Missing
Chapter Twelve
A week until:
She'd been up at the cave for three days and whatever mystery illness she had was clearly getting killed off by the fresh air and clear springwater up there (she figured, anyway) but she had to go home eventually.
After school, she tossed her clothes and sleeping bag in the washing machine, made a mental note to pick up some paraffin for the camping stove and batteries for her flashlight and showered. Just as she was getting out of the bathroom she caught the scent of cooking wafting from the kitchen. It didn't smell all that appetizing (way too much garlic and five-spice) but after three days of char-grilling over a campfire something cooked on an actual hob would be nice.
"Hi honey, how was your day," Miriam drawled, already halfway into a Long Island iced tea.
"Pretty good," Helga drawled back, sitting across from her. "Got an A on my History report."
"That's nice," Miriam sniffed, and swigged from her glass.
"Hit three home runs in practice yesterday."
"That's super," Miriam slurred, stirring her ice cubes with a straw.
"Then I beat a homeless man to death with my baseball bat. He had it coming."
"That's nice," she said again.
"Went to the park to celebrate and ended up doing a whole bunch of meth with some crackheads."
"Well, the important thing is that you tried, dear," Miriam slurred, blinking heavily.
Helga rolled her eyes; the 'say outrageous shit and see how long it takes Miriam to notice' game used to be fun when she was younger, but it was getting dull. Miriam just didn't react to anything anymore.
Bob blustered in just then with a pot full of some mysterious bubbling 'stuff.' Probably chili again. He looked surprised to see Helga there.
"Where the hell have you been?" he growled.
"Overnight field trip," Helga shrugged. "I gave you the permission slip, remember?"
She gave him nothing of the sort but Bob nodded anyway.
"Uh, yeah," he muttered. "Hang on, I'll get you a plate."
He took the pot back with him for whatever reason, and there was a big production of opening and slamming cupboard doors. When he came back, he dumped two plates of 'stuff' in front of Helga and Miriam. Helga poked at what might have been a pinto bean with her fork gingerly.
"What's in this?" she asked as Bob sat down with his own plate.
"Little bit of everything," he said, but he wouldn't look at her; he just shoveled the stuff into his own mouth. "Eat it and stop whining. I didn't spend all day in that kitchen to have you turn up your nose at it."
She rolled her eyes again, but took a dainty bite of the mystery stuff. It was gritty, and oddly chalky and the aftertaste reminded her of accidentally inhaling aerosol spray.
…..
Phoebe caught up with Arnold at lunch, just as he was telling Thom from Social Studies about some cliff notes he had found.
"You were going to tell me something this morning," she said instead of hello.
Arnold was acutely aware that people were looking at them and whispering. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Gerald frowning. He gathered up his lunch tray, excused himself to Thom and brought Phoebe over to one of the empty tables at the back of the cafeteria.
"Yes, I was," he said. "Something I came across this morning, it triggered a memory for Helga."
"What was it?"
Arnold glanced around him; if Phoebe got upset, the rumours would be pretty wild...
"Arnold, stop it."
"Hm? Stop what?"
She threw down her sandwich and fixed him with a hard glare.
"Stop keeping things from me because you think I'll be upset," she said. "I've been upset for five years. I know it's going to be bad but I can deal with it. I want to help Helga just as much as you do."
"Okay," he sighed. "What do you know about Pocaselas?"
"Not much," she said, brows furrowed in concentration. "I got a bus from there once when my Dad's car broke down."
"Helga sees the name of the place in her dreams," he told her. "I think it's like a residual memory. She also said she feels like there's something around her neck when she's asleep."
Phoebe paled, but braced herself.
"Pocaselas is known for being a place that runaways go to a lot," Arnold continued. "Do you think she might have gone there?"
"No," Phoebe answered abruptly. "She always said she was determined to wait it out. She would have qualified for boarding school scholarships in another year, she was talking to Mr Simmons about it."
Arnold hadn't thought about Mr Simmons for a long time. In the aftermath of Helga's disappearance he'd taken early retirement and left Hillwood. A paper reporting on the case quoted him as 'heartbroken.'
"She wouldn't have gone voluntarily," Phoebe said, shaking her head with certainty.
Arnold swallowed. "Then that leaves us with the other solution. Have you heard of the Black Gulch Ripper?"
Phoebe paled even more, which should have been impossible.
"Yes," she murmured. "Bits and pieces."
"Most theories say he's an experienced woodsman," Arnold said, bringing up the slew of articles he had looked up on his phone between classes. "Pocaselas is bordered by a stretch of woodland and marsh that meets Hillwood's forests on the other side. There's no roads connecting them and it's about two days walk if you don't mind wading through sinkholes in bear-infested wildland."
"All the Rippers' victims were adults," Phoebe countered.
"They were young women, or at least looked it," Arnold said. "The youngest was nineteen, and all of them were taken from Pocaselas. Then he went quiet about three years before Helga went missing. It's not unknown for murderers to keep picking younger and younger victims."
"So you think he caught her in the forest when she was out there? He walked for two days through bear-infested wildland, as you put it, and just happened to come across her? That's kind of far-fetched..."
"Is it really? Because none of the buses leaving Hillwood, none of the cars going through the speed cameras picked up anyone fitting Helga's description. As far as we can see, she never left the forest."
"All his victims were dumped in the Gulch," Phoebe said. "They never found Helga's body."
"All of his known victims," Arnold countered. "People disappear from Pocaselas at four times the national average. An experienced woodsman would be better suited to dragging someone through the marshes."
Mute and unhappy, Phoebe stared down at her nibbled-on sandwich and Arnold did the same to his own mostly untouched lunch. They were almost relieved when the bell rang and they went back to class.
And then, something very unexpected happened.
Just as Arnold was pulling out his Algebra homework, Rhonda Lloyd Wellington stopped in front of his desk. Tapping her foot irritably and frowning down at him, she was oddly twitchy.
"I need to talk to you about something," she said, glancing around the room at anyone who was looking in their direction.
"Uh, sure?" he said, surprised. She hadn't spoken a word to him in over a year.
"Not here," she said furtively. "Meet me in the coffee house after school. If you're even a minute past four, I'm leaving."
And then she was gone.
…..
The girls were furious, because Helga Pataki was flaunting her older boyfriend in front of the school with absolutely no shame.
Well, flaunting wasn't the word Arnold would have used. Helga was talking quietly to the boy at the wall that separated the school grounds from the street, and he was gently teasing her about something because she laughed and jokingly punched his arm. He flashed his teen-idol-worthy smile at her, the kind that seemed designed to make preteen girls swoon, and she rolled her eyes because she was all too used to it.
To the other girls, they might as well have been making out in full view of the entire school.
"He treats her like one of the boys," Angela Harper sniffed with an injured air. "If that's the kind of thing he goes for, good luck to them."
"Wasn't there another boy walking her home yesterday?" Nadine piped up.
"That's Martin," Phoebe said over the spine of her book. "Patrick was away yesterday and they don't like letting Helga walk home in the dark. She's not dating either of them."
"Whatever," Angela said, tossing her hair back. "Personally I don't think a boy should walk you home unless you're dating but that's just..."
"Could you all just shut the fuck up?" Rhonda growled suddenly, looking up from her phone for the first time.
A touchy silence fell on the girls, they exchanged nervous glances. Rhonda smoothed down her hair, and over her shoulder Arnold could see she wasn't looking at her phone but rather at her own reflection in the blackened shine of the screen.
…..
Rhonda glared when she saw Arnold had brought Phoebe with him.
"You could have warned me you were bringing her."
"Sorry," Arnold shrugged. "I get the feeling this is about Helga. You were behind us in the cafeteria."
"Bingo, Sherlock," Rhonda laughed scornfully, and then she looked nervous again. "Hey, you mind getting me a latte or something? They don't let me vape in here, can you believe that?"
"Okay," Arnold nodded, and went to the counter to order. Phoebe followed him.
"Can you believe her?" Phoebe hissed into his ear. "As if she's doing you a favour being here...!"
"She might be, we don't know yet," Arnold hissed back. "If she gives us something new, it's worth the price of a latte, right?"
Phoebe grudgingly agreed.
Even when she had her coffee in front of her, Rhonda fidgeted, took out her vape and put it away again, touched up her mascara and fiddled with her phone before she even tried to speak to them. Her hands were trembling, Arnold noted with surprise.
"Did you want to tell us anything or are we just here to watch you be Rhonda?" Phoebe bit out at last.
"Ooh, that's told me," Rhonda laughed mockingly. "Fine, let's get this over with."
But as she took a sip of her latte, her demeanor changed once again, her eyes dropped to the table in front of her.
"Look, you have to understand something first, okay?" she began. "I was a stupid kid. A really fucking stupid kid. I did stupid shit and nobody ever stopped me so I just kept on doing it. Get that?"
Arnold nodded, Phoebe folded her arms and stared. Rhonda sipped her latte again.
"Back then, I was really pissed off at Helga," she continued. "I didn't even think she liked boys... and she didn't give a shit about looking nice or anything so it was kind of annoying when suddenly all these older boys are fawning all over her like she's some fucking supermodel...
"She wasn't dating them," Phoebe cut in. "You know she wasn't!"
"Whatever," Rhonda quipped. "Anyway, it made me mad, okay? And I thought fine, if she can do it so can I. How hard would it really be to get myself an older boyfriend? Turns out it's not that hard at all. Especially if you do it online."
Arnold's heart sank; he had a feeling he knew where this was going.
"You'd better believe I got lots of attention. As many older boys as I could ever want. Way older. And then there's this one guy who pops up, and he's really nice to me. Listens to all my complaints about school and home and whatever, and then he sends me a picture."
"What kind of picture?" Arnold asked, his mouth gone dry with the horror of it.
"A picture of Helga. Not a creepy picture or anything, except she's asleep in it. And he tells me she's his cousin and asks if I know her. I didn't even know she had a cousin."
"She doesn't," Phoebe said quietly, as if from very far away.
"I didn't know that. So I said yeah, she's in my class. He tells me he wants to meet up with his family because they got separated or some shit, and I figure if he meets up with them he would be in Hillwood and I could date him properly. Like I said, I was a stupid fucking kid."
"what did you do, Rhonda?" Arnold gulped.
"I told him where we lived."
Phoebe reacted before Arnold could stop her. There was a loud crack as her palm met Rhonda's cheek. Rhonda's head snapped to the side and she stayed there, stunned, as her face reddened.
"You bitch," Phoebe growled. "You sold her out because you wanted a boyfriend? You fucking bitch!"
She went to slap her again, but Arnold stood up and grabbed her arms, pulling her back, as Rhonda shakily sat up again cradling her cheek in her hand.
"Phoebe, no," he hissed, trying to drag her back down to her seat. "Come on, what's done is done."
Phoebe swung back and pushed him away, and then she grabbed her bag and stormed out. As the door of the coffee shop slammed shut, he could see she was in tears. He could go after her, but...
"Rhonda, are you okay?" he asked quietly.
Tears were glittering in her eyes, but she blinked them away and tried to act casual, sipping her latte like nothing had happened.
"You're a nice guy, you know that?" she laughed bitterly. "It's no less than I deserved, right? As if I haven't been thinking about it ever since..."
"Did you tell the police when they questioned you?" he asked, already guessing she hadn't.
"No," she said, and Arnold's heart sank. "Arnold, I sent pictures to some of those guys! Pictures I didn't want my folks seeing...and you know how that kind of thing gets around...I'd have been finished at school."
"Helga's probably dead, Rhonda," Arnold reminded her. "And whoever got her is still out there. I think it's a bit more important than your reputation."
"Yeah, well," she laughed again, so bitter it stung. "Like I said, I was a stupid fucking kid."
…..
Helga was asleep in his bed when he got back, and Arnold's heart thumped hard because she had been sleeping more and more lately. Did it mean something? Were they running out of time to find her closure?
The PC was on, and a folder of his finished homework was open on the screen. It was only 8pm, but he dressed for bed and slid in beside her anyway, to watch her breathe. His eyes traced the long line of her throat, looking for the mark of whatever she felt was around her neck. Sure enough, there was a faint red line circling her neck, near the juncture of her chest. He reached out and stroked it gently with his finger.
Suddenly, Helga mumbled something frenzied-sounding in her sleep, turned over and ended up just an inch or two from Arnold's face. He saw something he hadn't noticed before.
On her bottom jaw, on the right side, two teeth were missing.
