I shift on the leather seat. “I haven’t seen him around.”
“Neither have we, and as far as we know, he hasn’t been deregistered,” she says. “The school’s in a panic, of course, because of what happened with his father, but they don’t want to alarm the other parents. The staff thinks there’s a connection with the girls. That it might be a kidnapping syndicate.”
She places the package on the table top—a white box wrapped in plastic and Sellotape.
“I looked up the return address and it’s Kiran’s. He sent it to himself, I suspect to keep it out of the house. He might be on those postage-stamp drugs.”
“LSD?”
Ms Isaacs nods.
“Are you going to open it?” I ask.
“No. I don’t know what he’s involved with, but I don’t want to scare him off. If he finds out it’s been tampered with by a member of staff, he might not come forward.”
“I still don’t know what this has to do with me.”
Ms Isaacs looks down at the box. “I want to give you this package. Judging from the trouble he’s gone to, it must mean something to him. When he contacts you, you can tell him you have something that’s his.”
I nod, even though I don’t understand.
“You can organize to meet with him, and then let us know how he is, and whether he’s coming back. If you ask me, the school should be alerting people as we speak, but they’re planning to sit on their hands until the funding meetings conclude. They don’t want to scare off funders, especially with the three girls, and most of them think he moved to a different school because of his father. I don’t think they’re making sufficient effort, but as a member of staff, I can’t act on my own. I need you to ask around about him. The administration thinks he’s left the school, but I need to know he’s all right.”
“I don’t know if he’ll trust me, either.”
“I’ve seen you with his recorder. Lord knows, I’ve confiscated the thing enough.”
“I don’t see how that’s connected.”
“Look, I know the two of you used to be Olympiad rivals before you enrolled here. It’s clear the boy is smitten. It would be sweet, if I wasn’t frightened for him. Kiran’s a bright boy, but scattered.” I clear my throat, but she holds up a hand. “I know I’m asking a big favor.”
I look at the package. Then I tell her it’s fine.
“You’ll do it?”
“I’ll do it.”
I leave her office hefting Kiran’s package. His MD recorder, which hasn’t helped me, weighs down on me like something I should toss.
Kiran’s a senior, and like most seniors he usually spends his lunch break skulking and sharing cigarettes behind the chapel, where the yard opens up between the tennis courts and the principal’s house. That’s where I’d gone looking for him a week ago, to learn how to set the recorder. There’s an upended boat splintering under a gumtree at the end of the yard. A few of his friends were sitting on the hull, knocking their heels against its sides and chipping powder-blue paint onto the grass. As I walked toward them, Jonathan approached me. He had a scratched Fanta yo-yo spinning at his feet.
“You’ve strayed far from the flock,” he said.
“I don’t care.”
“To what do we owe it?”
“I’m looking for Kiran.”
He grinned, revealing a crowd of butter-colored teeth. “I wish I knew where he was,” he shrugged, somehow managing the truth. That was a week ago.
I walk up Queens Road and head down Galloway Street. It’s a different route from school to the one I’m used to. Kiran’s parents own a house in Kaffrarian Heights, the wealthiest part of town, named after the word the British used to describe the natives. That’s what it says at the museum in town, anyway. Now their lawns lie manicured next to their driveways, their yard walls raised high and rimmed at the top with electric fencing. The roads are vacant, except for SUVs and sprinklers that hiss out moisture even in winter.
As I get to Kiran’s block, I get a text message from Part: There’s another bazaar at Central tonight. I have prefect duties as usual. Let’s put Litha in the dunk tank and drown him with our sorrows.
I close the message and stand in front of Kiran’s house. I can tell the place is abandoned, with the windows and the garage doors hanging open. I’m not sure what to make of it, but I decide to keep a record. I take out the exercise book with Mom’s birthdate and start sketching the façade.
I hear a car approaching and turn. The driver of the white SUV, an old woman wearing dark glasses and a rose-gold necklace, tells me to keep off the street. That it isn’t safe.
October 16, 1999
My cousins, Nandi and Lihle, visited us later that October, after Tata stabilized again. Lihle and I helped Nandi unpack her suitcase in the room down the hallway, where the matron used to sleep before she died. Then the three of us spent the night eating crinkle-cut chips and watching music videos in the dark. The next day, we split our chores at 9 a.m., as soon as we got up. Around noon, I walked down to the library to page through a hardcover book on UFOs that I’d found, but it was loaned out. It hadn’t been returned for a week. I bought a Coke, used the change on the Ms Pac-Man machine at Parbhoo’s, and walked back home, where we warmed up leftovers and ate them in front of the TV again. Then there were more music videos.
Nandi fell asleep. When I closed my eyes to fall asleep too, laying my head on the armrest of the couch, I felt Lihle’s hand on my face. His cold lips brushed against mine, and I breathed in to let his hand slip below my belt. Later, he came in my mouth.
The next morning, Lihle led me to the pool in our back yard and dared me to push my head under the water, which was green and had scummed the steps in the shallow end. He said he’d do it after me.
His father had downed two bottles of Autumn Harvest and drowned at Orient Beach the previous summer. My own had been going to the hospital twice a week, gargling his own water in his throat. I nodded.
I stood on the edge of the pool and took my shirt off, leaving my bra on. “I’ll do it for something to do,” I said.
One night the following week, the machine filled the entire ceiling with the number “3”—which I interpreted as a sign from Mama. That she hadn’t forgotten about us. Me and her and Tata.
After that, I stopped seeing it.
RTR: 005 / Date of Recollection: 05.29.2002 / 6 min
I get home and walk past my aunt, who’s fallen asleep with The Daily Dispatch on her lap. This has been her daily M.O. since going on leave earlier this month. I make out the photos of the three missing girls on the front page.
In my room I draw the curtains, take Celexa and Paxil, fit in my earphones and try to sleep. But when I hear Doris closing the door to her room, and then the bed springs creaking under her weight, I get up.
Out in the garage, boxes of Mom’s old newspapers sit stacked in the corner. She never could toss them, even after Dad told her they were a fire hazard. I used to think the reason she kept them was because she was in them, but after she was gone, when I read through a pile of the papers, I realized there was more to it. Mom believed they’d be useful again one day, and that there was no expiration date on what was wrong with the world.
I open a box and take out a bundle. I’m looking for other cases of missing girls, but I don’t find them. Instead, I read about dead bodies. Most of them are women