Page 46 of Skalterra By Nightmare
“She’s humoring poor Liam,” Sarah said. “No one who goes missing in Keel Watch is ever seen again, and life goes on. It’s sad, but it happens.”
The library air conditioning chose that moment to shut off, throwing an unsettling silence over the room.
“This has happened before?” I asked.
“Well, sure,” Gladys interjected. She leaned over their shared stack of magazines to rifle through the titles until she found one she wanted. “Every town has disappearances, but it’s more noticeable when it’s a small town like ours.”
“Like Margaret.” Mr. Lane nodded.
“Like Margaret!” Gladys agreed.
“She was always trouble,” Sarah said.
Gladys glared at her friend, but continued.
“And Rusty and Hank Tracewell about fifteen years after that. They were brothers. That one hurt.”
“Not as much as Sophie and Henry Glass,” Mr. Lane said.
“Glass?” My heart dropped. That was Liam’s name.
“Liam got over his parents. He’ll get over his cousin too.” Sarah shrugged. “Where’d the magazine you just had go? I wanted that one.”
“Did he get over them?” Gladys asked, helping Sarah to the discarded magazine. “Or does he not want to listen to harpies like you tell him that he should?”
Sarah replied with another shrug and licked her finger before thumbing through the magazine pages.
“How old was Liam?” I’d assumed just because he was friendly and mildly attractive, he must’ve had it easy, and I’d been such a dick. Worse than that, I’d been a dick to anorphan.
The flyers in the backpack felt heavier than before.
“I think Liam was in middle school?” Mr. Lane guessed. Sarah shook her head.
“It was more recent than that. It was the same year Gladys was a ginger.” Sarah gave Gladys’s gray hair a pat without looking up from her magazine.
“It wasn’t ginger, it was a warm chestnut.”
“It was an eyesore.”
“Anyway,” Mr. Lane cut in, “it wasn’t that long ago. Maybe a few years. Liam came home from school one day, and no one was waiting. We never figured out what happened.”
“But life goes on.” Sarah dropped her magazine again to look at me from behind her giant glasses. “We’re used to it by now. People go missing, we wait a little bit, we hold a memorial, and then we carry on. It doesn’t do anyone any good to linger on things we can’t fix.”
I clutched the backpack tighter. I had half a mind to repost the flyers against Gams and Mom’s wishes, just to prove Sarah wrong. Riley would come back. There was no need to be so cynical.
“Thanks for the posters, Mr. Lane,” I clipped. “I know Liam will appreciate it too.”
I made sure to glare at Sarah as I spun on my heel and bolted for the doors, moving fast enough that I wouldn’t hear whatever nasty thing she said next. The last time I’d wanted to spite someone as badly as I wanted to spite Sarah, I’d gotten Linsey’s Von Leer admission revoked.
I tossed my backpack into the front seat of the car, and Riley’s posters spilled out on the floor. They were still warm from the printer as I shoved them back into place, threw Gams’s car into drive, and started the journey north.
I didn’t have time to hang all of the new posters, but I managed to replace most of the ones I’d removed in the first town. Sarah had pissed me off just enough to disobey Gams and Mom, but what did they know either? I probably shouldn’t have listened to them in the first place. Riley deserved a chance to be found, and Liam deserved my help in finding him.
As for their fears about unwanted attention coming to Keel Watch Harbor? Surely the town’s reputation wasn’t worth the life of one of its own.
I returned to the shop well after closing. Gams raised an eyebrow from where she counted money at the register when I came in, and I scowled in response.
“Your friend Sarah sucks.” I shuffled past her towards the stairs.
