Vanishing Girls

I pull up a grainy picture of Dara and Ariana—at least I think it’s Ariana, although she’s wearing so much makeup and the picture quality is so bad, it’s hard to tell—surrounded by guys who must be in their early twenties at least. One of them has his arm around Dara; he’s wearing a cheesy leather jacket and would be hot except for his hair, which is thinning, and gelled into spikes. I wonder when this was taken, and whether poor, brokenhearted Dara was with Parker at the time.

Dara shoves the pillows off her face and sits up, making a grab for the phone. “What the hell?” She rolls her eyes when I hold the phone out of reach. “Are you serious?”

“Jesus.” I stand up and make a show of shaking my head over the picture. “Ariana looks like a slutty bumblebee in that shirt. Friends don’t let friends pair yellow and black.”

“Give it back.”

I take a step backward, dodging her. Dara has no choice but to stand up.

“Ha,” I say, angling away from her as she once again tries to swipe the phone back. “You’re out of bed.”

“This isn’t funny,” Dara says. But at least she doesn’t look so much like an abandoned doll washed up on a reef of pillows and old sheets. Her eyes are bright with anger. “This isn’t a joke.”

“Who’s this guy?” I pull up a second picture of leather-jacket guy. It appears to have been taken in a bar or a basement—somewhere dark and crowded with people. In this one, obviously a selfie, Dara is making a kissy-face at the camera while behind her, Leather Jacket watches. Something in his expression makes me nervous; it’s the way Perkins looks when he locates a new mouse hole. “He looks like he wants to eat your face.”

“That’s Andre.” She at last succeeds in grabbing the phone back from me. “He’s nobody.” She hits delete, punching hard with a finger, and then deletes the next picture that comes up, and the next, and the next. “They’re all nobodies. They don’t matter.”

She flops onto the bed again, still deleting pictures, jabbing at the phone forcefully as if she can physically splinter the images into nonexistence, and mutters something I don’t quite make out. But I can tell from her expression that I’m not going to like it.

“What did you say?” I’ve completely missed homeroom by now and will be late to first period, too. I’ll get detention, all for Dara’s sake, all because she can’t leave anything whole and good and untouched, all because she has to dig and explode and experiment, like a kid making a mess in the kitchen, pretending to be a cook, pretending something good will actually come out.

“I said you don’t understand,” she says, without looking up. “You don’t understand anything.”

“Do you even like Parker?” I say, because now I can’t help it, can’t keep back the anger. “Or was it just to see if you could?”

“I don’t like him,” she says, going very still. “I love him. I’ve always loved him.” I’m tempted to remind her that she said the exact same thing about: Jacob, Mitts, Brent, and Jack.

Instead I say, “Look. I thought it was a bad idea because of this. Because of . . .” I struggle to find the right words. “You were best friends before.”

“He was your best friend,” she fires back, and lies down, curling her legs up to her chest again. “He’s always liked you better.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I say automatically, even though, really, I always kind of believed that was true. Was that why I was so shocked when Dara was the one to kiss him? When he kissed her back? Even though it was often the three of us, he was my best friend, my giggle-till-you-snarf-soda, my antidote-to-boredom, my talk-about-nothing person. And Dara was mine, too. For once, I was the apex of the triangle, the high point that kept the whole structure together.

Until Dara once again had to be on top.

Dara looks away and says nothing. I’m sure in her head she’s the tragic Juliet, about to pose for her final, premortem photo.

“Look, I’m sorry you’re upset.” I pick up my bag from the floor. “And I’m sorry I apparently don’t understand. But I’m late.”

She still doesn’t say anything. There’s no point asking whether she plans on going to school. She very obviously doesn’t. I wish Mom could be half as hard on Dara as she is in her school, where, apparently, some of the junior boys just refer to her as “that tough bitch.”

I’m halfway to the door before Dara speaks again.

“Just don’t pretend, okay? I can’t stand it when you do.”

When I turn around, she’s looking at me with the strangest expression—like someone who knows a very juicy, very secret secret.

“Pretend what?” I say.

For a second, the sun goes behind a cloud, and Dara’s room turns incrementally darker. It’s as if someone has held up a palm to Dara’s windows, and now, in the shadows, she looks like a stranger. “Don’t pretend you aren’t happy,” she says. “I know you,” she goes on, when I start to contradict her. “You act like you’re so good. But deep down, you’re just as screwed up as the rest of us.”

“Good-bye, Dara,” I say, stepping out into the hall. I make sure to slam the door so hard behind me, it rattles on its hinges, listening with satisfaction as something inside—a picture frame? her favorite mug?—crashes to the ground, a responsive echo.

Dara’s not the only one who knows how to break things.