Fly Away Read online

Page 5


  It almost seemed as though Arielle had left the suitcase as a decoy. To avoid suspicion long enough to get away.

  Once we figured that out, the real panic set in.

  We left the bus idling outside for half an hour while we searched the hotel, knocking on doors, asking questions, handing out Coach’s cell phone number to anyone who would take it. Since Arielle had left with her boots and her coat, we knew we were unlikely to find her inside, but we had to try. Finally, when we couldn’t wait any longer and still make our competition slot on time, the chaperones herded all the girls onto the bus.

  Some of the girls were whispering nervously. Others were silent. A few, like Sharon and Amy Jo, were crying. Realizing that we needed something distracting to do, Ms. Wilkinson—Keri’s mom—suggested we do each other’s hair. For competitions, we wear ponytails with ribbons in red, white and black, our team colors. Every Soar team wears black and white with one accent color. I fumbled hopelessly with Priya’s fine, shiny hair. It kept slipping out of my fingers before I could get the elastic on.

  “This is ridiculous!” I said, letting go of her hair and the ribbons. “Arielle is missing. Out there!” I pointed out the bus window at the unfamiliar city, with its graffiti-covered walls and crawling traffic. “And we’re doing each other’s hair and heading for a stupid competition like nothing has happened? We should—”

  “Now, Marnie,” interrupted Ms. Wilkinson, “your coach is at the hotel right now, on the phone with the police—”

  “But we should be helping!” said Lucy. “We should be looking for her!”

  Ms. Wilkinson shook her head and spoke sternly. “No. Nobody leaves. This is a serious situation. We will not have another girl separated from this group. Do I make myself clear?”

  Sharon let out a loud, choking sob.

  Ms. Wilkinson softened. “I know it seems strange to be going into a competition at a time like this. I know it doesn’t seem important compared to finding Arielle. But there’s nothing more you girls can safely do to help.” She bent down and scooped up Priya’s tangled ribbons. “You searched the hotel. Now you need to stay together.”

  Ashleigh nodded her agreement. I marveled at her calmness. I’d never realized that bad situations bring out the best in natural leaders. I wished I was more like Ashleigh.

  “You came here to perform,” Ms. Wilkinson continued. “It’s better than sitting around the hotel in hysterics. So that’s what we’re going to do.”

  Ms. Wilkinson reached for Priya’s hairbrush, and I handed it over. Then I leaned forward, my head in my hands, while she finished my job.

  chapter thirteen

  Running away on the eve of a competition was the very last thing you would expect from Arielle. I looked out the bus window. Traffic was gridlocked on the roads, and people pushed past each other on the sidewalk. Busy city people, disappearing up side streets and into buildings with bars on the windows. Even the kids I saw looked tough. One boy a few years younger than me coasted dangerously close to the bus on a bike. He wore no helmet and steered expertly around the February slush piles, putting one hand on the side of the bus for stability. We were three hours’ drive from Stratford, but Toronto could have been on another planet. It was so different from our little town. And Arielle was alone out there.

  Maybe she’d run out to do an errand and had gotten lost.

  With her computer and her makeup bag? No.

  The bus squealed to a stop, interrupting my thoughts. I fell into step behind the other girls, lining up numbly in front of the baggage door to wait for my gym bag. I turned around when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “Marnie,” said Ms. Wilkinson softly.

  I looked up.

  She beckoned for me to take a couple of steps away from the others, and then she spoke. “I know you’re worried about your friend. But you’re our assistant captain. These girls are going to need some leadership if they’re going to get through this competition. Are you up to it?”

  I nodded, but I wasn’t convinced.

  We walked in almost complete silence into the conference center. The lobby was packed with cheerleaders, most wearing their team ribbons and stage makeup. The girls—and a few boys—were talking and laughing, bubbling over with anticipation. It was the kind of exciting, charged environment you experience only at competitions. It was an environment that I usually loved. This was a moment that I’d always dreamed about: my first time arriving to compete as a flyer.

  But that morning, my team walked into the conference center with all the energy of a shell-shocked band of disaster survivors. Arielle had been the head and heart of our team. Losing her felt like a knockout punch. We were acting like a broken team.

  Ashleigh, who was a step ahead of the group, turned around and stared at me. I shrugged my shoulders at her. What?

  She looked away in frustration and then shouted, “Starlings! This way! Team meeting!”

  We pushed our way through the crowd, following Ashleigh’s long auburn ponytail. We walked until we found our team’s gathering spot, marked off with tape on the lobby floor. Some people were sitting in our spot, and it was so loud and crowded that it would have been impossible to talk there. Ashleigh led us through a curtain and into the auditorium seating area. We followed her up three flights of steps to the empty top tier of seats. Even with the competition going on below us, it was quieter there than in the lobby.

  “Sit,” Ashleigh said.

  All twelve of us sat.

  “Not you, Marnie,” she whispered.

  Oh, right. I was the assistant captain. I stood up, and Ashleigh took my seat.

  “Uh…,” I began, “…like Ms. Wilkinson said on the bus…I know it feels weird, being here without Ari. But she…um…would have wanted us to compete…”

  Shona, who’d been unusually quiet all day, piped up. “Then why isn’t she here?”

  “Pardon?” I asked. The other girls turned and stared at Shona.

  But Shona was not deterred. “How could she ditch us a few hours before we’re supposed to go on?”

  “Well, obviously,” I answered, “nobody—”

  “Everybody talks about Arielle like she can do no wrong,” said Shona. “But look at us. We go on in forty minutes. We’re short a base. Sharon won’t stop blubbering. Nobody’s warmed up. What kind of captain does this to her team?”

  I stared at her, my mouth hanging open.

  “I can’t believe you think this competition is more important than Arielle’s safety!” Lucy said.

  “Oh, come on,” Shona said. “Arielle’s safe. She’s probably on the number fifty-two bus right now, going to some art gallery.

  She blew us off.”

  “She did not!” I said.

  “She did,” said Shona. “And don’t pretend you weren’t in on it. Why else would she make you assistant captain?”

  “Shona,” I said, fighting to keep my anger under control, “if I had any idea where Arielle was, do you really think I would keep it secret?”

  Ashleigh jumped to her feet. “Enough! All of you. If we have any hope of getting this done, we have to focus on cheerleading. Sharon, can you take Arielle’s place in stunt group three?”

  Sharon was a tumbler. The way the routine was choreographed, she wasn’t tied to any stunt group, though she sometimes acted as spotter.

  “How should I know?” Sharon wailed. “I don’t know Ari’s part!”

  Besides, I thought, she was hysterical. If I were Keri, the group-three flyer, I wouldn’t want to put my safety in Sharon’s shaky hands.

  “I’ll do it,” volunteered Jada. Like Ashleigh, Jada was one of the few girls who were handling this whole situation with some maturity and composure. The way I was supposed to be handling it, as assistant captain.

  Arielle wasn’t even there, and I’d still managed to let her down.

  Ashleigh nodded. “Thank you, Jada. Now we’ll find an empty spot in the hall to stretch, and then I’ll ask the organizers if they’ll let
us into the on-deck room a few minutes early. Maybe they’ll be understanding.”

  The on-deck room at this competition was not really a room. It was the southernmost third of the stadium floor. It was divided from the north side by a high curtain, put up to hide the sound equipment and to provide a backdrop to the performance mats. There were mats on the south side too, but these were reserved for teams warming up. Normally, they don’t let you into the warm-up area until about fifteen minutes before you go on. Some creative begging on Ashleigh’s part got us a little corner where we could work out the choreography changes made necessary by Arielle’s disappearance.

  Lucy, Priya and I lined up in front of Keri’s stunt group so that Jada could copy Lucy’s positioning. Being a good base meant knowing two things—where to place your hands for the lifts and throws, and how to time all your movements with the flyer’s momentum. Jada had been a base before Emma’s accident. Every competition song has its own rhythm, and each stunt group has its own particular signals, apart from the usual beat-counting, to communicate timing.

  With Jada and the rest of group three watching, I performed the slow turning arabesque from “Midsummer,” and then the tuck throw from “Groovy” while the rest of the girls counted the beats. It wasn’t until Lucy and Priya put me down that I realized I hadn’t felt nervous doing the stunts. In fact, I hadn’t thought about my own performance at all. I’d just concentrated on keeping my movements precise so that Jada could follow Lucy.

  Maybe that was the trick—to stop thinking so much about myself as a performer and more about how I fit in with the team. Maybe that was how girls like Ashleigh and Jada—and Arielle, of course—stayed so calm.

  chapter fourteen

  Despite my own little discovery, the ten minutes of extra practice in the on-deck room didn’t make any difference. We could have practiced all day, and we still would have stunk. We moved like a band of zombies out there.

  When we walked off the mats, Coach Saylor was waiting for us. Some of the girls barely even looked up at her.

  “Cheer up,” Coach said. “At least you got it done, right? That shows a lot of spunk.”

  “Any news about Arielle?” Jada asked, ignoring the coach’s praise.

  Coach shook her head. “Not yet. We had her parents email a photo to the police…”

  “But?” I asked, knowing she was holding something back.

  “Well, girls, Arielle is eighteen. The Toronto police, and our police back home too, consider her to be an adult. Unless there’s evidence of foul play—and there isn’t—they won’t start searching until forty-eight hours have passed.”

  “What?” Ashleigh exclaimed. “She’s alone in a city she doesn’t know.”

  Coach nodded. “Her parents are frantic. They’re on their way down. But Arielle’s turned off her phone. And other details have come to light”—she hesitated for a moment—“that suggest she might not want to be found.”

  No one spoke. A cold, heavy feeling settled into the pit of my stomach. “What other details?” I asked, quietly.

  “Well, contrary to what she told her parents, Arielle never submitted her application for university residence. And she’s not the type to miss deadlines. Her parents are worried that she’s given up on going to U of T next fall.”

  I thought back to the end of January and Arielle’s vague answers to my questions about residence. Why hadn’t I pressed her? I’d been so wrapped up in my struggles as a flyer, and my problems with Liam, that I’d missed the signs that something big was going on with Arielle.

  I slumped to my knees on the sidelines. Would I have been able to stop her if I’d taken the time to ask some questions?

  “You okay, Marnie?” Coach Saylor asked.

  I nodded without looking up.

  “You know,” said Ms. Wilkinson, “you girls didn’t eat much at breakfast. What do they sell at the snack bar?”

  Coach reached into her pocket for money. “Priya, Samara, Amy Jo, why don’t you head up to the snack bar and see if you can get some pizzas? And some sports drinks.”

  The girls took the money and headed off. The rest of us sat down on the sidelines. A few girls were whispering about Coach’s news, but the majority stayed quiet, watching the remainder of the morning’s competition groups without real interest. The Friday morning results were to be announced at 1:00 PM. After that, we’d be free to go back to our hotel. With the performance we’d given, we’d probably missed the cut anyway. We wouldn’t be needed for Saturday’s round. We could go straight back to Stratford today, if we wanted to.

  With that thought to comfort me, I sat obediently and waited for my pizza. I tried not to think about Arielle on some crowded street—or bus—all alone.

  Bus…What had Shona meant when she mentioned the number fifty-two bus? Was it a real bus, or was she making it up? I promised myself I’d ask her about it when I got the chance.

  To our surprise, when the judges announced the morning results, we found out we’d tied for third in our division. It was far below what we were capable of, but still good enough to qualify for the Saturday round. When they called our team name, we were so sure we’d been eliminated that only Shona and a couple of other girls jumped up to run out onto the mats to get their ribbons. Shona stood there next to one of the judges and glared at the rest of us until we finally clambered to our feet and walked on.

  Yay, I thought. Third place.

  When I got back to the sidelines, I saw Sharon and Barb whispering to Coach Saylor. Coach put a hand on Sharon’s shoulder and turned her around to face us.

  “Girls,” Coach said, “I understand that, in light of Arielle’s disappearance, some of you are eager to get home. Barb and Sharon have asked that we withdraw from tomorrow’s competition. Quitting is not usually an option for a Soar team. But as we discussed last month, we enrolled in this competition as a warm-up for provincials. Based on our standing today, the best finish we could attain, if we stayed for tomorrow’s round, would be third place. And we’d need to be close to perfect to do that. So I’m going to put it to a vote. Girls in favor of withdrawing, please raise your hands.”

  Ten hands went up, and I could see that Amy Jo, one of the three holdouts with Shona and me, was wavering. Lucy elbowed her in the ribs. “The sooner we get home,” Lucy whispered, “the sooner we can start calling around to Arielle’s friends.”

  Amy Jo looked away from Shona and raised her hand. Shona and I were the only holdouts.

  “That’s eleven out of thirteen,” said Coach. “I’ll go talk to the judges.”

  Before we left town, we used Jada’s laptop and the photo Ari’s parents had sent to put together a Missing Person poster. We had a bunch printed at a copy shop, and we plastered them all over the conference center and the neighborhood near the hotel. While we were postering, I sidled up to Shona.

  “What was that bus you were talking about?”

  “What bus?” She frowned at me, obviously still furious that we’d pulled out of the competition.

  “You said Arielle was probably on the number fifty-two bus already. Is that a real bus? How do you know about it?”

  “It’s the northbound bus. To the art gallery. You know, for the field trip that Arielle cared about more than she cared about this competition.”

  I ignored the dig. “But how do you know about that bus?”

  “My grandparents live in Stouffville,” she said. “Not far from here. They used to take me to a store in North York to buy my gymnastics outfits. For competitions.”

  Well, I thought, aren’t you special. But all I said was, “Oh.”

  chapter fifteen

  It was 7:00 PM by the time we reached Stratford. After our night out with the basketball players, and the long day’s drama, it felt like midnight to me. It was a relief to see my father’s car pull into the Soar Club lot. Dad got out to load my bags. To my surprise, he gave me a long, tight hug before climbing back into the car. I guess the news of Arielle’s disappearance hit close
to home.

  “Are you hungry, hon?” he asked. “Want to hit a drive-thru or something?”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I just want to go home to bed.”

  “I should warn you, sweetie,” my dad said, “we got a call from the police. They want you to come to the station tomorrow for an interview.”

  “Do I have to?” I asked.

  “Well,” he said, “I’m not sure you have to. But I guess they think you could be of some help, if they decide to start a search.”

  “Okay,” I sighed.

  A couple of hours later, I was watching TV in my pajamas when the phone rang. It was Arielle’s mother, calling for me. She wanted to know if I could come by to talk. “Her paintings are gone, Marnie,” she told me.

  I went up to my room to change back into my clothes.

  “Where are you going, sweetie?” asked my mom.

  “Ari’s mother wants to talk to me,”

  I said. “Can you drive me over there?”

  I’d tried to keep the fatigue out of my voice, but I couldn’t hide those things from my mom. She put her arms around me in the hallway, and then she held me out at arm’s length. “Listen, Marnie, you tell Mrs. Kuypers that if there’s anything I can do to help, she should give me a call. I can’t imagine what she’s going through right now.”

  I nodded in agreement and then stepped out the door to warm up the car for my mom. When I got to the Kuypers’ house, Arielle’s mom looked as elegant and well groomed as ever, but her hands were shaking. She led me into the living room, where Mr. Kuypers was waiting, and we sat stiffly across from each other. The last time I had been in that room, Arielle and I had been sprawled on the floor, our feet up on the couch cushions. We’d just come in from a long run. It was September, the beginning of cheerleading season, and we’d been trying to whip ourselves into shape. We were laughing at how winded we were and talking happily about the season to come.