Vanishing Girls

Then Maude comes stalking down the path toward us, shoulders hunched, like a linebacker charging toward a touchdown.

“Wilcox sent me,” she says, as soon as she sees us. She’s out of breath and annoyed, obviously, to have been sent to deliver messages. “Crystal didn’t show.”

Instantly Alice turns businesslike. “What do you mean, she didn’t show?”

Maude scowls. “Just what I said. And the show’s in fifteen. There are already, like, forty kids waiting.”

“We’ll have to cancel,” Alice says.

“No way.” Maude has a BE NICE OR LEAVE pin staked to her T-shirt, just above her right nipple, which is both (a) hypocritical and (b) definitely not part of the FanLand dress code. “They already paid. You know Donna doesn’t do refunds.”

Alice tips her head back and closes her eyes, as she does when she’s thinking. She has a thin neck, and an Adam’s apple as pronounced as a boy’s. Still, there’s something undeniably attractive about her. Her dream, she told me once, was to run FanLand after Mr. Wilcox. I want to get old here, she said. I want to die right on that Ferris wheel. At the high point. That way it’ll be a quick trip to the stars.

I can’t imagine wanting to stay at FanLand, and don’t know what she sees in it, either: the endless procession of people, the overflowing trash bags and sticky pulp of mashed-up french fries and ice cream coating the pavilion floors, the toilets clogged with tampons and plastic barrettes and spare change. But lately I can’t imagine wanting anything. I used to be so sure: college at UMass, then a two-year break before graduate school for social sciences or maybe psychology.

But that was before Dr. Lichme, and lipstick-toothed Cheryl, and the accident. And those dreams, like my memories, seem to be floundering, caught in murky darkness somewhere just out of reach.

“You can do it.” Alice turns to me.

I’m so surprised that it takes me a second to realize she’s serious. “What?”

“You can do it,” she repeats. “You’re Crystal’s size. The costume will fit you.”

I stare at her. “No,” I say. “No way.”

She’s already gripping me by the arm and piloting me back toward the front office. “It’ll take ten minutes,” she says. “You don’t even have to say anything. You just have to swan around on a rock and clap your hands to the music. You’ll be great.”

Once a day, a group of FanLand employees does a musical performance for the little kids in the big sunken amphitheater. Tony Rogers stars as the singing pirate, and Heather Minx, who is four foot eleven in a pair of platform wedges, dons a huge, ruffled parrot costume and accompanies him with various well-timed squawks. There’s also a mermaid—Crystal, normally, strapped into a shimmery, sequined tail and wearing a fine nylon long-sleeved top with the image of a bandeau shell bikini imprinted on it—to clap and sing along.

I haven’t been onstage since I was in second grade. And even that was a disaster. In our second-grade production of Chicken Little I completely forgot my cue—and then, in a desperate rush to make it out of the wings before the musical number ended—ran smack into Harold Liu and ended up knocking out one of his teeth.

I try to detach my arm from Alice’s grip, but she’s surprisingly strong. No wonder she scaled the Cobra this morning in five minutes flat. “Can’t you get Maude to do it?”

“Are you kidding? No way. She’ll terrorize the children. Come on, do it for me. It’ll be over before you know it.” She practically pushes me into the front office, which is empty. She skirts around the file cabinet and bends down to retrieve the mermaid costume from the corner, where it is folded neatly and sheathed in plastic after every performance. She removes it from its protective covering, shaking the tail out and releasing the faint smell of mildew. The sequins shimmer in the dull light. I fight the wild impulse to turn and run.

“Do I have to?” I say, even though I know what her answer will be.

She doesn’t even answer. “Showtime’s in five,” she says, unzipping the tail from waist to fin with one fluid motion. “So I suggest you strip.”

Seven minutes later I’m standing next to Rogers behind a thick covering of glossy plastic pond fronds, which serves as a makeshift curtain. Heather’s already onstage, doing her thing, strutting and flapping her wings and letting the kids pull her tail feathers.

The amphitheater is packed: kids are laughing and clapping, bouncing in their seats, while their parents use the distraction as an excuse to get business done, typing away on smartphones, reapplying sunscreen even as their kids wiggle away from them, puncturing juice boxes with miniature straws. A dog, snow-white and about the size of a large rat, is barking like crazy and making lunging motions whenever Heather gets too close. Its owner, a fat woman wearing a turquoise sweat suit, can barely keep it in her lap.

The mermaid costume is tight and makes it incredibly difficult to maneuver. I had to waddle down the path, taking miniature, shuffling steps while various park-goers stared.

I feel like I might throw up.

“When the tempo changes, that’s our cue,” Rogers says. His breath smells faintly of beer. He bends down and hooks an arm behind my knees. “Ready?”

“What are you doing?” I try and quick-step backward, but restrained by the costume, I manage only a kind of hop. In one fluid movement, Rogers has swept me up into his arms, carrying me the way a groom would a bride over a threshold.

“Mermaids don’t walk,” he practically growls, and then plasters on a huge smile, showing off his gums, as we barrel through the fake foliage and emerge onto the stage, just as the tempo picks up. The kids break out into high-pitched squeals as Rogers bends down and deposits me onto the large, flat rock—actually painted concrete—built for this purpose.