In the woods,
in the dark,
before she died,
Miriam Lockhart dug a hole big enough for a body.
Then she went away and returned dragging something heavy wrapped in a tattered plastic tarp. She imagined she looked like a grave digger. Or a murderer. Maybe both.
The something heavy crunched and jingled as her bundle thumped to the bottom of the pit. Then all was silent, save for the swish of dirt and grunts of labor.
This was the first step of Miriam’s BIG PLAN, the goal of which was to remind her father of something he seemed to have forgotten.
Namely, that she was alive.
The forgetting, Miriam believed, began soon after he was hired as the fix-it man for Sunny Shores Mobile Home Park–a dirty strip of land along a river bend where everything from the water to the trailers conformed to the color of rust. So much fixing was needed at Sunny Shores that Miriam’s father was rarely home. And on the occasions that he did show up before midnight, he seemed drawn and ghostly, like a soul on a stretcher.
The fix-it work led to more money, but strangely, the money did not lead to more food, nicer clothes, or a tutor to help with her school assignments.
The money led to a woman named Elisa.
Miriam could always tell when Elisa had been over because she brought a fluffy little dog she called ‘Poo-poo’ that left its white fur everywhere. The pair of them laid claim to food, the television remote, and Miriam’s favorite comfy chair.
It was when Miriam overheard her father and Elisa whispering about moving in together that the BIG PLAN began to take shape.
“And if he doesn’t notice me missing,” Miriam muttered with a swing of the shovel, “perhaps I’ll stay gone forever.”
The girl patted down dirt on top of her hole, leaned the shovel against a tree, and retrieved her school bag from the shadows. As she hiked up the backpack, a silhouette tumbled from an open front pocket–making the slightest whump against the ground.
Miriam turned and saw the outline of a body in the sand.
“Beatrix!” she stooped to pick up her oldest and dearest friend. The hand-sewn doll had paisley-patterned fabric for skin, curly red yarn for hair, and button eyes that shimmered iridescent blue.
“Sorry for dropping you,” she said as she dusted off the doll.
Think nothing of it, she imagined Beatrix replying.
Whether or not the girl actually believed her doll could talk is anybody’s guess, but Miriam had always been good at pretending.
When she couldn’t find help with her schoolwork, she pretended it was okay to copy answers from a classmate. When she couldn't find food to cook, she pretended her toothpaste was a four-course meal. Except, of course, when the toothpaste ran out. And each night she had to help her father to bed, prying the bottle from his hand, she pretended to believe his promise that it wouldn’t happen again.
“In any case,” said Miriam to Beatrix, “you should ride with me. It’s going to be a long hike.” Unzipping her hoodie, she nestled the doll inside like a baby opossum.
As the girl turned away from Sunny Shores, a glint of moonlight caught the shovel leaning against the tree. This somehow became a nagging question from Beatrix.
What if Dad notices the shovel missing?
“He’ll think a neighbor borrowed it. Or stole it,” she assured the doll.
But what if he follows the very obvious tracks you left? What if they lead him through the gap in the fence and into the woods? What if he finds his shovel and wonders what it was used to bury?
“Then he’ll only dig up my old suitcase,” Miriam shrugged. “And find all the missing things from my bedroom. So what?”
And then?
Miriam sighed. “Then he’ll know I didn’t run away to the city like the note says. And then maybe he’ll look in the camping bin, find it empty, and guess exactly where we’ve gone.”
Do you really want him to find you before the adventure even gets going?
“No!” Miriam insisted.
And to prove her point she stomped over to the shovel, knocked it down, and kicked it with her boot into a patch of palmetto scrub. Someone would only be able to find it if they really, really looked.
As she turned toward the train tracks that cut a path deep into the wood, a dreadful fear twisted in her stomach.
What if no one even cared enough to come looking?