Who Once Was Lost
©2005 The Angst Guy
(theangstguy@yahoo.com)
Daria and associated
characters are ©2005 MTV Networks
Feedback (good, bad, indifferent,
just want to bother me, whatever) is appreciated. Please write to:
theangstguy@yahoo.com
Synopsis: Two little girls from
Highland, Texas, go to Camp Grizzly for several weeks of annoying summer fun.
Only one little girl comes home. Three years later, the other little girl
begins her long journey back—but discovers that the world has moved on without
her. Inspired by the fifth-season Daria
episode, “Camp Fear,” “Who Once Was Lost” is the first tale in a
science-fiction series about a Daria displaced in time.
Author's
Notes: This
story began as an experimental spin-off of another Daria fanfic, “Fortunate One,” and begins in almost the same way.
It was not intended to grow into a multipart alternate-history science-fiction
fanfic, but it did anyway. The chronology of the story assumes that Daria
Morgendorffer would normally have graduated from Lawndale High in the year
2000, but here did not.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Galen “Lawndale
Stalker” Hardesty for asking me not to vivisect or kill Daria in this story; Brandon
League for reminding me of The Flight of
the Navigator; and Ranchoth, Galen, and others for little tweaks here and
there. It helped.
*
All was right with the world, or at
least as right as could be managed. Fourteen-year-old Quinn Morgendorffer
relaxed in the passenger seat of her father’s Lexus and closed her eyes of
robin’s-egg blue. The pop-music radio station played Hanson’s latest hit, which
lulled her into near hibernation except for her nodding head, moving lips
(“Mmm-bop!”), and tapping foot.
“Busy day, kitten?” Jake
Morgendorffer asked, maneuvering through morning suburban traffic. “You’ve got
a test in Math Strivers, right? Or was that Phys Ed?”
“It’s not a test, Daddy, it’s a
quiz, and it’s in math,” she murmured, and then added—knowing it was
pointless—“Don’t worry.”
“I won’t,” said her father. “I mean,
I always worry a little, of course, but that’s normal. I’m supposed to worry.
After all, ninth grade is tough. It’s your first step into high school and
adulthood. At least you’re not in a military school, like I was. Damn my old
man! Oh, remember, if you need anything, just call us on your cell phone. You
have your police whistle, right? And the pocket siren?”
Quinn nodded, trying to stay in the
flow of the music. “Yes.” She’d left the pocket siren at home because it
malfunctioned once during history class, but she wasn’t going to mention that.
“Your mother said you could have
your friends over tonight as long as all of your homework is done first,” Jake
went on. “Well, I suppose as long as you have it done before Monday, okay?”
“Thanks, Daddy.”
“Just be careful and have a good
day. That’s all that matters. Just be careful and have fun. I wish my dad had
let me do that.” Jake shouted at his side window toward the heavens. “I hope
you’re happy, Daddy Dearest!”
Exhaling long and slow, Quinn opened
her eyes and looked out the side window. Another song came on the radio, this
one by BoysIIBoys. Her head began to nod in time with the rapid beat (“Please
do me do me do me do!”).
“Oh,” her father continued, coming
out of his mini-rant, “let’s not argue anymore with your mother about getting a
nose job. It doesn’t matter if your friends get their own nose jobs. Your
mother made it very clear that your nose is fine just the way it is, no matter
what any plastic surgeon says. What do they know, anyway? And why do they call
them ‘plastic’ surgeons? They don’t work on plastic, do they?” He drove in
silence for three seconds. “You know not to go anywhere by yourself, right?”
“Yesssssss, Daddy.”
“That’s my girl!” He turned the car
into the semicircle drive to the front doors of Lawndale High School, slowed,
and stopped by the curb. “See you tonight, kitten!”
“You, too.” Quinn gave her father a
kiss on the cheek and got out of the blue Lexus with a casual toss of her long
mane of orange-red hair. The September air was cool and crisp, but she wore her
usual end-of-week outfit of a colorful tee and jeans. Her father could not tell
that she wore a bright red halter top under the tee; the tee would go in her
locker once she got inside, to be put back on before school let out so her
parents wouldn’t freak at her exposed midriff.
“Call if you need anything!” her
father shouted after her. “And good luck on your P.E. test!”
“Math quiz!”
“Right, quiz!”
“Bye!” She shut the car door and
waved him off, though he drove away slowly and kept looking back in the
rear-view mirror. Turning, she headed for the building to get out of sight, or
else he’d drive back and ask her what was wrong.
Her best friend, Sandi Griffin, and
the rest of the Fashion Club were waiting for her outside the main entrance.
They waved, giggling over a new bit of school gossip. Quinn checked to make
sure her father was gone, then peeled off her tee in relief.
“Nice top, Miss Fashion Club Vice
President,” said Sandi. “It goes perfectly with your complexion.”
“And you know complexions best,
Sandi!” said Quinn brightly.
“That’s why I’m the prez. I’m
complexicate—complicationed—I know my complexions.”
“Speaking of complexions,” Quinn
added, “everyone ready for a makeover party tonight at my place?”
The other girls squealed with
excitement. They had been waiting for the overnight at Quinn’s the entire week.
Her parents were quite tolerant of teenage get-togethers and often sprung for
food and movies, as long as no one left the house.
“Oh, you just won’t believe what we
heard was going on between Rob and Lisa!” Stacy Rowe bubbled. “You absolutely
won’t believe it! I hope that doesn’t sound like I’m doubting that you’ve
believe it when you hear it because it’s true and you’ll have to believe it,
but when you hear it first you absolutely—”
“Chill, Stacy,” said Sandi with a
tired look (ignoring Stacy’s subsequent “Eeep!”). “We should share our current
events in a more secluded setting. Let us adjourn to the girls’ room.”
“Good,” drawled Tiffany
Blum-Deckler. “I have to go.”
“Go ahead and go, then,” said Sandi,
“but not here.”
Halfway down the hall, Quinn stopped
for a moment at a water fountain. When she drank her fill and raised her head,
she saw that someone had put a huge poster on the wall above. It was a poster
she knew by heart. HAVE YOU SEEN THESE CHILDREN? the header cried. Below the
title was a large array of black-and-white photos of lost children, each with a
name, personal data, date and place of birth, and date and location last seen.
The photo of the unsmiling girl in
the dead center of the array was the one Quinn knew best.
DARIA MORGENDORFFER
Brown hair, brown eyes
Born 11/20/1981 – Austin TX
Last seen 6/8/1994 – Camp
Grizzly AR
Her face had been shown for over three
years on posters, milk cartons, TV ads, mass mailings, and billboards, but
Daria was still gone. Quinn’s big sister by a year and a half, Daria had turned
up missing after a hike at a children’s summer camp. Repeated searches had
produced nothing. Every lead had petered out. The Arkansas state police had
filed it away as a cold case. Even a $10,000 reward had no effect. It was one
of the strangest and most heart-wrenching disappearances of the 1990s—and it
was her sister.
Quinn never allowed herself to
speculate on Daria’s fate. She knew what usually happened to children when they
were kidnapped. She also knew the swiftly diminishing chances for recovering
any missing child alive as time went on. Quinn’s parents still believed their
eldest daughter might yet turn up. There was always a chance. Quinn believed in
that chance, too, and always had.
Three years later, however, it was
an infinitesimally tiny chance. Quinn didn’t let herself think about how small
the probability was. She would never get through a single day if she did. It
was enough that the chance was there.
For the thousandth time, she studied
her sister’s impassive face. It was Daria’s seventh-grade class picture from
Highland Middle School, back in Texas, where the Morgendorffers had lived when
the two sisters were sent on their ill-fated camp adventure. Quinn remembered
that neither had wanted to go. Her parents made them go anyway. It was for
their own good, their parents had said—but they cursed their words now, with
one daughter left, and did all they could to keep that daughter safe.
Quinn, too, had a cross to bear.
God forgive me for denying you
were my sister, Daria, she thought, looking at the tiny picture. God
forgive me for calling you my distant cousin in front of my new friends at
camp. If I ever see you again, I will make it up to you in any way I can. I
swear it.
She turned away from the poster and
rejoined her friends. None of them said a thing, though they were looking at
the poster and thinking about Quinn’s sister, too.
“Quick,” she said with forced cheer,
“tell me what’s up with Rob and Lisa!”
She swam into consciousness, cold
and aching all over. A swirling vortex spun madly in her head. She took a
breath and found her lungs filled with knives. Crying out, she rolled over,
pushed herself up on her elbows, and opened her eyes—but there was no light
anywhere. She was on a flat, dry, ice-cold surface—but where was she? The pains
in her joints and muscles were mind shattering. Something had awakened her,
but—
The ground trembled and rocked,
pitching her from one side to the other. Freight-train thunder boomed around
her and jarred her down to the bones. The odor of broken stone filled the air,
mixed with the pungent smell of fresh earth. She panicked. Earthquake! She’d be
killed! Was she in a cave? A cellar? She had to get out!
She tried to get to her feet, but
her muscles would not cooperate. Searing pins and needles lanced into her
limbs. She cried out and redoubled her efforts to get up, scraping her knees
and hands on broken bits of stone that fell over her from the ceiling.
A new earthshaking roar came from
ahead of her. She looked up—and a wall of dust flew into her face, blinding
her. Screaming in pain, she got a mouth full of powdered rock and coughed until
she feared she would choke to death—
—and blinked her streaming eyes
again, and ahead of her saw light. Light! It came down from a hole in the
ceiling of the room—no, it was a cave! She was in a cave—she remembered it, how
she’d fallen into a sinkhole—
Scrambling to her feet, she limped
and stumbled and staggered and fell and crawled, always moving toward the
light. It was all that mattered, getting into the light, going up and out of
there. She found herself on top of a rock pile, trying to dig her fingers into
falling earth, then something was in her hand, a vine, and she pulled and
hauled herself up, hands stinging and bleeding, boots finding toeholds as she
went, and light filled her eyes and blinded them—glorious, brilliant sunlight!
She was free! She crawled out as the earth rocked and shook once more,
scrambling on hands and knees through forest undergrowth until she wrapped her
arms around a tree and held on for dear life.
Moments later, the rumbling faded
and ceased. Silence filled the woods. Dazed, she looked around her. With a
trembling hand, she reached up and adjusted her glasses by reflex, amazed that
she had kept them.
I’m at Camp Grizzly, she
thought. I remember now. I fell down the stupid sinkhole when I had to stop
and tie my bootlaces and got left behind the other campers on the hike, and I
ran to catch up and tried a shortcut through the woods and fell into the
sinkhole, hitting the earthen sides of it as I went in, then—
She took a deep breath with a raw throat.
“I’m—” she said, then coughed and coughed until she almost threw up. Her throat
was parched, and her entire body still ached with pins and needles. She had the
strangest sensation that she had overslept.
When she felt steady enough to do
it, she got to her feet. She was lost, as she expected. She had no idea where
the trails were, much less the main campgrounds. Running her bruised hands
through her dust-filled hair, she scanned her surroundings, then looked down at
herself. Her knees and hands were bleeding, and her blue Camp Grizzly T-shirt
was the same color as her medium-brown short pants. Her normally pale skin was
the same color, too, in fact. She was filthy beyond words.
I give up, she thought. I’m
going back to the cabins for a shower. I wonder how long I’ve been gone. The
whole camp will be out looking for me, if I knocked myself out in that fall. On
the other hand, maybe they won’t be looking for me. Most of them could care
less. Cretins.
It was hard to remember what had
happened after she’d fallen. It didn’t matter now, though. A shower was what
counted—a shower and a call home to her mother to get her out of this camp,
pronto. If she had to fake an appendicitis attack, she would. She’d had enough
of summer camp to last a lifetime.
Rubbing her cheek where she’d banged
into a rock while crawling out, she looked back the way she’d come. A large
chasm lay only thirty feet away, into which whole trees had dropped, roots and
all. She realized it was probably the cave in which she’d fallen, now wholly
collapsed from the earthquake. There was supposed to be a fault system around
here, she remembered, one that ran through several states, including this one,
Arkansas. That explained where the little earthquake came from.
She stared at the chasm and thought
about how ridiculously lucky she had been to get out before the thick rock
ceiling fell and flattened her like a pancake under a steamroller. Shaking her
head, she staggered up the slope and discovered the pathway she had left
only—minutes ago? Hours ago? What time was it?
It’s time to get the hell out of
here, that’s what time it is, she thought. Twelve is too young an age to
die at summer camp, or anywhere else. I want to live long enough to make
everyone pay for ruining my life.
She set off, determined to get
un-lost and out of there. As she went, she tried to speak again with more
success. “I am Daria Morgendorffer,” she shouted hoarsely, “and I am sick and
tired of having fun!”
Daria Morgendorffer was mad at a lot
of people. She thought about this as she stomped along the trail back to the
cabins. At the moment, she was angriest at her parents, as it had been their
idea that she be forced to go to summer camp for a month, supposedly for her
own betterment. (If only Quinn had been sent away, that would have been fine,
but nooo.) She suspected the camp
thing was just an excuse for her parents to get some alone time for a few
weeks. Dump the kids, party it up, schedule some “quality time” later to soothe
the conscience. It figured.
As bad as things were for Daria at
the moment, she knew Quinn was surely having a good time. Quinn always had a
good time. If they’d been on the Titanic, Quinn would have ended up warm
and safe in a lifeboat, being plied with drinks by the surviving crew, while
Daria sank alone into the cold depths of the Atlantic. For always winning out
in the sibling-rivalry sweepstakes, Quinn ran a close second to their parents
on Daria’s crap list. After camp, though, her eleven-year-old sister would
recapture the number-one position, as she always did.
Quinn usually had no thoughts deeper
than her nail polish was thick, but she was cuter than cute and enormously
popular. Daria saw herself as smart and well read, only averagely attractive,
and enjoying the same level of popularity as the Black Death. Her peers at Camp
Grizzly were no better than the teen queens, thugs, airheads, and jocks in her
now-completed seventh-grade class at Highland Middle School. The other campers
called her “the weird kid” and ignored or harassed her as they pleased. Daria
retaliated with acidic commentary, cold glares, and a refusal to participate in
group activities whenever possible. It was her Shakespearean insults, however,
that earned her the “weird” title. Perhaps, she reflected, calling the other
campers a “churlish, pox-infested mob of louts and strumpets” during the
S’mores Roast had been a bit over the top. Still, they’d deserved it.
The worst of her camp peers was a
tall, blond, muscular kid named Skip, who constantly berated her for a lack of
camp spirit. “Grrr! Go Grizzlies!” he shouted at her morning, noon, and night,
like a sadistic guard trying to break the spirit of a prisoner of war. The
other campers were jerks, but none quite as vile as Skip, who took it upon
himself to bring her kicking and screaming into the Grizzly cult. He was
currently number three on her crap list.
True, she knew that not everyone at
camp hated her. One annoying girl named Amelia followed her everywhere like a
stray cat waiting for a handout. Daria had no use for sycophants, but Amelia
never quit. And the camp director, Mr. Potts, was decent enough—except of
course for the fact that he ran the camp, which put him midway up
Daria’s crap list. Plus, he had little time for giving individual attention or
cutting slack where needed. At least he’d recovered her glasses when, thanks to
Skip pulling Daria off the dock, they’d fallen into the lake during the
grab-the-greased-watermelon game. Mr. Potts also found some bug repellant for
her that kept a few of the mosquitoes away. But he still ran the camp. Guilty.
The physical side of camp would have
easier had not Mother Nature seen fit to stick Daria in the 25% bracket for
growth. At age twelve and a half, Daria was one inch short of five feet and
weighed barely over ninety pounds. She read, watched TV, or pecked on a
computer instead of exercising, and she didn’t eat properly if she could help
it, so her strength and endurance were below average as well. She was primed
for trouble. Color Wars, prolonged hiking, calisthenics, rope-climbing,
swimming in the lake to battle other swimmers for possession of greased
watermelons—Camp Grizzly was, for her, the first circle of Hell. Daria had been
there less than a week, but she doubted she’d live to see the rest of June,
much less the rest of 1994, if she stayed a moment longer. Especially if there
was horseback riding.
Daria shivered. Distracted from her
gloomy thoughts, she rubbed her bare arms. It was cooler out than she had
thought it should be for June. She frowned and looked around at the trees she
passed. Some of the leaves were turning yellow and orange. A few were already
red and brown. She wondered if this part of the forest had been treated with
poisonous chemicals that damaged the leaves. That would be great if she got
poisoned, too, from walking through it. Her funk deepened.
A plan was called for. If she
pretended to be sick and could make it look authentic, Mr. Potts might call her
parents to come get her. At worst, she would get a day off in the medical cabin
with Ms. Barnes, the overworked camp nurse. It was worth a try. Should she go
for a deadly tick or spider bite, or eating poisonous mushrooms? If the latter,
she’d have to make herself throw up before she got back to camp, for the sake
of authenticity.
Her plans came to naught in moments,
however. A fresh-faced little girl with short, honey-blonde hair appeared on
the path ahead, walking in Daria’s direction. She wore a bright yellow sweat
suit with red letters printed across the front—Camp Sunrise. Where the hell was
that?
The girl spotted the filthy Daria at
the same moment and waved, though with a look of concern. “Hey!” she shouted.
“Did you fall down or something?”
It had to be the stupidest question
Daria had ever been asked. “I’m fine,” she called back with a curled lip. “I
always look like this.”
“You look like you fell down,” the
girl repeated. She stopped and looked Daria over. “Are you hurt? Did the
earthquake do that?”
“I’m crippled for life. What are you
doing here?” Daria did not stop as she spoke. The little girl fell into step
beside her, walking back to camp, too.
“I was looking to see if some kids
ran down this way when the earthquake came,” the girl said. She seemed to be
about eight and reeked of cheer and wholesomeness. “Everyone got real scared
except me. I’m a cabin captain because they said I was so responsible. Which
camp are you from?”
“Grizzly. Where’s Camp Sunrise?”
“Grizzly? Where’s—oh! The old camp
name!”
“What old camp name?”
“Grizzly! It’s Camp Sunrise, now!”
Daria’s patience began to wear thin.
“Whatever,” she said. “I’m going back to the cabins.”
“I’ll go with you,” said the girl.
“My name’s Tricia Gupty. What’s yours?”
Daria looked down at herself. My
name’s Mud. “Daria. Is Camp Sunrise next to Camp Grizzly?”
“No, it is Camp Grizzly. I
mean, it used to be Camp Grizzly, but they changed it after a girl
disappeared.”
The conversation was becoming stupid
as well as irksome. “When did they do that? This morning?”
“No! A couple years ago, Mom said.”
Tricia slowed to take a closer look at Daria’s outfit. “Is that a real Camp
Grizzly T-shirt?”
“It’s my evening gown. Can’t we just
walk and enjoy the quiet for a change?”
“Wait. Did you say your name was
Daria?” The little girl caught Daria’s dirty elbow and tugged.
“Yeah.”
“What’s your last name? Is it
Morning—”
“Morgendorffer, and I don’t feel
like talking anymore.”
The gasp from the little girl caused
Daria to look down at her companion. “Daria Morgendorffer?” Tricia cried. “Like
the girl on the poster? Are you really? Wow, they’ve been looking for you since
forever! Where in the world have you been?”
The camp’s been looking for me?
Daria knew this was bad news. She must have been gone longer than she’d
thought, perhaps a full day after she’d knocked herself out. There was no
telling the trouble she was in now. Worse, no one would ever believe she’d
fallen into a sinkhole, because the earthquake had destroyed all evidence of
it.
On the other hand, if the camp
director thought she was uncontrollable and phoned her parents to come get her,
perhaps the experience would serve a greater good. All might soon be well. If
only Tricia would shut up.
“So, where were you all this time?”
Tricia pressed, walking at her side.
“I’ve been out eating poisonous
mushrooms, okay?” Daria snapped. “I’m sick of talking, I want a shower, and I
hate this rotten camp!”
“No, this is a great camp!” Tricia
cried earnestly. “It’s for homeschoolers like me. We come out for a week to
learn about the exciting wonders of Creation Science, we make s’mores, and we
have sack races! My brother Tad gets to come next year. Hey, did you get lost
in the woods? Did you run away from camp and come back today? Did the
earthquake make you come back? Do your Mom and Dad know you’re here?”
There was no use in replying. Daria
marched on as Tricia peppered her with guesses as to Daria’s previous
whereabouts. “If you were kidnapped, the FBI will find the guys that did it,
you know! They’ll get them for sure! And I bet I get the reward for finding
you! It’s ten thousand dollars, but maybe they’ll give me a million and I can
use it to feed homeless families! That would be wonderful, wouldn’t it?”
To Daria’s infinite relief, the camp
cabins appeared around the next bend in the path. As the forest cleared,
however, a disturbing sight appeared. The children at the camp were all small
and dressed identically to Tricia, in bright yellow sweat suits. No
blue-shirted Camp Grizzly people were about. The blue-and-white banners for
Camp Grizzly that Daria had last seen had all been replaced by yellow-and-red
banners proclaiming this area as Camp Sunrise, and several new buildings were
present that Daria was positive had not been there when she’d left to go on the
hike. The Snack Shack, for sure, had appeared out of nowhere.
Feeling a touch of anxiety, she
slowed as she approached the main campgrounds. Her attention was drawn to a
large sign near the camp parking lot.
Welcome Fall ‘97 Session!
Stay Safe, and Have Fun!
What the hell? she wondered. Fall
‘97? Like 1997? Is this some kind of practical joke, or just a mistake on the
sign? If it’s a joke, is everyone in the camp in on it? It figures that no one
let me in the secret—unless I’m supposed to be the butt of it. That makes
sense, almost.
“Tricia!” several young campers
shouted when they spotted her. “Tricia, the earthquake’s over, and we found
everyone! No one’s missing! All present!”
“Where’s the camp commander?” Tricia
shouted back. “I have to tell her something real important!”
“She went to call the police and
tell them we found everyone!” a boy shouted. He pointed at Daria. “Who’s she?”
Feeling quite uncomfortable now,
Daria decided to get cleaned up before doing anything else. Tricia, however,
grabbed her arm. “No, wait! You have to come with me!”
“I don’t have to do anything!” Daria
said, jerking her arm away. Her self-control began to erode. “I’m going to take
a shower, get cleaned up, and everyone can go stick it!” She wanted to add
something rude and pithy from Shakespeare, but she was too shaken to remember
any of it.
“Tricia!” called a man’s voice. It
sounded familiar. “Tricia, what’s going on?”
“Mister Potts!” shouted Tricia. “I
found her! The missing girl, Daria Morgendorffer! I found her!”
“Tricia, that’s not at all funny! We
don’t—”
Daria turned. A portly, balding man
with glasses walked toward them from one of the cabins. As he approached, he
fell silent and instead stared at Daria with great intensity. His face cleared
in shock. His mouth fell open, and he stopped dead in his tracks. It was Mr.
Potts, the director from Camp Grizzly—but he wore a yellow sweatshirt and black
pants now, and the yellow sweatshirt’s letters said: CAMP SUNRISE.
“Jesus God,” Mr. Potts breathed. He
took a halting step closer, his eyes locked on Daria. “Great Jesus God!”
“That’s swearing!” Tricia shouted.
“You’re not allowed to swear here, Mister Potts!”
“Is that you?” Mr. Potts said to
Daria. “Are you really Daria? You look like her. Did you lose your glasses in
the lake just before you—is that really you? Where the living hell have you
been, girl?”
“Stop swearing!” Tricia yelled.
Daria found herself unable to
answer. Something had happened to Mr. Potts. His hair was almost white now
instead of grayish brown, and his face was lined. He seemed to have put on
weight since she’d seen him last, before the hike, which couldn’t have been
more than a day ago.
Her skin began to crawl. This was an
elaborate hoax, and she didn’t deserve it—but Mr. Potts was the kind of person
who would never tease anyone like this. He seemed genuinely stunned to see her.
And if the aged look he had was only makeup, it was a world-class job.
Mr. Potts took Daria by the
shoulders with both hands, looking into her scratched, smudged face. “Thank
Almighty God!” he gasped—and a moment later, he had her in a bear hug. Daria,
who hated being hugged, was so shocked she did not even think of protesting.
“Thank God, you’re safe!” he cried. “I worried myself sick over you!”
“Mister Potts!” Tricia said. “Do I
get the reward so I can help homeless people?”
“What?” He let go of Daria and
looked down at Tricia in a daze. “The reward?”
“Yes!” Tricia held up an
eight-by-eleven-inch sheet of paper that she had removed from a cabin bulletin
board. In the center of it was Daria Morgendorffer’s middle-school yearbook
photo, blown up in black and white. Across the top was written: HAVE YOU SEEN
ME?
Feeling her grip on reality slip
away, Daria took the page from Tricia’s hand and read the bottom lines.
Brown hair, brown eyes
Born November 20, 1981, in Austin, Texas
Disappeared June 8, 1994, at
Camp Grizzly, Arkansas
Daria Morgendorffer was last seen on a hike
along the Woodchuck Trail at Camp Grizzly (now Camp Sunrise), Arkansas. She
wore a blue T-shirt with a Camp Grizzly logo in white, brown short pants, and
gray, low-rise boots. She wore corrective lenses for nearsightedness. A $10,000
reward is offered by her family for any information as to her whereabouts. If
you have any information on this missing child, immediately contact the
Arkansas State Police at this number—
Daria’s gaze dropped to the bottom
of the page.
Issued by Arkansas State
Police, Little Rock AR – August 1997
“What day is it?” Daria said in a
stunned voice.
“Friday,” said Tricia.
It had been Wednesday when she’d
left on the hike. “What date is it? The date?”
“Oh. Um, September twenty-sixth,
nineteen ninety-seven.”
Daria stared at the missing-child
flier. Rational thought was not possible.
“What happened to you?” Mr. Potts
asked. “Were you hiding in the woods, or staying somewhere else?”
Unable to speak, Daria merely stared
up at his face, mouth open in shock. I have got to be dreaming. That’s the
only explanation. This has got to be a really bad dream.
“Well, we’ll find out what happened
eventually,” said Mr. Potts. “Three years and three months! I can’t believe
it.” He laughed as if a great burden had been taken from him. “I can’t believe
it! You’re alive! It’s really you! At least, I think it’s you!”
Young campers who had crowded in
around Daria, Mr. Potts, and Tricia began to cheer and clap. Several campers
took flash photos of her.
“This is a joke, right?” whispered
Daria to Mr. Potts. Her knees were shaking. It was very hard to breathe. “This
is some kind of joke you’re playing on me, isn’t it?”
“You’d know better than I would,
girl,” said Mr. Potts. “You’d better not be playing a joke on me, let me tell
you, even if you are Daria. We’ve got to get the camp director and
nurses to look you over and get you cleaned up. I can’t believe you’re actually
here.” He looked her over once more with a puzzled frown. “You know, you don’t
look like you’ve changed at all since you’ve been gone. You look exactly the
same as the day . . .” He shook his head and directed her toward the nurses’
cabin.
Tricia took the page from Daria’s
unresisting hands before she left. “Boy,” said the little girl with great
satisfaction, “is your mom going to be glad to see you!”
Dinner at the Morgendorffers that
Friday evening went much as it always did—for a short time, anyway.
“. . . so Sandi said, anyone who
wears white after Labor Day would wear short pants with black socks, too.”
Quinn ate another spoonful of microwaved lasagna. She sat in her usual place at
the dining table in the kitchen nook, with her back to the wall. “I think there
should be a law,” she added, pointing her spoon at her mother for emphasis. “I
really do. What’s the point of having fashion if people don’t pay attention to
it?”
“That’s wonderful, dear,” said her
mother Helen, looking over a legal brief beside her plate. “I think white is an
excellent color for her.”
“Muuh-ooom!” Quinn glared. “You’re not listening to me!”
“Of course I am, dear. You said
Sandi was wearing white for Christmas. Or something.”
“No! Listen to me! I said—”
“Why are we eating so early,
anyway?” Jake asked from Quinn’s left. “It’s hardly five o’clock!”
Helen gave her husband an
exasperated look. “Jake, I told you this morning that I have to go back to the
office to get this brief ready for the Titan Motors case next week. This could
be critical to winning a settlement! Plus, Quinn’s got company coming over, and
I’d rather she—”
“Does anyone want to hear about my
math quiz?” Quinn asked.
“Sure, sweetheart!” said Helen,
changing her tone to one of sympathy. “How did you do?”
“How should I know?” Quinn said
peevishly. “I just took it today!”
The cordless telephone rang. Helen
sighed, got up from the table, and walked over to pick up the handset. “It’s
probably Eric from work, wondering why I’m not there yet,” she said. She raised
the handset. “Morgendorffers, Helen speaking.”
“How do you think you did on the
test, kitten?” asked Jake, getting more lasagna.
“Daddy, it was just a quiz, so stop
torturing me, okay? I’m all stressed out and I’ve got a Fashion Club meeting
here tonight and I haven’t—”
“Who is this?” asked Helen in a loud
voice. The handset creaked in her white-knuckled grip. Jake and Quinn looked at
her and fell silent, waiting. “The Arkansas State Police?” she said. “What’s
this about?”
Quinn gripped her spoon, but her
appetite was gone. She knew what the phone call was about. Someone had found
Daria’s skeleton in the woods near Camp Grizzly, and the whole family would
have go and identify it this weekend. Quinn didn’t think she could hang on to
her sanity if she had to see—
Her mother’s eyes became impossibly
large. “What?” she said in a loud, high voice. She swayed on her feet.
Jake jumped from his chair and went to his wife.
“Is it her?” Helen shouted,
nearly hysterical. “Do you know if it’s really her?”
Quinn got up and ran to her mother’s
side. “What?” she demanded. “What’s going on?”
She heard a man’s voice over the
phone, but could not make out the words. Whatever was said had a remarkable
effect. Helen’s eyes rolled up into her head, the handset slipped from her
grasp and fell to the floor, and her legs buckled underneath her. Jake and
Quinn caught her before she fell across the tiles, easing her down to a prone
position. She was out cold.
As her father rubbed Helen’s hands
and face, calling her name, Quinn ran after the phone and picked it up. “I’m
Quinn, Quinn Morgendorffer!” she said, near panic herself. “I’m Daria’s
sister!”
“Is Helen Morgendorffer still
there?” said a man with a drawl that made Quinn think of movie hillbillies.
“Mom fainted! She’s okay, though.
Dad’s taking care of her. What’s going on?”
“Will your mother be all right?”
“Yes, she’s fine! Forget about her!
Tell me what happened!”
“All right. I’m Captain Henry Lee
Lucas, with the Arkansas State Police. I’m calling from St. Joseph’s Hospital
here in Hot Springs. This afternoon, a young woman was found near Hot Springs
National Park, wandering through an overnight camp for kids. She says her name
is Daria Morgendorffer.”
Quinn inhaled sharply, her eyes
huge.
“Now, I know there were some false
leads with this case early on,” the officer continued, “so I don’t want to get
your hopes up too far. However, we have her in the pediatric unit here at St.
Joe’s, and her fingerprints match those we have on file for your daugh—I mean,
your sister. She also knows almost all of the background information that your
family supplied so that we could weed out con artists posing as her. We’re
still waiting on the DNA match results. We’d like to ask if you and your
parents can get to Hot Springs as soon as possible to make a positive
identification.”
As hard as Quinn had clung to the
idea that Daria might yet be alive, she had long suspected that her sister was
dead and had been so since shortly after her disappearance. She now thought her
head would explode. “Is she there?” she cried. “Can I talk to her? Is she
hurt?”
“She’s in good condition, though a
bit dehydrated, and she was bruised and scratched up in places. Nothing major,
as far as we can tell. She was walking in the woods when they found her. I’d
let you talk to her, but she’s been sedated and is getting some rest right now
in her room. We had a little earthquake here this afternoon, and she apparently
showed up right after the tremor ended. Anyway, can you speak for the family as
to whether you’ll be coming to Hot Springs to—”
“We’ll be there!” Quinn shouted.
“We’ll be there as fast as we can get there!” She snatched a pencil and pad of
paper on the kitchen countertop. “Tell me where she is again! And I need phone
numbers! And your phone number!” She scribbled rapidly. “Does Hot Springs have
an airport?”
“Quinn?” called Jake in a shaky
voice, kneeling at Helen’s side. His face had lost all its color and he seemed
unsteady himself. “Who is it?”
“They found Daria!” Quinn screamed.
“She’s alive, Daddy! She’s alive!”
For a moment, Jake simply stared at
his daughter. Then he burst into tears and bowed his head, clutching Helen to
him.
Barely keeping her wits about her,
Quinn finished her conversation with the officer after getting more contact
information, and then hung up. She intended to call Sandi Griffin to cancel the
sleepover, but the phone rang again almost immediately.
“Hello?” she said, her voice too
high and loud.
“Is this Quinn?” She barely
recognized her mother’s youngest sister from D.C., Amy Barksdale. Amy was
screaming, too. “Get your mother! Turn on the TV to a news channel! I think
they found Daria!”
“They did, Aunt Amy!” Quinn screamed
back. “The police in Arkansas just called! They found her and she’s alive!”
Hysterical shrieks poured from the
phone. The call-waiting beep came on at the same time, but Quinn was too
distracted to answer it. She put the handset down and ran into the living room
to turn on the television set. After clicking through four cable stations, she
hit a 24-hour news channel. On the screen was a reporter in a light jacket,
talking into a microphone from the side of a forest-lined road. The volume was
turned down, but the bottom of the screen had a running line of news type:
BREAKING NEWS—ARKANSAS STATE POLICE ARE SEARCHING CHILDREN’S CAMPGROUND NEAR
HOT SPRINGS FOR ALLEGED KIDNAPPERS OF DARIA MORGENDORFFER—DARIA VANISHED IN
JUNE 1994 AT SAME CAMP AT AGE 12—SEVERAL WITNESSES REPORT THAT DARIA WAS FOUND
ALIVE NEAR CAMPSITE THIS AFTERNOON—CHILDREN AT CAMP BEING EVACUATED—AMBULANCES
UNDER POLICE ESCORT LEFT CAMPGROUNDS FOR HOT SPRINGS ONE HOUR AGO—BREAKING NEWS
And then the screen changed. Quinn’s
heart stopped.
A color photograph was shown in
which an anxious and dirty young girl wearing glasses was apparently talking to
an astonished-looking older man who also wore glasses. The girl’s stained blue
T-shirt had the familiar Camp Grizzly logo. The caption under the photo read:
TAKEN BY CAMPER EARLIER TODAY AT CAMP SUNRISE, ARKANSAS.
Without a doubt, the anxious girl
was Daria. She looked exactly as she had when Quinn last saw her three years
earlier. At the time, Daria, kicking at rocks in irritation, had left the cabin
area at the end of a line of trail hikers.
It struck Quinn as odd that the
Daria in the photo looked rather small and thin for a girl who should be almost
sixteen. And why was she wearing a Camp Grizzly shirt after all this time?
She had no time to think about it.
The doorbell rang. Unable to imagine going anywhere without running and
screaming, Quinn ran to the front door and opened it.
“Eww,” said Tiffany Blum-Deckler,
clutching an overnight bag. She looked Quinn up and down with a wrinkled nose.
“You’re, like, all sweaty and red and—”
“They found my sister!” Quinn
screamed. She grabbed the startled Tiffany and hugged her and tried to jump up
and down at the same time. “They found her! They found her, and she’s alive!”
Quinn stopped jumping a moment later
and held Tiffany by the shoulders at arm’s length, grinning like a maniac.
Tiffany blinked. “Oh,” she said
slowly. “Is she coming to the sleepover, too?”
Wearing only an open-back hospital
gown, Daria lay awake in her hospital bed under a blanket, staring at a pile of
news magazines on her stomach. Her head was propped up on two pillows. A
chocolate milkshake from the cafeteria sat on the table beside her. In a chair
nearby, a brunette nurse in her twenties read a murder-mystery novel. Daria
wondered if she’d been placed on a suicide watch, or if the hospital staff was
insuring she would not sneak out the door and run away. She didn’t mind. It was
nice for once to know someone was around.
“I don’t understand,” Daria said in
a low voice.
The nurse looked up. “Sorry. What
did you say?”
“I don’t understand. I don’t . . .”
She hesitated. Talking about this was pointless, but she needed to think out
loud and have someone hear it. “How could I have been gone this long? It’s not
possible. I fell into a sinkhole—I mean, it looked like an opening into a cave,
I was running down a slope through the trees and didn’t even see it until I was
right on it, and I fell into it and then . . . here I am.” She sat up in bed. “Did
the doctors find any kind of head injury on me, like a concussion or skull
fracture, a little one, or . . . or anything?”
“No, your X-rays checked out,” the
young nurse said calmly. “Nothing broken that we know of.”
Daria glanced at the clock over the doorway.
It was nine fifteen p.m., Friday night. “When did they say my parents would get
here?”
“They were on their way earlier to
an airport, I think in Baltimore,” said the nurse. “They might try to call
again. I’m sorry about that mix-up, or you could’ve talked to them before now.”
Daria shrugged. In a way, she was
glad of it. A miscommunication between the hospital staff and the police had
one of the officers thinking Daria had been given medication to help her sleep,
at the very moment when she was in bed watching the news on the room’s TV,
taking a break from the doctors’ poking and probing and questioning. Though she
wanted to see her family—never mind how angry she was with them earlier—she
also wanted time to collect herself and try to figure out what had happened.
Her earlier suspicion that she might
be in trouble for being away so long was proven prophetic. Given the
increasingly pointed interrogations to which she had been subjected since the
police had taken her into custody, she knew that while everyone was glad to
find her alive after all this time, no one believed her story about what had
happened. No one.
It had been a long afternoon and evening. After getting her scrapes bandaged up by the Camp Sunrise nurses, Daria had asked to take a shower. The police told the camp by phone not to let her do it, as she might have crime-scene evidence on her that would be washed away. The police came in force shortly thereafter—cars, helicopters, K-9 units, everything. She told them there had been no kidnappers, she’d merely fallen down a sinkhole, but the police elected to play it safe. Buses carried all the kids and counselors away as heavily armed search teams with dogs scoured the region, tracing Daria’s footsteps back to the collapsed cave she had described. Daria was sent off in an ambulance with medics, police officers, and counselors who examined her while they asked her where she’d been for three years.
Daria quickly elected to take the
advice of Mark Twain: When in doubt, tell the truth. She thought it a
wise choice at the time, but she wondered about it now. The truth wasn’t enough
for anyone who heard it. It wasn’t enough for her, either. The time between her
falling into the sinkhole and her climbing back out was, from her perspective,
a day at most but probably less. She hadn’t gone to the bathroom in her
clothing, so it had likely been a few hours max if she had been knocked
unconscious in the fall.
Yet, that wasn’t right, either.
Everyone she’d met since she’d climbed out said she’d been gone for three and a
quarter years. The camp itself had changed, and the news magazines were further
proof of it. Even if she had struck her head—and the X-rays said there was no
physical evidence of that, or even evidence of any trauma from a fall—she would
not have survived underground in a coma for three years. Everyone asked for
more information than she could possibly give. She feared that they suspected
she was hiding something, but there was nothing more to tell. She fell into a
cave on Wednesday, June 8th, 1994. She came out on Friday, September 26th,
1997. No rational explanation could account for that. It was enough to make her
think about the rabbit hole from Alice in Wonderland.
The door to the room opened, and a
forty-ish nurse with streaked blonde hair came in, carrying a chart in one
hand. “Hey, Daria,” she said, giving her a warm smile. She walked over to check
the IV bag that led down into Daria’s left arm. “You’re looking good,” she
said, then turned to the other nurse. “Anne, you can go on break. Sarah can sit
in if need be.”
After the other nurse left, the
older nurse put Daria’s magazines aside and took her temperature with an
electronic thermometer. She made a note in the chart, then set it aside, too.
“No fever,” she announced, hands on her hips. “Catching up on your reading?”
“A little.” Daria looked at the
clock again. “Waiting for my family to get here.”
“They should be here before
midnight. I think their plane lands at the airport at ten. The police are going
to bring them right here.” The blonde nurse waited a beat before continuing.
“You ready to see them?”
Daria nodded, but her gaze drifted.
“I didn’t know they lived in Baltimore now.”
“Lawndale,” said the nurse. “It’s a
suburb of Baltimore.”
“When did they move? From Highland,
Texas, I mean?”
“Oh, baby, I don’t know that. You’ve
been gone a long time.”
Daria sighed in despair. “But I
haven’t,” she said. “I haven’t been gone anywhere. I mean—I haven’t gone, I
didn’t go . . . oh, forget it.” She relaxed her head and stared up at the
ceiling in defeat. “I don’t know what happened. I don’t know anything.”
“Do you have any other family around
Baltimore?”
“My mom’s sisters live near there.
Maybe that’s why Mom wanted to move. Aunt Amy moved to D.C. a couple of years
ago, in nineteen ninety-two . . . wait, that’s wrong, isn’t it? She moved there
in nineteen ninety-two, so it’s been . . . whatever. And Aunt Rita lives in
Leeville, Virginia, with Uncle Ross and my cousin Erin. At least, they did in
nineteen ninety-four. I don’t know where they are now.”
The blonde nurse looked at her in
sympathy. She seemed to understand. “You don’t remember anything at all that
happened to you from the time you say you fell into that cave until this
afternoon, right?”
“Yeah.” Daria paused, looking at her
purple fingers. The fingerprint ink would not come out for days. “Everyone’s
keeps asking about it, but I don’t know what to tell them.” She suddenly gave a
mirthless laugh. “I was thinking that . . . this was a heck of a way to get out
of camp. I really hated it at Camp Grizzly. I wanted to do anything to get out
of there, but . . . I just never expected this.”
“Were people being mean to you there
at camp?”
“Well, sort of. One guy there was
really obnoxious, but he never actually hurt me. He was just annoying. It was
just a stupid camp full of stupid people, and I wanted to go home. I don’t know
what happened to me, though. I just don’t—” She groaned, feeling like a broken
record “—I don’t get it.”
The nurse patted Daria’s hand. “Do
you want to get a little sleep before your folks arrive?”
Daria shook her head. “I want to
stay up for when they get here.”
“Your sister’s coming, too. Quinn,
is that her name?”
“Yeah.” She swallowed. Mention of
Quinn caught her off-guard. “I’m sort of . . . nothing.”
“What?” The nurse seemed genuinely
concerned.
“I’m sort of nervous. A little.”
Daria began to play with her fingers, focusing on them intensely. A scratch ran
through the left lens of her glasses, but it could be borne for the time being.
She took her glasses off and squinted at the scratch.
“What are you nervous about?”
“Seeing my Mom and Dad.” The nurse
said nothing, so Daria continued. “When I saw my sister—” She put her glasses
on again and sighed. “When I saw Quinn last . . . it feels like it was this
morning. It does. She was at camp, and she’d had her eleventh birthday just . .
. this must sound stupid, but it was only a few weeks ago, as I remember it.
Anyway, when I last saw her, she was in line waiting to get breakfast at camp,
talking to her friends. She was ignoring me, but she always does that. I was
leaving on the hike, so that was the last . . . and then I last saw my parents,
as I remember it, about a week ago, when they dropped us off at camp. It’s just
not . . .” She looked up, speaking in a low voice. “I’m scared of what they’ll
look like. When I look in the mirror, I look exactly like I did before I fell
down that hole, and in my head, all I remember and everything, I’m still
twelve—twelve and a half, really. My sister—she’d be fourteen now. I can’t
believe that. That isn’t right. I’m scared about seeing them—it really scares
what they’ll look—”
Daria’s voice broke. She fought back
tears. The nurse reached to one side and produced a tissue that Daria used to
wipe her eyes. “I’m really scared,” she said, and she began to cry.
The nurse held her hand until Daria
finished and cleaned herself up. “No one believes me,” she finished, wiping her
eyes under her glasses. “I don’t know what happened. No one kidnapped me, and I
didn’t run away. I don’t remember anything except falling down in a cave, then
waking up and climbing out when the earthquake came. I was really scared I was
going to be killed, but I got out and I thought everything was going to be
okay. I didn’t want to go back to camp, but I did, and that little girl found
me, and there’s nothing else to tell. I’m telling the truth, but no one
believes me and they won’t leave me alone, and I don’t know what else to do!”
She gestured at herself in exasperation. “I mean, look at me! Do I look like
I’m going on sixteen?”
“I was thinking that you seem a
little small for your age,” said the nurse softly. “My daughter turned fifteen
last month, and she’s five seven. She’s not even the tallest girl in her
class.”
“I’m still four foot eleven! They
measured me when they brought me up here. I wasn’t that big compared to the
other kids in my class to begin with.” Daria blew her nose again on the tissue
and put it aside. She felt grubby. Her hair was in dire need of a wash, as was
the rest of her. “I’m sorry. I’m in a bad mood. Where did my clothes go?”
“The police took them to get
evidence from them.”
“Evidence? Evidence of what?”
“I couldn’t tell you that, baby. I’m
not a cop. I married one, but I’m not one.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do.”
She looked down at herself. “I hate this gown thing.”
The nurse laughed. “No one likes
them. I think the guys like seeing them on women, though, for the rear view.”
“Yeah, great. I didn’t want to be in
bed when my parents got here, but maybe it’s better if I am.”
“Tell you what,” said the nurse. “I
can check downstairs for something you can wear. We have spare clothing for
patients, things that the local churches donate. Want me to do that?”
Daria considered this and nodded.
“Okay. Thanks. Maybe some jeans or shorts or something, and a T-shirt. Nothing
too stupid looking. I’m not the fashion model type. I like something sort of
regular looking. Oh—can I take a shower before my parents get here? I haven’t
had a shower since—” She fought back a smile “—since nineteen ninety-four, I
guess.”
The nurse smiled for her. “Let me
see what I can do. I think the police have collected all the evidence they need
to for now, but I’ll ask. You want to watch a little television in the
meantime?”
“No.” It was disturbing to watch
news reports about her discovery. Every channel except the sports ones had
something about her. Speculation had already begun about what had happened.
Listening to the theorizing was upsetting. So far, she was either an abused,
amnesiac cult-kidnap victim or a sociopathic runaway survivalist, if she hadn’t
been taken away briefly by aliens on a UFO. What did her parents think had
happened? Would they believe her? Did she have anything to say that was worth
believing?
“You want anything else to read?”
asked the nurse.
Daria looked over at the magazines
on the table. The Oklahoma City bombing. The Republican Congress. O. J.
Simpson’s murder trial. War in Bosnia. Mir. Jet crashes. The Olympics in
Atlanta. The Olympics bombing. Clinton’s reelection. Fighting in the Middle East.
Cloning. Comets. Stock market boom. Whitewater. Hong Kong’s return to China. A
Mars rover. Princess Diana and Mother Teresa dead, less than a month ago. And
she had skipped the sports and entertainment news.
“No, thank you.” She’d had too much
recent history. It wasn’t any one thing that bothered her most. It was all of
them at once, the sum of all she had missed. Which begged the question: How
could it have happened? “I can’t believe this is real,” she whispered.
“This can’t be happening to me.”
“We’ll get it sorted out, baby,”
said the nurse, squeezing her hand. It was strangely comforting to be called
baby, though Daria knew she normally would have hated it. She felt a terrible
need to be babied for a while.
“Thank you,” said Daria, and she
squeezed the nurse’s hand back. “Thank you for helping me.” She had not said
“thank you” to anyone without being forced to do it since she was ten.
“That’s what I’m here for,” said the
nurse. “I’ll be right back once I find out about a shower for you and some
clothes. Sweats okay?”
“As long as they’re not too . . .
yeah, whatever. Anything’s okay. Thanks.”
The nurse smiled, gave Daria’s hand
one last squeeze, and left. On her way out, she called another nurse in to sit
with Daria. The new nurse brought some incomplete charts and sat in a corner of
the room, not talking, scribbling away.
With nothing to do, Daria’s gaze
wandered back to the TV. She picked up the remote, glanced at the clock (nine
thirty on the nose), then at the new nurse writing. She then clicked the set
on.
A series of ghastly green concentric
circles appeared on the screen with a clash of music. In the center of the
circles was an open eye, with garish red letters laid over all. “Do cloned
sheep have souls, or do they flock to Satan?” shouted an announcer. “See our
exclusive report, ‘Halo, Dolly!’ next, on ‘Sick, Sad World’!”
The ghost of a smile formed on
Daria’s pale lips. This might not be too bad. It would help pass the time until
her family arrived, anyway. She settled back into her pillows, took a sip of
her milkshake, and watched—and, for a little while, forgot her troubles.
It took forever for the
Morgendorffers to get into St. Joseph’s Hospital, thanks to the on-air
reporters and cameramen from dozens of television and radio stations who rushed
their police motorcade in the parking lot. Uniformed officers struggled to hold
the media crews back as other policemen shoved their way through the mob to the
doors, clearing a path for the family. More reporters filled the lobby,
shouting and holding cameras aloft and thrusting microphones at the overwhelmed
Helen and Jake. Quinn bore it well, smiling and waving in her excitement to see
Daria, but despite her grin, she wanted nothing more than for the media people
to be stuffed into a leaky cargo freighter and sent to Indonesia.
Once inside the hospital, the
Morgendorffers were escorted to a conference room, where they met with the team
of doctors who had examined Daria. After apologizing for the media circus
outside, the team leader warned the Morgendorffers not to question Daria too
closely about what had happened to her over the last three years. Police had
questioned her several times already. She now needed acceptance, not a new
cross-examination. Further, such questioning would probably be pointless, as
she apparently had no memory of anything from the time of her disappearance to
the present day.
“Nothing?” asked Jake. “I mean, is
it possible she’s—” He glanced uncomfortably at his wife and Quinn “—repressing
the memory of what happened?”
“That’s possible, and we’re
exploring that,” said the doctor. “However, we have no evidence that that’s the
case. One of the nurses who were with Daria this evening is the head of our
pediatric staff, and she’s spoken with Daria on several occasions. Your
daughter has opened up to her, but again, it appears your daughter genuinely
does not recall anything between her disappearance in June three years ago to
this afternoon, when the earthquake came and she was found.” The doctor leaned
forward in his seat. “More to the point, at the time she was found, she still
believed it was June nineteen ninety-four, she’d been gone only a short while,
and she was still at Camp Grizzly. She’s been very consistent on these points.”
“That’s craz—” Jake glanced at
Helen. “That’s completely terrible,” he finished.
Helen fidgeted. “You don’t think she
. . . well, might have gotten lost, or wandered off, or—you know?”
“We can’t say. We literally have no
idea what happened.”
“Can we see her now?” asked Quinn.
“We have one more issue we have to
talk about, something you need to know before you see her. Daria—” The doctor
hesitated.
“Is scarred?” said Quinn.
“Doesn’t remember us?” said Jake.
“Doesn’t want to see us?” said
Helen.
“No, no, no.” He raised his hands,
then dropped them into his lap. “Has she always been short for her age? In
height, I mean.”
Helen and Jake looked at each other.
“Well,” said Helen in confusion, “she’s a little under-tall, maybe, but not
particularly. She was a couple inches shorter than the other girls in middle
school. A late bloomer, I always thought. Why?”
“As best we can tell from our
limited information,” said the doctor, “Daria does not seem to have grown over
the three years while she was gone. The camp supplied us with copies of her
application forms from three years ago, which show her age, height, weight, and
so on. Your daughter is still the same height and about the same weight as when
she was last seen, in the middle of nineteen ninety-four.”
The silence after that statement
drew out. Quinn immediately thought of the photo of Daria at Camp Sunrise, how
small she had looked for someone who was almost sixteen.
“She hasn’t grown?” said Helen in
amazement. “What are you talking about?”
“As I said, she’s the same height as
when she went to camp, the same height and weight. She’d actually lost a pound
or two from—”
“How tall is she?” Helen pressed.
“Ah, she’s four feet and eleven and
one-quarter inches. Her weight is ninety pounds.”
The Morgendorffers looked stunned.
“Is she sick?” asked Helen. “Could her growth have been stunted? If she was
eating things from garbage cans around camp, hiding out in the woods, would
she—”
“Mom, I don’t think she was hiding
out in the woods,” said Quinn, though she couldn’t explain how she would know
that. It just didn’t seem like something Daria would ever do.
“No, she’s in good health,” the
doctor said quickly. “We can’t explain why she looks as she does, but we’re
still investigating and want to run more tests. She was well fed, though
dehydrated. We put her on an IV, and she should be close to normal. The IV was
taken off a short while ago for the duration of your meeting with her, but when
she goes to sleep, we’ll consider putting it on again for a while longer.”
“Excuse me,” another doctor put in.
“I hate to interrupt, but we desperately need her complete medical and dental
records, and we have to get them as soon as humanly possible. We feel this is
quite urgent, given the circumstances. We have some tests we’d like to run on
her before she is released. We can discuss this after your meeting with her.”
“Sure,” said Jake. “Of course,” said
Helen. Both were visibly shaken.
“You said she thinks it’s still
nineteen ninety-four?” asked Quinn. “How can she think that?”
“She doesn’t think so now, but she
apparently did when she was found,” said the head doctor. “She’s been watching
TV and reading a fair amount in her room this evening, and the nurses say she’s
had trouble understanding what happened to her and how she could have lost
three years of her life. She might be very sensitive about this issue, so think
carefully about what you say to her. Certainly, don’t joke about it.” He looked
around the room. “Anything else?” He then stood up. “Let’s go see her, then.”
The doctors and the Morgendorffers,
flanked by four hospital security guards, walked to the elevators and went to
the fifth floor. Quinn followed her parents, her head filled with fears and
worries. Will Daria be angry with me when she sees me? We never got
along well, and I wasn’t trying to get
close to her at camp. And then I said that thing about her being my cousin,
which I know she overheard because she said something snide about it the night
before she went on that hike. I could slap myself for that. I hope she has
forgotten it. I should apologize anyway—but what will I say to her when I see
her? Will I recognize her? Is she really that small? That means that I would
be—
They were at room 513, Daria’s room.
The doctor pushed the door open. Helen, who had been walking almost even with
the doctors in front of her, shoved her way through first. Quinn saw her mother
stop for a moment, dead in the doorway, and give a strange cry—of joy or
fright, she couldn’t tell. Helen ran into the room, followed a second later by
her father, who appeared staggered. Quinn had the wild thought that her father
aged ten years the moment he saw Daria again.
Helen’s wordless cries rang down the
hallway. Alive with hope but steeling herself for the worst, Quinn stepped into
the doorway and looked.
It was Daria. There was no question
of it—long brown hair, round glasses, the face, everything. She was held in an
embrace between Helen and Jake, who had almost lifted her from the floor in their
desperation to hold her to them. Though her face was buried in Daria’s
shoulder, Helen’s wails and sobs filled the room, drowning out even those from
Jake.
Quinn stood in place. She wanted to
rush forward, too—but she could not believe what she saw.
Clad in a worn green sweatshirt,
black stretch pants, and mismatched sneakers, Daria was almost a head shorter
than Quinn was. Daria was no longer her big sister. Daria was an undersized
twelve-year-old girl, the same girl who vanished at Camp Grizzly, and Quinn was
now two years and almost six inches her senior.
Quinn gaped in horror. She could not
believe she was looking down at the sister to whom she had always before
looked up. She could not even think of anything to think.
Pressed tightly between the crouching
Helen and Jake, Daria opened her eyes to look around the room. She saw
Quinn—and stared in disbelief.
On wooden legs, Quinn walked forward
until she reached her sister and sobbing parents. She gently leaned down, took
her sister’s face in her hands, and kissed her on the forehead. “I love you,
Daria,” she whispered. “I missed you so much.”
The look on Daria’s face, however,
was not one of love. It was the look of someone who has seen a dreadful thing,
a horror beyond imagining. Quinn saw the look and understood it instantly. I’m
a monster to her. I’m almost a woman, and she’s a girl. She’s lost her place in
the family. Her world is destroyed, and I am the destroyer. I, the sister she
always hated, the one she could not compete with for attention and popularity,
I have her place now, too. I have it all. I wish to God that I were dead.
Quinn woke up in her chair with a
stiff neck. It was dark in Daria’s hospital room except for a sliver of light
coming under the door from the hallway outside. She grimaced and tried rotating
her head in a circle to stretch her neck muscles and ease the stiffness, but
that had only limited success. Her glow-in-the-dark watch said it was 2:53 a.m.
Sighing quietly, she shifted her position in the hard chair to get more
comfortable, but then discovered her rear end had gone to sleep.
She gave up and carefully got to her
feet to stretch. As she did, her elbow bumped into an unseen table beside her,
which caused her to flinch though the noise was not too loud. Fearing the
worst, she looked in Daria’s direction. Her sister was still a motionless dark
shape under the bed blankets. However, their mother was gone from her chair by
Daria’s bedside. Must have had to go to the bathroom, Quinn thought. Her
father had gone out to find a hotel in the area that would take them on short
notice. She hoped he was able to find a way through or around the reporters
without difficulty, though that did not seem likely.
Following a desire to sit closer to
her sister, Quinn walked over to her mother’s chair and carefully moved it up
to the side rails on Daria’s bed. She settled into the cushioned seat, hoping
her mother wouldn’t come back right away—then looked at Daria and jumped,
startled.
Daria’s eyes were open. Her face was
turned toward her sister, both of them barely visible in the half-light from
under the door.
Quinn calmed quickly. She knew Daria
couldn’t see very well without her glasses on, so everything was probably just
a blur to her. Putting her forearms on the cold railing, Quinn rested her chin
on one of her hands. “Hi,” she said softly.
Daria said nothing back.
“I love you,” Quinn added. She
reached over to adjust Daria’s blanket.
“I heard,” said Daria in a low
voice.
This will be hard going. She’s
still a kid. “I’m glad you’re back,” she said, withdrawing her hand.
“I didn’t go anywhere.”
“You did for us. We missed you. It’s
been the worst thing ever, not having you around.”
“I have a little trouble believing
that.”
Ouch. “I mean that,” Quinn
said, swallowing. “I know I said things to you that I shouldn’t have, and I’ve
regretted saying them for years, ever since I last saw you. If I could take
them back and do everything over again, I would. I really missed you.”
Daria’s eyes glittered in the
darkness. “How was it, being an only child?”
That one really stung. Quinn felt
her temper rise, but she tried to keep a lid on it. “It sucked.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Well, then you try being an only
child with your sister presumed dead. You try living for three years wondering
what kind of awful thing happened, wondering if there was something you could
have done to save her, wondering if her body was going to turn up one day and
you’d have to go look at it and wonder what sick things were done to her before
she died. You try it next. I don’t ever want to do it again.”
In the silence that followed, Quinn
made her hand reach for Daria again, taking hold of a corner of her blanket. “I
don’t want us to go back to doing what we were doing. I really don’t. I don’t
know what happened that took you away from us, but I know this rivalry thing
has got to stop. I can’t do it anymore. I quit. I want you, and that’s all.”
Daria did not reply. It seemed,
though, that she retreated a little.
“So,” said Quinn in a forced but
lighter tone, “how do you like nineteen ninety-seven?”
After a moment, Daria shrugged under
her blanket.
“You said the police took your
clothes?”
“Yeah.” Daria bit her lip. “Do you
think I’m crazy?”
“No.” Quinn’s hand began to rub Daria’s
back through the blanket. “I was afraid I’d go crazy lots of times, though. I
thought . . .” She let it drop. “I can’t believe you’re back. All I’ve wanted
for three years was to see you again.”
“Your cousin.”
I deserved that. “No, my
sister. I told everyone about you. I did a TV commercial for you once, two
years ago. It was a public service spot for missing children in general,
actually, back in Texas, but it had you in it—pictures of you, movies of you.
Millions of people saw it. We have it on tape somewhere. I told everyone I
wanted you back.” She stopped and wiped her eyes. It wasn’t good to talk about
it anymore. It would only make her cry again.
“What did you think happened to me?”
Quinn almost laughed. “I was afraid
you were dead.” It was strange, she thought, that saying that didn’t upset her
more. “I kept hoping we’d find you. I was really hoping you’d run away and
would turn up somewhere, hiding in a library or something. I didn’t care what
it took, as long as we got you back.”
“Do you think that’s what I did?”
“Run away, you mean?”
Daria nodded.