People are so gross, she wrote above a screenshot of a comment left on a Herriman High School reunion page.
Tiffany Miller? Did she graduate with us? She was in foster care or something. No parents. She never talked to no one except her pot dealer. Is that guy invited to the reunion? Haha! Not surprised no one tracked her down. She probably ODd on something, right??? Girl was always high. Hot ass tho. Hey Tiffany if you see this, message me or hit me up at the reunion!
Tiffany Miller. She’d been included on the board of missing women, but there had been no accompanying newspaper article. Even online, there was hardly anything. The girl had just vanished from the world sometime in 2000. Maybe she’d only run off from a bad situation.
Or maybe Alex Bennick knew something no one else did.
When the apartment door swung quickly open, Everett jumped, convinced for half a second that the cops were here.
“We’re doing a tour of the facilities,” his mom said. “Just call my cell if you need me.”
“Sure,” he answered, doing his best not to reach guiltily for the mouse to minimize the window. She couldn’t see the monitor from there, and she was already closing the door anyway. When he heard the office door open and both voices fade, he relaxed and started searching for Tiffany Miller online again, just in case he’d missed something the first time he’d looked. But the name was way too common. Maybe she was just one of the Tiffanys living in Minnesota or Iowa. He forced himself to look a bit more carefully just in case, studying pictures and birthdays.
When the phone in his mom’s bedroom rang, he ignored it until it stopped. Then it rang again.
On the third round of ringing, it occurred to him that it could be his mom trying to reach him. Maybe she was on the far side of the complex and needed something? Still anxious about how his own behavior could’ve caused her harm, he walked into her room. The ringing stopped. Then it started a fourth time.
Everett finally reached for the phone. “Hello?” he said, then thought better of that and tried again. “Hi, this is Neighborhood Storage.” He’d heard his mom on the phone often enough.
“Everett?” a voice asked after a long pause. Not his mom. A man, his tone deep and hushed.
“Yes?” Everett responded.
“Everett! Wow. It’s your dad.”
For a moment the words meant nothing. How could they? This wasn’t his dad, because he didn’t have a dad anymore. Then his brain ticked through a few notches of thought, and he realized it was a stupid prank call. “Yeah right,” he snapped.
“Everett, I’m serious. It’s your dad. I’ve been trying to reach you for days. Well, for months, really. How are you, little man?”
Little man.
That struck something that rang through his mind like a bell. Little man. Hadn’t his dad always called him that? The words were more solid than a memory. They were buried too deep to actually recall, but he could feel them trembling through his muscles, his bones.
And who would prank call a business line? Who would try to reach him there? “Dad?” he croaked, as the possibility expanded inside him, pressing too hard against his heart and throat.
The man laughed. Or . . . his dad laughed. “Jesus, I’ve missed you! You’re twelve now, right? You’re probably almost as tall as me!”
Everett shook his head and whispered, “Dad?” again.
“It’s really me. I’ve been hoping you would answer the phone, Ev. I wanted to hear your voice. I mean, jeez, what I really want is to see you, but that’s a bit harder to arrange.”
His eyes fluttered in blinks so rapid his vision looked like a stop-action film, so Everett turned his head away from the hard sunlight streaming past his mom’s bedroom curtains. It didn’t help. He still felt dizzy.
“My God, Son, I can’t believe I’m finally talking to you. I’ve wanted to. I’ve tried.”
“You did?”
“Every time I try to call, I think . . . Well, I don’t know. Maybe this isn’t a good idea.”
Everett’s body felt strange. Limbs heavy but also tingling and numb. His chest felt constricted, as if he were strapped down. He couldn’t think, and his throat had squeezed itself shut. He closed his eyes and heard a slow sigh in his ear.
“You probably don’t even want to talk to me.”
“No,” Everett rasped. The tight knot of his heart eased a bit, though it hurt more now, as if the lightened pressure had let pain in. “I do want to talk to you.”
“You know that means you can’t tell anyone, right? It’s a big secret for a twelve-year-old. I’m still . . . Well, I did some bad stuff, and I guess you’ve heard all about it.”
“Yeah.” His dad was on the phone, and Everett felt like all he could get out were caveman grunts. But he’d never thought about what he might say if they talked, because he never thought he’d have the chance. It seemed . . . not real. Like a dream where something weird happened and everyone carried on like it wasn’t weird. Including Everett.
“I’m sorry, little man. Though I guess you’re not so little anymore.”
Everett’s eyes started blinking again, this time to stop the burning of tears. “Dad, where are you?”
“I can’t really talk about that. But maybe you could tell me about your life. Do you like school?”
“It’s fine.” He couldn’t believe they were finally speaking and they were talking about school. He didn’t care about school. He wanted to know a hundred things about his dad. Wanted to know everything. Yet he couldn’t think of one single question.
“Play any sports?” his dad asked. “Do you still have that glove I got you?”
“Yes. I have it,” Everett said quietly. “It’s too small.”
“Maybe I can send you a new one.”
“Oh, sure.”
“Do you have a special girlfriend?”
He frowned hard at that. “No.” An engine started somewhere outside, and he jerked in shock before racing to the living room to look out the window. He heard voices somewhere around the corner. “I think my mom’s coming back,” he said, nearly panting the words.
“Okay, all right, it’s fine. Just give me your cellphone number, and I’ll call again.”
“I don’t have one.” Now he really was crying, afraid this was their last chance and they’d only talked about the dumbest stuff like school and sports and girls, of all things. “But I want to talk to you, Dad! Can you use Discord? It’s an app. We can text there. We can even do calls on it. I can—”
“I can get Discord,” his dad said quickly. “Absolutely.”
Everett gave him his username, then repeated it, just in case. “You promise?” he asked. “You’ll find me there?”
“Absolutely, little man. I won’t let you down.”
When he heard his mom’s voice outside the window, talking to someone just before the gate squeaked open, Everett couldn’t catch his breath. “She’s here,” he whispered.
“Okay, we’ll talk soon. Bye, Son.”
“Goodbye,” he stammered. “Bye, Dad.” He didn’t want to put the phone down, and he held it to his ear even as he heard the office door open. He held it there until it made a strange sound before going quiet. Then he finally sprinted to his mom’s room to put the phone back on its charger.
After tumbling back out to the living room to close all his windows and wipe his search history, Everett retreated to his bedroom, closing the door tight behind him.
His stomach ached. His throat burned. Because now he had more secrets. Bigger ones. And he couldn’t tell anyone, not even Josephine.
He changed his mind at the last moment and jumped from his bedroom to the bathroom just as he heard the knob on the apartment door turning.
Everett turned on the shower, sat down on the toilet, and cried. But they were happy tears. Mostly.
CHAPTER 15