“You okay?” Dante asked, snapping Pao out of dreamland.
“Yeah,” she said. “Well, no. But yeah. You?”
“Same,” Dante said. “Just…” He swiped a hand over his face. “What if we don’t find her?”
“We will,” Pao said with conviction, even though she had no facts to back it up. They needed to believe right now.
“This is it,” Dante announced to the adults when they reached their usual spot. The water lapped gently against the bank, and not far in the distance loomed the cactus field—a place that kids always pretended was haunted.
They didn’t have to conjure up any monsters today, though. They were in a real, living nightmare.
The officers asked for details: how far the trio normally strayed from this spot, what time they were supposed to meet, how long they waited, why they hadn’t called Emma or her parents sooner.
“The Lockwoods mentioned you were supposed to meet them at the station,” Officer Tyler remarked, looking at his notes. “Why didn’t you come?”
“We did!” Pao said, instantly heated. “But that cop with the mustache threw us out! He said we were telling ghost stories.”
Tyler’s eyes widened, and he conferred with James in whispers.
“I’m sorry about that,” Tyler finally said. “O’Brien can be a little…overzealous.”
Pao thought racist pig was probably a better way to describe him, but she had learned enough from her mom to keep that particular opinion to herself.
Tyler and James excused themselves to take photos of the scene. Trying to cool her temper, Pao took a few steps away, the memory of her dream taking hold as she moved closer to the water. She knew it was her imagination getting the better of her, but the riverbank felt sinister even in the light of morning. Pao could swear there was a remnant of a green glow. She imagined she could see the mysterious guy with the pixelated face, light spilling from his hands….
Her mom peered at her sharply, and Pao shook herself. It was just water and sand and the overactive imagination of a girl who was raised on bedtime stories about drowned children.
In the sandy earth, Pao could see the imprint of the picnic blanket from last night and the footprints where she and Dante had paced their worries into the ground. Their trio had spent so many evenings here, Emma redoing Pao’s messy braids with her patient hands, the three of them taking turns gazing through the telescope while Emma made up her own names for the constellations and Pao corrected her with the real ones.
Would they ever sit there again? Would Pao get to confide in her best girl friend about her changing feelings toward her mom?
Tears pricked her eyes, but Pao refused to let them fall. They would find Emma. They just had to.
“How often do you come here?” asked Officer James, finally pulling out a notepad and a pen.
Pao and Dante glanced at each other guiltily. “Once a week or so,” Pao said. “We never go in the water, though!” she added hastily when her mom scowled.
“They’re not allowed near the river,” Pao’s mom said to the officers. “I had no idea—”
“It’s the best place to see the stars,” Pao explained, trying her best not to sound whiny. “And it’s so hot everywhere else….”
“Has Emma ever expressed interest in swimming in the river?” Officer James asked, getting back to the subject at hand.
“No!” Pao said emphatically. “We all remember what happened to Marisa. We know it’s too dangerous. Emma would never have gone in.”
Pao’s eyes drifted to the riverbank again. She’d seen the silhouette just over there. Had he—
“That’s all we need for now,” the officer said.
“Wait!” Pao said, feeling her anger reignite. “Don’t you want to check out where the guy was?”
“What guy?” Tyler asked.
“Last night I told the cop—O’Brien—that we saw someone,” Pao said. “Right over there.” She pointed.
Tyler shifted toward his partner, flipping through his notebook. “I don’t have anything about that,” he muttered to James, but Pao heard him anyway.
“Because he cut me off before I could finish,” she said, her temper flaring again. The officers’ expressions were neutral, so Pao couldn’t tell if they believed her or not. “I did see a guy, I swear,” she continued, wishing she were wearing something more grown-up than space pajamas. “In the reeds by the river.” She gestured in the general direction, but neither officer even turned.
“Did he speak to you?” Tyler asked.
“Well, no,” Pao said. “I don’t think he saw us.”
“And you didn’t think to ask him if he’d seen your friend?”
“I’m sorry,” Pao’s mom interjected. “Did you just ask a twelve-year-old girl why she didn’t approach a strange man at night? The answer is pretty obvious.”
The look on the officer’s face heated Pao’s anger to red-hot. He was clearly trying to decide if her mom was stupid, or dangerous, or both. Even though Pao and her mom weren’t exactly seeing eye to eye right now, she couldn’t stand for that.
“Dante and I wanted to get home and call Emma,” she said, drawing attention away from her mom, her heart fluttering like a hummingbird in her chest. “We still didn’t know she was missing then. Just that she didn’t show up.”
“Can you describe the man in more detail?” James asked, though he wasn’t taking any notes.
“He was short—about my mom’s height—but I didn’t see much else.” The dream screamed from her subconscious, demanding that she make the connection. But she couldn’t.
“Skin color? Hair color? Any identifying marks or tattoos?”
Pao tried to remember. “His hair was longish? He was in silhouette, so—”
Tyler cut her off. “We could try to find and question him,” he said, “if you could remember what he looked like.”
But Pao knew he was just being polite. He didn’t believe the man had really been there.
“I saw him, too!” Dante said, tearing his haunted gaze away from the water and stepping up beside Pao, his fists clenched at his sides. “You have to believe us. Do you even want to find Emma?”
“I suppose you can’t identify this mystery figure, either?” Tyler asked, narrowing his eyes when Dante didn’t answer. “This isn’t a cop show, kid. We need evidence. Facts. We can’t just go knocking on doors asking if anyone with longish hair took a totally legal stroll by the river last night.”
As infuriating as it was, Pao knew he was right. Dante remained silent. Without a description, their information was useless.
The restless buzzing she’d felt last night was back, the same sensation that had made her go all supernova and break her mom’s velita. Without waiting for permission, or for anyone to follow, Pao stomped toward the reeds opposite the spot she’d seen the silhouette, feeling her mom’s eyes on her like a tractor beam preventing her from going too far.
She ignored their pull. Maybe she’d find some footprints—something to prove she hadn’t made it all up. Real evidence that the person she’d seen wasn’t one of her mother’s ghosts.