Out of the Deep Read online

  “…Bindy’s brother Cole,” Olivia was telling Steven. “According to Ms. Lopez, the tension between Bindy and Cole goes way back. Apparently he’s some kind of a football star.”

  “More like a superstar,” Steven countered. “Ms. Lopez told me Cole has already been offered full scholarships from colleges all around the country.”

  “Did you know that after Bindy’s accusation, the football coach and his teachers all wrote letters of support for Cole, saying he was an honest and decent kid who couldn’t possibly do such a thing? Ms. Lopez said no one came forward to defend Bindy.”

  When he craned his neck ever so slightly, Jack could catch a glimpse of his father. Steven shook his head and took another sip from his mug. “So, Bindy’s adoptive parents believe Cole is telling the truth and Bindy is flat out lying. How sad for Bindy.”

  “I know. Still, it’s possible she invented the whole thing, Steven. Ms. Lopez says Bindy comes up with one fantastic story after another. Even Ms. Lopez isn’t sure how much of what Bindy says is true.”

  Steven set down his mug. “Having said that, it’s still no excuse for what the parents are doing. I mean, how could anyone try to get rid of their own child, even if she’s adopted?” Suddenly, his head jerked up and he looked toward where Jack was standing. “Wait a minute—Jack! Why are you lurking out there in the hall?”

  Shuffling his feet, Jack emerged from the shadows. For the next ten minutes, his parents gave him a verbal going-over. Jack should never listen in on their conversation. They respected Jack’s privacy, and he should do the same for them. They told him to keep everything he’d heard to himself because Bindy’s private affairs were just that—her own private affairs. Since the social workers and the therapists didn’t know what to make of Bindy’s story, Jack shouldn’t judge it, either. Instead he should give Bindy the benefit of the doubt.

  He was not to tell any of this to Ashley. Finally, if Bindy wanted to share her own story with Jack, that was fine, but he should in no way ask Bindy about her court case. Let her come to you, was how his mom had put it.

  Now, when Jack returned to the girls’ motel room, he found his sister working Bindy’s hair into stubby braids. Smiling brightly, Bindy held out her hand for the Butterfingers.

  “Here,” Jack told her. “Catch!”

  She caught one neatly and tore off the wrapper, then took a big bite. With her mouth full, she said, “Ashley’s been asking questions about my so-called career, but I told her to wait until you got back. That way I can double my audience, ha ha.” Pulling herself into a seated position, she proceeded to tell them about her life B.C.—before the Callisters.

  She could hardly remember her father. He was killed in a speedboat accident off the coast of California when she was only three.

  Back then, Bindy was cute—everyone said so—with nice round cheeks, big blue eyes, and curly blond hair. Her mother signed her with a casting agent who arranged for Bindy to make a few commercials, but the jobs were few and far between. Bindy and her mother lived in a tiny apartment over a garage two blocks from Hollywood Boulevard. “Then I got my first movie,” she said.

  “And after that you were rich and famous,” Ashley stated, believing it.

  “Ha! I wish! I had about a dozen lines to say in that movie. Mostly I had to jump rope to ‘Down by the river, down by the sea, Johnny broke a milk bottle, blamed it on me….’ We must have shot that scene 20 times, and when I got so tired I started to cry, my mother took me on her lap and told me this was my big chance, and I had to be brave. So I kept doing it, over and over.”

  “How old were you?” Ashley asked.

  “Seven. I didn’t get the part in Melissa’s Dream till I was nine. By then, my mother already had cancer.”

  Each day, Bindy said, her mother managed to take her to the studio where the movie was being filmed; each night they returned to the cramped apartment over the garage and rehearsed the script again and again until Bindy learned her lines. She had to be perfect; she couldn’t lose that job, because they had no other income and no hospital insurance.

  “That must have been awful for you,” Ashley sympathized.

  “No it wasn’t, because we were a team. My mother loved me!” Bindy said fiercely. “We were always together—she stayed with me on the set every minute. It was months before Melissa’s Dream was released in the theaters, and my mother kept getting sicker, but finally we went together to see the movie. Two days later, she died.”

  Jack felt his throat tighten as he thought of what Bindy had been through. If Bindy Callister—or Belinda Taylor—wasn’t telling the truth, she was one fabulous actress. But she stayed dry eyed as she sat there telling them the rest of her story, which only got worse.

  “So Aunt Marian came to Hollywood to take me home with her—she was my mother’s sister. She’d seen Melissa’s Dream, too, and she thought if she adopted me, she’d get a pretty, talented little girl to be part of her family, along with her handsome, smart, athletic son, Cole. A perfect Barbie to go with her perfect Ken doll. Hey, throw me that other Butterfinger, would you, Ashley?”

  “So…so what happened?” Ashley whispered.

  “Well, I didn’t want to be part of Aunt Marian’s perfect family. I hated Cole on sight, and he hated me, too. So…I ate. And the more I ate, the more upset Aunt Marian got. Twice she dragged me back to Hollywood to get me into another movie, but the casting director took one look at me and said no film needed a prepubescent girl with weight issues. That’s how they talk in Hollywood.” Bindy threw back her head and laughed a laugh so full of anger it made Jack feel creepy.

  He wanted out of there. Reading his mother’s thick books on whales would be better than hearing Bindy talk about her awful life, even if it was all made up.

  Someone was moving around in the room. Jack opened one eye to stare at the digital clock on the lamp table. 12:35. Barely past midnight. He’d been asleep for only one uncomfortable hour, because the cot he was on felt lumpy.

  Hair stood up on his arms as he watched the deep shadow glide silently across the floor. He could make out the outline of his parents in their bed, so it wasn’t one of them who’d gotten up to go to the bathroom or anything. The shadowy shape, moving so soundlessly through the room, had to be an intruder. A thief! His fingers trembled as he watched the shape move closer. Should he call out and wake his parents or just keep quiet and let the thief take whatever he wanted?

  His heart thumping so loudly the thief might hear it, Jack opened his other eye. Whoever the intruder was, he seemed awfully small. Then the shadowy figure bumped into Jack’s cot and muttered, “Ouch!”

  That was Jack’s chance. He leaped up and grabbed the person, who wiggled and yelled, “Let go, you dork!”

  “Ashley?”

  “Who’d you think it was? Freddy Krueger?”

  By then Jack was feeling pretty stupid—for the second time in the past six hours—so he grumbled, “What the heck are you doing sneaking around in the dark?”

  “What’s going on?” Olivia asked, turning on the bedside lamp. Her dark hair sprang from her head in wild curls. Blinking hard, she asked, “Where’s Bindy?”

  “That’s what I came to tell you,” Ashley answered calmly. “She’s gone.”

  Steven sat upright. “Gone? Gone where?”

  Plunking herself down on the end of Jack’s cot, Ashley replied, “I have no idea. I heard a door close, and at first I thought it was the bathroom door and Bindy had just gone in to…you know. I was kinda sleepy, so I don’t know how much time went by, but then I looked over at her bed and it was empty. I got up and looked into the bathroom, and that was empty, too.”

  Both Steven and Olivia were on their feet so fast it was as though they’d been shot out of a cannon.

  They practically dove into their jeans and then pulled sweatshirts over their heads, yanking them into place as they ran through the door that connected Ashley’s room to theirs. In less than a minute they were back, looking grim.

>   “I’ll check at the front desk,” Steven said.

  “It’s after hours. I doubt anyone will still be there,” Olivia said.

  Jack suggested, “Maybe she just couldn’t sleep. She could have gone out on the beach to look at the waves.” Before he even spoke the last word, Steven rushed out the door. Jack listened for the clatter of his father’s footsteps going from the front deck down the wooden stairs to the parking lot, then remembered that his dad hadn’t bothered to put on shoes. Steven’s feet were going to get awfully sore clambering barefoot over the rocky beach.

  Olivia had begun to page through a phone book, muttering, “I’m calling the police.”

  “Don’t you think you ought to wait a little while?” Jack asked her. “At least until we look around the motel. Maybe she just went for a Coke in the drink machine.” Or a couple more candy bars, he thought.

  Olivia slammed down the receiver, saying, “You’re right. Kids, get dressed. We’ll do a thorough search. Then I’ll call the police. And grab your dad’s shoes on your way out. He’s going to need them.”

  After catching up to Steven and handing him the shoes, Olivia and Ashley left to scour the grounds of the motel while Steven and Jack walked along the shore, peering inside weathered boats and searching protruding rock formations that seemed to bubble up from the water’s edge. Lights from a few distant buildings twinkled in the darkness. Jack would have felt cheered if it hadn’t been such a serious situation. Olivia’s faint voice wafted to them. “Anything?”

  Steven called back, “No!” Then, to Jack, he grumbled, “This is ridiculous. Where could she be?”

  Suddenly, Jack snapped his fingers. “Hey, wait a minute—did you check the pier?”

  “Of course I checked the pier.”

  “But did you go past the No Trespassing sign? There are steps way at the end of the pier—I could see them from our balcony. Bindy might be sitting at the bottom of the steps just looking at the waves. She said she likes the Atlantic,” he finished lamely.

  Steven sighed and ran his fingers through his thinning blond hair. “I went to the point where the chain blocks it off. I couldn’t see too well, but I called for her. Nothing. She’s not there.”

  “Except she might not have answered you. She’s really weird. Maybe she’ll answer if it’s me. Dad, you just keep looking around. I’ll be right back.”

  “All right. I’ll give you two minutes. Then we’re going back to the motel to get help.”

  “Right. Two minutes!” Broken seashells crunched underfoot as Jack made his way to the pier. Tall enough for larger boats to load and unload, the pier had a row of rickety stairs that descended from the far end to the water’s surface. At the halfway point, a metal chain had been strung across to prevent access, with the No Trespassing sign hanging from the links and a smaller sign reading “Enter at your own risk” beneath that. But no signs would keep Bindy out. She did what she wanted to do and went where she wanted to go.

  Moving along the creaking, splintery slats, Jack called out her name into the night sky. Only the sound of waves and the groan of the wooden pier echoed back. As he squinted into the darkness, he saw what he thought was a dark shape, a deep patch of black turned toward the sea. “Hey, are you there?” Jack cried. The shape seemed to move farther away, hovering at the pier’s end, then disappearing.

  Glancing around quickly to see if his dad was watching, Jack easily climbed over the chain. A sudden wind whipped his face, ballooning out his shirt as though it were a shroud and rocking the pier like a trapeze. For a moment Jack wondered whether there might be any missing boards underfoot that he couldn’t see in the dark. He didn’t want to fall through onto the rocky beach beneath, where waves could grab him and soak him to the skin. With every motion the sun-bleached boards creaked under his feet, as the cold and insistent wind tried to push him backward. But someone was down there. It had to be Bindy.

  He cupped his hands again against the wind and called out, “Is that you?” After waiting a beat, he shouted again. The boardwalk stretched into darkness. Jack could hear, rather than see, the water beneath him, rushing against the timbers before receding back to the sea.

  The inky night at the pier’s end seemed denser now. As the shape blocked his view of whitecaps on the dark waves, Jack noticed a pale, orange glow. It illuminated the shadowy figure’s head. The shape was bigger than Bindy, taller, broader in the shoulders—or was Jack being deceived by the darkness? He took another step. “Bindy?”

  When the shape turned, Jack’s breath sucked into his throat. This wasn’t Bindy. It was a man, dressed in black, with a black wool coat that skimmed the tops of his boots. A rectangular metal box—a suitcase?—rested inches from his feet.

  “What do you want?” the man growled. His knit cap had been pulled down onto his thickly featured face. A cigarette hung from his lips, the lit end dancing in the night. The light from the cigarette let Jack see the man’s expression, and the look made his mouth go dry.

  “I asked you a question. Are you going to answer me?” The man took a drag from the cigarette, then flicked it into water.

  “I want—nothing,” Jack stammered. “I’m looking for a girl. Have you seen her?”

  “I dunno. What’s she look like?”

  “She’s 14, she has light brown hair, and she’s…uh….” Jack made a half-hearted gesture.

  “Kind of chunky?” the man finished.

  “Yes! So you saw her?”

  “No, I didn’t see anyone like that. I came down here for a private smoke,” he answered, lighting up another cigarette. “No one indulges anymore, so I have to find places where I won’t bother anyone, and no one will bother me. OK?”

  “It’s just that she—the girl—is missing. Have you been up here long?”

  “No.” Taking another drag, the man blew it between his teeth and asked, “Why?”

  “I’m asking just in case maybe you saw her walking along the beach. We’re really worried about her.” Smoke curled toward Jack, and the smell hit him, acrid and pungent. How could anyone suck that stuff into their lungs? It was gross.

  Suddenly, the heel of the man’s boot struck hard on the boardwalk as he took a step forward. “Where are you staying?”

  The question caught Jack off guard. “At the Seaside Motel. Up there.” He gestured.

  “Yeah? What’s your name?”

  “I—I don’t think you need to know my name. Anyway, I’d better go.” There was something wrong here, something Jack couldn’t quite put his finger on. The man had only taken a single step toward him, and yet Jack felt his muscles tense in a “flight or fight” reaction.

  He was relieved when he saw his father halfway down the beach. Steven spotted him and waved his arms in the air. “Jack!” he yelled. “I told you not to go past the chain. Come back here right now!”

  The man snorted. “So it’s Jack, is it? Well, Jack, I guess it’s time for you to go. To answer your question, I didn’t see anything, I didn’t hear anything. And Jack—it’d be smart if you did the same.”

  What did that mean? Spinning on the toes of his sneakers, Jack began to climb the stairs. With his back toward the man, he felt exposed, as if something might hit him between the shoulder blades at any moment. Don’t be stupid, he chided himself. The man’s just weird. With Bindy gone, the Landons had bigger problems. Swinging himself over the chain, he hurried along the pier to join Steven, who had a look of panic on his face.

  “Dad—there’s this guy up on the pier—”

  “Did he see Bindy?”

  “No.”

  “I can’t find her anywhere. Let’s move it. We need to look around the motel.”

  The four Landons checked all the halls, which were strangely empty. “What if she’s gone into someone’s room?” Steven worried.

  Olivia groaned, “I can’t even deal with that possibility. I’m calling the police right now!”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Jack could hear only one side of the conversati
on as his mother stated, “Her name is Bindy Callister. B-I-N-D-Y. Short for Belinda. Fourteen, blondish hair, a bit overweight.” With her hand over the mouthpiece, she asked Ashley, “Do you know what she had on?”

  Ashley shrugged. “The last time I saw her, she was wearing a sleep shirt. She was reading in bed with the light on. Then I fell asleep.”

  Olivia had turned all her attention to the phone again, concentrating so hard it looked like she might shoot through the phone lines, like Trinity in The Matrix. “Yes,” she was saying. “Yes, that’s right. Fourteen. She is? You do? Oh thank—We’ll be right there. Uh…where is the police station? We just arrived this afternoon, and we don’t know anything about Bar Harbor.” Grabbing a ballpoint pen from the desk drawer, Olivia began to scribble directions. Then, slowly, she returned the phone to its cradle.

  “Good news or bad news?” Steven asked.

  “Both. The police have her. But they picked her up in a bar.”

  Had Jack heard that right? “Did you say they picked her up in Bar Harbor?” he asked.

  “No, I said in a bar. A place that serves alcohol. Oh, Steven,” Olivia cried, reaching for his hand, “maybe we’re in way over our heads with this girl. She was able to sneak out right under our noses. When I imagine what could have happened—maybe she’s too much for us to handle. We’ve never dealt with anything like this before.”

  “Now calm down,” he said. “Let’s all pile into the car and find the police station.”

  That’s what they did, heading onto the highway that led to Bar Harbor, since the Seaside Motel was located about five miles from the town proper. In the back seat, Ashley held a flashlight while Jack tried to follow the street map of Bar Harbor, and Olivia studied the directions she’d scribbled. The town wasn’t all that big, but it had a lot of quirky little side streets that confused Jack. “I can’t really tell…,” he muttered. “Wait, turn here,” he told his father, who was driving. After a couple more turns they found the police station, a pale brick building, squat and square and plain, as if it, like the state of Maine, would tolerate no nonsense. Lights radiated from inside the building, casting a greenish glow onto the street. What a scary place for Bindy to be! Steven must have been thinking the same thing, because he didn’t even bother to parallel park. He left the car sitting with one tire on the curb and the headlights still on, as the family hurried into the station.