Vanishing Girls Read online

  My wrist is burning, and I know I’m going to cry. This was supposed to be the night Dara and I fixed everything. Dad reaches for me again, this time to touch my shoulder, but I stand up, so my chair grates loudly on the linoleum. Corey pauses halfway across the restaurant, as if he’s afraid he might be physically accosted if he comes any closer.

  “We aren’t a family anymore,” I repeat in a whisper, because if I try to speak any louder the pressure in my throat will collapse and the tears will come. “That’s why Dara isn’t here.”

  I don’t stay to see my parents’ reaction. There’s a roaring in my ears, like earlier today, just before I fainted. I don’t remember crossing the restaurant or bursting out into the night air but, suddenly, there I am: on the far side of the parking lot, jogging through the grass, gulping deep breaths of air and wishing for an explosion, a world-ending, movie-style disaster; wishing for the darkness to come down, like water, over all our heads.

  Nicole Warren

  American Lit-Adv

  February 28

  “The Eclipse”

  Assignment: In To Kill a Mockingbird, the natural world is often used as a metaphor for both human nature and many of the book’s themes (fear, prejudice, justice, etc.). Please write 800–1,000 words about an experience of the natural world that might be seen as metaphorically significant, employing some of the poetic techniques (alliteration, symbolism, anthropomorphism) we’ve covered in this unit.

  One time, when my sister, Dara, and I were little, my parents took us down to the beach to watch a solar eclipse. This was before the casino opened up in Shoreline County and before Norwalk got built up, too, and became a long chain of motels and family-style restaurants and, farther down, strip clubs and bars. FanLand was there, and a gun store; nothing else but gravel-dotted sand and coastline and little dunes, like wind-whipped cream, spotted with sun-bleached grasses.

  There were hundreds of other families on the beach, making a picnic of it, spreading out blankets on the sand while the disk of the moon moved lazily toward the sun, like a magnet pulling slowly toward its pair. I remember my mother peeling an orange with her thumb, and the bitter smell of pith.

  I remember Dad saying, Look. Look, girls, it’s happening.

  I remember, too, the moment of darkness: when the sky turned to textured gray, like chalk, and then to twilight, but faster than any twilight I’d ever seen. Suddenly we were all swallowed up in shadow, as if the world had opened its mouth and we’d fallen down a black throat.

  Everyone applauded. There was a small constellation of flashes in the dark, miniature explosions while people took pictures. Dara put her hand in mine, squeezed, and began to cry. And my heart stopped. In that moment I thought we might be lost forever in the darkness, suspended in a place between night and day, sun and land, earth and the waves that turned earth back into water.

  Even after the moon rolled off the sun, and the daylight came again, a bright and unnatural dawn, Dara wouldn’t stop crying. My parents thought she was cranky because she’d missed her nap and had wanted ice cream on the way over, and we did get ice cream, eventually, tall cones too big for either one of us to eat that pooled in our laps on the way home.

  But I understood why she was crying. Because in that moment I’d felt it, too: a sheer, driving terror that the darkness was permanent, that the moon would stop its rotation, that the balance would never be restored.

  You see, even then, I knew. It wasn’t a trick. It wasn’t a show. Sometimes day and night reverse. Sometimes up goes down and down goes up, and love turns into hate, and the things you counted on get washed out from under your feet, leaving you pedaling in the air.

  Sometimes people stop loving you. And that’s the kind of darkness that never gets fixed, no matter how many moons rise again, filling the sky with a weak approximation of light.

  Nick

  8:35 p.m.

  I fling open the front door so hard it cracks against the wall, but I’m too pissed to care.

  “Dara?” I call her name even though I can tell by feel, by intuition, that she hasn’t come home.

  “Hi, Nick.” Aunt Jackie emerges from the den, holding a glass filled with what looks like neon-green sludge. “Smoothie?”

  She must have headed to our house in her car straight from the restaurant. Maybe Mom and Dad sent her ahead to talk to me.

  “No, thanks.” I’m really not in the mood to deal with Aunt Jackie and her self-help “wisdom,” which always sounds like it came off the inside of a bottle cap. Let truth radiate toward you. Focus is about presence. Let go or be dragged. But she’s positioned in front of the stairway, blocking access to my room. “Are you staying here tonight or something?”

  “Thinking about it,” she says, taking a long sip of smoothie and leaving a green mustache around her upper lip. Then: “That isn’t the way to get a response, you know. Not if you really want to talk to her.”

  “I think I know my sister,” I say, irritated.

  Aunt Jackie shrugs. “Whatever you say.” She stares at me for a long second, as if debating whether to tell me a secret.

  “What?” I ask finally.

  She bends over, setting down the smoothie on the stairs. When she straightens up again, she reaches for my hands. “She isn’t mad at you, you know. She just misses you.”

  Her hands are freezing, but I don’t pull away. “She told you that?” Aunt Jackie nods. “You—you talk to her?”

  “Almost every day,” Aunt Jackie says, shrugging. “I spoke with her for a long time this morning.”

  I pull away, taking a step backward, nearly tripping on Aunt Jackie’s bag, which is slumped, body-like, in the middle of the hall. Dara used to make fun of Aunt Jackie for her patchouli smell and weird vegan concoctions and endless chatter about meditation and reincarnation. And now they’re besties? “She won’t talk to me at all.”

  “Have you asked?” she says, with a pitying look. “Have you really tried?”

  I don’t answer. I brush past Aunt Jackie, take the stairs two at a time up both flights to Dara’s room, which is also dark, also empty. The birthday card is still sitting on her pillow, exactly where it was this morning. Could she have been out since last night? Where could she have gone? To Ariana’s, maybe. Or maybe—suddenly the answer is so obvious I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me before—she’s with Parker. They’re probably together on some crazy Dara-inspired adventure, trying to make it to North Carolina and back in twenty-four hours, or camped out together in an East Norwalk motel, throwing potato chips to the gulls from their window.

  I pull out my phone and dial Dara’s number. It rings five times before going to voice mail. So either she’s busy—if she is with Parker, I don’t want to think about what she’s busy with—or ignoring me.

  I text her instead.

  Meet me in front of the Gateway @ FanLand. 10 p.m.

  I hit send.

  There. I’ve asked, just like Aunt Jackie said I should.

  Downstairs, Aunt Jackie has retreated to the den. I root around in the kitchen for a key to Dara’s car. Finally I find a spare nestled in the back of the junk drawer, behind a bunch of highlighters and half a dozen matchbooks.

  “You going somewhere?” Aunt Jackie calls as I head for the door.

  “Work,” I call back, and don’t wait for her reply.

  Dara’s car smells earthy and strange, like there’s fungus growing beneath the seat cushions. It’s been months since I’ve been behind the wheel of a car, and a tiny shiver of dread passes through me when I turn the key in the ignition. The last time I drove was on the night of the accident, down on that bleak portion of 101 that shoulders up to the stone-rutted coast, with its thick nests of sandwort and gnarled beach plum trees. I haven’t gone back there; I haven’t wanted to.

  That road leads nowhere.

  I back out of the driveway, careful to avoid the trash cans, feeling awkward and a little jumpy behind the wheel. But after a few minutes, I relax. Rolling down the win
dows, turning onto the highway, gathering speed, I feel the tension in my chest break apart slightly. Dara still hasn’t responded to my text, but that doesn’t mean anything. She’s never been able to resist a surprise. Besides, the 22 goes straight to FanLand. She may have blown off dinner just to get to the park a little early.

  At FanLand, the parking lot is still packed, though immediately I can tell the crowd has changed: there are fewer minivans and SUVs, more beat-up secondhand Accords, some thumping with bass, some releasing fine plumes of sweet-smelling smoke from the cracked windows, as kids pass back and forth into the lot to drink or get high. As soon as I park, I start scanning for Dara, ducking low to try and see past the fog-patterned windows without trying to look like I’m looking.

  “Hey, sweetheart. Nice ass!” a guy shouts from a nearby car, and his friends erupt into laughter. I can hear a girl shriek in the backseat, “She does not.”

  Three boys, maybe a little younger than I am, are standing in front of Boom-a-Rang’s, lighting off sparklers right on the pavement and throwing snaps as hard as they can so they crack off in a cloud of gas.

  The fireworks have started. As soon as I pass through the FanLand gates, a huge shower of gold lights up the sky, trailing long tentacles like a glittering sea creature pinned up in the sky. The next one is blue, and then red, these brief, tight bursts, small fists of color.

  Dara must be here. She must have come.

  I push through the crowds still milling down Green Row, lining up to shoot basketballs through hoops or to try their hand on the strength hammer. It’s all lights and flash, the ring-ring-ring of games starting and ending, kids shrieking with joy or disappointment, the sky lit up green or purple or startling blue as the fireworks attain some height and, miraculously, transform, scattering like ashes across the underbelly of the clouds. I wonder how high they know to go.

  I turn toward the Gateway: it, too, is lit up in flashes, its high point gleaming like a burnished nail.

  The lawns are crowded with blankets and picnicking families. I’m skirting the merry-go-round when someone hooks an arm around my neck. I spin around, thinking Dara, and am disappointed when it’s just Alice, laughing, her hair coming loose from her braids. Immediately, I can tell she’s a little drunk.

  “We did it!” she says, flinging an arm out as though to take in the sky, the rides, everything: and I remember what she said, that she wanted to die at the very top of the Ferris wheel. “Where’d you go?”

  “I had a thing,” I say. She has changed out of her work shirt and is wearing a flowing tank top that shows off two more tattoos, wing tips peeking out beneath her shoulder straps. I’ve never seen her without her uniform before, and in that moment she looks almost like a stranger.

  “Have some,” she says, as if she can tell what I’m thinking; and passes me a flask from her back pocket. “You look like you need it.”

  “What is it?” I uncap the bottle and take an experimental sniff. Alice laughs when I make a face.

  “Jame-o. Jameson. Go on,” she says, nudging me with an elbow. “Take a load off. FanLand turned seventy-five today. And it doesn’t taste that bad, I promise.”

  I take a swig—not because FanLand turned seventy-five, but because she’s right, I do need it—and immediately start coughing. It tastes like lighter fluid going down.

  “That’s disgusting,” I choke out.

  “You’ll thank me later,” she says, patting me on the back.

  She’s right: almost immediately, a fizzy warmth travels from my stomach to my chest, settling somewhere just between my collarbone, like a giggle I’m trying to hold back.

  “Wanna come watch from the hill?” she says. “It’s the best view. And Rogers even brought”—she lowers her voice—“like an ounce of pot. We’re taking turns in the maintenance shed.”

  “I’ll be there soon,” I say. Suddenly the insanity of what I’m about to do—what Dara and I are about to do—hits me. Then I really do feel the urge to laugh. I take another swig of Jameson before passing the flask back to Alice.

  “Come now,” she says. “You’ll never find us.”

  “Soon,” I say again. “I promise.”

  She shrugs and starts skipping backward down the path. “Up to you,” she says, and raises the flask high, so it momentarily picks up the colored reflection from the sky: this time, a sudden dazzle of pink embers. “Happy anniversary party!”

  I raise a pretend glass and watch until she has merged into shadow with the rest of the crowd. Then I take a shortcut, pushing into the stretch of woods that keeps the Gateway relatively isolated: a part of the park once designed, like every other overgrown area, to look tropical and exotic. Stepping off the path feels like stepping into another world. Unlike the other wild stretches, this one has been allowed to grow riotous, and I have to swat creeper vines out of my way and duck underneath the fat, broad leaves of palmetto trees, which reach out like hands to slap me when I pass.

  Almost instantly the sound is muffled, as though by a thin sheen of water; the gnats and crickets are buzzing from unseen places, and I can feel the feather-thin sweep of moth wings beating against my bare arms. I shove through the growth, stumbling a little in the dark, keeping my eye on the Gateway’s shimmering point. Distantly I hear a pop-pop-pop and the roar of the crowd: the finale. All of a sudden the sky is a crazy patchwork of colors, colors with no name, blue-green-pink and orange-purple-gold, as the fireworks come hard and fast.

  There’s a rustle to my left and muffled laughter; I turn and see a boy hitching up his pants and a girl, laughing, pulling him by the hand. I freeze, terrified for no reason that they’ll think I was spying; then I’m alone again, and I move on.

  The final display of fireworks goes up as I fight through the last of the growth; in its glow, a sudden shower of bright green that lights the underside of the clouds the same color as a murky ocean, I see that someone is standing by the Gateway, looking up at its high point.

  My heart flips. Dara. Then the tendrils of green light fizzle out again and she becomes nothing but a dark brushstroke, a spiky silhouette against the landscape of steel.

  I’ve covered half the distance between us before I realize that it isn’t Dara—of course it isn’t—the posture’s all wrong, and the height, and the clothes, too. But by then it’s too late to stop, and already I’ve half shouted so when he turns around—he—I draw up, horrified, with nothing to say and no excuse to give.

  His face is very thin and covered with stubble that in the half-dark looks just like shadow smeared across his jaw. His eyes are sunken and yet weirdly overlarge, like pool balls dropped only halfway into their pockets. Even though I’ve never seen him before, I know him instantly.

  “Mr. Kowlaski,” I say reflexively. Maybe I need to name him. Otherwise seeing him, coming across him here, in this way, would be too awful. Like how Dara and I used to name the monsters in our closet so we wouldn’t be so frightened of them, silly names that reduced their power: Timmy was one, and Sabrina. Because there is something awful about him, something haggard and also haunted. It’s as if he’s looking not at me but at a photograph showing a terrible image.

  Before he can say anything, Maude appears, shoving past me and immediately linking an arm through Mr. Kowlaski’s, as if they’re partners at a square dance about to do-si-do. She must have been sent to intercept him. As soon as he starts to move, I can tell he’s drunk. He’s stepping extra carefully, like people only do when they’re worried about seeming sober.

  “Come on, Mr. Kowlaski,” Maude says, sounding surprisingly cheerful. Funny how she only seems happy during a crisis. “The show’s over. The park will be closing soon. Did you drive here?” He doesn’t answer her. “How about a cup of coffee before you go?”

  As they move past me, I have to turn away, hugging myself. His eyes are like two pits; and now I feel as if I’m the one who’s seeing terrible things, seeing all the times I tried to help Dara, to save her, to keep her safe: the times I lied to Mom and
Dad for her, scoured her room for Baggies full of white residue or green nubs, confiscated her cigarettes and then, relenting, gave them back when she put her arms around me and her chin on my chest and stared up at me through those silky-dark lashes; the times I found her passed out in the bathroom and brought her instead to bed, while she exhaled the sharp stink of vodka; the notes I forged for her, excusing her from gym or math class, so she wouldn’t get in trouble for cutting; all the bargains I made with God, who I’m not sure I even believe in, when I knew that she’d gone out joyriding, drunk and high, with the random collection of freaks and losers who accumulated around her like a heavy snow, guys who bounced at clubs or managed sleazy bars and hung around high school girls because all the girls their age were too smart to talk to them. If Dara gets home safe, I promise I’ll never ask for anything again. So long as nothing bad happens to Dara, I promise to be extra good. And what happened at the Founders’ Day Ball will never happen again.

  I swear, God. Please. So long as she’s okay.

  How stupid I was to think Dara would come, that she’d be pulled to me, magnet-like, the way she was when we were younger. She’s probably out somewhere in East Norwalk, drunk and happy or drunk and unhappy or high, celebrating her birthday, letting some guy slip his hand between her legs. Maybe Parker is the guy.

  By now, the fireworks are over, and the park is beginning to empty. Already I detect the action of the grave diggers—seven of them on shift to clean up after tonight, including Mr. Wilcox himself—in the evidence they’re leaving, of trash bags piled neatly by the gates and chairs stacked in high towers.

  Two security guards are posted by the gates, making sure that the park clears out. The parking lot has emptied. The boys are gone from in front of Boom-a-Rang, though the air still has that lingering gun-smoke smell of firecrackers. When I finally climb back in Dara’s car, I’m so tired I feel it through my whole body, a dull ache in all my joints and behind my eyes.

  “Happy birthday, Dara,” I say out loud. I fish my phone from my pocket. No surprise, she never texted me back.