She lifted the TV tray high enough to uncross her legs and stretch them out straight before carefully placing it back down. Sticky sweat trickled down the backs of her knees. She wished she could point the vent down, but the old wall unit’s airflow only shifted so far. The lady with perfect blonde hair on TV was talking about something she didn’t care about. She just wanted the news to be over, then it was 60 Minutes, then Charlie’s Angels. She loved trying out their fighting moves. She tried to unstick her leg where the carpet fibers itched but nudged the tray. Milk splashed over the edge of her cup, landing on Smurfette’s face.
The blonde lady’s brow furrowed when the picture of the little boy appeared above her. Missing, she had said, from a department store. Not too close, but a couple of hours away. He was just a little kid. Seven, the lady said. Not big like her. She was almost eleven. She stared at the photo and shoveled in another forkful of hamburger casserole.
“Where? Did they say?” She hadn’t noticed her mom come in from the kitchen. She had a rag in one hand. She was always cleaning something.
“The other coast, I think,” she replied, taking a gulp from the glass of milk. “Why would someone take a little kid?” She looked up at her mom. The woman kept her eyes glued to the small screen, her hands in fists, resting on her narrow hips.
“I don’t know. I just don’t know. There are a lot of sick people in this world.” Mom shook her head and left to find something else to clean.
She went to work with her mom the next day. Playing on the small stretch of beach that belonged to the resort. She made friends with some of the kids that stayed there, sometimes. But not that day. She had to keep an eye out. She scanned the faces of the beach walkers and the families setting up towels in the sun. She looked for the freckled nose and the red ball cap. Maybe he wouldn’t be wearing that now, though. She imagined finding him. Maybe she’d ask his name, or if he was lost, and he’d tell her. Then she’d take his hand. Take him to a grownup. They’d call his parents because all parents knew how to reach each other, didn’t they? Maybe the blonde lady on TV would talk about how a girl had helped find him, just like the detectives on TV, and everything would be okay again.
She didn’t see him, though. Not that day, or the next. Everyone seemed to be talking about the kid. The sun seemed angry, burning hotter with every passing day.
She had been distracted. Had forgotten to put sunscreen on and her skin screamed pink under the hem of her shirtsleeves. When they’d first come to the beach a few years before, she’d gotten a second-degree burn from a day in the sun. She was little then. Her cousin was supposed to have been watching her. He was high and hadn’t paid attention. Her mom had been furious about it. It put her mom on high alert for the danger of too much sun. Add it to the million other things that were dangerous. The little snakes with the beautifully colored stripes in their backyard. The patch of loose gravel at the edge of the street that had sent her flying over the handlebars of her bicycle. The older man that was visiting a neighbor who told her she was beautiful and offered her a dollar. She had said, “No, thank you.” She had wanted the dollar, too. She could play four games at the arcade for that much or buy a bagful of candy. But she didn’t take it. She ran home, instead. At least she’d gotten that one right.
On the beach, she heard two women talking as they slathered on coconut-scented oil. Talking about how awful it was for the kid’s mother. It felt to her like an invasion. They were tourists. Even though she hadn’t known him, she felt a kinship with the kid. They both lived in the place where the rest of the world came to play, then went home to their regular lives. Maybe that’s why she felt responsible for finding him. He was one of them, and so maybe she should look out for him. Help, if she could. It didn’t matter that nobody did that for her. That the girls behind her on the bus put rubber cement in her hair. Or that the boy from the next street over, the one who always smelled like grape bubble gum, had said nasty things after she refused to kiss him.
It didn’t matter that nobody did anything when she told the grownups about the crack of the belt she’d heard over and over from the neighbors’ house when she lay in bed with the windows open, or the sobbing, or how the little boy who lived there stayed indoors for days afterwards. That was what bothered her the most. She could take care of herself. But he was little, like the kid on TV. The grownups said, “He’ll get it worse if we call the police.” They stopped talking about it when they saw her. Nothing changed.
The days turned slow. She wasn’t allowed to cross the main road anymore and take two dollars to the hot dog cart on the beach. She couldn’t go fishing on the pier, either. She had to stay where her mom could see her. Her world was smaller now.
One evening, she came in from outside as the fireflies descended and the colors of the sky went soft purple. The news was on. The blonde lady said they’d found the kid. Part of him, anyway.
Her chest ached.
She decided that maybe tomorrow, she would let the boy from the next street over kiss her after all.