For the first time I finish first in the fifty fly—all the girls who have gotten good have moved up to the B team—and I come up out of the water jubilant, turn to give my entourage a raised fist, only to see bedlam.
This is my fourth grade classroom experience on hallucinogenics. When something gets into Nancy’s head, even the truth won’t knock it out. She is certain her daughter has been publicly disparaged on a day when she not only made it on time, but brought the entire Boots crew, and somebody has to pay, and on this day if you’re yelling your head off for the Anchors, it’s you. To amp it up, this is the first day in the history of all Bootses everywhere that Sheila sides with Nancy.
I pull myself out of the water and race through the gate, hoping to stop this ahead of any arrests and before Leah hears the N-word, a staple in Sheila’s verbal arsenal. I reach Nancy just as Leah is ready to punch her lights out—this wouldn’t be happening if I had kept my two worlds completely apart—immobilize Nancy into a bear hug, and whirl her at the same moment Leah unleashes a roundhouse that catches me on the back of the head. Nancy and I tumble onto the grass, me landing on top which is very lucky for me. This could go on forever if Yvonne, who has kept herself completely out of the mayhem, doesn’t scream, “WHERE’S FRANKIE?”
The Boots clan freezes, because they know who Frankie is, and the Annie Boots faithful freeze because the Boots do.
No Frankie.
In what has to be record time Sharon and Marvin, of all people, have everyone organized and we pour through the park calling Frankie’s name.
To no response.
Mission Park is a sprawling city park. The pool sits adjacent to Mission Street, a busy two-way four-lane, with a playground to the south and family picnic grounds to the east. It’s midweek so the place isn’t packed, but Washington Water Power employees are eating lunch along with picnicking families, so someone had to see a five-year-old, screaming like a one-man merry-go-round off its hinges, going poof! But no one did. Suddenly we’re all frantically searching the bushes and behind the outbuildings and the backseats of cars in the parking lot.
Sirens blast toward us while Sheila screams “No cops! No cops!” which ends her alliance with Nancy. Rance stands in the middle of it all like the ghost he is.
And Frankie is gone.
ChapterNine
He was there and then he wasn’t. With as many people running around hurtling accusations and howling epithets, as much attention as was directed at us and as many smart phones as had to be there, it’s almost impossible to imagine no one saw where he went.
But no one saw where he went.
Leah’s first thought is the river. She sprints across the park and over an eleven-foot chain-link fence; jogs up and down the river’s edge, but sees only calm waters. Thank God.
The responding cops and EMTs reorganize the search, block off the parking lot, and check all exiting cars.
Sheila has become less than no help, alternately screaming, threatening, then breaking down in rapid circular succession while Yvonne tries to calm her by offering weed, which makes Nancy nervous, but this is Washington, and it’s legal, maybe not smart, but legal.
I think I read, or saw on TV, that after the first hour or two of a child’s disappearance, chances of finding him or her plummet. By four o’clock my sinking feeling has sunk. I called Momma first chance I got, and she called Pop, who shot over from work. There will be a long discussion about contact with the devil clan, and as much as I hate anticipating that, I’m worried that somehow this is my fault. It’s crazy to want something so much that you forget who might get trampled if you get it.
The search at the park turned up nothing; Sheila has gone to the police station to file a report that I’m sure won’t include her inattention, and as the sun lowers in the sky Leah and I are driving through neighborhoods adjacent to the park with Tim, who came running in response to Leah’s text, at the wheel, on the off chance that Frankie got so rattled at the chaos that he just took off. I can barely breathe.
“They’ll find him,” Tim says. “A kid doesn’t just vanish.”
“Kids vanish all the time,” I say. “Somewhere, I have a brother. I have no idea if he’s even alive. His bio dad snatched him and left the state, then lost him to CPS. Kids disappear.”
“C’mon, Annie,” Leah says, “this is different.”
“Yeah, well, tell you what’s about to happen with my drug-crazed whore of a sister. She’ll get on TV and cry and say what a wonderful little guy her Frankie was and how desperate and brokenhearted she is, and when it dies down she’ll double her drug use and Frankie will just be another awful Boots memory.”
“You’re running way ahead. The cops have
