Vanishing Girls Read online

  Me too. ┎

  posted by: katywinnfever at 11:33 a.m.

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  JULY 21

  Nick

  There’s a fundamental rule of the universe that goes like this: if you’re running late, you will miss your bus. You’ll also miss your bus if it’s raining or if you have somewhere really important to go, like the SATs or a driver’s test. Dara and I have a word for that kind of luck: crapdiment. Just crap smeared on top of more crap.

  My morning is already full of crapdiment.

  By the time I get to FanLand, I’m nearly twenty-five minutes late. The traffic was bad along the shore. It was announced that Madeline Snow vanished from her sister’s car two days ago outside Big Scoop Ice Cream & Candy, and the news has blown up across the entire state. Even more tourists are flooding the beach than usual. Sick how people like tragedies—maybe it makes them feel better about the crapdiment of their own lives.

  The front gate is hanging open, even though the park won’t officially open for another half hour, but there’s no one in the front office, no sound except for the gentle whir of the refrigerator that contains all of Donna’s precious Diet Cokes. I grab my red shirt from my assigned cubby—yes, I get a cubby, like in kindergarten—and do a quick armpit sniff. Not bad, but I’ll definitely have to wash it after today. Already the parrot-shaped thermometer registers ninety-three degrees.

  I reemerge, blinking, into the sun. Still no one. I take the path that winds down past the big public bathrooms, toward the Lagoon—also known informally as the Martini, the Cesspool, and the Piss ’N’ Play—where all the water rides are. The wind rustles the leaves, both plastic and real, lining the path, and I have a memory of watching Dara, knock-kneed and skinny as a stick, running ahead of me, laughing. Then I turn the corner and see the park employees, all of them, sitting in a semicircle in the sunken outdoor amphitheater the park uses for birthday parties and special performances. Mr. Wilcox is standing on an overturned wooden crate, like a crazy man spouting off about religion. Fifty pairs of eyes turn to me simultaneously.

  Funny that even in a crowd, it’s Parker I see first.

  “Warren, so nice of you to join us!” Mr. Wilcox booms. But he doesn’t sound too angry. I can’t actually picture him angry; it’s like trying to imagine a skinny Santa Claus. “Come on, cop a squat, pull up a chair.”

  There are no chairs, of course. I sit cross-legged at the edge of the crowd, my face hot, wishing everyone would stop staring. I catch Parker’s eye and try to smile, but he turns away.

  “We were just discussing plans for the big day,” Mr. Wilcox says, addressing me. “FanLand’s seventy-fifth-anniversary party! We’ll need all hands on deck, and we’ll be coordinating a special volunteer force, too, with some local middle school recruits. The concession stands and pavilions will be working double time, and we’re expecting more than three thousand people over the course of the day.”

  Mr. Wilcox rattles on about delegating special task forces and the importance of teamwork and organization, like we’re heading out to do major battle instead of throwing a party for a bunch of pukey children and their exhausted parents. I half listen, while thinking of Dara’s birthday two years ago and how she insisted we go out to this sleazy under-eighteen club near Chippewa Beach with a Halloween theme all year long. She knew the DJ—Goose or Hawk or something—and I remember how she stood on the table to dance, her mask looped around her neck, fake blood oozing down into the hollow of her clavicle.

  Dara’s always liked that kind of thing: dressing up, green on Saint Patrick’s Day, bunny ears for Easter. Any excuse to do something out of the ordinary.

  If there’s one thing she’s bad at, it’s ordinary.

  After the staff meeting, Mr. Wilcox instructs me to help Maude “prep” the park. Maude has a pinched face, almost as if it went through a vise; short hair, white-blond with blue streaks; and spacers in her ears. She’s dressed like a hippie from the sixties, wearing a long flowing skirt and leather sandals that make her standard red T-shirt look even more ridiculous. She looks like a Maude; it’s easy to imagine that in forty years she’ll be hand-knitting a cover for her toilet seat and cursing at all the neighborhood kids pegging her porch with baseballs. Her face is twisted into a permanent scowl.

  “What’s the point of a dry run?” I ask, trying to make conversation. We’re standing in front of the Cobra, the park’s largest, and oldest, roller coaster. I shield my eyes against the sun and watch the empty cars rattle along the toothy track, eating it. From a distance, it does look like a snake.

  “Gotta warm ’em up,” she says. Her voice is surprisingly deep and husky, like a smoker’s. Definitely a Maude. “Get ’em on their feet, wake ’em up, make sure there’s no glitches.”

  “You’re talking about them like they’re alive,” I say, only half joking. This makes her scowl even harder.

  We make the rounds, testing the Plank and the Whirling Dervish, Pirate’s Cove and Treasure Island, the Black Star and the Marauder. The sun is creeping higher in the sky and the park has officially opened; the concession stands and gamers have unshuttered their booths, and already the air is scented with fried dough. Families are streaming in, little kids trailing the paper flags we give out at the entryway, moms shouting for them to Slow down, slow down.

  Mr. Wilcox is parked by the front gate, talking with two cops wearing identical mirrored sunglasses and scowls. With them is a girl who looks familiar. Her blond hair is pulled into a high ponytail, her eyes swollen like she’s been crying.

  In the distance, I spot Alice and Parker painting a long canvas banner stretched between them on the pavement. I can’t make out what the banner says: just blocky red and black lettering and blue splashes that might be flowers. Parker is shirtless again, his hair hanging long over his eyes, the muscles in his back contracting every time he moves the brush. Alice catches me watching and gives me a big wave, smiling broadly. Parker looks up, too, but when I wave to him he looks down, frowning. It’s the second time today he’s avoided eye contact. Maybe he’s mad that I skipped the party.

  “All done,” Maude says, after we send the line of interconnected boats through the Haunted Ship and watch them emerge, passenger-less, on the other side. Faint screams and roars emanate from inside: a scream track, Alice told me yesterday, to get everyone into the right mood.

  “What about that one?” I point to a ride that looks like a single metal finger, pointed to the sky. GATEWAY TO HEAVEN is painted on the side of a grounded sixteen-seater cart, which, given the name, presumably shoots up into the sky before dropping.

  “That one’s closed,” she says, already turning away from me.

  As soon as she says it, I can see that she’s right; the Gateway looks as if it hasn’t been used in ages. The paint is flaking from the metal, and the whole thing has the sad, disused look of an abandoned toy. “How come?”

  Maude whirls around, barely suppressing a sigh. “It’s been closed forever.”

  For some reason, I don’t want to let it drop. “But why?”

  “Some girl fell out of the chair, like, ten years ago,” Maude says flatly, as if she’s reading off the world’s most boring grocery list.

  Even though we’re standing in the sun and it must be one hundred degrees, a tiny shiver snakes up my spine. “Did she die?”

  Maude squints at me. “No, she lived happily ever after,” she says, and then shakes her head, snorting. “Of course she died. That thing is, like, one hundred and fifty feet high. She fell from the very top. Straight to the pavement. Splat.”

  “Why don’t they tear it down?” I ask. Suddenly the Gateway looks not sad, but ominous: a finger raised not to get attention but as a warning.

  “Wilcox won’t. He still wants to get it running again. It was the girl’s fault, anyway. They proved it. She wasn’t wearing her harness correctly. She unlocked it as a joke.” Maude shrugs. “Now they’re all automated. The harnesses, I mean.”

&nbs
p; I have a sudden image of Dara, unbelted, falling through space, her arms pinwheeling through empty air, her screams swallowed by wind and the sound of children laughing. And the accident: a brief photo explosion in my head, the sound of screaming, a jagged face of rock lit up by the headlights and the wheel jerking out of my hands.

  I close my eyes, swallow, will away the image. Breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth, ticking off long seconds, like Dr. Lichme taught me to do—the only useful thing he taught me. Where were we coming from? Why was I driving so fast? How did I lose control?

  The accident has been clipped from my memory, just clean lifted away, as though surgically excised. Even the days before the accident are lost in murk, submerged in deep, sticky strangeness: every so often a new image or picture gets spit out, like something surfacing from the mud. The doctors told my mom it may have had something to do with the concussion, that memory would return to me slowly. Dr. Lichme said, Trauma takes time.

  “Sometimes her dad still comes to the park and just, like, stands there, staring up at the sky. Like he’s still waiting for her to fall down. If you see him, just get Alice. She’s the only one he’ll talk to.” Maude curls her upper lip, revealing teeth that are surprisingly small, like a child’s. “He once told her she reminded him of his daughter. Creepy, right?”

  “It’s sad,” I say. But Maude doesn’t hear. She’s already walking away, skirt swishing.

  Alice directs me to spend the rest of the morning helping out at the booths that line Green Row (so named, she explains, because of all the money that passes hands there), distributing stuffed parrots and keeping the kids from bawling when they don’t manage to peg the wooden sharks with their water pistols. By twelve thirty I’m sweating and starving and exhausted. More and more visitors keep arriving, flooding the gates, a tidal wave of grandparents and kids and birthday parties and campers dressed identically in bright orange T-shirts: a dizzying, kaleidoscope vision of people, more people.

  “What’s the matter, Warren?” Mr. Wilcox, weirdly, isn’t sweating. If anything, he looks even better and cleaner than he did this morning, as if his whole body had recently been vacuum-cleaned and ironed. “Not hot enough for you? Go on. Why don’t you grab some lunch and take a break in the shade? And don’t forget to drink water!”

  I head for the opposite side of the park, toward the pavilion Parker showed me yesterday. I’m not particularly looking forward to braving another conversation with Shirley, or Princess, but the other pavilions are absolutely packed, and the idea of trying to fight my way through a crowd of sweaty preteens is even less appealing. I have to pass under the shadow of the Gateway again. Impossible not to look at it: it’s so high, the sun looks like it might impale itself on the metal. This time, it’s Madeline Snow I picture, the girl from the news, the one who disappeared: free-falling through the air, hair blowing behind her.

  It’s quieter on the eastern side of the park, probably because the rides are sedate and farther apart, separated by long tracks of manicured parkland and benches nestled beneath tall spruces. Alice told me that this section of FanLand is known as the Nursing Home, and I see mostly older people here, a few couples tottering along together with their grandkids; a man with a face full of liver marks napping, upright, on a bench; a woman making painstaking progress toward the canteen with her walker, while a younger woman next to her does a bad job of pretending to be patient.

  There are only a few people eating at the pavilion, sitting beneath the metal awning at metal picnic tables. I’m surprised to see Parker behind the counter.

  “Hey.” I step to the window, and Parker straightens up, his face moving through an array of expressions too quick for me to decipher. “I didn’t know you were manning the grill.”

  “I’m not,” he says shortly, not smiling. “Shirley had to pee.”

  Next to the window are dozens of multicolored flyers, layered like feathers over the glass, advertising different special events and discounted specials and, of course, the anniversary party. A new one has been recently added to the mix, this one glaringly out of place: a grainy photograph of the missing girl, Madeline Snow, face tilted to the camera, gap-toothed and grinning. In big block letters above her image it says simply: MISSING. Now it strikes me that the girl with the blond ponytail, the one who was standing with the cops and seemed somehow familiar, must be related to Madeline Snow. They have the same wide-spaced eyes, the same subtly rounded chin.

  I touch my finger to the word Missing, as if I could erase it. I briefly think about the story Parker told me, about Donovan, an everyday guy just walking around wearing a big smile and collecting kiddie porn on his computer.

  “You going to order, or what?” Parker says.

  “Is everything okay?” I’m careful not to look at him. My throat is still as dry as chalk. I want to buy a water but don’t want to ask Parker to get it. “You seem a little . . .”

  “A little what?” He leans forward on his elbows, eyes dark, unsmiling.

  “I don’t know. Mad at me or something.” I take a deep breath. “Is it because of the party?”

  Now it’s Parker’s turn to look away—over my head, squinting, as if something fascinating is happening midair. “I was hoping we could, you know, actually hang out.”

  “Sorry.” I don’t bother pointing out that technically, I never said I would come, only that I would think about it. “I wasn’t feeling well.”

  “Really? Didn’t seem like it.” He makes a face. Then I remember I spent the whole day with him at work, laughing, talking, threatening to splash each other with the industrial cleaning hose. He knows I was feeling just fine.

  “I wasn’t in the mood to party.” There’s no way I can tell him what I really feel: that I was hoping my note would bring Dara to my door, that she would knock a half second before letting herself in, wearing one of her backless, strapless, gravity-defying tank tops and a thick covering of eye shadow; that she would insist that I change into something sexier, that she would grip my chin and force makeup on me, as if I were the younger sister. “Did you have fun?”

  He just shakes his head and mutters something I can’t hear.

  “What?” I’m starting to get angry.

  “Forget it,” he says. I spot Shirley waddling toward us, scowling as usual. Parker must see her at the same time, because he backs up, toward the door sandwiched between the deep fryer and the microwave. When he opens the door, a wedge of light expands across the narrow space, touching boxes of hamburger buns and towering stacks of plastic soda lids.

  “Parker—”

  “I said forget it. Seriously. It’s no big deal. I’m not mad.” Then he disappears, silhouetted momentarily before vanishing, and Shirley takes his place, shuffling up to the counter, huffing, moisture clinging to the bleached-blond hair on her upper lip.

  “You gonna order something, or just sit there staring?” she says to me. Big dark rings have expanded under her breasts, like the shadows of two groping hands.

  “Not hungry,” I say. Which, thanks to Parker, is true.

  JULY 22

  Dara

  Sarah Snow and her best friend, Kennedy, were babysitting Madeline Snow on Sunday, July 19. Madeline was running a low fever. Still, she demanded ice cream from her favorite place on the shore, Big Scoop, and eventually Sarah and Kennedy gave in.

  By the time they arrived, it was after 10:00 p.m. and Madeline had fallen asleep. Sarah and Kennedy went inside together, leaving Madeline in the backseat. Sarah may have locked the doors, but she may not have.

  There was a long line. Big Scoop has been in business since the late seventies, and has become, for the residents of Shoreline County and the tens of thousands of vacationers who descend on the shore every summer, a landmark. It took twenty-five minutes for Sarah and Kennedy to get their order: Rum Pecan Punch for Kennedy; Double Trouble Chocolate for Sarah; Strawberries and Cream for Madeline.

  But when they returned to the car, the back door was hanging open an
d Madeline was gone.

  The cop who tells us all this, Lieutenant Frank Hernandez, doesn’t look like a cop, more like a weary dad trying to coach his son’s soccer team back from a really bad loss. He’s not even wearing a uniform, but scuffed-up sneakers and a dark-blue polo shirt. There’s mud on the cuffs of his jeans, and I wonder whether he was one of the guys at the Drink two nights ago, maybe even the cop who arrested Colin Dacey and made him spend the night sleeping it off at the boxy little station downtown. Rumor has it that the bust was related to Madeline’s disappearance. The cops start getting shit in the media—no leads, no suspects—so they decide to prove their worth by raiding a keg party.

  Colin is here, looking miserable and pale, like a tortured saint; I spot Zoe Heddle and Hunter Dawes and assume both of them were forced to volunteer, too.

  Even though Nick covered for me when the cop showed up on our front porch this morning, she made it clear she has no intention of taking the rap for a party she didn’t even attend.

  This time, the note was on the toilet seat.

  Cop busted “me” at the Drink. Thanks for asking whether you could borrow my sweatshirt. Since “I” went to a party, “I’m” volunteering today. Big Scoop parking lot, 4:00 p.m. Have fun.—N

  “At this point, we’re still hoping for a positive outcome,” the cop says, in a tone of voice that suggests they’re fearing the opposite. He’s climbed up onto the concrete divider that separates the Big Scoop parking lot from the beach, and he speaks into the air above the crowd, which is larger than I’d expected. There must be two hundred people packed into the lot, along with three news vans and a cluster of journalists hefting heavy equipment and sweating in the sun. Maybe these are the same journalists who’ve been writing bad things about the Shoreline County cops and budget cuts and incompetence. With their cameras and boom lights and microphones, hovering at the edge of the crowd, they look like members of a futuristic army, waiting for the chance to attack.