Fly Away Read online

  What a difference a few months can make, I thought as I sat across from Ari’s worried parents.

  “So she told you she’d applied for residence?” Mrs. Kuypers asked. “Actually applied?”

  I tried to remember Arielle’s exact words. “I’m not sure,” I said. “I think she just told me she’d make up her mind later.”

  “And you say you didn’t help her pack for this Toronto trip? You don’t remember how many bags she had?”

  I shook my head. Clearly, my focus had been on one person only: me. “When did you notice the paintings were gone?” I asked.

  “This afternoon,” Mr. Kuypers said “As soon as I got the call from your coach, I drove home from work and checked Arielle’s room. The outside doors were all locked, as usual. But the paintings were gone. There was a roll of packing tape on the floor. Whoever took the paintings had to have had a van and a key.”

  And they wouldn’t have been spotted, I realized. The Kuypers’ driveway went all the way around to the back of the house. Whoever took the paintings would have gone in and out the side door to Arielle’s studio. It wasn’t visible from the road.

  “And she didn’t say anything to you about any unusual plans?” asked Mrs. Kuypers. “Nothing at all?”

  Both of them stared at me, disappointment written all over their faces. “You’re her best friend…,” Mr. Kuypers said.

  “She didn’t tell me anything,” I said.

  She didn’t trust me enough, I thought as I put on my boots at the door. On the bus trip to Toronto, when she’d seemed so excited, it wasn’t the cheerleading competition that was on her mind. It wasn’t cheerleading at all. It was something else. Something that I was absolutely clueless about.

  A secret.

  That really hurt.

  The next morning, I answered all the same questions at the police station. When I asked them when they were going to start looking for Arielle, they wouldn’t give me a straight answer. All they would tell me was that they’d circulated her photo and some details of her disappearance through both police forces. But that was it.

  As I was about to leave, the interviewer, an older guy named Detective Fuller, asked me a question no one had asked before. “Did she have a private email address? One her parents might not know about?”

  “She had at least three addresses,” I told him. “The home one and two others. I don’t know them off by heart. But I have them on my computer.”

  Detective Fuller gave me his card. “Send them to me,” he said.

  Not even “please” or “thank you,” I thought, as I walked out. Just “send them to me,” as if I’d give up my best friend’s secrets that easily.

  But when I thought about the despair I’d seen on Mrs. Kuypers’s face, I knew I’d do just that.

  chapter sixteen

  I turned on the computer as soon as I got home and did a search of my inbox to find Arielle’s addresses. There were lots of messages from her home email address. Most recently, there were details about the Toronto trip, most of them sent to the whole team.

  I had to look harder to find messages from her other addresses. A note she’d sent me from Toronto when she was checking out residences was sent from her iPhone. I pasted that address into a message to the detective.

  The third address was [email protected]. There were only a couple of messages from that one. The most recent was the art portfolio. It was sent to me alone, no other recipients.

  I wondered if she’d ever sent that portfolio out, and if so, to whom. I looked through the pictures again. As always, the images sent a chill up my spine. They were pictures that kept secrets.

  I sat in my chair for a long time, looking at the carnival picture. There was a title under the picture. My Girl.

  I went online and and googled My Girl by Arielle Kuypers. Arielle had been on the computer a lot recently. I remembered her telling me about the artist who’d admired her work, but I couldn’t remember his name. I wasn’t expecting to find anything, and I didn’t on the first try. But when I tried again, this time using My Girl with gesso91, I got a hit to a bulletin board. The board was hosted by a site for young artists. There was a conversation thread about Arielle’s painting. Three different people had commented. One was the site moderator. The other two were “Redmeg,” a seventeen-year-old girl who, according to her profile, specialized in “fantasy illustration.” The other was someone who called himself “TheBeneFactor.”

  “The BeneFactor.” I said it aloud, trying to remember if this was the artist Ari had talked about. I clicked on his profile. A pop-up advised me that TheBeneFactor did not accept unsolicited portfolios. A search on the word benefactor turned up too many hits. I was stumped.

  I spent another hour on my computer, trying, without success, to figure out the identity of Arielle’s friend.

  I felt alone in a way I never had before. I knew I ought to be worried about Arielle— and about Liam too—but what I really felt was hurt. Besides my parents, Ari and Liam were the two people I trusted and counted on most in the whole world. Now both of them were gone, and provincials were just four weeks away. I was not only trying to adjust to being a flyer, but I was suddenly the team captain too.

  When Arielle made me assistant captain, I thought she’d done it to put an end to Shona’s little mutiny. Now I wondered if she’d planned this all along. If she was already preparing to bail out on the team and leave me to pick up the pieces. It was a cruel trick, especially considering I could barely manage my own problems. Now I had twelve other girls to worry about.

  chapter seventeen

  The next day at school, I made my way down to the art room at lunchtime. I needed to talk to Ms. Currie, the art teacher, to see if she knew anything about someone called The BeneFactor. But how was I going to talk to Ms. Currie without raising her suspicions about Arielle? Ari, of course, was one of Ms. Currie’s favorite students. If she thought I knew something about Ari’s whereabouts, she’d want me to report it to the police. Even though that seemed like the logical thing to do, Ari had kept me in the dark about her plans because she knew I would blab under pressure.

  I needn’t have worried. The art room was locked. There are expensive supplies in there. It made sense that Ms. Currie would lock it up when she wasn’t there. I let go of the doorknob and turned around to leave. Then I saw the bulletin board display on the wall across from the art room:

  A Career in Fine Art—Not Just a Fantasy.

  The display was part of a schoolwide career-day project. Many classes and labs had these boards up to highlight the practical applications of the subjects we were learning. I’d contributed a profile of a physiotherapist I’d interviewed to the Health display. I leaned in closer to scan the bulletin board, which housed a collage of art pieces and the careers they reflected. A piece of gift wrap, for example, framed a photo of a person working at a stationery design company. A page of print included a long list of web links, organized into categories. I zeroed in on the list marked Government grant and other funding support for artists. I pulled out my iPhone and typed in four URLs from the list. The most promising one was to a website that had information about private donors.

  I stuffed my phone back in my purse and walked quickly away from the art room. If I was lucky, there’d be no need to talk to Ms. Currie after all.

  After I got home from school, I only had about twenty minutes to go online before cheerleading practice, but it was enough. One of the private donors profiled on the website from the bulletin board was a man named Trey Benedict. The first hit, when I googled the name, was a newspaper review of an art exhibition. According to the reviewer, Trey Benedict’s work was “arch.” What was arch? Was it good or bad? There was no photo with the article, so I moved on until I found a page about a juried art contest for youth. Trey Benedict was on the three-member jury. I clicked to enlarge his photo. He was a white guy, with a shaved head, thin lips and small features. He stared intently at the camera. It was hard to tell his age. I guessed s
omewhere in his thirties.

  Trey Benedict, the bio said, is a multimedia artist based in Toronto. He is known for his collaborative work, including the creation, with sculptor Cheri Tepperman, of an award-winning permanent installation for the lobby of the prestigious Harwood Club in Oakville. An enthusiastic supporter of young artists, Benedict created the BeneFactor Foundation, which offers exclusive mentorships to emerging young artists.

  Exclusive mentorships. I had to find out what that meant. Trey Benedict was based in Toronto. Arielle had disappeared in Toronto. She was with him. I was sure of it. I was desperate to find out more, but I had to leave for cheerleading. I couldn’t afford to be late. I was the captain.

  As soon as I’d changed, Coach Saylor took me aside and asked how I was coping. I told her the truth. The idea of being captain of the Starlings completely freaked me out, and I wasn’t sure I was up to the task.

  She made her I’m disappointed face at me. “Well, Marnie,” she said, “you’re going to have to fake it. These girls need leadership. I can only do so much.” She ran a hand through her curly hair. I could see that she was tired. She had been interviewed by the police too. “First of all, you need to tell me whether you want me to replace Arielle.”

  I opened my mouth, but she interrupted me before I could say anything.

  “Not with a new captain. You’re stuck with that gig. I mean with a new base.”

  “I’m the one who has to decide that? Not you?”

  She nodded. “Arielle decided to replace Emma with you and to bring Lucy on. It’s your call.”

  I was quiet for a moment, thinking. Our team had been through a lot. I wasn’t sure the girls were ready to adjust to a new member. “I’d rather have Barb do it, if she’s willing. And use Jada as a spotter when we need one. I’ll let the girls know.”

  Coach nodded.

  Having made at least one real decision calmed me down a little. When the warm-up was over, I scooted to the front of the room and did my best to deliver a pep talk.

  “Hey,” I said. I had to repeat myself a couple of times before the girls quieted down to listen. They weren’t used to speeches from me. “We’ve got some business to discuss. We didn’t do too badly at the Great Lakes, considering.”

  Shona made a face, but she didn’t correct me.

  “We were in the middle of a crisis, but we got through the routine without any major screwups. We’ve got provincials coming up, and there’s no reason why we’re not still in the running.”

  I looked at Barb. “Barb, I want you to take Arielle’s place in stunt team three. When you need a spotter, you’ll use Jada. We’ll work through the choreography changes today. Are you ready?”

  I looked around the room for reactions. Lucy and Priya were smiling at me, but there were a lot of skeptical faces. Shona had her head down, pretending to fiddle with her shoelace. What exactly did she have against me? I was sick of her attitude. It didn’t do anything for the team.

  “Okay. Places,” I said, with as much authority as I could muster. “We’re doing ‘Groovy.’ From the top.”

  When practice was over, I followed Shona to her end of the locker room. “Can I have your phone number?” I asked her.

  “You already have it,” she reminded me. “Didn’t Arielle send you the contact file when she made you assistant captain?”

  “Oh,” I said. “Right.”

  “Why would you need to call me anyway?” she asked.

  “Tell you later,” I answered.

  I’d just remembered something. Shona knew her way around Toronto.

  chapter eighteen

  As soon as I got home, I got back on the computer. Whatever an “exclusive mentorship” was, it would be hard to argue that Arielle was not worthy of one. I was no judge of art, but I knew Arielle’s paintings had earned praise from people who were. She was smart, beautiful and talented, with her life precisely on track. It seemed, now, that those things hadn’t mattered much to her. She’d wanted to be an artist more than anything else. And she’d apparently decided that she had to run away to do it. I guess her parents were stricter than I ever realized. I leaned back in my desk chair. I hadn’t even figured out where Trey Benedict lived or where his mentorship program was or how it worked. But I knew that Arielle’s parents would be grateful for even the little scraps of information that I did have. So why hadn’t I called them yet? I probably would have to call the police too. I fished Detective Fuller’s business card out of my purse.

  Then I put it away again. Wherever Arielle was, she wanted to be there. She’d planned her disappearance with a great deal of care. She’d shipped her paintings. She hadn’t told a soul. Not even me. She didn’t want to be found. And here I was, trying to help her parents—and the police—find her.

  Maybe I owed it to her to find her on my own. She was my best friend. I could find out if she was okay, and then make a decision about who to tell.

  There was no address for Trey Benedict on the web. Not surprising. He probably had fans. He might not want them showing up at his door.

  There was an address for the BeneFactor Foundation in Richmond Hill, Ontario. Box 2290, Red Maple Road. There was no phone number though, and when I looked up the address on Google Maps, there was a stationery store at that location. So it was a mailing address located in a stationery store, not a real office. That didn’t mean anything. Lots of businesses have addresses like that. But it was no help.

  If I was going to track down Benedict, I’d have to do it the same way Arielle had. I went to the young artists’ bulletin board that I had bookmarked, and hit the button marked Register. I typed in “Flygirl” for a user name, and “Starlings” for my password. Easy as that, I was in.

  chapter nineteen

  Trey Benedict didn’t come online until nearly eleven thirty that night. I knew better than to pounce on him right away. I’d introduced myself to the group when I first joined, and I posted a general question every half hour or so, to make sure my user name popped up on the list now and then. I wanted to look like a legitimate member.

  I read all Trey Benedict’s posts. Most of the time he was giving advice. He seemed to enjoy the mentor’s role. But in a couple of posts, he answered questions about his own work. He was working on some kind of “installation.” I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I learned that it involved metalwork sculptures. First he had to do drawings of the sculptures though. He promised to post the drawings directly to the board for all to see.

  By now, everyone at school seemed to know that Liam and I had broken up. As soon as she found out, Priya had started following me around like I was on suicide watch. "You two were, like, the cutest couple in this school," she moaned. "What happened?"

  I shrugged. “Don’t ask me,” I said. “He didn’t explain.”

  And anyway, I thought, I wasn’t sure I even cared. I’d been trying for months to be patient with Liam’s new moodiness. I’d done everything I could to prove that I’d stand by him while he got over his depression. It was wrong of him to turn his back on me so completely. Something inside me was shifting. I was going from feeling abandoned to feeling angry.

  For the first time in my life, I was on my own. And being mad instead of lonely made it easier to deal.

  When I got home from school, I logged onto the artists’ site. Nothing yet. Benedict was obviously a night owl.

  So I went out for a run. It was March, and we’d had a mild spell. The streets were clear. I ran for only fifteen minutes or so, but it felt good to move. It made me feel competent. In charge. When I got home, I pushed the coffee table aside in the family room and marked out some changes to the choreography for the “Midsummer” routine. With only one tumbler, I needed to find a way to make us look balanced. Pulling out Priya and Ashleigh, the spotters from groups one and three, for some simple tumbling moves during basic stunts would accomplish that. It would provide more visual interest at floor level. Besides, using only two bases for lifts looks less cluttered. It also makes you loo
k cocky, like you don’t need spotters.

  Priya, I knew, was a decent tumbler, so she’d be able to do it. Ashleigh was more of an unknown quantity. I dialed her number.

  “Hi, Mar,” she said.

  “Hi,” I said. “Hope I’m not calling too late. I need to know what kind of tumbling you can do. Can you do a handspring?”

  She laughed. “I can do a back tuck, thank you very much. I’m not just a platform for Keri to stand on, you know. What’s up?”

  “I’m tinkering a little with ‘Midsummer.’ I want to pull you and Priya out for a couple of tumbling runs.”

  “Go, girl,” Ashleigh said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “I was worried about you for a while. You seemed pretty shaken up about Arielle. But it sounds like you’re on the job now.”

  I smiled. After Arielle, Ashleigh was the most mature girl on the team. She should have been assistant captain. Her support meant a lot to me. “Thanks,” I said.

  “Any news about Arielle? The forty-eight hours are up now, right? The police must be searching.”

  I explained that the search was on hold. Ari was eighteen, she’d shipped her paintings somewhere, and there was nothing to suggest she was in danger. “It’s not like she’s a missing child,” I told Ashleigh, “or even a runaway teen. According to the police, she’s an adult. Basically, she’s moved out with no forwarding address. Not really a police matter.”

  “Her parents disagree, I’ll bet,” said Ashleigh.

  “Yep,” I said.

  It was after midnight. I was exhausted when Benedict finally uploaded his sketches. But I was glad I’d stayed up. When I scrolled down to the second one, a flash of recognition jolted me fully awake. The sketch was of a boy on a skateboard, shoulders hunched, chin tucked down into his collar. Arielle’s cousin. My Girl was there too. There was no mention in his post of Arielle’s name, but Benedict was using Ari’s paintings as the basis for his sculptures.