Vanishing Girls Read online

“You’re welcome,” Dara says, reaching for the cup. She takes a big swig and passes it to me.

  “No, thanks,” I say. “I’ll keep my tonsils.”

  “Come on.” Dara hooks an arm around my shoulder. In her heels, she’s even taller than my five-seven. “It’s Founders’ Day.”

  Ariana stands up to take the cup back. She has to pick her way across a bathroom floor littered with bras and underwear, dresses and tank tops—all discarded outfit selections. “Founders’ Day,” she repeats, in her best impression of our principal’s voice. Mr. O’Henry not only chaperones the dance, which takes place every year in the gym, he participates in the lame historical reenactment of the Battle of Monument Hill, after which the original British settlers determined all the area west of the Saskawatchee a part of the British Empire. I think it’s a little politically insensitive to basically mime the massacre of a bunch of Cherokee Indians every year, but whatever. “The most important day of the year, and a seminal moment in our proud history,” Ariana finishes, hefting her cup in the air.

  “Hear, hear,” Dara says, and mimes drinking from a glass, keeping her pinkie high.

  “They really should have called it Royal Fuck-Up Day,” Ari says in her normal voice.

  “Doesn’t have the same ring to it,” I say, and Dara giggles.

  Three hundred years ago, colonial explorers looking for the Hudson River believed they’d found it and settled instead on the banks of the Saskawatchee, chartering the town for England and inadvertently forming what would later become Somerville, about five hundred miles southwest of their initial destination. At some point, they must have realized their mistake, but I guess by then they were too settled to do anything about it.

  There’s a metaphor in that somewhere—like all of life is about ending up somewhere you didn’t expect, and learning to just be happy with it.

  “Aaron’s going to freak when he sees you,” Dara says. She has the uncanny ability to do that: to pluck a thought out of my head and finish it, like she’s unspooling some tangled invisible sweater. “One look, and he’s going to forget all about the promise club.”

  Ariana snorts.

  “For the last time,” I say, “Aaron’s not in the promise club.” Ever since Aaron was cast as Jesus in our Christmas pageant—in first grade—Dara has been convinced that he’s a religious freak and a sworn virgin until marriage, an idea confirmed, in her mind, by the fact that we’ve been together for two months and haven’t gotten much past second base.

  I guess it hasn’t occurred to her that the problem might be with me.

  Thinking of him now—his long dark hair, the way he always smells, mysteriously, a bit like toasted almonds, even after his basketball games—makes something squeeze up in my stomach, half pleasure, half pain. I love Aaron. I do.

  I just don’t love him enough.

  Dara’s phone starts vibrating again. This time she snatches it up, sighs, and drops it into a small sequined bag, patterned all over with tiny skulls.

  “Is that the guy who—?” Ariana starts to ask, and Dara shushes her quickly.

  “What?” I turn to Dara, suddenly suspicious. “What’s the big secret?”

  “Nothing,” she says, giving Ariana a stern look, as if daring her to argue. Then she turns back to me, all smiles, so beautiful, the kind of girl you want to believe, the kind of girl you want to follow. The kind of girl you want to fall in love with. “Come on,” she says, taking my hand and squeezing it so hard my fingers ache. “Parker’s waiting.”

  Downstairs, Dara bullies me into finishing the last few sips of Ariana’s lukewarm drink, which is full of pulp, but at least it lights up my chest, helps me get into the mood.

  Then Dara pops open a metal pill case and fishes out something small and round and white. Instantly my good feeling fades.

  “Want?” she says, turning to me.

  “What is that?” I say, even as Ariana holds out a palm for one.

  Dara rolls her eyes. “Breath mint, dummy,” she says, and sticks her tongue out at me, showing off the mint, slowly dissolving. “And trust me, you need one.”

  “Yeah, right,” I say, but hold out my hand, the good feeling returning. Dara, Parker, and I have always gone to Founders’ Day together, even in middle school, when instead of a dance the school puts on a weird variety show, and for the past few years Ariana has been tagging along. So what if Parker and Dara are something now? So what if I won’t get shotgun? So what if I haven’t talked to Parker, really talked, since he and Dara started hooking up? So what if my best friend seems to have completely and totally forgotten that I exist?

  Details.

  We have to take the long way, because neither Ariana nor Dara can make it through the woods in their heels and Ariana wants to smoke a cigarette anyway. It’s freakishly warm, and all the ice is running off the trees into the gutters, soft snow whoomphing down from roofs, the air layered with that rich smell, the pulpy promise of spring, even though it’s a false promise: we’re supposed to get more snow next week. But for now, I’m wearing only a light jacket, and Dara’s walking beside me, mostly sober, laughing, and we’re heading to Parker’s house: just like old times.

  Every block brings back memories. That old maple where Parker and I once competed to see who could climb higher, until he crashed through the high, flimsy branches and broke his arm—for a whole summer he couldn’t swim, and I wore a cast of paper towels and masking tape out of solidarity; Old Hickory Lane, Parker’s street, our favorite spot to trick-or-treat, because Mrs. Hanrahan could never distinguish between the kids on the block and kept forking over Snickers bars even when we rang three, four, five times in a row; the stretch of woods where we convinced Dara that fairies lived who would steal her away to a horrible underworld if she didn’t do what we said; concentric circles of growth, spreading outward, like the rings of a tree marking off time.

  Or maybe we’re passing from the outer rings in, back to the start, the root and the heart, because as we get closer to Parker’s house the memories get thicker and come faster, of summer nights and snowball fights and our whole lives layered together, until we’re standing on his porch and Parker opens the door with warm light spilling out behind him and we’re here; we’ve arrived at the center.

  Parker’s actually bothered to put on a button-down, although I can see a T-shirt peeking out from the open collar, and he’s still wearing jeans and his blue Surf Siders, covered over with faded ink marks and doodles. Nick is the greatest SMELLIEST greatest!! is written beneath the left sole in Sharpie.

  “My best girls,” Parker says, opening his arms wide, and just for a second, when our eyes meet, I forget and start to move toward him.

  “Hotness,” Dara says, moving past me, and then I remember.

  So I take a quick step backward, turning away, letting her get to him first.

  AFTER

  JULY 20

  Dara

  Are you going to party @ the Drink? Parker told me about it.

  The note is wedged under my door when I get out of the shower, written on Nick’s cream-white stationery. (Nick is the only person under the age of a hundred who actually uses stationery, and her handwriting is so neat it looks like each letter is a minuscule piece of architecture. My handwriting looks like Perkins ingested some letters and then puked them onto a page.)

  I stoop down, wincing as pain snakes up my spine, and scoop up the note before crumpling it and overhanding it toward the trash can in the corner. The note hits the rim and rebounds into a pile of dirty T-shirts.

  I pull on a pair of cotton shorts and a tank top and take my computer onto the bed, clicking quickly away from Facebook as soon as it pops up, catching a brief glimpse of all the messages, unliked, unanswered, posted on my wall.

  We miss you!

  Thinking of you!!

  We love you so much!!!

  I haven’t posted since the accident. Why would I? What could I possibly say?

  I’m bored to tears alone on a Saturday ni
ght.

  I’m hopelessly scarred for life.

  I’m finally able to bend my knees like a normal person!

  I click over to YouTube but keep imagining Parker’s face, the way he squints against the light reflected in the windshield, his nails, trim and neat, the way a guy’s should be. His eyebrows, thick and dark, drawn together. Everyone else in Parker’s family is totally Norwegian-looking, blond and fair and smiley, like they should be out hauling catches of herring on the open ocean, which somehow makes Parker’s dark hair and olive skin even cuter, like it was a mistake.

  Suddenly I can’t stand the idea of another night at home, watching stupid videos or queuing up TV shows. I get the old itch, a heat between my shoulder blades, like my skin might suddenly sprout wings to carry me away.

  I need out. I need to prove that I’m not afraid of seeing him, or my old friends, or anyone. I’m not afraid of Nick, either, and the way she makes me feel now: as if I’m broken. Every time I hear her blasting music downstairs—indie pop, shiny happy music, since Nick doesn’t get depressed—or shouting for Mom to help her find her favorite jeans; every time I come into the bathroom and find it still humid from her shower, still smelling like Neutrogena; every time I see her running shoes on the stairs or find her field hockey T-shirt tangled up with my laundry, she may as well be hammering a stake into the ground. TOWN: NORMAL. POPULATION: 1.

  Maybe she always made me feel that way, but it’s only since the accident that I’ve been able to admit it.

  I pull on my best skinny jeans, surprised by their fit. Weirdly, even though I’ve barely left the house, I must have lost weight. But with a studded tank top and my favorite slouchy boots, I look all right, especially from a distance.

  When I head downstairs to the bathroom, I see Nick’s door is still closed. I press my ear to the door but hear nothing. Maybe she’s already left for the party. I briefly imagine her standing next to Parker, laughing, maybe competing to see who can throw their beer cans farther.

  Then my brain spits out a whole series of memories, flip-book-style, from our lives together: struggling on my tricycle to keep up with Parker and Nick, both on shiny new two-wheelers; watching from the pool deck while they took turns cannonballing into the deep end when I was too small to join them; hearing them burst into laughter because of an inside joke I didn’t understand.

  Sometimes I think I didn’t even fall in love with Parker. Sometimes I think it was really all about Nick, and proving I could finally be her equal.

  Downstairs, Mom is standing in the kitchen, talking on the phone, probably to Aunt Jackie, the only person she ever calls. The TV is on behind her, barely audible, and I get a jolt when the camera pans to a familiar stretch of highway not far from the place Nick drove us into a solid face of rock. The place is crawling with cops, as it must have been after the accident; the whole scene is lit up with floodlights and sirens, like a nighttime movie set. Words scroll across the bottom of the screen: Cops Launch Massive Search for Missing Nine-Year-Old . . .

  “Yeah, of course. We expected a period of adjustment, but—” Mom breaks off when she sees me, points to the Stouffer’s lasagna box on the kitchen table and then to the microwave, mouthing Dinner? In the quiet, I can make out the newscaster’s voice: “Police are searching for witnesses or clues in the disappearance of Madeline Snow, who vanished Sunday night. . . .” I shake my head and my mom turns away, her voice muffled as she passes out of view. “But I’m hanging in there. It’s starting to feel a little more like a house again.”

  I punch the TV off and grab Nick’s favorite field hockey hoodie from the peg near the front door. Though it’s likely still in the mid-eighties, with the hood up my scars will be mostly concealed. Besides, it gives me a thrill to wear Nick’s clothes unasked, as if I can shrug on a new identity. The sweatshirt still smells like Nick—not like perfume, since Nick never wears any, but like coconut shampoo and the general, indefinable odor of cleanliness, outdoors, and competency at sports.

  I pull the hood up and cinch it under my chin, stepping onto the grass and enjoying the slick feel of the moisture around my ankles, seeping through my jeans. I feel like a burglar, or someone on a secret mission. My car is blocked in, and I don’t want to ask Mom to move the Subaru, which would then involve a lot of questions and concerned, quizzical looks. I’m not even sure she would say yes—she put a moratorium on driving after the accident.

  I drag my ancient bike out from the garage—I haven’t ridden in forever, except once two summers ago, as a joke, after Ariana and I dropped mushrooms and Nick found us flopping on the grass like fish, gasping with laughter. I’m a little unsteady at first, but soon enough, I get the rhythm back. My knees are bugging me, but no worse than usual. Besides, the Drink is only a few miles away.

  The Drink is actually a nickname for the Saskawatchee River. Sometime in the previous decade, back when a rush of Realtors and speculators descended on Shoreline County like an army of money-crazed locusts, chewing their way through our land, a development group decided to raze the woods and build a clutter of sleek waterfront stores on its banks: coffee houses, art galleries, and high-rent restaurants, smack-dab in the middle of Somerville.

  Construction was approved and materials shipped before the residents freaked. Apparently, for a town built on history, the threat of new buildings and new parking lots and new cars bearing in tides of new people was too much. Somerville managed to have the entire area west of the river declared a piece of national park land. I’m surprised the town board hasn’t mandated we start wearing hoop skirts yet.

  Someone was supposed to have cleaned up the mounds of gravel and the piles of concrete. But no one bothered. There’s even an abandoned hard hat, meticulously and mysteriously preserved by the people who hang out there.

  I can hear the party almost as soon as I turn off Lower Forge and bump off the road and into the woods, keeping to the path that has been carved through the undergrowth because of a constant Friday-night procession of kids, coolers, bikes, and, occasionally, Chris Handler’s ATV. In the woods, the air is cooler, and leaves slap wetly against my thighs and calves as I jerk along the uneven ground, holding tight to the handlebars to avoid being bucked off. As soon as I see lights through the woods—people moving around, using their phones as flashlights—I dismount, wheeling my bike out into the open and leaning it next to several others on the grass.

  The party’s pretty big: forty or fifty people, most of them in shadow, milling around on the slope leading down to the river or perched on broken pieces of concrete. No one notices me yet, and for a second I get this moment of panic, a feeling like being a little kid again on the first day of school and watching the stream of kids through the double doors. I haven’t felt like an outsider in a long time.

  I don’t know why you always have to be the center of attention, Nick said to me once, not long before the accident. I’d been wriggling into a pair of leather pants I’d bought and then concealed from our parents by hiding them underneath the sweaters folded at the back of my closet.

  Well, I don’t know why you’re so scared of being noticed, I responded. It’s like Nick gets power from being totally, inoffensively correct: nice jeans, tight but not too tight, white T-shirt, translucent but not transparent, just enough makeup so it looks like she isn’t wearing any. I bet if Somerville did start mandating hoop skirts, she’d be the first to sign up and grab one. She’d probably add in a pair of ruffled pantaloons for good measure.

  I don’t see Nick, or Parker, either. But when the crowd shifts, I spot a keg and a bunch of red Solo cups stacked in the ice.

  I feel better, much more myself, once I’ve poured myself a beer, even though it’s mostly foam. The first few sips dull some of my anxiety, and it’s dark enough that I even take off my hood, shaking out my hair. I see Davis Christensen and Ben Morton standing, pinkie fingers linked, on the other side of a small knot of people. Both of them notice me at the same time, and Mark’s mouth forms an O of surprise. Davis whis
pers something to him before lifting her cup and extending two fingers in a kind of wave.

  I slug back the beer, turn to the keg, and refill. When I look up again, Ariana has materialized, just appeared out of the crowd like something spit up on a tide. She’s cut her hair short. In her black shorts, wedge sneakers, and heavy eyeliner, she looks like a deranged pixie. I feel a sudden squeeze of pain. My best friend.

  My former best friend.

  “Wow.” Ariana stares at me as if I’m a new species of animal that hasn’t yet been categorized. “Wow. I didn’t expect to see you here. I didn’t expect to see you out.”

  “Sharon’s had me on lockdown,” is all I say, because I don’t feel like getting into it. It’s an old joke of ours that my mom is a jailer, and I’m expecting Ariana to laugh. But instead she just nods really fast, as if I’ve said something interesting.

  “How is your mom?” she asks.

  I shrug. “The same,” I say. “She started working again.”

  “Good.” Ariana is still nodding. She looks a little like a puppet whose strings are being tugged. “That’s really good.”

  I take another sip of my beer. I’m past the foam now, into the flat bitter burn. Now I see that my presence has caused a disturbance, a ripple effect as the news travels from one group to the next. Various people swivel in my direction. Once, I might have welcomed the attention, even enjoyed it. But now I feel itchy, evaluated, the way I do during standardized tests. Maybe this is the effect of wearing Nick’s sweatshirt—maybe some of her self-consciousness is seeping into my skin.

  “Look.” Ariana takes a step closer and talks low and really fast. She’s breathing hard, too, as if the words are a physical effort. “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry. I should have been there for you. After the accident, I should have reached out or done something, but I couldn’t—I mean, I didn’t know what to do—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say, taking a step backward and nearly stumbling on a bit of cement half-embedded in the grass. Ariana’s eyes are wide and pleading, like a little kid’s, and I feel suddenly disgusted. “There’s nothing you could have done.”