Finding Georgina Read online

  I don’t care.

  I zoom in on her face and take three pics in rapid succession. I look at one after the other.

  It’s her. I know it’s her. Tears fill my eyes again. I message the photo to Remy.

  Two minutes later, before my coffee is even cool enough to sip, I get a text from Remy.

  Be there in fifteen minutes.

  2

  Lilla

  I slice off two pieces of bread from an English muffin loaf with a serrated blade from my mom’s knife roll. Some chefs freak out if someone touches their personal knives, but not my mom. At least not with me. If someone picked up one of her knives at work without asking, I don’t think she’d cut them or anything, but she probably wouldn’t like it. Knives are personal for chefs.

  I carefully wipe off the blade with a hand towel and, stepping over a cardboard box, return it to the leather roll on the center island. We still haven’t unpacked, even though we moved to New Orleans three months ago. There are boxes everywhere. Except in my room; I unpacked my stuff the weekend we got here. I don’t mind the kitchen and living room being a mess, but my bedroom where I sleep and do my homework has to be tidy. As dumb as it sounds, things are so disordered in my sixteen-year-old head that I need some order somewhere.

  I like the house we rented in Bayou St. John near City Park in New Orleans. It’s called a single shotgun. You have to walk through one room to get to the next. No hallways. They call it a shotgun because you can stand at the front door and shoot through the back without hitting the walls, because the rooms are lined up, one after the other. I Googled it. I don’t know anything about guns, but I guess you could throw a chef’s knife from the front door through the back if you wanted to. If you were good at throwing knives.

  I wrap up the bread and take my slices to the toaster oven. While I wait, I slide onto a stool at the island and flip open my statistics book. Quiz, third block. I already know the material, but I look over it anyway because I’m a nerd and that’s what nerds do. They study even when they’re already going to get an A.

  I check the time on my phone on the counter. I have to leave in ten minutes. I can walk to school, which is nice because Mom works late most nights. When I was little it was hard on her, working until one or two in the morning, then only getting a few hours’ sleep before she had to get me up for school. But even though she’s always worked nights, she never let any of my babysitters make my breakfast or take me to school. That was her job, she always said. And even now that I’m old enough to get myself off to school, she still gets up a lot of mornings and makes me breakfast. Sometimes she makes fancy Challah bread French toast, or chocolate waffles with peanut butter sauce, but other mornings she makes my favorite. What I used to call “dippy egg” when I was little. Actually I still call it that, but I made up the name when I was little. It’s an egg fried soft in the center of a piece of toast that has a circle cut out for the egg. Mom says a good chef knows how to recognize a good meal, even when it’s simple.

  The toaster oven dings and I slide off the stool to get my English muffin toast. Mom and I found a cool bakery that makes amazing donuts and these loaves of English muffin bread. I put the hot slices on a plate, glass not paper. We may do cardboard boxes, but we don’t do paper plates. Negates a good meal, Mom says. I get Irish butter out of the refrigerator and grab a butter knife on the way back to the counter. We haven’t found the silverware or the plates and bowls and stuff yet because Mom mislabeled all the boxes. I found my hair stuff and tampons in the box labeled “coat closet.” We bought two place settings of silverware and dishware at a flea market. They’re antiques so that’s cool. And dishes don’t pile up in the sink, so I’m fine with not unpacking the dishware that’s probably labeled “underwear.”

  I’m scraping the tiniest bit of butter across my toast, because that’s the way I like it, when Mom walks into the kitchen in her robe. Her hair is all messy and her eyes puffy from only a few hours of sleep. But she’s smiling. At me. Because I’m the center of her world. And as uncool as it is, she’s the center of mine.

  She sleeps in the bedroom behind the kitchen and I have the back bedroom. Which means I have to walk through her bedroom to get to the bathroom, kitchen, or living room from my room. When we moved in, she insisted I take the back room. She said a sixteen-year-old girl needed privacy. I teased her that having the front bedroom was going to get in the way of her love life and we both laughed. Mom doesn’t date. Never has. Well, I guess she did at some point because she got knocked up with me. My dad was a one-night stand. Another chef. It used to upset me that that was the way I came into the world, by a busted condom or whatever, but I’m over it. I’m old enough now to realize how lucky I am to have a parent like mine. The kind of mom who, after I was born, decided her priority was being my mother. She said she didn’t have the time or the energy to work and be a mother and someone’s girlfriend at the same time.

  “Did I wake you?” I ask. I make a face. “Sorry.”

  She shakes her head. She’s wearing the bathrobe I gave her for Mother’s Day last year. It’s bright yellow and has Tweety Birds all over it. She’s into old-school cartoon memorabilia.

  “You didn’t wake me.” As she walks past me, she kisses my shoulder. I’m taller than she is now. Taller and a lot skinnier. Mom’s kind of short and round.

  “Thought I’d work on unpacking for a few hours. Time this house started looking like a home.” She goes to the counter and pours coffee beans from a Mason jar into the grinder. Hits the button to grind the beans.

  I wait for the whine to stop. “Go back to bed. You didn’t get home until two thirty in the morning.”

  “Oy vey iz mir. Fresh fish order wasn’t right again. They’ve got a great menu, but their organization is a disaster.” She sighs as she dumps the ground coffee into a press. Then she takes the electric kettle to fill it with water from the faucet. “You working this afternoon?”

  “Till seven.” I take a bite of my English muffin toast and tap my phone to check the time. I hate that I have to head to school. I’d rather sit here and have coffee with Mom. I’d even rather unpack boxes with her. It seems like we never have enough time together, not with her working nights and weekends. But her new job is a good one, at one of the fancy restaurants in the Warehouse District. I assumed she would want to work in the French Quarter, but she likes the Warehouse District. She says the clientele is better. I was born here, but we moved when I was two, so I don’t remember it. But I’m excited about getting to know my birth city.

  “We talked about you working and going to school, bubbeleh.” Mom comes to lean on the counter next to me. She smells good. Like her Calvin Klein perfume and sweet potato biscuits.

  I push one of my slices of toast across the counter to her. She takes it.

  “You don’t need a job,” she says, taking a bite.

  I guess my mom’s not pretty by contemporary standards. Of course, who is, what with the Kardashians plastered all over the Internet? My mom’s got dark, curly hair and dark eyes and kind of a big nose. I didn’t get her nose. I really don’t look much like her at all, really, except my hair is dark and my skin is the same color as hers. We’re not white white, but we’re not “people of color,” either. She says our skin tone comes from ancestors in Hungary. We’re Jews.

  “We’re going to be fine, financially,” Mom says. “I’m making quite a bit more than I was in Baton Rouge.”

  “But rent’s higher here,” I counter.

  The electric kettle clicks off. “I still don’t like the idea of you working.” She turns away, munching on the toast. “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you to work.”

  I close my statistics book. “Right, but I need to save for college.”

  She laughs, which hurts my feelings a little bit. Sometimes she teases me that she doesn’t know where my geekiness comes from. I guess when she was younger, she was kind of wild. Got expelled from school a couple of times. Was promiscuous. Obviously. She has ta
ttoos.

  “Well, I do.” I get off the stool. “Do you know what tuition is at Tulane, even in state?”

  She pours boiling water into the French press. “Coffee?”

  “Can’t. Gotta go.” I push my book into my old blue backpack that I’ve had since I was in middle school. Mom keeps offering to buy me a new one, but I like this one. It’s kind of my security blanket.

  The front doorbell rings and I look at her. “Who’s that at seven forty in the morning?”

  “I don’t know.” She shakes her head. “I called the landlord about the toilet running, but she said she’d call before she sent someone over.” She tightens the tie on her robe. “I’ll get it.”

  “I’m on my way out. I’ll get it. Kisses.” I make a smacking sound with my lips as I throw my backpack over my shoulder.

  “Ring me after school,” she calls after me. “Good luck on the calculus test.”

  “Statistics,” I correct her as the doorbell rings again. “Frequency distributions.” I walk out of the kitchen. “Love you, Mama Bear.”

  “Love you, Baby Bear.”

  I peek out the sidelight of the door before I open it because that’s what my mom taught me to do. Another notch in my geek belt. There are two police officers standing on our step. Wrong house? There’s a whole row of shotguns on our street. But ours is the only mint-green one. I open the door. “Hi.”

  “Lilla Kohen?” the woman asks. Her skin is so dark that it’s shiny, and she has a distinct accent. British maybe?

  “Yes?” I frown again because this is totally weird. Cops have never come to our door before. Not anywhere we’ve lived, and we’ve lived lots of places. The life of a chef.

  “Are your parents home?” There’s a white guy with her. He looks like what you think a city cop ought to look like: older; beer belly; stern, wrinkly face. But the woman seems to be in charge.

  “Um . . .” I step back, feeling uncomfortable, and I’m not sure why. “No dad. Just my mom.”

  “Can we come in?” As she says it, she steps into the living room, forcing me to back up.

  “Sure.” My tone is a little sarcastic. “Mom?” I call, taking another step back.

  Mom is just walking into the living room. “I’m Sharon Kohen. Can I help you?”

  The guy cop is just coming in the door behind the woman. His radio crackles and there’s a voice, but I don’t catch what’s being said. I’m mildly embarrassed to have the cops see our house in such disarray. I push a cardboard box with the toe of my white Converse to make room for him to come all the way in. It’s labeled “books,” which might mean the missing silverware is inside.

  The woman cop looks at me and then at my mom. “Could we speak with you privately, Mrs. Kohen?”

  I wonder if there’s been a robbery at the new restaurant. At one of the places where my mom worked in Baton Rouge, a busboy or dishwasher or someone helped himself to the cash drawer one night and my mom was interviewed by the police.

  “I’m gonna be late if I don’t get going,” I tell my mom, looking to her.

  She nods.

  But the cops don’t move out of my way to let me pass.

  “Actually,” the woman cop says, “we’ll need to speak to Lilla, too. But we want to speak with you first, Mrs. Kohen. Separately.”

  I’m surprised my mom doesn’t correct her on the “Mrs.” She usually does. She’s never been embarrassed by the fact that she was never married to my dad. Or didn’t even know his middle name. But there’s something about the cop’s tone of voice that seems to worry my mother. All of a sudden she’s got this odd look on her face. She’s holding both ends of the tie to her bathrobe. But she’s gripping them really tightly.

  “You want me to go into the kitchen?” I ask my mom.

  “I think you should leave.”

  For a second, I think my mom’s talking to me. But then I realize she’s talking to the cops. There’s something wrong with her. Her voice is all wrong. And suddenly I have this horrible, sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach. Like when I’m watching a scary movie and I know the girl is about to be killed by the guy with the ax.

  “Mrs. Kohen.” It’s the guy cop, now.

  “Leave. Leave us alone,” Mom says in a voice I’ve never heard. It’s like she’s scared and pissed and . . . a little bit bat-shit crazy.

  The cops look at each other.

  “Mrs. Kohen,” the woman repeats in what is definitely a British accent.

  The guy is speaking quietly into the radio thingy on his shoulder, but either I don’t hear what he says or my brain can’t process it because the woman is saying, “Is Lilla your daughter, Mrs. Kohen?”

  At that moment, time seems to move at two speeds. In a way, it seems as if it takes forever for my mom to respond, yet the moment is over in a nanosecond. My life is over in a nanosecond. Hers too.

  Because my mom doesn’t say anything. She just falls to her knees in her Tweety Bird robe.

  “Mom!” I say, my voice not sounding like my own in my head. Now I’m scared. “Mom, what’s wrong?” I drop my backpack on top of the box. I’m moving toward her when the woman cop takes my arm. Not roughly, but enough to make me stop where I am.

  “Mrs. Kohen, we had a report filed yesterday stating that Lilla might be the missing daughter of—”

  I don’t hear what the cop says because my mother makes a sound that I’ve never heard a human make before. I guess it’s what you would call a keen. It’s this cry that’s more animal than human. The kind of sound that wraps around your heart and pulls it up to your throat so you can’t breathe.

  “Mom!” I tear away from the cop and throw myself onto the floor in front of her. I don’t remember starting to cry, but tears are stinging my eyes. “Mom, what are they talking about?” I say in that voice that’s not mine. “Mom, tell them it’s not true. Tell them . . .” I reach for her, but she doesn’t reach for me.

  She lowers her head to the floor, cradling it in her arms, a sobbing pile of yellow fleece and Tweety Birds. And she keeps making those sounds. Sounds that scare me enough to make me pull away. “Mom?”

  The woman cop is behind me. “Lilla,” she says, her voice gentle, as if I’m an abandoned kitten she found in a gutter on Bourbon Street. But her hands are firm on my shoulders. “Lilla, I need you to stand up.”

  “Mom,” I squeak as I get to my feet. “Mom,” I sob as the cop pulls me toward the front door. “What are they talking about? Mom, tell them I’m your daughter,” I beg, half shouting.

  I feel myself being propelled backward, as if I’m being sucked into a black hole. And in a way, I am. In a way, I’ll learn, it will be, for a very long time. And when I emerge, I won’t even be in the same universe.

  3

  Jojo

  “What do you mean they might have found your sister?”

  I glance at my best friend, Makayla. We’re standing on the corner of State and Freret, waiting for the light to change. We’re walking to school together, just like we have since elementary school, only now we actually get to walk alone, without our parents. We’re both fourteen.

  She wrinkles her nose. Makayla might be the prettiest fourteen-year-old ever. She’s biracial. Her dad is Haitian. Her mom’s white. Makayla has her mother’s blue eyes, her dad’s dark hair, and skin that’s somewhere between the two of them. I tease my dad all the time about wishing he was Haitian. I mean I’m pretty, sure, but I’ll never be beautiful like Makayla.

  “I thought some perv decapitated her and buried her in the bayou,” Makayla says. “You said he buried her head in one hole and her body somewhere else so no one could ever identify her.” The traffic light changes and she looks both ways before we step off the curb.

  We wait for a car that runs the red light and then start across. “I never said that.”

  Makayla doesn’t respond, even though I probably did tell her that. People don’t argue with you about your dead sister. Not even best friends. It’s amazing the stuff you can get awa
y with when people realize you’re the girl whose sister was kidnapped at a Mardi Gras parade.

  I walk beside Makayla in the crosswalk. There’s a cute guy on a scooter with a red lunchbox on the back stopped at the light. I make eye contact, smile, and then look at the street in front of me. I’m just learning the whole flirting thing. Sometimes it feels really good, but sometimes I just feel like an idiot. It’s an idiot kind of morning, I guess. “That’s just what we always thought happened,” I tell Makayla. “It’s what the police think happened.”

  “But your mom never thought she was dead.” She glances at me. “Didn’t she go to a medium or something and try to talk to her, and the voodoo lady said Georgina wasn’t dead and that was why she couldn’t be contacted?”

  I make a face at her. “Now you’re just making stuff up. There’s no way my mom went to a voodoo lady.” I probably told her that, too. I don’t remember. I know Makayla’s mom has been to a psychic. “Mom goes to Mass, like, three times a week. She doesn’t believe in voodoo or magic or even fate. She believes in the Holy Trinity.” I do the quotations thing with my fingers, then tug on the hem of my skirt; I’ve had another growth spurt. If my skirt gets any shorter, you’ll see Christmas. That’s what my grandmother used to say when she meant lady parts. Of course I never quite understood that because I always wear panties. I can’t ask her because she died two years ago. Cancer in her Christmas.

  I glance at Makayla. We’re dressed identically: a skirt, white collared shirt, and navy blazer with the Ursuline Academy emblem over our hearts. Pink Jelly Donut lip gloss and Kerouac Black eyeliner. Just a little eyeliner, not enough for any of our teachers to call us on it. “This is what my eyes look like, Miss Gerard. They’re the eyes the Holy Father blessed me with.”

  I stop at Makayla’s house every morning to put on makeup because her mom doesn’t mind. She just says she’s not getting into it between me and Mom, which is totally letting me get away with it. Mom would notice if I was wearing lip gloss and eyeliner. She’d see it. She’d smell it. She notices when I roll my socks instead of folding them. She knows when I have a religion quiz. She knows when I’m getting my period before I know it. The term “helicopter mom” was invented to describe Harper Louise Broussard.