Vanishing Girls Read online

  I don’t know what makes me call her. A simple desire to hear her voice? Not exactly. Because I’m mad? Not exactly that, either—I’m too tired to be angry. Because I want to know whether I’m right, whether she simply forgot about dinner, whether even now she’s sitting on Parker’s lap, warm and tipsy and loud, and he has one arm around her waist, pressing his lips in between her shoulder blades?

  Maybe.

  As soon as the ringtone starts up in my ear, a secondary ring, slightly muffled, sounds in the car, so for a moment I can’t tell which is which. I dig my hand in the space between the driver’s seat and the door, close my fingers around cool metal, and unearth Dara’s phone, which must have somehow gotten wedged there.

  It’s no surprise that she’s been using the car when she isn’t supposed to: Dara might not be the best student, but she gets an A+ in any subject that involves breaking rules. But it’s weird, and worrying, that she doesn’t have her phone. Mom used to joke that Dara should just have the thing surgically attached to her hand, and Dara always said that if scientists could figure out a way to do it, she’d be the first to sign up.

  My finger hovers over the text message icon. I’m suddenly uneasy. One time, when I was in fifth grade, I was in the middle of a social studies test—I was filling in the countries of Europe, I remember, on a blank printout of a map—and had just reached Poland when I had the sudden, sharpest pain in my chest, like someone had put a hand around my heart and squeezed. And I knew, I felt, that something had happened to Dara. I didn’t realize I’d stood up, knocking my chair backward, until everyone was staring and my teacher, Mr. Edwards, told me to sit down.

  I did sit down, because I had no way of explaining that something had happened. I switched the location of Germany and Poland and didn’t even remember to label Belgium, but it didn’t matter anyway; halfway through the test, the vice principal came to the door, her face pinched tight like the toe of a nylon stocking, and gestured for me to come with her.

  During recess, Dara had attempted to climb the fence that separated the blacktop from the industrial complex on the other side: a factory that manufactured AC components. She’d made it all the way to the top before a teacher, spotting her, had called for her to stop; Dara, losing her footing, had fallen a dozen feet and landed with the blunt, rusted edge of a galvanized pipe, discarded for no apparent reason in the underbrush, lodged partway into her sternum. She was silent on the way to the hospital. She didn’t even cry, just kept fingering the pipe and the spot of blood on her T-shirt as if it fascinated her, and the doctor managed to extract the metal successfully and sew her up so smoothly the scar was barely visible, and for weeks afterward she bragged about all the tetanus shots she had received.

  Now, sitting in the car, the feeling returns to me like it did that day: the same horrible, squeezing pressure in my chest. And I know, I just know, that Dara’s in trouble.

  All along, I’ve been assuming she just blew us off tonight. But what if she didn’t? What if something bad happened? What if she got drunk and passed out somewhere and woke up and has no way of getting home? What if one of her loser friends tried to scam on her and she ran off without her phone?

  What if, what if, what if. The drumbeat of the past four years of my life.

  I pull up Facebook. The photo on Dara’s profile is an old one, from Halloween when I was fifteen, and Dara, Ariana, Parker, and I crashed a senior party, banking on the fact that everyone would be too drunk to notice. In it, Dara and I are hugging, cheek to cheek, red and sweaty and happy. I wish that photographs were physical spaces, like tunnels; that you could crawl inside them and go back.

  There are dozens and dozens of birthday messages posted to her wall: We love you always! Happy birthday! Save a shot for me wherever you’re partying tonight! She hasn’t responded to any of them—unsurprising, since she’s without her phone.

  What now? I can’t call her. I switch back to my phone and pull up Parker’s number, thinking that, after all, he might be with her or at least know where she went. But his phone rings only twice before going to voice mail. The pressure is building, flattening out my lungs, as if the air is slowly leaching out of the car.

  Even though I know she would kill me for looking through her messages, I pull up her texts, swiping quickly past the one I sent earlier and several in a row from Parker, not sure what I’m looking for, but sensing that I’m getting close to something. I find dozens of texts from numbers and names I don’t recognize: pictures of Dara, eyes huge and pupils big and black as holes, at various parties I never knew about or was invited to. An unfocused shot—maybe a mistake?—of a guy’s bare shoulder. I study it for a minute, wondering whether it’s Parker, and then, deciding it isn’t, move on.

  The next text, and the pictures attached to it, make my heart stop.

  This one is almost professional-grade, as if it had been styled and lighted. Dara is sitting on a red sofa in a room almost barren of furniture. There’s an AC unit in one corner, and a window, although it’s so coated in grime, I can’t see beyond it. Dara is dressed in nothing but her underwear; her arms are stiff by her sides, so that her breasts, and the small dark spots of her nipples, are center frame. Her eyes are focused on something to the left of the camera and her head is tilted, like it often is when she’s listening. I imagine, immediately, a person standing behind the camera—maybe more than one person—calling instructions to her.

  Put your arms down, sweetheart. Show us what you got.

  The next picture is a close-up: only her torso is visible. She’s tilting her head back, eyes half-closed, sweat dampening her neck and clavicle.

  Both pictures were sent from a phone number I don’t recognize, an East Norwalk phone number, on March 26.

  The day before the accident. I have the feeling of finally hitting ground after a long fall. The breath goes out of me and yet, weirdly, I feel a sense of relief, of finally touching solid earth, of knowing.

  This is it: somehow, in these pictures, the mystery of the accident is contained, and the explanation for Dara’s subsequent behavior, for the silences and disappearances.

  Don’t ask me how I know. I just do. If you don’t understand that, I guess you’ve never had a sister.

  MARCH 2

  Dara’s Diary Entry

  Everyone’s always accusing me of loving to be the center of attention.

  But you know what? Sometimes I wish I could just disappear.

  I remember one time when I was little and Nick got mad because I broke her favorite music box, a gift from Mamu. I told her it was an accident, but it really wasn’t. I’ll admit it, I was jealous. Mamu hadn’t given me anything. No big surprise there, right? Nick was always the favorite.

  Afterward I felt bad, though. Really bad. I remember I ran away and hid in Parker’s tree house with a plan to live up there forever. Of course I got hungry after an hour or so and came down. I’ll never forget how good it felt to see Mom and Dad walking the streets together with a flashlight, calling my name.

  I guess that’s the really nice thing about disappearing: the part where people look for you and beg you to come home.

  Nick

  10:15 p.m.

  A fist hits the window and I jump, letting out a yelp. A flashlight skates across the glass. The security guard gestures for me to roll down the window.

  “You okay?” he says. I recognize him as one of the men who was standing by the gates, making sure everyone left in an orderly fashion. He probably has instructions to clear the lot, too. My eyes tick to the dashboard. I’ve been sitting in the car for more than twenty minutes.

  “I’m fine,” I say. The guard looks as though he doesn’t believe me. He angles a flashlight up to my face, practically blinding me, probably to check my pupils and make sure I’m not drunk or high. I manage to smile. “Really. I was just leaving.”

  “All right, then,” he says, rapping the outside of my car once with his knuckles, for emphasis. “Just make sure you finish texting before you ge
t on the road.”

  I realize I’m still gripping Dara’s phone in my hand. “I will,” I say, as he turns, satisfied, back toward the gates. I roll up the window again, twist the key in the ignition, punch on the AC. The security guard’s words have given me an idea.

  I pull up the East Norwalk number attached to the two almost-naked photographs and paste it into a new text. For a minute I sit there, debating, typing and erasing. Finally, I settle on a simple: Hey. You around?

  It’s a crazy gamble, a shot in the dark. I’m not even expecting a response. But almost immediately, Dara’s phone dings. I feel a rush of adrenaline all the way to my fingertips.

  Who is this?

  I ignore that. Was looking at our pictures again, I write. And then: They’re pretty hot. I wipe sweat from my forehead with the inside of my wrist.

  For a minute, the phone stays silent. My heart is beating so hard, I can hear it. Then, just as I’m about to give up and put the car in drive, the phone buzzes twice.

  Srsly who is this?

  I’ve been unconsciously holding my breath. Now I exhale, a big rush of air, feeling a little like a balloon that has just been punctured.

  Rationally, I know that the photographs probably don’t mean anything. Dara got drunk, she took her clothes off, she let some creep snap some pictures, and now he doesn’t even remember. End of story. I can’t explain the feeling, nagging, persistent, that there’s some connection here, a way of sewing up the story of the past four months and making sense of it. It’s the same feeling I get when I’m trying to remember the lyrics to a song that keeps looping through my head somewhere just out of reach.

  I write DARA, all caps, and leave it at that.

  One minute passes, then two. Even though the security guard’s face is lost in darkness, I can tell he’s watching me.

  Ding.

  You think this is a fucking joke?

  Before I can figure out how to respond, another text comes in.

  I don’t know what u think ur playing at but u better be careful.

  And then another.

  This is serious shit whatever u know u better keep ur mouth shut or else!!!

  The security guard is moving toward me again. I throw Dara’s phone in the cup holder, hard, as if I can shatter it and shatter the messages there, too. I put the car in drive and find myself halfway up the coast before I even realize I’ve started for home. I’m going way too fast—sixty-five, according to the speedometer—and I slam on the brakes, blood thumping in my ears and air pounding outside my windows, mirroring the distant noise of the surf.

  What does it mean?

  You think this is a fucking joke?

  I think of Dara the way I saw her earlier: boarding a bus, arms crossed, jumping at the sound of her name.

  U better keep ur mouth shut or else!!!

  What the hell has Dara gotten herself into now?

  JULY 28

  Dara’s Diary Entry

  DEAR NICK,

  I MADE UP A GAME.

  IT’S CALLED: CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.

  —D

  Nick

  10:35 p.m.

  I might as well have chugged a gallon of coffee. I feel ultra-wired, jumpy, and alert. On the drive home, I keep checking the rearview mirror, half expecting to see a stranger sitting in the backseat, leering at me.

  As soon as I enter the house, I see that Aunt Jackie’s bag is gone—she must have decided to go home after all. Mom has fallen asleep in the den, her legs entangled in the blankets: a sure sign of sleeping pills. The light from the TV casts the room in blue, sends shifting patterns over the walls and ceilings, and makes the whole scene look submerged. An orange-hued news anchor gazes seriously into the camera above a blazing red graphic that reads SNOW CONSPIRACY? A TWIST IN THE MADELINE SNOW CASE.

  Onscreen, the news anchor is saying, “We’ll have more on the new reports from the Snows’ neighbor, Susan Hardwell, after the break.” I turn off the TV, grateful for the sudden silence.

  How many times have I heard it in the past week? When a person disappears, the first seventy-two hours are the most important.

  I saw Dara just before dinner, only a few hours ago, boarding the bus. But she didn’t have a bag with her, and she didn’t have her phone. So where the hell could she have been going?

  In Dara’s room I switch on all the lights, feeling a little bit better, less anxious, once the room is revealed in all its mess and plainness. This time, I know exactly what I’m looking for. Despite all of Dara’s whining about privacy, she’s too lazy to ever hide things successfully, and I find her journal where it always is, at the very back of the smallest drawer in her rickety side table, behind a tangled mess of pens, old phone chargers, condoms, and gum wrappers.

  I sit down on her bed, which groans awfully underneath me, as if protesting my trespassing, and open her journal on my lap. My palms are itchy, like they always are when I’m nervous. But I’m compelled by that same indescribable instinct that flattened me all those years ago during that stupid geography test. Dara’s in trouble. Dara’s been in trouble for a long time. And I’m the only one who can help her.

  Dara’s handwriting looks like it’s trying to leap off the paper: the pages of the journal are packed, covered with scrawled notes, doodles, and random observations.

  It happened, starts one, dating from early January. Parker and I hooked up for real.

  I flip forward a week.

  Hookups, breakups, complaints about Mom, Dad, Dr. Lichme, and me: it’s all there, all the anger and triumph, all channeled into neatly intersecting lines of ink. Some of it I’ve seen before—I did once read her journal, after I found out from my friend Isha that she and Ariana had started in on coke—and I read her note to me afterward, taunting, about what had happened at the Founders’ Day Ball. I’m going to tell Mom and Dad their little angel isn’t such an angel after all.

  If only she knew.

  From February 15: Happy Day After Valentine’s Day. I’d like to take whoever invented this holiday out to the backyard for a good old-fashioned firing line. Better yet, just string up Cupid and fire arrows in his stupid fat ass.

  From February 28: Parker’s in love with somebody else. That one makes my heart turn over a little.

  And from March 2: I guess that’s the really nice thing about disappearing: the part where people look for you and beg you to come home. I slow down when I reach March 26: the day the photographs were sent to her from the East Norwalk number, from the guy who warned me—who warned Dara—to keep her mouth shut. This entry is relatively short, only a few lines.

  There’s another party tonight!! Andre was right. It gets easier. Last time I worked for three hours and made over two hundred bucks in tips. The other girls are nice, but one of them warned me about getting too close to Andre. I think she’s just jealous because he obviously likes me the best. He told me he’s going to be producing a show for TV. Can you imagine what Nick would do if I had my own reality show? She would just die. Then Parker would feel like a real dipshit, wouldn’t he?

  I know that name, Andre. Dara mentioned an Andre to me months ago. She had pictures of him on her phone.

  I flip forward another page. Dara’s entry from the morning of the accident is even shorter.

  Damn it. I really thought I was getting over him. But today I woke up feeling like shit.

  Ariana says I should just go talk to Parker. I don’t know. Maybe I will. Maybe Lick Me was right. I just can’t fake my way out of this one.

  Or maybe I’m finally growing up.

  Images come back to me from that night: the rain slick and steel-colored on Parker’s hood, and headlights cutting the world into blocks of light and shadow. Dara’s look of triumph, as if she’d just crossed a finish line first.

  Forward. The entries stop for a while, and I flip past several blank pages. Dara shattered the bones in her right wrist in the accident; she couldn’t hold a pen or even a fork. The next entry—the last one, from the looks of it—da
tes from yesterday, and is written in all capital letters, like a sign, or something shouted.

  DEAR NICK,

  I MADE UP A GAME.

  IT’S CALLED: CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.

  —D

  For a second I can do nothing but stare at it, stunned, reading the message over and over, torn between equal feelings of relief and anger. Anger wins. I slam the journal shut and stand up, hurling it across the room, where it thuds against the window and knocks an empty pencil cup from her desk on the way down.

  “You think this is a fucking game?” I say out loud, and then feel a sudden chill, as if someone has blown air down my back. That’s almost exactly what Unknown said in response to my text.

  You think this is a fucking joke?

  I stand up, kicking my way through piles of her crap, looking for anything out of place, anything that might be a clue about where she’s gone and why. Nothing. Just the usual clothing and garbage, the same tornado-style chaos Dara leaves behind everywhere. There are four new cardboard boxes piled in the corner—I guess Mom finally asked her to pick up her shit—but they’re empty. I kick one of them and have a short-lived burst of satisfaction when it sails across the room and thuds against the opposite wall.

  I’m losing it.

  I take a deep breath and, standing in the corner, look again at her room, trying to mentally overlay an image of the room I saw just a few days ago, like fitting slides together and seeing if something doesn’t align. And then something clicks. There’s a plastic bag at the foot of her bed I’m sure wasn’t there earlier in the week.

  Inside the bag is a random assortment of stuff: a curling iron, a travel-size bottle of hair spray, a sparkly thong I remove with my pinkie, not sure whether it’s clean or dirty. Four business cards, all of them for random businesses like house painters or actuaries. I flip them all onto the bed, one by one, hoping to find some kind of message.