Lisa Unger - Fragile

“I can drop you off, Sarah. No problem,” Maggie heard the driver say.

Maggie could make out Sarah’s voice but not her words. Maggie saw her point at the road that was just a few feet away. Her house wasn’t more than half a mile through the trees.

“All right. Watch yourself, you hear?”

And the bus hissed and lurched forward, leaving Sarah behind. Maggie looked back to see her turning off the main street and making her way toward the tall stand of trees. It seemed like a hundred years ago.

“Don’t go there, Melody,” Maggie said. “This is not the same.”

“How do you know?” The other woman turned pleading eyes on Maggie. She seemed to remember the cigarette then, tossed it out the open window.

“Because it’s not.” Maggie couldn’t think of anything more convincing to say. The fear on Melody’s face was a contagion.

“Does Jones ever talk about it?” Melody said.

“Jones? No. Why would he?”

The other woman just shrugged and shook her head, glanced away from Maggie. Melody might have been about to say something, but the front door to Britney’s house opened then, and her mother stepped onto the porch. Denise was as petite and pretty as she’d been in high school. Good genes, old money, married rich-twice. It showed. Even in velour sweatpants and bare feet, baggy pink sweatshirt, obviously roused from dozing on the couch, she was a perfect ten.

“What’s going on? What’s wrong?” she asked. She hugged herself against the cold.

“Is Charlene here?” Melody asked, stepping down out of the car.

Denise shook her head. “Not on a school night. Brit has a test first period. She’s sleeping.”

“Can we come in?” asked Maggie, walking up the steps to the porch. “I think we need to talk to Brit. Charlene is missing.” There it was, the word spoken and out there, floating on the air. She regretted it, should have been more vague. She should have said something, anything, else. She couldn’t take it back.

Denise looked stricken, moving back toward the house and pushing the door open. “Of course. Come in.”

It didn’t take long for tensions to build. The three of them-the pretty cheerleader, the sexy burnout too old, too knowing for her age, the geek with gothic leanings-they were all there, these representatives of the perennial high school subcultures, squirming and pink beneath the shells of their adulthoods. Maggie thought that childhood things would be left behind, these silly groupings would fade and become meaningless, but they never were. Not in a town like this. Those teenage girls, each awkward and unsure in her own way, never left The Hollows.

Brit stood sleepy before them now, every bit as beautiful as her mother. Maybe more so. Also with no trace of the high school angst and insecurity Maggie remembered so well. The girls of Ricky’s generation knew their power better, didn’t seem to be casting about as much for approval and validation. Though, of course, Brit had her own set of problems, occasionally throwing up after bingeing, reacting to some terrible pressure she claimed she didn’t really understand herself. I’m not perfect , she’d said to Maggie in a session. That’s what they think, but I am so far from that .

“I have no idea where Char is. I’m sorry.” She huddled in close to her mother, was half-hidden behind her. A protective posture.

“You didn’t hear from her at all tonight?” asked Melody. “She didn’t call to tell you she’d left home?”

Brit shook her head quickly.

“Brit,” her mother urged, nudging her gently with a soft shoulder.

“What?” the girl snapped, moving away from Denise. “I don’t know where she is.” Denise hung her head and moved away, traced a circle on the floor with a perfectly pedicured toe.

Britney and Charlene were unlikely friends. Brit, the athlete scholar, not a cheerleader like her mother but a track star, the fastest girl Hollows High had ever seen, a record breaker, and one of three girls in a heated competition for the valedictorian spot. The girl before Maggie was a textbook overachiever.

And Charlene, the resident gothic queen, singer in Ricky’s band, smart enough in her own right but not inclined to academic achievement, pouring her energy into her music-she sang and wrote lyrics. She was a talented, intelligent girl, artistic and wise beyond her years but not cast from the same mold as Brit. They were as different as two girls could be but had been friends since the third grade.

“This is not the time to be protecting Charlene, Brit,” Maggie said gently. “We know she’s your friend. But this is serious. If you know her plans, or you know where she is, you need to tell us.”

Brit released a sigh, lifted her eyes to the ceiling.

“Please,” said Melody. “I know you guys think you’re grown up, that you know everything. But she’s just a girl. The world is not what you want it to be. It’s an unforgiving and dangerous place. Some consequences are forever.”

Maggie flashed on Sarah’s lean form, a hundred years ago, walking into the tall, black woods, the sky a slate slab above her. From Melody’s pleading tone, Maggie expected to see her tearing. But her face was grim, a stone mask of tension.

“Sometimes home is not a safe place, either,” said Brit, looking pointedly back at the older woman.

Melody blinked and shook her head as though she’d been struck. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Britney narrowed her eyes. “You know.”

The eruption was quick and fierce. Melody moved in to Britney, shouting something unintelligible, her face gone from stone to fire, flushing a hot red. Denise stepped forward to put her body between the two.

“Stay away from her, Melody,” she said firmly. “Stand back.”

When Maggie put her hands on Melody’s arms and pulled her back, Melody began to sob. It started low, then turned to a wail. She doubled over with the force of it. It was a terrible sound, something that frightened Brit, caused her to go white, her face to go slack. The sound connected to a place in Maggie’s center. Denise felt it, too, Maggie could tell. A mother’s fear for her child. Denise moved to Melody and put her arms around the other woman, led her away.

“What was she afraid of at home, Britney?” Maggie asked. They were good with each other; she knew Brit trusted her, knew that Maggie understood and accepted who she was, flaws and all. You’re everything you need to be , she’d told Britney in a session. It’s enough to just be who you are .

Britney looked up at the ceiling, then back at Maggie. “She was afraid of Graham,” she said.

Melody’s wailing grew louder; Denise had taken her to the couch in the sunken living room off the foyer. Calm down, Mel. It’s okay. We’ll find her. We’ll find her .

“How so?” Maggie asked. She was trying to be the measured and even one; but the stress of the situation was starting to get to her, too. “Did he hit her?”

Maggie remembered the shadow under Char’s eye a few weeks back. She’d asked the girl about it, but Char had laughed it off. Hit her head on the faucet in the tub when she bent down to pick up a dropped bar of soap. Silly. Stupid, she’d said. It didn’t ring true, but Maggie hadn’t pushed. Charlene didn’t present like an abused kid. Maggie knew Melody wasn’t a perfect mother, and Graham Olstead wasn’t anyone’s idea of an ideal stepfather. But what did an ideal parent look like? She wasn’t arrogant enough to think she knew.

Britney shook her head, seemed to measure her words. “He was inappropriate with her. Crude. Suggestive. She thought it was only a matter of time.”

“Until what?”

“Until, you know, he hit on her or something. Tried to touch her.”