Apprehension And Anticipation

Brenda pulled into a parking spot by the bus terminal and went in, not bothering to put coins in the meter because she would only be there a few minutes. Striding to the door, she put on a strict yet motherly face and barged in.

There were a few strung-out looking people sitting around on the benches and chairs, a bored looking desk clerk, and…no Valentine. Brenda looked around, seeing no sign of any of the black plastic bags either, and then her face cleared. Valentine must be in the women's restroom, so she went to check there.

Valentine wasn't there either. Her heart and head now pounding, Brenda approached the desk clerk. "Excuse me, but I'm looking for someone who was here earlier. A teenage girl, Chinese, tall for someone Oriental. She was wearing blue jeans and a turquoise sweater, and she had a lot of garbage bags with her."

"Didn't see anybody like that," the desk clerk said. "Didja try the convenience store next door? Lotta kids like to hang out there." He waved a hand in the direction of the store.

"How could you not—never mind." Brenda left the bus terminal. People never seemed to remember Valentine, despite the fact that she was quite striking looking. That, although no one knew it, was the doing of Mrs. Bun-bun, aka Nainai, the rabbit goddess.

Ever since the incident with Brenda's brother Jack, Nainai had decided the best way of protecting Valentine Xuelan on a day-to-day basis was to make her as close to invisible as possible, in a specialized way. So Nainai wove an aura around the girl that made her unmemorable to strangers and unattractive to those people who had bad intentions. The fact that this hurt Valentine's social life and made sure she had never been on a date were unintended side effects.

Anyway, Brenda went next door to the convenience store, where a cluster of teenagers were indeed hanging around. One glance was enough to let her know that Valentine was not among them. They were also of an ethnic group that Brenda did not even want to speak to, but they might have seen Valentine.

So even though her palms grew sweaty with fear, she went over and asked, "I'm sorry to bother you, but have you seen a Chinese girl around here? She's kind of tall, and she was wearing a turquoise sweater and blue jeans."

"No, ma'am," said one. "Would you like to sign our petition for Greenpeace? It's to stop dumping plastics in the ocean." He held out a clipboard.

"You mean Valentine Townsend? She's in Earth Sciences with me," said another. "She left school early today. Haven't seen her anywhere around here, though."

"Oh," Brenda said. "Thank you. Goodbye." She hurried off before the teenagers could assault her and steal her purse.

Where could the girl be? She couldn't have gone far with all of those bags. Had she thrown them away and went off somewhere? Brenda went behind the strip mall to check the dumpsters, and while there were plenty of garbage bags in them, they weren't the kind she had used.

"Stay calm," she told herself. There was a pizza place and a hairstylist in the same strip mall as the convenience store. Maybe they had seen something. Brenda went to each, and got the same reply. No one had even seen a teenage Chinese teenage girl.

Across the street there was a Thai takeout place—Brenda went there. They had seen a teenage Asian girl, because she was the owner's daughter and worked behind the counter. No one else, though.

Brenda went back to her SUV to find out she had a ticket waiting on her windshield. Ordinarily she would have been furious, but today she was too frightened. What were some places Valentine might have gone? The library came to mind, since Valentine was hardly ever seen without a book or an e-reader.

But there was no Valentine there either.

"Sh*t. Sh*t. Sh*t," Brenda cursed. She pulled out her phone and called home.

Brandi answered. "Mom? How do you cook—."

Brenda cut her off. "Is Valentine there?"

"If she was, do you think I'd be asking how to cook the pot roast? What happened? All her stuff is gone." There was a strange tone to Brandi's voice.

"Never mind. If she comes back, call me immediately, understand?"

"Yeah, yeah," Brandi said.

Brenda hung up on her. Valentine couldn't have gone far, so Brenda got back in her SUV and drove up and down the streets around the bus terminal, but there was no trace of her. She even tried the local homeless shelter, but they hadn't seen Valentine either. Brenda considered calling the police or Child Protective Services, but she was afraid to. After all, the authorities would take a dim view of her abandonin—of her teaching Valentine a lesson the way she did.

The sun was starting to go down when Brenda drove home, which she did very reluctantly. She was only slightly less afraid of confronting her husband with what she did than going to the police.

Meanwhile:

"The only way I could have gotten hold of those pills is if somebody, probably Brandi, put them in our medicine cabinet. The bottle was there for a while before I used it—I thought Brenda had restocked our supplies. I remember thinking that the pills worked well, so I should remember the brand and get it again." Valentine told her aunts.

"Yeah, that's the thing about opioids, they really do the trick when it comes to pain," Aunt Alison said. She rubbed her arm, which once had been badly burned by hot oil in a kitchen accident. "But you only took them for a couple of days, and not that many of them."

"That's right. I read the instructions on the bottle, which said to take one or two pills every six to eight hours as needed, like that kind of medicine usually does. I took two pills on Friday night around six-thirty. I wound up sleeping until after eleven on Saturday. After that I only took one at a time. I don't remember exactly how many I took, but it couldn't have been more than five or six total."

"Do you feel like you need to take more, or like you're going through withdrawal? Do you have trouble sleeping without them?" Aunt Judy asked.

"Um—I don't think so? I have a little bit of a headache. I dozed off on the bus after I wore myself out crying, but I haven't tried sleeping at night yet," Valentine said.

"So it doesn't seem like you're addicted. When did you take the last one?" her aunt asked.

"Last night before I went to bed. So, a little less than twenty-four hours ago," she replied. "The school has a zero-tolerance policy."

"Well, in a day or two we can take you for another drug screen that's more in-depth than just a urine test. They can also test your hair and see what you've been doing, or in this case, not doing, over a longer period of time. I bet you can be exonerated," Judy patted her shoulder. "Now, you said you had other stuff you wanted to tell us."

Valentine did, and she took a deep breath. "Coming here to stay with you is the best part of my life. Thanksgivings, Christmases, Easters—without them, I don't know what I'd do. The rest of the time, it's like all of them—Dad, Brenda and Brandi—are suppressing me. Brandi, you know about. She still calls me 'Chinky-ching-chong' when she wants to aggravate me and she gets her friends to make fun of me in school.

"Brenda doesn't say things out loud very much, but she's in charge of running the household and the finances. So back when we were still little and Brandi wanted to learn piano, Brenda bought a piano and hired a teacher. Brandi got bored with it in three months. When I wanted to take ice skating lessons, it was too expensive and too much trouble to take me to the rink. Brenda even used Brandi as an example why not, because I would get bored too and stop soon.

"And it's still the same way. Brandi can go on overnight school trips—I can't, because Brenda needs me to help with the triplets. I can't join the Archery Club or volunteer at the animal shelter or the nature center because I have chores, but Brandi can hang out with her friends almost anytime she wants to. Brandi says they study. I don't know if they do or they don't.

"Dad doesn't listen to me. I try to tell him, and he says 'Don't ask me, your mother's in charge of the money.' Or, 'Next time, you can go.' Only the next time, I can't go. And of course, there's my favorite, 'Don't make trouble, Val.'

"If I keep on living with them, I expect that when I graduate high school, I won't be able to go away to college, because the triplets still need me. Maybe I won't even be able to go to college at all, because it's so expensive. No colleges in our town offer meteorology degrees, and they aren't places I really want to go to, anyway. I love the triplets, but I don't want to be their unpaid nanny and Brenda's live-in maid. So even if Brenda would let me go back, I—don't want to."

Valentine started crying again. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she said through her tears. "I thought I was done crying."

"It's okay," Aunt Judy and Aunt Alison both came over and sandwiched her in a hug between them.

"So," Aunt Judy said finally. "You don't want to go back. Do you want to stay with us? Because I think even if your dad says he wants you back, under the circumstances, we can go to court and transfer custody of you from them to us. Your basic needs are being met, but you're not in a stable environment where you can thrive emotionally and mentally. In fact, your stepmother and stepsister are being abusive."

"If throwing you out like that isn't abusive, I don't know what is." Aunt Alison added.

"I would love to stay with you here. I can help out with the lodge! I'll do anything!" Valentine bargained.

"Hey, calm down! We suggested you stay here. But how about coming upstairs now?" Aunt Judy hooked her thumb towards the stairs.

"Okay," Valentine got up and followed them.

"You haven't been here since the new dining room and porch were finished," Aunt Alison said. "Or the upstairs part of the addition."

Valentine had been staying in the same room at the lodge since she was a very small child. The room was only large enough for a single bed and a dresser, but it was homey and familiar. However, on the last visit, she noticed the bed was a little too short for her growing limbs.

Instead of leading her to the old part of the lodge, the aunts led her to the addition. There they opened a door…