Heidi Johnson is the most beautiful woman in town. Everybody knows this.
Heidi first arrived in Nevada four months ago. She is still relatively new in town, though that doesn’t mean that she has gone making no friends. The first—and the only one as far as everybody else knows—is Marcel Gatsby. Also known as Sheriff Gatsby.
Heidi could pull any guy that she wanted, so it came as no surprise that she chose someone with such a high status amongst the people.
Heidi and Marcel first met at a bar.
Heidi liked to drink red wine to release stress; she felt stressed about starting her new job as an 8th grade English teacher. Heidi had been teaching for three years, and should have been used to it by now, but this was the first time she was going to teach children. Before that, she taught teenagers in the 11th-to-12th grade bracket.
It was going to be a bit of a change, but she figured she could make it fun for all of them; they could play games based on books they’re reading. She could play lo-fi music over the speakers while the children did silent work. She used to be a teacher at a Catholic school and never had this much flexibility before. Heidi was excited; no longer would she have Sisters watching over her shoulder.
Marcel sat down next to her at the bar. He turned, a glass of cold beer wrapped around his spindly fingers. “Tough day, huh?”
Her eyes flicked up and down his body; he was still in uniform. Never had she shagged an officer before, and her stomach jittered with nerves. Her last relationship lasted two years. He became abusive and caused her to flee home. That was why she had moved and started at a new school.
Still. Maybe befriending an officer would be a good thing. She could use him to her advantage if her ex ever came crawling back into her life.
She blinked. “So-so,” she mumbled, lifting the wine to her mouth.
He raised an eyebrow. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
“No. I just… moved here a while ago. Four months ago, to be exact. I just landed a job at Ridgeview.”
“Amazing. Why haven’t I seen you around here before?”
“I keep to myself, I guess.”
“You go to church, Ms. —?”
“Johnson. Heidi, I mean. And well… I tried. But I saw the way the woman looked at me. I don’t know. It made me retreat into myself.”
Heidi didn’t think the officer would understand. She didn’t know why she had told him all this in the first place, but it was nice to release her stresses and worries for once.
He nodded. “Which, uh, church did you try?”
“Faith Presbyterian.”
“Oh, yeah? I’m a 7th-day Adventist.”
“But you’re drinking.”
“I’m the sheriff in town, sweetheart. If I didn’t drink from time to time, I’d blow my brains out.”
“That sounds excessive.”
“Sure. But my parents raised me that way, you know? Just stuck with it.”
“Understandable.”
“Say, uh, would you want to try my church one day with me? I think you’d like it.”
“Is that a date?”
“Sure. It’s a date. I’m Marcel by the way. How does that sound?”
“Sounds great, Marcel.”
“Awesome.”
***
Saturday morning came around; Heidi tended to her garden splayed out in the front yard. She rested on her hands and knees. The sun shined down on her and the sky was a bright blue. Windy, but warm.
Heidi sensed that something was off. She whipped her head around to look. A girl on a bicycle has fallen on the road. Heidi rushed over to the girl, asking frantically, “Are you okay?”
The girl looked up at her, and suddenly, Heidi realized she knew who she was. Angelica Owens, from her morning class. She lived just down the road from her; she’d seen her riding her bike around here before.
Angelica is a pretty girl with brown hair and brown eyes. She received good scores, especially in Heidi’s class. She has a gift for writing, Heidi thought to herself, yet she has written some disturbing things before when we worked on creative writing. Heidi worried for her, but she didn’t let it show. Her work hadn’t sent her to the guidance counselor's office after all.
“I’m… I’m fine,” Angelica choked out; she held both hands to her knee.
“No, you’re not. Let me look.” She motioned for Angelica to walk in the grass; Heidi laid her bicycle down on the front lawn. “How about I bandage that up for you, huh? Would you like to come inside?” Heidi watched the blood drip down Angelica’s leg. She knew how it must have sounded, inviting one of her students into her home. But she didn’t care. She was only trying to help.
Angelica reluctantly followed her inside, not thinking anything of it. There was something about Heidi that drew Angelica to her. She wanted to be near her, to absorb her. She had lived with two boys, a dad and a brother. There was no mother in the picture, no female role model to look up to.
Yet Angelica craved that with an aching heart.
Angelica sat on the kitchen counter; Heidi pulled down medicine and bandages from the cabinet above. She wiped the blood away from her knee, cleaned the wound, and then plastered on a band-aid.
Angelica looked down, inspecting her knee, pulling at the skin like rubber: “Thanks a lot.”
“No problem,” Heidi said. She poured lemonade into a plastic cup, pulled out a couple of chocolate chip cookies from the cookie jar, and handed them to her. “A treat.”
Angelica chuckled. “I’m not five, Ms. Johnson.”
“Oh! I know that! Now, why don’t you run along?”
***
It is the middle of the night. The moon and stars are visibly out. Angelica pounded frantically on Heidi’s door after riding her bike all the way here.
Going to open the front door, Heidi thought it might be Marcel. When she saw it was Angelica instead, she was even more worried. She pulled her robe close to her chest. “Angelica, what’s wrong?” She opened the door wider, inviting her in; Heidi peered out to see if there was anybody else out there. Nope, just her.
She closed the door and rubbed Angelica’s back as she sobbed.
“He, he, he—”
“Shh… let’s go over here, okay?”
They sit on the couch together. Heidi wrapped a blanket around Angelica’s shaking body, brought her a warm cup of tea ‘cause she doesn’t drink coffee anymore.
She kneeled in front of Angelica. “Do you want to tell me now?”
Angelica hesitantly nodded.
“Did somebody hurt you?”
She nodded.
“Someone you live with?”
She nodded again.
“Was it your dad, or —?”
This time, she lifted her tee-shirt to reveal bruises on her stomach. “I don’t want to go back there.”
“No, I won’t let that happen.”
Heidi swallowed. Needed some time to think. “Why don’t we go to sleep, okay, angel? You can sleep in my bed.”
“Okay,” Angelica mumbled.
Angelica fell asleep in Heidi’s bed; Heidi tucked her in warm and cozy. Angelica had to remind herself that she was in Ms. Johnson’s bed, and not some friend of hers. It was weird to think about.
Heidi fell asleep on the couch. She tossed and turned the rest of the night. She didn’t know what was going to happen to Angelica. She worried for her.
***
When Heidi awoke in the morning, she found Angelica was already up, too. She stared at the pictures on the wall. She saw pictures of flowers that Heidi once made bloom. She saw pictures of Heidi smiling with church friends. This caused Angelica to blush, realizing, again, who she was with. A teacher of hers. She never said much to Heidi at school before. What would the other students have thought if they knew? Her friends?
Well, Angelica couldn’t say that she had many friends. She was quiet and studious and kept to herself, mostly. She read books as opposed to chatting in class.
And then, looking at all the pictures on the wall, she stared at a door. She wondered where it led to, and twisted the knob. Stairs appeared before her.
The door led to a basement.
Angelica put one foot in front of the other, clicked on the light, and descended into the room.
It looked like any old room in the house. A livable space, not much of a basement, really. There was a couch, a TV, a fridge, and a microwave.
There was another door as well. Inside were two beds, a mirrored closet, and windows.
Suddenly, she heard Heidi’s footsteps padding on the floor above her. Angelica rushed to leave, but it was too late; Heidi caught her snooping around.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Johnson —”
She smiled. “Come on now, sweetie,” she said, wrapping an arm around Angelica. “How about I make some pancakes? Hmm? How does that sound?”
“You mean you’re not mad?”
“Of course not.”
Angelica stopped walking towards the stairs. She chewed on her bottom lip and flicked her eyes around the room.
“What? What is it?”
“I don’t want to go back home.”
“No, I won’t let that happen.”
“Ms. Johnson?”
“Yes?”
“Couldn’t I just live here?”
***
The news of Angelica Owens disappearance is all over TV, the radio, newspapers. Angelica hears people calling out her name as they search throughout the neighborhood. When she hears them, she hides herself under the bed.
Heidi takes care of Angelica whenever she gets the chance.
Heidi has taken on the role of a mother now. She doesn’t mind. She is going to protect Angelica for as long as she lives. She provides Angelica with love, food, and warmth. They watch chick-flicks and play Monopoly, binge out on microwavable popcorn and dance to her CD’s. They are, Heidi tells Angelica, going to have a very happy life together.
But there is something in the way — there always is. It’s Sheriff Gatsby, otherwise known as Marcel. Also Heidi’s boyfriend.
They are becoming close. Too attached. Intimate. And Heidi wants nothing to do with him anymore because she doesn’t want to get caught hiding Angelica in her basement. It’s for her own good, Heidi tells herself, to keep her safe. To keep her away from her abusive family.
Heidi is going to keep Angelica in a bubble and make sure that it never pops.
She walks hand-in-hand with Marcel, continuing to pose as the sheriff’s girlfriend. They are on the “lookout” for Angelica. Nobody knows where she is except for her. This makes Angelica feel powerful. It makes her heart beat in her chest with adrenaline. They walk in the woods together, another one of the town’s nightly searches.
“She’s dead.”
Marcel shines the flashlight on her face.
“She has to be. I mean, she probably killed herself for all we know.”
“Don’t talk like that, Heidi. Her family is here. We have to be strong, show respect. And for all we know, some trucker passing could have kidnapped her.”
The word kidnapped sends a chill down Heidi’s spine, for obvious reasons.
She nods at Marcel. “Yeah, well. You should have seen the stuff she wrote in my class. I’m not saying that for nothing.”
Marcel perks up with interest. “You mind if I… get a look at that stuff?”
Heidi shrugs. “Sure.” She didn’t realize how easy it would be to rope Marcel in with her web of lies, and without his knowledge, either. She didn’t realize how easy it would be to come up with a theory on Angelica’s disappearance. But now that she has said it all, she’s sure glad she did.
She can’t, however, bring herself to lie to Angelica. She tells her that the police discovered her father lying in a ditch with alcohol poisoning, dead. She tells her that her brother has moved away with a girlfriend he got pregnant.
“Janie,” Angelica whispered. She remembered her.
She doesn’t lie to Angelica about Oscar. But she says nothing about Oscar to her, either. Heidi doesn’t want to scare her, doesn’t want her to grow paranoid that somebody has discovered where she’s been this entire time.
Oscar broke into Heidi’s home in the middle of the night. He had seen nothing, thankfully. But she knew. She knew he knew. Admitted seeing Angelica walk into her house and never come back out.
She held Oscar by the scruff of his baby-blue shirt. She told mom and dad that Oscar had a bit of a “peeping Tom” problem.
They believed her.
Nobody suspected what went on behind closed doors.
***
Idaho seemed like a good place to settle, all things considered. They walked inside the restaurant hand-in-hand. “I’ll have the red wine. And my daughter here will have a strawberry milkshake. Food? We’ll have the burger and fries, medium-well.”
She crossed one leg over the other, looking ever so sultry as she sipped on her red wine. She watched the girl in front of her eat like a horse. Coming from a small town in Nevada to Idaho was a long drive.
An officer walks in. The woman uncrosses her leg, sits up straighter. She eyes the man with the badge and gun, but he pays her no mind. He cannot smell the blood on her. He cannot sense that she is a police-killer, a criminal on the run with her victim.
They are no longer their past-selves. Heidi and Angelica. Oh, no. They have changed names. Chosen ones such as Melanie and Seraphina Scott.
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