chapter 17
In a small white room that had a border of ugly yellow flowers, I swayed my feet against the doctor’s examination table, not unlike I used to when I was a little kid. Since I had refused to be examined for sexual assault, a series of doctors, some friendly, while others not so much, had subjected me to a series of brain scans, coordination exams, blood tests, x-rays, and a variety of other unnecessary procedures that were grueling and invasive. Throughout the entire process, however, I kept my mouth shut and went along with it because the only thing I could really think about was whether or not Charlie was okay and how mad he probably was at me.
I think they were checking my blood pressure for the third time when I finally said something. “Excuse me, but can I use a telephone so I can call my Dad?”
The head doctor guy looked at me as if I had asked him for an endangered animal to eat.
A nurse patted me on the arm and spoke in soft, slow sentences. “He’s already been contacted, honey. He’s on the way now.”
I mimicked her and spoke in an equally condescending tone, “Well, I would hope so. But I’m not cooperating with any of you further until I have an opportunity to speak with him myself.”
Whether they thought I was traumatized or my attitude itself was effective, none of the hospital’s staff gave me anymore problems.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Addie! Are you okay? They wouldn’t tell me anything over the phone.”
I sighed. “Yeah, Dad. Just some bumps and bruises, no worse for wear.”
“I’m on a plane right now. I’ll be there in three hours.”
“Dad, you don’t have to do that—”
“I brought you clothes and a new phone.”
“Okay, Dad. I love you.”
He was clearly surprised by my admission of affection. “You too, Addie. I-I’m glad you’re okay.”
So there I sat, every so often icing my face, which I could tell from the brief glance in the mirror, was not going to be pretty by the morning. While I was trying to be nice to all of the doctors and nurses, I was also on the brink of not sleeping for 24 hours and my patience had all but run out. So when two gentlemen and another woman entered the doctor’s office, I had all but had enough of it.
“Hello, Adeline,” said the woman. “My name is Dr. Dayton, and these are agents Brian Norton and Adam Harpsten.” She gestured to the two men. “Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?”
I was almost stupid enough to say to the copper haired man about how I recognized him from television, but I caught myself. Instead, I just said, “Addie, you can just call me Addie.”
She smiled. Her teeth seemed bleached in the bright room. Luckily, the FBI agents were less intimidating than I thought they might be. Agent Harpsten wore a dark blue suit and looked like he did on television and Agent Norton was a shorter man with a bronzed complexion and a gray suit. They both appeared tired and soft around the edges of their eyes. I wondered if they had been up as long as I had.
“You guys should sit down.” I pointed to the worn plastic chairs at the corner of the room kept for the patient’s family. “You look like you could use a break.”
Dr. Dayton made some kind of menacing mark in a notebook while Agents Norton and Harpsten looked at each other questioningly. Though it was encouraging to see Agent Harpsten smile a little when his partner looked away.
“Relax everybody.” I tried to smile. “It isn’t the end of the world.”
Or was it? If they had caught Charlie or if he was injured beyond repair, then it most certainly was the end of the world.
“Addie,” Dr. Dayton began, “can you tell us a little bit about what happened?”
So I told them about the crowded rest stop, the sounds from the parking lot, and how someone had come up from behind me and put me in the back of an SUV. And I told them about the abandoned house, leaving out Charlie and the boys…
“I was blindfolded most of the time after that,” I lied. “I don’t remember a lot…”
Agent Norton removed several items from a large envelope and placed them in front of me. “Do you recognize any of these individuals, Addie?”
It was all I could do not to let my eyes bulge from my head. Of course I recognized almost everyone. There were six photos there, all of them mug shots, but the three that stood out the most was one of Polo and an extremely young photo of Ben.
I made my eyes stay on each photo for exactly four seconds before moving on to the next.
“N-no. I’ve never seen them before.”
I was sure they didn’t believe me, but they moved on anyway. Maybe it wasn’t good etiquette to interrogate kidnapping victims within a few hours of being ‘rescued.’
Norton took out another photo. It was of Charlie that night I had first seen him. It was black and white, grainy with shadows. It must have been a piece of camera footage from the rest stop.
“Do you know who this man is, Addie?”
I pretended to study the face of the stranger, though in reality I already knew every detail, every feature. “No. Am I supposed to?”
Harpsten answered, “His name is Charles Hays, and you spoke with him a few moments before you were abducted…”
I looked at the photo a moment longer. I didn’t want them to put this one away. “Oh yeah, he umm—he asked me for the time.”
“You never saw him again after your abduction?”
I closed my eyes, rubbed my brow. “I don’t think so.”
“After you were assaulted in the house, do you remember?”
The sigh came from deep within me. I closed my eyes again and tried to breathe. This was the part I had practiced in my head while Reid drove me. When it came down to it, I implored his help because I knew he wouldn’t hesitate to be rid of me. Elise might try to convince me to stay, and one of the guys might try to force me to stay.
“Everything is kind of hazy.” I didn’t lie but I didn’t tell the truth, either. I said that I remembered being in a small room, lots of cigarette smoke, different voices talking about card playing…
Everyone made notes on their pads of paper. I marveled at the autocracy of it.
“How did you get in contact with your father?”
I also marveled at Reid’s creativity. When I reached for a suggestion he had been surprisingly helpful.
This Norton was like a puppy with a new bone. And while I needed an easy out, it wasn’t as though I was lying when I became overwhelmed. I felt the tears welling up but tried to keep them back. “Someone dropped a phone and I took it. I thought it was to prove I was alive—a ransom thing. But when they caught me with it…” I pointed to my face and gestured to the bruises there. My hand inadvertently wiped away the tears. I marveled at the wet on my fingertips. Because while I had planned to make myself cry, I had never intended to do it for real. “Listen, I don’t want to talk anymore.”
“That’s quite all right, Addie,” Dr. Dayton attempted to comfort me with lame smiles and pats on the back, yet it did me little good. I wanted—needed Charlie there. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
But Norton ignored us both. “Do you know how you got from New York to California?”
“N-not really,” I lied. I switched the ice pack to the other side of my face, hoping it would cover up any inconsistencies in my expression. “I slept a lot.”
Another part of the lie I had prepared for.
“I’m a terrible liar,” I warned Reid.
“Yeah, I got that.”
“Well, then, I’m open for suggestions—”
“Here.” He violently yanked my wrist and forced my palm open, shoving two small blue pills inside. “Take these. When they ask, just say someone spoon fed you them all day long.”
I laughed in his face. “I’m not taking these.”
“Don’t trust me?” he mocked.
I fastened my seatbelt and scowled back, “About as far as I can throw you.”
“Look! Those people are professionals, they won’t believe you if you just outright lie. They see some sleeping pills in your blood and maybe—maybe they’ll believe you don’t know anything, that you just slept all week.”
I squeezed the tablets in my hand. “And if they don’t?”
“Then I know where you live.”
Norton opened up his file and began reading off a sheet of paper. “Yes, your tox screen is positive for diphenhydramine, but the head neurologist says your head CT is clear. You don’t remember how you got three-thousand miles from home?”
If only this one knew how far from home I had really been.
“At some point I ate the food they offered me,” I sniffed. “I know it was stupid, but I didn’t want to starve to death, either. After that, a man named Wallace would give me blue pills every few hours. He said they wouldn’t hurt me, but he’d do a lot worse to me if I refused.”
I then described Wallace with every possible detail I could, right down to the angle of his hairline. I could tell Harpsten was impressed by how intricate some of my answers were. But before Norton could ask anything else, Harpsten shook his head at him and took the remainder of the files. Agent Harpsten and Norton were looking at each other as they put away the photographs. They didn’t quite have the answers they wanted but they were still somewhat satisfied.
“Thank you, Addie,” said Agent Harpsten, “you’ve been really helpful.”
By the time we got back to New Jersey, thirteen different newspapers had thirteen theories about what had happened to me and what had occurred between New York and California. Robbie had collected most of them, obnoxiously waving them in my face (which had for the most part healed), and been about as annoying as any brother could be.
“‘Kidnapping’s Happy & Mysterious Conclusion’? ‘Nabbed Teen Escaped Captors’? Can you believe this stuff?”
“Anything about alien abductions?” I asked.
“What?”
“Never mind, Robbie.” I went back to my crossword.
The days and weeks that followed my return home were long and brought the kind of dull ache that one might feel after having run on the treadmill too long. The monotony of the same place even though it felt like I never stopped moving, though I confess the days were mostly just long. It didn’t bother me that the FBI and local police were always around asking questions I kept pretending to not know the answers to, listening to our telephone conversations, and checking our mail, following us around. I had checked it off as a mere nuisance, only feeling bad that it inconvenienced Dad. It didn’t bother me that Adam Harpsten had been temporarily transferred to the Trenton office and ran weekly reports on our family so that the FBI headquarters could be prepared for any other impending threat.
Honestly, it didn’t even bother me that the media was hounding us day and night, wanting interviews and exclusives to ‘our story.’ Dad and I actually found an advantage in it, since reporters had swamped Robbie at Fort Drum so relentlessly that the ranks actually rerouted his contract until the end of the following month. So while Dad pretended to be annoyed by the pretty female reporters in the parking lot of his work, I think deep down he was exceptionally overjoyed at having both of his kids back home and safe.
The only thing that ever got to me was not having Charlie. A lot of the newspapers said that when I mysteriously showed up at a bus stop (little did they know it was of my choosing) half passed out, drugged, and a face covered in bruises, I might have been dropped off there by a sympathetic cohort of my kidnapper. Some of them were even eager to point out how the authorities could have been off base about their original theories. I guess they liked the wild potential in the fiction they could sell.
Meanwhile, I couldn’t help but be miserable about being away from Charlie. I knew I was being stupid, selfish even, in my misery, yet I couldn’t help myself. When night fell, I was reminded of his lips on mine that first time. I half hoped to see him every time I stepped out of the bathroom, his arrogant smile waiting for me. I wondered how he might sketch nearly everything…I spent my days hoping he was keeping his temper, that he wasn’t hurting anyone…mostly himself. Inside, it chewed away at me not knowing if he was injured or if he was taking care of himself. I didn’t even know what country he was in. I didn’t even know if he was alive.
Dad walked into the kitchen with a pizza and a bottle of soda. He looked worn. It was hard to deny that he had aged since my disappearance. Not knowing where I was, or if I was alive had clearly wrung his nerves raw, turning his skin ashy and his remaining dark hair gray. I felt responsible for this, since in many respects I could have avoided the entire ordeal. But at the same time, it was the only element I could truly regret. My adventure had allowed me to know and love Charlie, and that was worth any pain or inconvenience I had gone through.
“Hello there, my adoring fans. I have brought tidings of great joy!” The aroma of pepperoni filled the dining room but still couldn’t tempt my stomach. I knew Dad and Robbie had noticed I hadn’t been eating, and while I tried to smile and go through the motions for their sake, most of it made my stomach hurl.
Robbie jumped from the table. “It’s about time, Old Man. I’ll grab some paper plates.”
I started stacking up the piles of newspapers and pushing them to the side. I could feel Dad’s eyes on me, his constant worry. Although he had never come out and directly asked me about what had happened, I had assured him time and time again that I was “Okay. Fine. All right.” And I think he tried to take me at my word.
“Say, Addie,” Dad pulled out a chair beside me. “That one social worker and the psychologist from California called again. She uh—thinks maybe you should make an appointment with an associate of hers over here. You know, like talk to someone about what happened?”
I smiled. I hated the falseness of it all. “Dad, we’ve been over this. I don’t need therapy or anything. I’m okay, honest.”
He tapped his fingers on the table. He had no idea what he was doing. “It might be good for you to talk to somebody, though.”
I patted him on the hand and did my best to be reassuring. “It’s okay, Dad. I’m okay, everything is okay.”
“If you need to talk,” he said. “I’m here. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, Dad.” I took the plates from Robbie, who bounced into the room. With the onset of attention toward our family, he had several young ladies seeking his affections and it was complimenting his ego more than usual. “I know.”
Dad was anything but stupid. I could lie all I wanted but with all the extra sleeping I was doing, he suspected more than anyone that I was depressed. Sleeping had become my greatest new pastime since I was now capable of dreaming on a regular basis. I blamed it entirely on the head trauma I had endured, but I loved every fleeting second of it. And I abused the ability as frequently as I could, often coming home from class and staying awake for as long as was socially acceptable before taking a nap or going to bed for the evening altogether.
When I dreamed, I could see Charlie as plainly as any given day. While unconscious, I didn’t know that everything was unreal and I would have to wake up and go back to a reality without him—I didn’t have to acknowledge my heart was broken. Sometimes the images were fainter than others. Other times, they were incredibly detailed, like one of Charlie’s sketches, and I could make out every detail of his tattoos and feel his smile with my fingertips. There were some nights when I could only hear his laughter like something erased in the shadows, but even those nights were decent enough and I could make it through another day.
I munched on the pizza, feeling the cheese go rubbery in mouth. Life pre-Charlie, I would have consumed it happily. I looked over at Robbie, who was taking up the slack with the remainder of the slices without hesitation, shoving them in his mouth one after the other.
I made myself laugh. “Don’t they teach you any manners in the Army, Robbie?”
He dabbed at his face with a paper napkin. “I happen to be very sophisticated.”
Dad rolled his eyes but it had me thinking again about how well he and Charlie would probably get along and I felt my heart slacken. It seemed as though I genuinely couldn’t get through anything without thinking of him. I began to think that maybe it was time to put my plan of choice into action—or at the very least, begin the process.
“Hey, Dad?” I put the beaten slice back on the plate. It was clearly defeated.
“Hmm?”
I had to sound casual about this. If I appeared as desperate as I really was then he wouldn’t even bite.
“What would you think about me um—maybe going away to school next semester?” I swirled a hill of garlic salt around with my pinky finger.
Judging from the way he pulled the cheese straight away from his slice of pizza, I could guess how he felt about it.
While less than two years ago Dad would have been okay with me going away for college, with recent events he was definitely not going to agree to it without some serious convincing. Since my return home, he had become uncharacteristically overprotective, even taking a leave of absence to drive me to and from class every day, the library, or anywhere else I might have wanted to go. He even memorized my course schedule so he could call between classes to confirm I was okay and still on campus. Luckily, I had convinced him that he was driving more attention toward me than diverting it. Even Robbie had lent a hand in arguing that he was causing more harm than good. After a couple of weeks he weaned himself of the new habits and returned to work—reluctant to let me return to a new kind of normal.
“I’ve already started applications for a few schools I’m thinking about,” I began “I’ve also sent out a couple.” I mumbled the words into my glass, unsure if I really wanted him to hear them or not.
Dad coughed. I think maybe he was trying to figure out how to play this one out. This was one of those moments he was probably wishing Mom was still alive so he could tag her in and he could just sit this one out on the sidelines.
“Addie, don’t you think maybe you should wait awhile? You’re kind of going through a lot of stuff right now.”
I smiled, tried to seem confident. “Life is too short to wait around, Dad. Besides, I should take advantage of my situation and see if I can’t get a free ride somewhere.”
“She has a point, Old Man,” Robbie added. “She won’t be the flavor of the month forever.”