A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

LEO
NOW
On your fourth day home, I go back to school. I walk there, taking the
long way. I still can’t walk by our old babysitter’s house without
feeling the need to dry heave, even though last I heard she and her
husband don’t live there anymore.
Dad says not to talk to the kids at school about you. If anyone
asks, I’m supposed to say my dad told me not to talk about it. That
goes over about as well as to be expected. During lunch, I get my
cafeteria tray knocked out of my hands because I won’t spill the
details of what happened to you.
The tray falls. Dr. Carmichael blames me because by the time it
hits the ground, Adam Beltner is nowhere around. Everyone laughs.
Look at that idiot, they say.
Dr. Carmichael makes me clean it up. By the time I do, there’s no
time left to eat. I go hungry.
I get nudged during the day. Kids ask questions that I ignore. They
throw things at me. They call me names. Jagoff. Jerkweed. They
stare. They point fingers and laugh.
The effing reporters have snapped about a gazillion pictures of
you since you’ve been home. They’re in the paper. They’re all over
Snapchat and Instagram. Kids keep sharing them on their own
stories like what’s happened to you is their own tragedy. Everyone’s
seen the pictures. It’s the same picture, taken from ten angles by ten
different photographers. In them, you’re red, covered with blisters on
your arms and face. Bleach burns, the doctors said. Second degree.
They’ll probably scar. Your clothes don’t fit right. You haven’t bathed
in eleven years; you look like trash.
I overhear some kid call you a burrito face because of the blisters
and burns. I go to punch him in the face, but Piper Hanaka gets in
my way. “Ignore him, Leo. He’s, like, just trying to screw with you.
Don’t give him what he wants.”