Vanishing Girls Read online

  Suddenly I’m angry at Parker: for reviving the memory of that night; for showing up now, when I’d already convinced myself I was over him; for making everything crack open again. For his perfect lips and his smile and those stormy eyes and the fact that even standing next to him I can feel an invisible force moving between us.

  Magnetism, my chem teacher would call it. The seeking of a thing for its pair.

  “Is that what you came to say?” I look away, hoping he can’t read how badly it aches to be next to him. How badly I want to kiss him. If I don’t act angry—if I don’t get angry—the ache will only deepen. “To take a stroll down memory lane at nearly one a.m. on a Wednesday?”

  He squints, rubbing his forehead. “No,” he says. “No, of course not.” I feel a hard squeeze of guilt. I could never stand to see Parker unhappy. But I remind myself that it’s his fault: he’s the one who showed up out of nowhere, after all this time.

  “Look.” Parker’s still swaying, and his words are soft around the edges—not slurring, exactly, but like he can’t be bothered to make hard sounds. “Can we go somewhere to talk? Five minutes. Ten, tops.”

  He makes a move for the door. But there’s no way I’m letting him inside and risking waking up Mom—or worse, Nick. She never said anything about Parker and me, not directly, but I could read on her face how much she disapproved. Worse. I could read the pity, and I knew what she was thinking. One time I’d even heard her friend Isha say it out loud. They were in Nick’s room and I was climbing down the trellis and Isha’s voice rose up suddenly.

  “She isn’t prettier than you, Nick,” she’d said. “It’s just that she shoves her tits in everyone’s face. People feel bad for her, you know?”

  I didn’t hear Nick’s reply. But at that moment she’d stood up and her eyes slid across the window and I swear, I swear she saw me, frozen, gripping the trellis with both hands. Then she reached out and yanked the curtains shut.

  “Come on,” I say, and take hold of Parker’s arm, dragging him off the porch. I’m surprised when he fumbles for my hand. I pull away, crossing my arms again. It hurts to touch him.

  My car is unlocked. I swing open the passenger door and gesture for him to get in. He freezes.

  “Well?” I say.

  He’s staring at the car as if he’s never seen one before. “In here?”

  “You said you wanted to talk.” I walk around to the driver’s side, open the door, and get in. After another minute, he climbs in after me. With both doors shut, it’s very quiet. The upholstery smells faintly of mildew. I’m still holding my phone, and I half wish it would ring, just to break up the silence.

  Parker runs his hands over the dashboard. “This car,” he says. “It’s been a while since I’ve been in this car.”

  “So?” I prompt him. The car is stuffy, and it’s so compact that every time he moves, we bump elbows. I don’t want to think about what we used to do in here—and what we didn’t do, what we never did. “You have something you want to say to me?”

  “Yeah.” Parker shoves a hand through his hair. It immediately falls back into place. “Yeah, I do.”

  I wait for a long beat of silence. But he says nothing. He doesn’t even look at me.

  “It’s late, Parker. I’m tired. If you just came over to—”

  He turns to me suddenly, and the words get caught in my chest: his eyes are two stars pinned to his face, blazing. He’s so close I can feel the heat from his body, as if we’re already pressed chest to chest, hugging. More. Kissing.

  My heart shoots into my throat.

  “I came to talk to you because I need to tell you the truth. I need to tell you.”

  “What are you talking—?”

  He cuts me off. “No. It’s my turn. Listen, okay? I’ve been lying. I never told you . . . I never explained.”

  In the endless stretch of silence before he speaks again, the world outside take a deep breath.

  “I’m in love. I fell in love.” Parker’s voice is barely a whisper. I stop breathing altogether. I’m afraid to move, afraid that if I do, everything will disappear. “Maybe I always was in love, and just too stupid to know it.”

  You, I think. The only word I can reach, the only thing I can think of: You.

  Maybe, on some level, he hears me. Maybe in some parallel realm, Parker knows, because just then he says it, too.

  “It’s you,” he says. And his hands are touching my neck, my face, skimming through my hair. “My whole life, it’s always been you.”

  Then he kisses me. And in that second I realize that all the work I’ve done to forget, to deny, to pretend I never cared about him—all the minutes, hours, days spent taking down our memories, piece by piece—has been totally and completely pointless. The second his lips touch mine—hesitantly, at first, as if he isn’t quite sure I’ll want it—the second I feel his fingers tighten in my hair, I know there’s no use in pretending and there never was.

  I am in love with Parker. I have always been in love with Parker.

  It’s been months since we’ve kissed, but there’s no awkwardness, no strain, like there was with any of the other guys I’ve been with. It’s as easy as breathing: push and pull; give, take, give. He tastes like sugar and something else, something deep and spicy.

  At a certain point we break to catch our breath. I’m no longer holding my phone; I have no idea when I dropped it and I couldn’t care less.

  Parker brushes the hair back from my face, touches my nose with a thumb, sweeps his fingers over my cheeks. I wonder whether he can feel the scar tissue, smooth and alien, and involuntarily I pull back a little.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he says, and I know he means it, which makes me feel worse. It’s been so long, maybe forever, since anyone has looked at me the way he’s looking at me now.

  I shake my head. “I’m all messed up now.” My throat is knotted up and the words come out high, strangled.

  “You’re not.” He takes my face with both hands, forcing me to look at him. “You’re perfect.”

  This time, I kiss him. The knot loosens; once again I feel warm and happy and relaxed, like I’m floating in the world’s most perfect ocean. Parker thinks I’m beautiful. Parker has been in love with me all this time.

  I’ll never be unhappy again.

  With one hand he eases aside the collar of my T-shirt, kissing me along my shoulder blade and then up to my neck, moving his lips across my jawline and then to my ear. My whole body is a shiver; at the same time, I’m burning hot. I want everything, all at once, and in that second I know: tonight’s the night. Right here, in my stupid mildew-smelling car: I want it all from him.

  I grab his T-shirt and pull him closer, and he makes a sound halfway between a groan and a sigh.

  “Nick,” he whispers.

  All at once, my whole body goes ice-cold. I release him, scrabbling backward, bumping my head against the window. “What did you say?”

  “What?” He reaches for me again, and I swat his hand away. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

  “You called me by my sister’s name.” Suddenly I feel nauseous. That other thing I’ve been trying to deny—that horrible, deep-down feeling that all along I was never good enough, could never be good enough—now surges up, like a monster made to swallow up all my happiness.

  He stares at me, then shakes his head, slowly at first, and then with increasing speed, as if he’s working up momentum to deny it. “No way,” he says. But for a second, I see guilt flash across his face, and I know that I’m right, that he did. “No way. I would never—that’s fucked-up—I mean, why would I—?”

  “You did. I heard you.” I shove out of the car and slam the door shut so hard the whole car rattles, no longer caring whether I wake anyone up.

  He doesn’t love me. He never loved me. All along, he’s loved her.

  I was just the consolation prize.

  “Wait. Seriously, stop. Wait.”

  He’s out of the car now, trying to interc
ept me before I can get to the door. He grabs my wrist, and I wrench away, stumbling on the grass, turning over on my ankle so a sharp pain goes all the way up to my knee.

  “Let me go.” I’ve started crying without knowing it. Parker stands there, watching me with an expression of horror and pity and even more guilt. “Leave me alone, okay? If you love me so much, if you care about me at all, just do me a favor. Leave me the hell alone.”

  To Parker’s credit, he does. He doesn’t follow me to the porch. He doesn’t try to stop me again. And once I’m inside, with my face pressed to the cold glass, taking deep, heaving breaths to try and keep the sobs back, I see that he doesn’t even wait that long before disappearing again.

  BEFORE

  FEBRUARY 16

  Nick

  “Tell me again”—Aaron takes my ear between his teeth, pulling lightly—“what time your mom is coming home?”

  He’s made me say it three times already. “Aaron,” I say, laughing. “Don’t.”

  “Please,” he says. “It’s so sexy when you say it.”

  “She’s not,” I say, giving in. “She’s not coming home at all.”

  Aaron smiles and moves his mouth from my neck to my jawline. “I think those might be the hottest words in the English language.”

  Something hard and metal is digging into my lower back: the spine, probably, of the pullout couch. I try to ignore it, try and get into the mood, whatever that means. (I’ve never understood that phrase; it makes it sound as if moods are something you choose, like putting on a pair of pants. Dara and I once decided that “sex-mood” would be a leather romper, skintight. But most of the time I just feel like a big pair of sweatpants.)

  But when Aaron shifts his weight, leans into me with a knee between my legs, I let out a sharp cry.

  “What?” He sits back, instantly apologetic. “Sorry—did I hurt you?”

  “No.” Now I’m embarrassed and scoot backward, instinctively covering my breasts with an arm. “Sorry. Something was digging into my back. It was nothing.”

  Aaron smiles. His hair, true black and silky, has grown out. He brushes it away from his eyes. “Don’t cover up,” he says, reaching out and easing my arm away from my chest. “You’re beautiful.”

  “You’re biased,” I say. Aaron’s the beautiful one. I love how tall he is, and how small he makes me feel; I love the way basketball has defined his shoulders and arms. I love the color of his skin, a cream-gold, like light shining through autumn leaves; I love the shape of his eyes and the way his hair grows silky-straight.

  I love so many individual things, points of a compass, dots on a diagram. Yet somehow when it comes to filling in the big picture, to loving him, I don’t. Or I can’t. I’m not sure which, and I don’t know that it matters.

  Aaron reaches out and grabs my waist, leaning backward and drawing me onto his lap simultaneously, so I’m the one on top. Then he’s kissing me again, exploring my tongue carefully with his, running his hands lightly up and down my back, touching me the way he does everything: with cautious optimism, as if I’m an animal who might startle away from his touch. I try to relax, try to stop my brain from firing out stupid images and thoughts, but suddenly all I can focus on is the TV, which is still on, and still replaying old episodes of some competitive grocery shopping show.

  I pull away and just for a second, Aaron lets his frustration show.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I’m just not sure I can do this to a soundtrack of The Price Chopper.”

  Aaron reaches for the remote, which is lying on the floor next to our shirts. “Do you want to change it?”

  “No.” I start to ease off him. “I mean that’s not . . . I’m just not sure I can do this. Right now.”

  He catches me by my belt before I can fully push off his lap. He’s smiling, but his eyes are even darker than usual, and I can tell he’s trying hard not to be annoyed. “Come on, Nick,” he says. “We never get to be alone.”

  “What do you mean? We’re always alone.”

  He sits up on his elbows, shaking his hair from his eyes. “Not really,” he says. “Not like this.” He half smiles. “I feel like you’re always running away from me.” He puts a hand on my waist and leans back again, pulling me down on top of him.

  “What do you want?” I blurt out, before I can stop myself. He hesitates, his lips a fraction away from mine, and pulls away to look at me.

  “Everyone thinks we had sex on Founders’ Night, you know,” he says.

  My heart starts going jackrabbit hard in my chest. “So?”

  “Soooo . . .” He kisses my neck again, progressing slowly up toward my ear. “If everyone thinks we did it anyway . . .”

  “You can’t be serious.” This time I sit up entirely, moving off his lap.

  He exhales, hard. “Only a quarter serious,” he says, scooting up on the couch so he can sit cross-legged. He rests his elbows on his knees and runs the back of a hand against my thigh. “You still haven’t told me what happened to you on Founders’ Night.” He’s still smiling that little half smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “The mysterious disappearing girlfriend.” His hand moves up my thigh; he’s teasing me, making a joke, still trying to get me in the mood. “The magical vanishing girl—”

  “I can’t do this.” I don’t even know I’m going to say the words before I have, but instantly I feel a sense of relief. It’s like I’ve been carrying something hard and heavy behind my ribs and now it’s gone, released, removed.

  Aaron sighs and withdraws his hand. “That’s all right,” he says. “We can just watch TV or something.”

  “No.” I close my eyes, take a deep breath, think of Aaron’s hands and smile and the way he looks on the basketball court, fluid and dark and beautiful. “I mean, I can’t do this. You and me. Anymore.”

  Aaron jerks backward as if I’ve reached out and hit him. “What?” He starts to shake his head. “No. No way.”

  “Yes.” Now the terrible feeling is back, this time settled in my stomach, a hard knot of guilt and regret. What the hell is wrong with me? “I’m sorry.”

  “Why?” His face is so open in that moment, so raw and vulnerable, a part of me wants to reach out and hug him, kiss him, tell him I was kidding. But I can’t. I sit there with my hands in my lap, my fingers numb and alien-feeling.

  “I just don’t think this is right,” I say. “I—I’m not the girl for you.”

  “Says who?” Aaron starts to reach for me again. “Nicole—” But he breaks off when I don’t move, can’t even look at him. For a horrible long moment, as we sit there next to each other, the air between us is charged with something cold and terrible, as if an invisible window is open and a storm is blowing through the room. “You’re serious,” he says finally. It isn’t a question. His voice has changed. He sounds like a stranger. “You’re not going to take it back.”

  I shake my head. My throat is tight, and I know if I look at him I might break. I’ll start to cry, or I’ll beg him to forgive me.

  Aaron stands up without another word. He snatches up his shirt and yanks it over his head. “I don’t believe this,” he says. “What about spring break? What about Virginia Beach?”

  Some guys from the basketball team plan to take a road trip to Virginia Beach in March. My friend Audrey is going with her boyfriend, Fish; Aaron and I had talked about going together and renting a house with everyone on the beach. We’d imagined clambakes on the beach and long days that tasted like salt. I’d imagined waking up with all the windows open, the cool sting of ocean air, and warm arms around my waist . . .

  But not his arms. Not him.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeat. I have to get down onto my hands and knees to pick up my shirt. I feel horrible and exposed, as if all the lights have been turned up by a factor of a hundred. Five minutes ago we were kissing, our legs intertwined, the beat-up couch taking on the impression of our bodies. Even though I’m the one who screwed it up, I feel dizzy, disoriented, like I’m watching a movie too fast. I
put my shirt on inside out but don’t have the energy to fix it. I don’t bother with my bra.

  “I don’t believe it,” Aaron says, speaking half to himself. When he’s angry he actually gets quieter. “I told you I loved you . . . I bought you that stupid stuffed cat for Valentine’s Day. . . .”

  “It’s not stupid,” I say automatically, even though it kind of is. I’d thought that was the whole point.

  He doesn’t seem to hear me. “What’s Fish going to say?” He shoves a hand through his hair. It immediately flops back into his eyes. “What are my parents going to say?”

  I don’t answer. I just sit there, squeezing my fists so hard my nails dig into the soft flesh of my palms, gripped by a terrible, out-of-control feeling. What the hell is wrong with me?

  “Nick . . .” Aaron’s voice softens. I look up. He has his hoodie on now, the green one he got doing Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans the summer after sophomore year, the one that always mysteriously smells like the ocean. And in that moment I nearly break. I can see he’s thinking the same thing. Scrap the whole thing. Let’s pretend this never happened.

  Upstairs, a door slams. Then Parker shouts, “Hey! Anybody home?”

  Just like that, the moment vanishes, skittering away into the shadows, like an insect startled by a footstep. Aaron turns away, muttering something.

  “What’d you say?” My heart is going again, like it’s a fist just itching to punch something.

  “Nothing.” He zips up his hoodie. Now he won’t look at me. “Forget it.”