So Much Love Read online

  She spent the whole day on the verge of tears because Donny wasn’t in Chem or Algebra. Her throat was sore from holding back sobs, and Britt and Siobhan couldn’t think of anything to do but keep bringing her Diet Cokes from the vending machine.

  Kyla hadn’t realized how many people at school knew she was Donny’s girlfriend. She’d never kept it a secret—Secord High didn’t enforce her parents’ “Christian values,” but it was easier to stay out of the spotlight. Even with Donny’s parents, she had ducked and weaved—not going to their house more often than any of his other friends, not leaning on his arm or touching his hand in front of them, never saying the words girlfriend or boyfriend. The Zimmermans trusted Donny to have a girl in his room with the door closed, or maybe they just never noticed the door, the girl. Kyla had begged Donny not to say anything about the two of them to his mom and dad. Dermott and Louise didn’t socialize much, but she didn’t want to take the chance that they’d hear about her and Donny through some sort of parent grapevine.

  But it turned out that everyone at school knew. People kept coming up to her in the hall, patting her on the shoulder or arm, some even trying to hug her—tragedy seemed to involve a lot of touching—and telling her they were so sorry about Donny. She heard a lot of theories, but pretty much everyone agreed that something bad must have happened because Donny was too responsible to just take off. And he loves me, so he would never have left without telling me, Kyla wanted to say but didn’t. Then she did say it, to Donny’s best friend, Beaker, sitting on the rad in the drafty front foyer, eating their sad cafeteria poutine. “Yeah, I know, right?” said Beaker, and for a minute it made her feel a little better, knowing that Donny must have told Beaker that he loved her. Then she pictured a slimy hand reaching out of the earth to grab Donny and pull him down because nothing else could have kept him away.

  Two women from the police department were interviewing kids from the basketball team in one of the French classrooms. Kyla knew she’d get called down eventually and she was terrified, but she didn’t know why. She had done nothing wrong, and nothing could be worse than what she was imagining. But when they finally brought her into Madame Bernadette’s room and she saw the two nice ladies in pastel blouses, both of them drinking coffee and taking notes, she felt better than she had staring out the window in Chem. At least she was doing something to help. Some tiny thing.

  “So you are good friends with Donny?” said Pink Blouse too cheerfully.

  “Yeah.”

  “Some friends of his thought you two were dating?” said Lavender Blouse more seriously.

  “Well, I guess, sorta.”

  “You’re his girlfriend?” asked Lavender.

  “No, I mean, we hung around together…You know how it is.” She shrugged and attempted a smile.

  “Do you know where he is?” said Pink.

  Kyla did not expect her to be so abrupt and straightforward. She wasn’t sure why, but she’d assumed there’d be more beating around the bush, some working up to this question—accusation? She didn’t think anyone would outright accuse her of helping Donny disappear. “No, I—He was supposed to text me two nights ago, but he didn’t. I wrote to him like ten times, but he didn’t text back. I haven’t heard from him since that afternoon.”

  “Was he unhappy about anything? Did he ever talk about being angry or depressed?”

  “No, he was fine. He was excited about the new team jerseys, and this movie he saw on TV over the weekend.” She trailed off, then saw they were still staring at her, waiting to hear what movie it was. It was then she realized they knew nothing, had no theories or leads or suspects, and genuinely thought she might be about to provide them with a clue. She had assumed the police knew things she didn’t; and they had assumed the same of her.

  The women kept asking questions—about their relationship, about Donny’s friends and grades, how the basketball team was doing, his parents, whether he got into his first-choice university, how much he liked to drink on the weekends, whether he tried any drugs, which drugs, who he got them from. She knew most of the answers, and, taken together, she supposed they formed the picture of her boyfriend that everyone else knew too: a tall, handsome guy who was popular and athletic, but also sweet and friendly, and good at school, or the subjects with essays anyway. He had nearly failed Algebra and Geometry, and he liked to get drunk with his teammates after an important game—those were the worst things Kyla knew about Donny, and she had tried to learn everything about him. The pastel-bloused women flicked their pencils aimlessly over their clipboards and didn’t write much down, but they thanked her for her help and sent her back to class, though they said there might be more questions later.

  All that afternoon, she kept waiting for Donny to come jogging into class in an Under Armour shirt and tearaways from an away game that somehow she and his parents and everyone at school had forgotten about. She kept picturing the pissy look on Mrs. O’Leary’s face, the happy backslaps from his friends, the slippery joy in her own chest. But the day ended without any of that happening, and Kyla was crying as she walked carefully up the long, icy driveway to her door. She couldn’t help it. All those months of keeping silent, when she wanted to tell everyone about riding doubles on Donny’s bike down the big hill at the waterfront, or watching some silly Woody Allen film at the Paris movie theatre snuggled inside Donny’s coat because it’s always freezing there. She’d held back, kept her secrets to herself. And now it turned out that almost everyone knew anyway and who cared if her parents found out in the long run? They already thought she was headed in a bad direction with all her doubts, her sarcasm, her secrecy—why not confirm it?

  And really, Kyla was strikingly good by Secord High standards. She and Donny had talked about it for months before she even let him put a hand in her panties, and they probably weren’t going to lose their virginities on prom night, although now that Donny was gone, she regretted not having said yes to that too. Everything was so fleeting—she had to grab whatever happiness she could. Donny was going to graduate that spring, and there was always the chance that he might break up with her once he was in university. Or maybe she would break up with him when she graduated in a year and a half, or something else could end their romance. Anything could happen. Maybe had already happened.

  She dried her face with the edge of the itchy brown scarf Louise had knitted for her and climbed the front step, which was just a cement block, carved away on the underside by ice. Inside, everything was just like she knew it would be, just like it was every night: Louise in the kitchen, making soup, chatting along with the grim-sounding woman on her German Rosetta Stone CD. Kyla’s sister, Jaycee, playing on the floor with dolls that were not as sexualized as Barbies but still pretty. Somewhere in town, Dermott was packing up his lunchbox from his locker in the warehouse, along with a bunch of broken cookies from the bin beside the packing line, and heading home.

  When she saw Kyla, Jaycee dropped her doll and pretended she was a horse. She galloped around the living room, turned, and trotted right into Kyla’s side, gave her a kiss on the ribcage. Funny little kid. It was so stupid that Donny hadn’t met Jaycee. Everything was stupid.

  Louise said, “How was school today?” before she fully turned from the steaming, meat-scented stove and saw Kyla in tears. “Oh, honey.” She swept over in her long beige dress and wrapped Kyla and Jaycee both in a warm beige hug. “I was listening to the radio all day and there’s no good news yet for that boy. But oh, I’ve been praying so hard.”

  Kyla felt weak and small in her mother’s arms, but the sobs she’d been keeping in started jerking out of her throat and there was nothing she could do. The past six months’ worth of arguments with her mother—over her one lipgloss, her desire to be a journalist, her staying out after school until dinner or even later, her disrespect for God—still burned. She was becoming something her mother had been raised to fear and, despite the hippie skirts and the freedom from “organized religion,” still did. But Louise couldn’t
stop nurturing, even when she was afraid, and the hug was what Kyla needed. She burrowed in.

  Jaycee squirmed free after a moment, but Kyla kept her wet face pressed against Louise’s rounded shoulder, her small pointed breasts squashed against her mother’s large soft ones. It was humiliating, childish, but also the only thing she could do. She knew if she opened her mouth right at that moment, the whole story, the whole useless lie of the fall and winter, would come tumbling out. She’d get yelled at, sentenced to days of prayer and “introspection,” and what would be the point? She now realized, buried in her mother’s soft arms, that if she’d braved all the anger and talk of sin earlier, maybe there could have been a way through and out the other side, with Donny sitting awkward at their dining room table, calling her father “sir,” being sent home by nine at the latest. But now there was no Donny, and no possible chicken dinner, and no point to angering her mother when she needed her so much. She let Louise pull her down to the couch.

  “I didn’t know that this would affect you so much. This boy, Donald, did you know him well? In class?” It sounded like Louise was goading her. They had been arguing about what was appropriate socializing for a while—Louise seemed almost ashamed to admit it, but she didn’t want Kyla talking to boys one on one at all. Kyla figured the town her parents had come from was so full of religion that even when Louise and Dermott “broke free,” they didn’t really know what freedom was. But this time, Louise’s grey eyes were wide, her warm, heavy arm a halo.

  “A little. He’s a good…student. He’s funny. Everyone likes him.”

  “We just have to trust that our heavenly Father is guiding him safely home.”

  Kyla leaned forward, reached for her bookbag, and dumped everything out onto the floor: the hefty algebra textbook, a couple spiral notebooks, a history text with a picture of a castle on it, and finally the slender novella she had to read for English class. She stacked them neatly on the coffee table just as her mother snapped up the top book.

  Louise waved The Death of Ivan Ilych toward Kyla’s face. “Tolstoy! What a wonderful assignment.” She flipped the book over; the back cover was curiously blank.

  “You like Tolstoy?” Kyla muttered, staring at the green-grey shag rug. Donny was obsessed with Shakespeare, and could recite swaths of Hamlet. Kyla wasn’t a big reader, so she’d been proud of feeling like she understood Ivan Ilych, could relate to him even. It sort of diminished the accomplishment if Louise, who read mainly the Bible and the grocery store flyers, liked it too.

  “Don’t look so surprised.” Louise smiled, then leaned in closer, as if confiding a secret. “He was a great Christian thinker, you know.”

  Jaycee had opened one of Kyla’s notebooks and started to scribble on the pages with a highlighter, but it took Kyla a second to notice. “No, that’s not right,” she said, snatching the highlighter away from her sister. “He was a writer. A novelist.”

  “People can be more than one thing.” Louise kept on smiling purposefully. “I don’t know a lot about him, but wouldn’t that be an interesting angle for your paper—Tolstoy’s Christianity? Something I bet a lot of people don’t think about.”

  “Well, what was he, like, Russian Orthodox? I don’t know anything about that.”

  “You’ll have to do your research, but I’m pretty sure he was just like us. He believed people should come to God in their own way, outside of silly rules and fancy buildings.”

  “Just like us?” Kyla’s voice was faint.

  Louise shrugged and grinned, her signal for “Figure it out.”

  Jaycee threw her cookie plate on the floor and bellowed, “Someone’s gotta pay attention to me!”

  Dermott stomped in. “Family!” Louise stood up daintily and Dermott hugged her, then Kyla, then Jaycee. Then he plonked down in the corner of the couch and tossed his feet on the coffee table. “How have you ladies been today?”

  Louise guided his gaze toward Kyla with her own. “Kyla’s had a rough one, dealing with the disappearance of that young man at her school.”

  “Zimmerman, yeah. I heard a search party is going out tonight to comb the bush behind the school. Good to see the community getting involved. You can’t always trust the police.”

  Louise stood. “Do you think you ought to go, Dermott? I can have dinner on the table in ten minutes.”

  “I might. I do feel the Lord wants me to aid this boy and his family however I can. Perhaps this is the way. Or one way.”

  Kyla felt like screaming at her parents, “You don’t even know him.” But then again, Dermott had found a way to help while she just wanted to stay at home and cry.

  “Can I go, Daddy?” Kyla hated to buy into anything her father suggested, but she knew she’d also hate to stay alone in her room, worrying and reading, not even trying to help. Her throat felt tight and hot. “I don’t have any homework tonight.”

  Dermott raised his furry eyebrows. “Has the Lord called you to help too, Ky?”

  She was silent a moment. It was silly to continue lying, but if she told the truth now she’d be grounded for weeks, and no one would comfort her anymore. If Donny comes back, I’ll tell them, she thought to herself. When he comes back. Then it’ll be worth it, worth the punishment for lying.

  “By works faith was made perfect.”

  He beamed. “James 2:22. Very nice, Ky. But still, after such a horror for the Zimmermans, I worry about you out in those woods.”

  “Well, you’ll be with me, right? You’ll protect me… ”

  She saw Louise turn to Dermott, shrug, then look away. Her mother didn’t like Kyla being out after dark, and although being with her father should have been theoretically some sort of shield against catastrophe, clearly Louise wasn’t convinced. Suddenly, Kyla wasn’t convinced herself. Maybe the person who had taken Donny was still out in those woods. The news hadn’t said taken, but what else would keep him away? The bush behind Secord High loomed before her, vast and terrifying.

  “Okay, Kyla, honey. We’ll go right after dinner.”

  —

  The drive over to her school was miserable because the heater in Dermott’s truck didn’t work, because Kyla didn’t want to talk and Dermott never shut up, because the only words in her mouth were her love for Donny and she couldn’t bear the interrogation that would come from that, because they were joining an attempt to find something that—in those woods, after so many hours—could only be bad. You miss all the shots you don’t take, whispered Donny in her mind. He was always quoting his coach’s terrible basketball clichés. He said they honestly helped him, but she couldn’t imagine how. And yet that was what she heard in her head right then.

  Donny’s parents were there to see the searchers off at the beginning. The police gave the volunteers directions on how to space themselves out, how to sweep the beams of their flashlights, what a useful clue or piece of evidence might look like. Then Mr. and Mrs. Zimmerman stepped forward at the edge of the parking lot, clutching each other’s arms as if they might be blown over. “Thank you!” they yelled into the wind. “Please, do everything you can—and thank you.” Their faces were wet, their eyes scrunched shut.

  As everyone started moving toward the woods, the Zimmermans shuffled toward their car, arms still locked around each other. Kyla tried to step back behind Dermott in case they recognized her, but she wasn’t quick enough, and they both clearly knew who she was.

  “Oh, hello, Kyla,” Mrs. Zimmerman called. Her voice sounded faint and fading, as if she might weep. “Thank you so much for being here.”

  Kyla felt she had no choice but to walk over, Dermott trailing behind her. Halfway there, she realized Donny’s mother was rummaging in her purse, his dad staring into the trees. They were trying to be polite, but clearly they didn’t care about her, didn’t think she knew anything special about their son. And really she didn’t, not for the purpose of finding him anyway. Still, she wanted to talk to them, wanted to stand and be counted with them, among the people who loved Donny, whom Donn
y loved.

  She didn’t do that, though. She just kept walking and when she reached him, Donny’s dad took her hand in his heavy leather glove. “Yes, thank you. We really appreciate it.” Mr. Zimmerman looked older than she remembered, deep creases under his eyes and around his mouth. He had probably been up all night as she had been, imagining all the same terrible scenarios she had imagined, and they couldn’t even talk about it. He glanced over her shoulder and nodded to Dermott. “Thank you.”

  When the Zimmermans were gone, Dermott stared at her hard, but Kyla couldn’t muster a lie. Instead, a spark of bravery lit her words: “I met them when Donny and I did a French project together. At his place.” Expressly against the rules, but Dermott just nodded and led her by the arm toward the woods. Did he not want to hear the truth, or was he not really listening? Either was possible with him.

  It was a long, cold evening stumbling over tree roots and trying to keep snow from blowing down their collars or falling into the tops of their boots. Kyla tried to fill her head with memories of Donny—the sweaty collar of his T-shirt when he took off his big hoodie, the grip of his hand on her waist when he tried to teach her to ride his giant bike, the way he always smelled like Axe shampoo and Sprite. The times they had studied together, thigh to thigh on a bench in the cafeteria or at the library. Once, Kyla was drawing a Punnett square and Donny started teasing her. He didn’t know anything about phenotypes, but he thought it was funny that she was allowed to study fruit-fly sex when her parents wouldn’t even let her watch prime-time television.

  “Well, they’re not, like, ignorant. They want me to be smart at school and go to university.”

  Donny chuckled, his face pressed into her ear, his breath on her neck. “I just think it’s sad that this is the closest you get to an R-rated movie.”