Eek! What do you do when someone goes missing, you've no idea what in the world happened, and then a body is found? Eek!
"Dream cars have no registration plate…
One evening, Adam’s mum pops out for the milk and doesn’t come back, launching a frantic nationwide search. Yet after weeks with no leads, the television crews drift away, the police start asking hairy questions, and Adam’s dad starts seeing someone else. Adam’s life is falling apart. But then he meets Skye, who it seems has misplaced a parent too, and things start to look up. That is, until a body is found…"
Misplaced by Lee Murray
Publication date: December 1st 2013
Genres: Mystery, New Adult
Lee Murray is a full-time writer and editor with masters degrees in science and management. Lee wrote Misplaced after a friend, Florence, went missing from her home in France in 2003. Sadly, Florence is still missing. Lee lives in Tauranga, New Zealand with her husband and their two teenaged children.
EXCERPT
The make-up girl has a silver nose ring and hair
streaked psychedelic orange.
‘Almost done,’ the girl says, puffing his face with
powder. She has bony knuckles like cauliflower stalks. Holding his
breath, Adam wills himself not to fidget as she deals to the fresh
eruption of zits on his forehead. Right now, a few spots are the
least of his worries.
‘There, that’s put some colour in your cheeks.’
Adam opens his eyes, stares at the mirror, and doesn’t
say anything. Even with the powder, he’s as pale as Colgate.
There’s fuzz on his chin and dark bags under his eyes. He looks
like a druggie, a metal-head on a bender.
The Powder Puff girl selects a lipstick from a tray
which, held vertically, could be a Connect Four player board.
Resolution Red.
With a practised twist, she pushes up the tube.
‘Pucker up, now,’ she coaxes. ‘Give me your
sexiest pout, the one the girls love.’ But Adam clamps his mouth
shut, pursing his lips in a thin line, and shakes his head. No
lipstick. This isn’t an audition for American Idol.
‘But...’ The Powder Puff girl puts on a pout of her
own.
‘No!’ he says, with more vehemence than is
warranted.
The girl shrugs, rolls her eyes. ‘Whatever.’ She
packs up her Connect Four box and leaves him there.
‘One minute, people!’ the floor manager screams.
Through the scramble of movement, Adam is aware of Dad, shuffling
about on the spot off to the side of the make-shift set, a man out of
his comfort zone. Six days a week, Dad’s natural habitat is
Creighton Cars, the yard that he runs. On Sundays he mows the lawns,
then slumps in front of the telly, cold beer in hand, watching
whatever sport happens to be on.
Adam notices that Dad’s tugging his earlobe again.
Dad always does that when he’s out of sorts. It’s a good thing
the clients haven’t cottoned on or he’d never sell any cars.
Lately, he’s pulled that lobe so often it’s a wonder he isn’t
mistaken for a tribesman from Borneo.
Not that Adam isn’t uncomfortable. He wishes it hadn’t
come to this. The thing is, the news people insisted a public appeal
could make a difference. They said it’d made a difference in other
cases. But Dad couldn’t face it, so Adam had agreed to do it
instead. At this point Adam would agree to car surf down Auckland’s
Queen Street in the wrong direction at rush hour, if there was a
chance it would make a difference.
Anyway, it’s better Adam does it because, being
younger than Dad, he’ll make the biggest impact, apparently. Adam
knows this because he heard the camera crew chatting. They’d
started off saying how Adam and Dad’s story was made for
television, the kind of story that won awards. Then one of them said
it was a bummer that Adam was seventeen. That’s when the guy
holding the boom said, in these kind of cases, nothing tops a
7-year-old girl, especially a little blondie with dimples.
‘Trust our freaking luck!’ They’d laughed then,
quietly amongst themselves, but one of them caught Adam looking and
quickly shushed the others.
‘Hey, show a bit of compassion, will ya?’
Maybe this is how his life will be from now on. People
shushing each other or looking away. Feeling sorry for him.
‘Adam? We’re ready for you.’ The floor manager
speaks quietly. Adam’s grateful. Right now he feels like the entire
cast of Lost, like something awful is about to happen. Maybe it
already has, maybe he’s living in a parallel universe and none of
this is real, but whatever it is, Adam doesn’t get any of it. He
gets to his feet and allows the floor manager to direct him to the
lectern. Placing both hands on either side of the lectern, Adam
steadies himself.
This has to work. Please, let this work. Please.
But Adam knows that even if it does, nothing will be
quite the same.
‘In 5... 4... 3...’ The floor manager holds up two
fingers, then one...
The microphone makes a soft buzz as it’s switched on.
Adam pauses, marvelling at how they actually do that, the holding up
the finger thing.
Oh shit.
He’s on national television. His face spreads with
warmth: the nasty-but-nice feeling you get when you pee in the sea.
Great. His face will be red and blotchy now. He inhales deeply.
Swallows.
Stares directly at the camera lens.
What if this is the last time he ever speaks to her?
‘Mum... Mum, if you’re out there, if you can hear
this, please, please call and let us know you’re all right.
Whatever’s wrong, Dad and me, we’re worried. Please, Mum, just
come home...’
No comments:
Post a Comment