"Z-a-n-e..." she waited... "S-c-h-a-k-o-w-s-k-y. And, uh his date of birth is May 18th, 1989."
A tall, blue-eyed police officer wrote the name and date down quickly, before looking back up at her for more information.
She stuttered, not exactly sure what kind of information would be required of her.
"Can you give me a physical description of your brother?" the police officer supplied.
"Uh-huh," she said dumbly. "He has, uh... platinum blonde hair, blue-grey eyes, kind of a baby face, I guess..."
The ominous, black radio on the side of his belt chirped and hissed as what sounded to Capri like someone speaking a foreign language scratched out of the speaker.
Officer Aycock ignored it and nodded to encourage her on. "Any tattoos, scars?"
"He has a kind of circular scar on his forearm, but it's not very prominent or anything."
He nodded and wrote it down. "Okay. Was he wearing any jewelry or glasses, etcetera?"
"His senior ring; It's silver, with a white stone. I don't know. He forgets it a lot."
"Okay and what was he wearing when you last saw him?"
Capri was suddenly extremely grateful for her almost flawless memory. "A black band shirt, dark jeans, a belt with silver studs on it. Black and white converse tennis-shoes?"
"No glasses or anything?"
"No."
"What was his hairstyle?"
Capri blew her lips out in speechlessness, making a sound like a horse. "Well, it's kind of... It's like stuck up to a point in the front, not a lot, just, like... he takes the sides of his hair and sticks them together at the top, with a little left over for like, casual bangs. I guess that's how you could explain it. And in the back, it's kind of...like..." Capri made a motion with her hands, and said, "like whispy, you know? Like he just sticks his brush back there and brushes outwards."
At this point, the cop was looking at her with a comically concerned expression on his face, and had stopped writing. Capri realized that the pressure of the day's events was starting to make her a little crazy.
Taking a brief moment to clear his head, he asked, "when and where did you last see him?"
"I dropped him off at school at about seven, I guess, and then at around one-thirty, when I came to pick him up-" with the lack of craziness, stress slowly morphed into unwanted emotion - her throat tightened and tears welled up in her eyes. "I waited for an hour and a half, thinking maybe he was in detention or something..." she stopped, realizing that the fact that her brother frequented detention wouldn't exactly look good on a missing persons report. "Anyway, he never showed up. So, I went home, hoping he maybe got a ride from a friend or something, but..." She trailed off.
"If he were to get a ride home, who would it be with?"
"Um. Maybe Brian Peterson or Greg Winehouse. They both go to school with him. He doesn't ride with them very much, though, and if he was going to, he would've called me to let me know." The tears began flowing freely now, and her voice was barely audible behind the lump in her throat.
"Who does he hang out with most? At school and after."
She sniffed. "Brian Peterson and Greg Winehouse. Oh, and Greg's girlfriend, Katrina Velasquez. They like to hang out in the Blockbuster parking lot." Capri let out a small laugh as she realized how funny that was. She reached behind her and took a tissue from the black end table beside her ugly, grey couch, and wiped black smudges of make-up stained tears off of her cheeks.
"Does he have any family that he might be staying with?"
"No."
"No one?"
"We're orphans," Capri said factually. "I'm his legal guardian."
The officer nodded, apparently satisfied with the information he had. "Okay. What's going to happen now, Miss Schakowsky, is that I'm going to issue a BOLO, which is a Be On The Look Out, and register him into the NCIC to make sure we find him. We're going to do some more interviews with teachers, students and school staff, so don't worry; we'll do everything we can to find him." The officer smiled sympathetically and walked with long, professional strides to the door.
Capri, holding her arms close to her body, mechanically walked to the window to watch the black and white squad car drive away.
Outside, in the disturbingly cheerful Texas sunset, the day went on just as usual, sickeningly contrasted by the bleak, dead silence all around her now. She sat down on the ground, leaning her back against the couch, and placed her cheeks between her knees.
The air conditioner turned on, making the walls creak momentarily, before switching into an incessant hum. Capri's ears rang from the silence.
She stood up, wrapped her hooded sweatshirt tighter around her waist, and walked soundlessly down the hall, to the last room on the left. The door was slightly ajar, letting a faint, musty odor of youthful testosterone steal out into the hallway.
She pushed the door open and looked around. Clothes, papers, wrappers and other stranger articles of mess lie as if in suspended animation on the floor, lit by a melancholy gold light coming from the windows on the north and east sides of the room.
Capri placed her self-manicured fingers over her mouth, trying desperately to dam up the river of sobs that threatened to escape her mouth. How had this happened? Yesterday had been so normal!
Everything had happened just like it always did. Capri had gotten off of work at Garrison's Pool World, and set her mind for a normal drive to her little brother's school.
With the wind wafting in through the open window of the little blue car, Capri drove down Highway 534, blowing and licking her beach blonde hair off of her chap stick, and tossed her head to the side in a futile effort to get it out of her face, before finally just cranking the window up and turning on her moody air conditioner.
She pulled into the parking lot of Tivy High School, scanning the clusters of antsy youths jumping and frolicking around cars that were generously decorated with flamboyant shoe-polish letters hoping to spot her brother, Zane.
He was nowhere to be found, so she pulled into a parking space that had just been abandoned by a very large, red truck and turned off the ignition to wait. The keys, greatly outnumbered by gaudy key-chains swayed back and forth, catching the sunlight in flashes of metallic radiance.
She looked down at her wrist watch impatiently and back at the doors of the big, tan brick building before deciding to push her seat down and take a small nap.
Just as she was dozing off, a loud knock on the passenger's side window jolted her back to her senses. She sat up and clicked her tongue in annoyance at the source of her scare.
Zane waved innocently.
Capri reached over and unlocked his door.
He sighed as he squeezed into the front seat beside her, tossing his ridiculously full backpack into the backseat.
"Did you have a nice day?"
"Yes, Mommy," he answered sardonically, "except you forgot my Fruit-Rollup again!"
"Don't be a jerk," she said good-humouredly, putting the car into reverse.
The right side of his mouth turned up in a smirk before he reached over and began to crank his window down.
"Zane! I have the air conditioner on!"
"It's blowing out heat again," he said, putting his hands up to one of the vents.
Capri rolled her eyes and cranked hers down as well.
Capri gasped and jumped, slightly straining her neck from tensing her muscles, when the phone shattered the silence with cruel mercilessness. The sound of the first ring sat stagnant in her ears as she ran for the phone, before the second ring replaced it, only to be replaced itself by the croak of Capri's voice asking, "Hello?"
"What's wrong?" the smooth, male voice on the other line asked.
She stuttered. "How'd you know something was wrong?"
"You sound like you've been crying," he answered.
"Oh, Ben!" Capri started weeping uncontrollably, sinking despairingly into the dining room chair behind her. "Zane-" her voice caught tightly in her throat. "I don't know where he is! I drove around for almost three hours today! Looking for him! And then I-" she finished a sob "I called the cops and they cafinimether!" The last word was unintelligible as her voice climbed up into a squeak.
"I'm coming over, okay? I'll be there in just a few minutes."
"Okay. Please hurry! The house is so empty and I just..."
"I'll be right there. Just hold on."
Ben hung up, a horribly final sound to Capri, and she ran to the door to turn on the carport light, since it would probably be dark by the time he got there. She sat down on the couch, trying not to focus on the stillness of the house, sure of how embarrassed she would be from her neediness after all of this was over... if it would ever be over.
The two siblings sat rather quietly through dinner, except for the clinking of Capri's dainty fork and the slurping of Zane sucking the spaghetti noodles into his mouth Lady And The Tramp style.
A large, orangish moth plinked stupidly against the light bulb above their heads, making the light sway back and forth slightly.
"Anything interesting happen at school today, Z?"
"Mmm... nope. Not really. Well, actually, yeah."
Capri smiled with interest.
"Greg won a burping contest in the halls. It was against Billy Martin, too. So, needless to say, it was pretty impressive." Zane took a purposeful bite of a large, red meatball, smirking sarcastically.
Capri gave him a 'very funny' look, and cut her meatball into a bite sized chunk.
"What about you? Anything interesting happen in the work-world?"
"I had to fire someone," she said, raising her eyebrows and sighing.
Zane chuckled. "Why?"
"Oh, he was abusing his employee discount."
"Oooh!" Zane said, waggling his fingers sardonically.
"Hey, listen, you really need to get your homework done tonight, okay? You have a test this Friday."
Zane's mood visibly changed. He clenched his jaw, and slumped a little lower in his chair. "You do realize that you're only five years older than me, right?"
"Well, I know, Zane, but you have to realize that I'm the one that'll be paying for your college. I need to know you can do it."
His voice raised slightly, "Why don't you just save yourself the trouble and let me drop out of high school right now!"
"You're almost done, Zane! You just need to finish this one year!"
"For the second time!"
"Hey! There is no shame in doing a grade again."
"Yeah," he said with a sarcastic chuckle, "Tell that to the senior girls" He slowly began to stand up, gaining fury as he spoke."You know what, tell the guys, for that matter. Or, heck! Tell that to the teachers!"He slammed his hands upon the table.
"Have the teachers been mistreating you, Zane?"
He sighed, making his bangs float up a little. He kicked his chair away from him, and walked around the table into the living room.
As he turned down the hall to go to his room, Capri called after him, "Zane, wait."
He stopped, but didn't turn around.
"No matter what they say to you, you're special! And smart, and unique and... and you have a bright future ahead of you!"
As sincere as Capri may have been trying to say it, the worry and disapproval hidden deep within her voice did not pass Zane unnoticed. He sighed, and walked down the hall to the last room on the left.
Capri sat silent, and jumped when she heard his bedroom door slam shut.
Ben had come over very quickly, just as he said he would, carrying with him a bag of things he would need to spend the night, which he offered to do, to Capri's sheer gratitude.
After making them both a quick meal of macaroni and cheese, which sat drying and hardening without a single bite, Ben promptly but kindly sent Capri to bed, where she either lie awake, staring at the darkness above her bed, or sleeping in a thin, restless haze that seemed to drain energy rather than renew it.
Much to her surprise, she woke up at around noon, (she'd slept much longer than she thought she would be able to) and shuffled into the kitchen, where Ben was waiting with bacon and eggs.
"Oh, I hope it didn't get cold," Capri said as she watched Ben fill her plate.
"Oh, no. I just made it."
"How long have you been up?"
"Since eight."
"How'd you know to make it at this time?"
Ben waited for a moment, focusing on filling his own plate.
After a few seconds, Capri wondered if he was going to answer.
His jaw moved forward before he answered in an overly sweet way, "I was just about to come and get you." He looked up at her, flashing her an oddly purposeful smile.
"Oh. Yeah, sorry I slept so late."
"I'm glad you did. I mean, I'm glad you were able to."
She nodded.
The rest of the day went on in a torpid haze.
The actual day of Zane's disappearance had, ironically, been a good one. Capri had gotten off of work early, and met Ben, who had gotten off at around the same time, for lunch at the mall.
The mall really wasn't much of a mall, being one floor and having roughly twenty stores, but Capri didn't have quite the imagination as Zane, who was content to hang out in an obscure parking lot.
Capri and Ben sat at one of the white plastic tables in front of the one restaurant in the whole mall, Capri facing the fountain and Ben facing the doors.
She watched a small family walk up to the broken fountain and sit down. The mother parked her stroller and set her diaper bag down.
"There is the cutest baby sitting in the stroller over there." Capri said, pointing past Ben.
"Yeah, I see her," he said with a mischievous look in his eye.
"How could you? You're facing the wrong way?"
Ben smirked. "Haven't I told you? I have eyes in the back of my head."
Capri chuckled. "Prove it."
"Okay," Ben said, dramatically closing his eyes and massaging his temples. "The toddler just dropped its bottle."
Capri's jaw dropped."Okay," she said, suspiciously. "Keep going."
Ben sat for a moment, squinting his already shut eyes. He tilted his head slightly, before saying, "The older kid is putting his hand in the water- oop! His mom slapped his hand. Now he's crying. The little one in the stroller dropped her bottle again, but the mom hasn't noticed, yet."
Capri sat awestricken, waiting to see what else Ben would magically see with his extra eyes.
"Now the dad just showed up, complaining about the fact that he couldn't find what he needed in the sports store. The woman is wearing a charm bracelet and long earrings..." Ben started talking faster and faster, as if whatever he was seeing was becoming clearer as he went. "The little girl is hungry, and she's getting frustrated that she can't reach her bottle. She's about to cry."
Sure enough, a loud, piercing cry echoed through the mall, making Capri jump and Ben cover his ears urgently.
Ben, broken out of his trance, looked back at Capri.
Capri sat silently for a moment, looking at Ben like a child who has just seen "the thumb trick". He smiled, suddenly aware of the fact that he may have been freaking her out.
Capri looked behind her for a mirror.
Ben laughed. "I was closing my eyes, remember?...Well, one set anyway." He winked and grinned.
"Really, though, how'd you do that!" she said, slapping his forearm companionably.
He took a sip of his grape soda and said, "The truth?" He looked at her seriously, judging whether or not she could be trusted.
"Yeah. How..."
"The truth is, I paid them. I paid them all."
Capri hadn't realized she had been leaning forward until then. She slumped in her chair, disappointed, but laughing. "You paid the baby?"
"Yup," he chuckled.
Capri gasped, "Oh, my gosh, look over there!" She pointed behind him.
He turned around to look, and laughed when the warm grease of a French fry hit the back of his neck. He turned around and chuckled, taking a big bite out of the edible weapon.
"What happened to those extra eyes?"
Ben grinned, a perfect, white smile, his eyes rich and sparkling. He tossed his wavy, dark hair out of his eyes and returned to eating his Doritos. He looked up. "What?" he asked, smiling pleasantly.
"What what?"
He spun his finger beside his head, making the sign for crazy.
Capri laughed, hoping desperately that the hot blush creeping up her face wasn't too obvious.
"Capri, I was thinking maybe I should go and look for Zane."
"What?" Ben had said it so abruptly that Capri didn't even hear the first half of his sentence.
"I could find him." Something strange had come over Ben. He seemed suddenly very antsy, as if he was forgetting something that he needed to do.
She wasn't quite sure how to respond. She sat silently, angry and confused. "You could just... find him?" she finally said, bitterly. "And where would you start, Ben? You'd just find him?"
Ben's ears turned red, and he looked down unsurely. "You- you know yesterday..." Ben stopped, licked his lips and shook his head. "Never mind. I can't believe I just-" He sighed angrily. "I'm gonna go, okay? Will you be alright?"
Capri knew very well she would most certainly not be alright, but wasn't sure she wanted to be around Ben right now. She turned her head away from him, giving him a strange sort of left-handed permission.
He quickly got up from the couch, grabbed his keys, and without saying a word, left Capri in her grey solitude.
A few hours later, Capri's growling stomach woke her from her nap on the couch. She looked at her wrist, but found no glowing numbers of a watch. All she knew was that it was now quite dark. She stumbled to the kitchen, and looked at the microwave for the time: 9:57. How in the world had she slept so long?
She rubbed her face, and started dizzily walking toward the fridge. As she reached for the handle, she stopped quickly, turning on her heels, and holding her shirt at the stomach. Her heart thumped loudly in her ears, and her hair stood on end. Had she heard a sound?
Again, a rustling of cloth from the living room.
Capri stopped breathing. She lifted a foot gingerly, and began slowly creeping to the edge of the linoleum, up to the carpet of the living room. Her socks stuck against the fuzz of the carpet, and she could go no further; the springs of the couch creaked. Capri's stomach lurched as an unworldly figure sat up to be silhouetted in the street light outside the window.
Capri reached behind her toward the kitchen table, hoping some sort of weapon had been left there. As she did so, her hand slid underneath a pile of bills and letters and pushed them off of the table in a noisy flurry.
The figure seemed to look toward the noise slowly, and Capri could no longer contain her adrenaline. She jumped over to where the cordless phone was sitting, took it clumsily out of its cradle, and threw it at the figure's head.
In her frenzy, she missed, and hit the window beside where the figure sat, almost completely unperturbed. In almost the same second, however, she turned the dining room light on, and reached to the phone desk where she knew a pair of scissors would be laying.
The figure squinted, and shaded its eyes with its hand slowly.
"Who are you!?" Capri screamed, brandishing her scissors tightly.
"Capri?" a familiar voice asked.
Capri's heart slowed a little, and she lowered her scissors.
The figure slowly lowered its hand.
"Zane!" Capri said, melting into a mass of uncontrollable emotion. She dropped her scissors and ran shakily to sit beside him. She hugged his neck and cried, kissing his head in between incoherent affection.
Zane hardly responded at all, but for raising his hand slowly up to Capri's arm and patting it, and leaning his head down on her shoulder.
"Are you okay? What happened? Where were you?" Her facial expressions changed humorously fast, from relief to fear to anger back to relief again.
Suddenly Zane said in a groggy voice, "You're bleeding."
"What?"
Zane didn't answer, but Capri saw that his face and shirt was covered in bloody handprints. She looked at her hands and saw the source. Apparently, when she had grabbed the scissors from the table, she grabbed the wrong end, and had been holding it so tightly, that it had sliced her hand.
"Oh, my gosh, I didn't even feel it," Capri said, sniffing, and looking at it with a giant smile still stuck on her face. She got up and rinsed it in the sink, until she had a bit of control over the amount of blood coming out of the gory gash.
"Zane, where were you?" she said, once she trusted her voice. She put a paper towel on her hand, which immediately let the blood seep through, and hurried back to the living room.
"Is your hand okay?" he asked distantly. His eyes were half closed, and bloodshot. His skin was pale, and a light sweat was beginning to break over his forehead.
"Zane, don't worry about my hand!" she said, a bit annoyed now. "Are you okay?"
Zane shook his head to clear it, and slowly said, "What do you mean?"
"Zane, you were gone for almost two days!" Capri said, standing in alarm.
His brow wrinkled. "I was?"
"Lay down," Capri said, pushing him softly down into the couch's cushions. "I'm calling Ben." After trying desperately to remember what happened to the phone, Capri remembered and reached behind the couch before dialing Ben's number and waiting impatiently for the phone on the other end to stop ringing.
"Capri?" Ben asked at last.
"Ben, Zane came home, but I don't know what's wrong with him."
"I'll be right there."
Capri hung up and set the phone down on the couch, before running to get a blanket, wet rag, and a glass of water.
"Cold or warm water for your head?" she called from the bathroom.
He didn't answer.
"Zane, cold or warm water?" she said louder.
"W-w-w-warm," he said.
Capri placed the blanket, water bottle and still dry rag on the counter quickly and ran in to see why Zane was stuttering.
Still lying where Capri had laid him down, Zane had changed dramatically just in the few moments she was gone.
He was shivering violently, grinding his teeth to keep them from clicking together, huddled closely to himself for warmth, and yet he was covered in the shine of sweat.
"Oh, my gosh," Capri said under her breath. Suddenly, and not a moment too soon in Capri's mind, Ben's headlights glared seriously into the thin curtains.
Capri ran out to meet him, not wanting to waste a single moment. "Ben, I'm so scared. He's shivering and sweating, and he's not responding."
"Sounds like a fever." Ben ran quickly to the side of the couch and checked Zane's pulse. "How long has he been like this?"
"He's been slow to respond since he got- well, since I found him, but he started shaking a little after I called you."
"Get me a flashlight." He turned to Zane and said purposefully, "Zane, where were you? It's very important that you answer."
A small, airy sound passed between his lips, but he couldn't seem to focus long enough to answer fully.
When Capri returned with a small flashlight, Ben opened his eyelids and checked his pupils. "Slightly dilated and nonresponsive. I think he's been drugged," Ben said, as he stood up and reached for the phone.
Tears began to flow from Capri's eyes, and she lifted Zane's head so that it would rest on her lap. "Who are you calling?"
"I have a nurse friend," he answered, putting the phone up to his ear. After an excruciatingly long few seconds, Ben said, "Hello? Michelle? I have a friend who's been in a bad situation. Can you come over and help me out?
"Well, I know that, but I can't be sure. I need you to... No, I know. But, you know I wouldn't be asking if I didn't suspect."
Capri couldn't help but wonder what kind of nurse would be trying to get herself out of helping someone who needed medical attention.
"409 Mistletoe Drive. 'Kay." He hung up the phone and said, "She'll be here soon. She's from Fredericksburg, though, so it'll be a little while."
"Why can't we just call an ambulance?"
Ben looked at Capri seriously, and back down at Zane, who seemed to be getting worse. "Capri, I don't know how to explain to you why we can't do that, and I hope I won't ever have to, but you just have to trust me right now, and believe me."
Capri sat very still, except for Zane's shivering, looking searchingly into Ben's eyes. Was a year of knowing someone really enough time to know that you could trust them with your brother's life? Even if the person was Ben.
Michelle, after arriving a little more than twenty minutes after Ben had called, turned out to be exceedingly strange. "Where is he?" she said, after coming into the house without knocking.
Ben pointed to the couch, where Capri stroked Zane's head as he lay now even more ill, although now more alert. "We've been giving him lots of water," he said.
The grey-eyed, pale woman, who, judging by her dishelved pajamas underneath her leather jacket, had been woken up by Ben's call, searched through a little black bag she had brought in and snapped two surgical gloves onto her hands. "Who is this?" she asked, pointing to Capri and looking at Ben.
"His sister, Capri."
Michelle searched Ben's eyes, and the two shared a strange moment of silent communication, before the woman looked back at Capri and asked her to move.
Capri gently sat up and moved around to the side of the couch, holding Zane's hand nervously.
"Uh- Could you not touch him at all, please?" Michelle asked.
Capri stared at her for a moment, before grudgingly letting go of her brother's hand.
Ben patted Capri on the shoulder, reassuring her of his faith in this strange, unsympathetic woman.
No amount of trust in Ben's opinion could contain her enraged skepticism as Michelle went to her work.
Michelle reached out and took one of Zane's hand in her own, and then put the other on the top of his head, toward the back, before closing her eyes with an expression of concentration.
Capri waited for a moment, hoping that this wasn't as strange and utterly useless as it looked. A few more seconds dragged on, and slowly, but surely, a strange expression stole its way across Michelle's face. She grew pale, and a light sweat broke out on her forehead. She seemed to be straining.
For a moment, everything was silent except for the increasingly heavy breath of both Zane and Michelle, before Capri could no longer sit by. She stood up, almost knocking the cream colored lamp off of the table behind her, and angrily said, "What do you think you're doing?"
"Shh! Capri, let her concentrate!" Ben said, grabbing her hand.
"Ben!" she responded, jerking her hand away. "My brother is laying here dying, and you think it's a good time to bring in this quack?! What is she supposed to be? Psychic?"
Ben had been trying his best to calm Capri down, following her around as she paced, shushing her without any success. "Capri, please listen!" Ben said, grabbing her by the wrists and holding her still. "She's not psychic. She's- she's-"
Suddenly, Michelle gasped, making all arguing cease, and let go of Zane's hand.
"Let me guess. Grandma is trying to talk to us through Zane, right?" Capri asked, putting her hands on her hips.
Michelle disregarded Capri entirely, only looking at Ben and nodding with a troubled darkness in her eyes. "Can I talk to you?" she asked quietly.
Suddenly Capri's confidence in the illegitimacy of Michelle's methods faltered. "What? What is it?"
Michelle stood up and led Ben over to the opposite wall. She looked over at Capri and turned her back to her before whispering urgently but almost inaudibly by Ben's ear.
Ben nodded and looked over at Zane thoughtfully.
"Ben! What is it?" Capri asked.
Ben walked over to her and put his hands on her shoulders. "Capri," he sighed, "I don't know what else to do but to tell you the truth."
Capri's stomach jumped out of fear, before falling heavily in the pit of her chest.
"Ben, are you sure?" Michelle asked from the corner. Surprise and fear filled her eyes.
"We have no choice."
Capri's breathing got harder and harder as a lump of anxiety expanded in her throat. "Ben, what is it?" Capri whispered.
"To explain what's happening to Zane, I'm going to have to go a lot farther back and explain some things, but he's fine for the time being, so we have time. You –uh, might want to sit down," he said, gesturing to the couch behind her.
Once Capri sat down, Ben took a big breath and added, "What I'm about to tell you, is highly secretive. If you were to leak any of this information, it could cost thousands of people their lives."
Capri nodded.
Never looking in her eyes, Ben licked his lips and began the most unbelievable story Capri had ever heard.
