life. I have my own space, nine hundred square feet without the annoying trappings of another person, their shoes on my floor, their body in my bed. I have friends, of sorts, ones who are willing to pay top dollar for my attentions, ones who hang on my every word and will rearrange their day to spend time with me. Plus, there’s Jeremy. He likes me because I am an oddity, a mystery. And the five-foot-eight body of perfect proportions can’t hurt. But would he even want me if I was a normal girl? The kind who visited the mall on Saturday afternoons, giggled on the phone with friends? The kind he could live with, be with, know enough to find out there is no mystery at all? It doesn’t make sense for him to like me for me. Not when me is a twisted, sick individual. So it must be the mysteriousness that attracts him. If I was able to return to normal life, to go to parties, and movies, and take trips and interact with people…I might gain all that only to lose him in my normality.
I am content, in these four walls, without normality. Lonely? Yes. Miserable? At times. But that is what being content is. Comfortable enough with the situation not to prompt change.
Thinking about a return to society is as dangerous as holding on to that scrapbook. Hope, in general, is dangerous. Hope can be the loose thread that pulls apart your sanity.
The AMBER Alert is issued on Monday at 9:14 a.m. The notification is sent instantly to all broadcasters and state transportation officials. It interrupts all regular television and radio programming. The message is displayed instantly on highway signage in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and South Carolina. In that single minute, more than eighty thousand text messages are sent out with the alert, and banner ads pop up on Internet sites everywhere.
I cam, unaware, for five hours. At 2:21 p.m. I sit on the floor, lean against my door, and
pull up my e-mail as I peel back the top of a Savory Chicken with Wild Rice meal. I am midchew when the sidebar headline catches my eye and I click on the link, opening the alert.
Annie Cordele Thompson
AMBER Alert: Georgia
Last updated: Monday, April 23 09:14:08
An AMBER Alert has been issued in Georgia for 6-year-old Annie Cordele Thompson. Officers say Annie was last seen when she was put to bed at approximately 8:15 p.m. Sunday night. Annie is approximately 37 inches tall, with blond hair and blue eyes. Investigators have no leads at this time, but expect her to be in the vicinity of Savannah, Georgia. We need your help in finding Annie.
There is a toll-free number listed at the bottom of the e-mail, along with a plea to call if you have any information regarding her whereabouts. I stare at the screen for a long time. Then I reach for my cell and dial the number.
It rings five times before someone answers—a man, his voice clipped and unfriendly.
“I’m calling about Annie Thompson.”
“Yes. Please state your name.”
I hesitate. “Jessica Reilly.”
“And the number you are calling from?”
I give it to him, certain it is showing up on his screen already. My stomach feels sick, tight. This is a bad idea, a threat to my bubble, my carefully cut ties.
“What is your information?” The man’s voice is cold, expressionless.
“You need to look at Ralph Atkins. He is a plumber that lives in Brooklet, Georgia.”
“What is his relationship to Annie?”
“I don’t know that he has a relationship to her.”
“What is the connection between them?”