I’ve moved on to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and to searching active AMBER alerts. I even signed up to receive AMBER alerts via email, and am now being notified every time some alienated spouse tries to run off with his or her own kid. But so far, nothing. Nada.
After discovering the Twitter account @LostWithoutU linked to a W. Greer, I spent more time than I’d ever admit reading the girl’s bleak tweets, the threats of self-destruction, staring at photos she’s posted online, her arms scratched to smithereens, or so she claimed, by the sharp edge of a razor blade. Cutting. There were responses from all sorts of other hooligans, their photos of self-inflicted wounds trying to one up each other, jagged, red words chiseled into the skin: fat and pain and whore. There were challenges made in response to @LostWithoutU’s suicidal threats: Do it, and I double dog dare you.
There were more photos, too, of her various tattoos: assorted occult symbols on a shoulder and leg, some sort of butterfly with black-and-yellow wings, spread across the palm of a hand. A close up of her face and there, hidden behind gangly red hair, a pair of cross earrings much like the ones our Willow wore. A pair of angel’s wings.
Could it be a coincidence? I stare long and hard at those earrings and think: probably not.
Could our Willow Greer be the same girl, with a profile photo that is not her own? Maybe. I browse others’ profile photos: a dog, a cat, Marilyn Monroe. There’s no law that says your photo has to be your photo. On a whim I set up my own Twitter account. @MoneyMan3. I upload a photo I find online, some male model with blue eyes and bushy blond hair, shirtless, flaunting six-pack abs.
A man can dream.
I send a tweet to @LostWithoutU.
Does it hurt? I ask, about the parallel red lines lacerated into the skin.
And then I make my phone call.
I have an old college friend who does some PI work around town, mostly in the realm of cheating spouses. Martin Miller. He’s got the best stories to tell, stories of high-class women winding up in seedy hotels. His website claims to find lost loves, college sweethearts, teenage runaways. Maybe he can help.
When Martin answers I tell him about our little situation. He vows to be utterly discreet.
The last thing I need is Heidi to know I’ve hired a PI. Or for this information to wind up in the wrong hands. If he turns the information over to authorities... No, I think. I scan the website again. Utmost discretion, it says. And besides, I know this guy.
How is it, then, that I know about the high-class women and the seedy hotels? No, I think, pushing that thought from my mind. I hear him laugh about it at some dive bar out in Logan Square. It was about five years ago, maybe more. We were drunk.
I know this guy.
Later that night, as I lie in the magenta sleeping bag on the floor, I think of that girl, the look on her face when she saw the fire. How does a teenage girl come to be terrified of lightning? Of fire?
Zoe hasn’t been scared of those things since she was eight.
I almost feel sorry for her. Almost.
But then again, being solicitous isn’t really my thing. It’s Heidi’s.
HEIDI
Willow settles into our home slowly, like the natural weathering of rocks over time, breaking into smaller and smaller pieces. Pebbles. She reveals little about herself, nearly nothing, and yet that alone becomes commonplace. I stop asking questions, stop trying to solicit information about her, her family, her past, knowing the responses will be sparse and incomplete.
There is a brother. A brother named Matthew. That much I know.
In what little time she’s been with us, each of us takes to her in our own way, Chris in a synthetic way, his empathy manufactured and strained. He tolerates her, though each day I’m barraged with questions about how many more days she will stay.
“One night?” he asks. “Two?” though I tell him I don’t know. He shakes his head at me and says, “Heidi. This is really getting out of hand,” and I make him see that for all the days she’s been with us, she hasn’t done a single harmful thing: our lives are still intact, electronics have yet to be swiped from the home while we sleep.
She’s harmless, I tell him. But he is not so sure.