The Last Night Of The Class Trip
Every time I mentioned Los Angeles, she got angry, which is not my daughter. On Friday I said something cheerful about printing more of her pictures, and she whirled around in the doorway and shouted, “Stop asking me about that place!” Her face was so white I thought she might be sick.
Mark said it was friend drama. I had my own theory, which was worse, and which I didn’t say out loud. I thought there had been a boy.
On Saturday I took the trash out to the big can by the garage, and when I lifted the lid I saw navy blue.
It was her Hawks hoodie, the brand-new one we paid forty-two dollars for, folded small and pushed down under a bag of coffee grounds like somebody wanted it gone and hidden. There was no stain on it anywhere. The only thing on it you would notice at all was the gold bird, and the word ASHBY across the chest in letters three inches tall.
I washed it and laid it on her bed. An hour later it was gone again.
On Sunday night she came into the kitchen while I was making lunches and stood by the refrigerator and said the only real thing she said to me all week.
“Mom. Would you be mad if I did something you told me not to do? If it was the right thing?”
I have replayed my answer a thousand times. I was tired, and hurt that she had shut me out for five days, and I had a peanut butter knife in my hand. I said, “Depends what it is, Lil. Rules are rules for a reason.”
She nodded once, slowly, like I had confirmed something, and went back to her room.
On Monday every family got an email from Principal Lowry, cheerful, with pictures. Our students had represented Ashby beautifully. It had been a flawless trip, start to finish. He looked forward to bringing next spring’s trip before the school board on the eighteenth, along with a special recognition for Coach Ray Dorsey’s twenty years of service.
Flawless. Start to finish.
Then on Tuesday Dana Price called, and the plate broke, and the hallway went dark.
After she hung up, I walked down that dark hallway with my hands still dripping and stood outside Lily’s door, and I didn’t knock, because I was afraid of what my voice would sound like.
Instead I went into the laundry room, where her suitcase had sat open on the dryer for a week because she refused to unpack it, and I did something I had never done to her. I went through her things.
In the zippered front pocket I found a white business card with a gold badge on it. Los Angeles Police Department. Detective Carol Hartley. A phone number, and on the back, in blue ink, a long case number.
There was a line of small print across the bottom of the card that I did not stop to read.
I sat down on the laundry room floor with that card and the whole week rearranged itself into a shape I could understand, and it was an ugly shape.
The police brought her back. A detective’s card. Joanne Kerr looking at me like I had done something to her child. The hoodie buried in the trash. The way she flinched at her phone, at every slowing car, like she was waiting for someone to come for her. Would you be mad if I did something you told me not to do.