Extraordinary October. Diana Wagman
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I started it up.
I’d been outside of Luisa’s house only once—when she and Jeb took me home from that party and Jeb had dropped her off first. I hoped I could find it again. She didn’t live near by. My particular housing development wasn’t big, but East Los Angeles with all the neighborhoods that fed into my high school was huge. I wound this way and that, made some wrong turns and had to turn around. The streets were empty. There were fewer houses, more businesses. They say no one walks in LA. but it’s a big city, you usually see someone around. That night I didn’t see another soul, not outside a bar or in the all night market. When I finally pulled up in front of her house, it was after midnight. The house was set back from the street with a white picket fence all around. It had a front porch and looked about the same as other houses in the neighborhood. Drooping over the porch rail was a dirty pink sweater that had obviously been there a long time.
I turned the car off and sat. Was I really going to knock on the door in the middle of the night? What would I say? I woke you up because Luisa left her Frisbee in front of my house? But Luisa had come to my aid so many times. She was the closest thing I had to a friend. Beautiful, sweet Luisa. And Jeb had really been worried.
I got out of the car and crept up the front walk. I peeked in the front window, but the curtains were closed. I’m not sure what I was looking for or what I hoped to see. It had been chilly earlier, but it had gotten strangely warm. The moon and stars were hidden behind heavy black clouds. I unzipped my hoodie for some air. Along with the odd warmth, it was perfectly still, not a breeze, not a sound. Where was the wind?
I tiptoed off the porch and around to the back of the house. It was darker in the back. I looked through a window and saw a coffee mug on the kitchen table, signs of life. I stumbled and bumped into a metal chair. It clanged loudly and I froze. I waited, but no lights came on. I was more careful as I walked down to the next window. It was raised about three inches. I peered through the glass. I made out a Brodie Smith Ultimate Frisbee poster on the wall. Had to be Luisa’s room. And then I saw a bed with someone sleeping in it.
I pushed up the window. “Luisa! It’s me.”
The body moved, turned over, sat up.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “Jeb is worried about you.”
The body stepped over to the window and I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Oh oh! Sorry!”
“October, is that you?”
It was Luisa’s mom. “Hi, Mrs. Flores,” I said.
“Come to the back door.”
She met me there. She had been crying. She looked horrible and I knew Luisa really was gone. I started crying and she opened her arms and I fell into them.
“What happened?” I managed. “Where is she?”
She pushed me back, held onto my shoulders with both hands and looked into my eyes. She was a pretty woman usually, but her face was as pale as the nightgown she wore and everything was sagging, her eyes, her mouth, her shoulders.
“We don’t know,” she said. Then she actually shook me. “Unless you know something. October, do you know where she is?”
“No, no, I don’t.” I pulled myself out of her grasp. “Jeb came by my house. He found, we found, her Frisbee.”
She sat down at the kitchen table. She rested her head in her hands. “I knew this would happen one day.”
“You mean her dad coming to get her?”
“One day,” she said it almost to herself. “What could we do?” She looked up at me and her eyes were hard and squinty—as if she was angry with me. “It was a mistake coming here. I should have said no, but Luisa wanted it so badly.”
“They’ll find her,” I said. “The police are good at finding deadbeat dads. Even if he took her back to Mexico.”
“You have no idea,” she said. “Oh October.” She gave me a small, bitter smile. “You are really clueless, aren’t you?” She looked me up and down. “And why? For what?” Then she put her head down on the table and cried.
I didn’t know what she was talking about. I had the creeps as I walked back through the yard to my car. A breeze rattled the palm fronds and I jumped.
“This is all your fault.” A woman’s voice, as clear as my own, whispered in my ear. I spun. There was no one behind me. There was no one anywhere. I was all alone standing by my car. It wasn’t Luisa’s mom’s voice. It wasn’t mine. It had to be my imagination. It had to be.
I was exhausted the next morning. I’d been frightened driving home and then running up my front walk and even inside my house. I checked under my bed and, after arming myself with my ancient red Elmo flashlight, looked inside the closet. I thought I was too old to be afraid of the dark, but that night all the terrors of my childhood came flooding back. Monsters, witches, vampires, and psycho murderers. I put a chair in front of the closet door and I kept the flashlight in bed beside me. Where was Luisa, my brain went round and round, where could she be and how could it be my fault? It wasn’t. It wasn’t. That voice was just my imagination saying the worst thing possible. The same too big imagination that pretended I could understand crows and cactus wrens and fireflies. I finally fell asleep just as the sun was coming up, a solid, heavy sleep without dreams. My alarm went off an hour later and I woke up stiff, my eyes puffy and my mouth dry. I wasn’t itching, but the bruise on my ankle had blossomed into a stylized kind of flower. I must have been scratching in my sleep because the red lines were dark blue like bruises and radiated from the flower shape, circling my calf. I definitely needed to wear my jeans to cover it up. Not that I ever wore skirts.
When I plodded into the kitchen, Dad was making his favorite banana pancakes. It seemed he was back to his old, chipper self.
“Morning. You look like you could use another couple of hours.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I can nap in English.”
“Don’t get cocky, Miss College Co-ed. English is still important. If you’re going to sleep, do it in Biology.”
He laughed, of course, but for once I didn’t, and he looked at me with concern.
“What’s up, Pumpkin? Bad dreams?”
“Luisa’s missing.” I blurted it out. “Even Jed doesn’t know where she is.”
My dad swayed as if someone had hit him. He held onto the counter.
“What? Are you okay?”
He turned to me, and his smile was big and fake. “They’ll find her. Not your problem. Don’t worry.”
But his eyes were saying something different. He looked worried. And scared.
“What’s going on with you?” I asked.
He put a pancake on a plate and handed it to me. He sounded like himself when he laughed. “You know what they say: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” He looked at me and waited.
“All day,” I responded. It was our standard joke—something I had said when I was a little kid and tried to justify eating banana pancakes at every meal—but again I didn’t laugh. I wasn’t even hungry. “Where’s Mom?”
“She left early. Said she had another conference.”
“What? She has to get back in time for my birthday.”
“Two more days.” Dad studied me for a moment. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine. Fine. Just tired.”
“Sit down. Eat your breakfast. I’ll drive you to school.”
“Okay, thanks.” Getting a ride sounded great.
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