Vanishing Girls

“Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous,” he says. “I’m far too busy playing Ancient Civ. Besides, everyone knows the best time to study is first thing in the morning.”

When it’s superhot, we take our shoes off and dunk our feet in the wave pool or take turns with a hose, passing the stream of cold water over our hair and emerging from the back of the pump house sopping wet and happy. He introduces me to the “Parker lunch classic”: pizza covered with the squeezy cheese we use for the nachos.

“You’re disgusting,” I say, watching him fold a slice expertly into his mouth.

“I’m a culinary explorer,” he says, grinning so I can see the mashed-up food in his mouth. “We’re very misunderstood.”

The graveyard shift is the hardest and most labor-intensive. As soon as the park gate is shut behind the last family, the other employees rush to shed their T-shirts and duck out through a side exit—a long stream of them, miraculously morphed from identical red skins like a molting snake—before they can be roped into helping the nightly park shutdown.

This includes emptying all 104 trash cans and loading up fresh bags; double-checking every bathroom stall to make sure no terrified children have been left behind by frazzled parents; sweeping up the debris in the pavilions; checking to make sure all entrances and exits are locked and secured; skimming every pool for floating debris and ramping up the chlorine levels overnight, to combat the daily influx of sunscreen-coated children and their inevitable pee; locking up the food carts against the intrusion of raccoons, and making sure no trash has been left behind to tempt them.

Gary delivers our instructions to us with the intensity of a general giving marching orders to an invading army. I’m stuck on Zone B trash duty, which will bring me from the Ship Breaker’s Pavilion all the way down past the Gateway.

“Good luck,” Parker whispers, leaning in so close I can feel his breath on my neck, as Gary distributes plastic gloves and industrial garbage bags the size and weight of plastic tarps. “Remember to breathe through your mouth.”

He isn’t kidding: the park trash bins contain a disgusting jumble of half-rotting food, baby diapers, and worse. It’s hard work, and after an hour my arms ache from the effort of hauling full bags to the parking lot, where Gary will load them into the Dumpsters. The park looks strange, lit up falsely in the bright electric glow of the floodlights. The paths are striped with deep tongues of shadow, and the rides shimmer in the moonlight, seeming almost insubstantial, like fairy structures that might disappear at any moment. Every so often a voice carries to me across the distance—Caroline or Parker, shouting to each other—but other than the occasional whisper of wind through the trees, it’s quiet.

I’m moving underneath the shadow of the Gateway when I hear it: a quiet humming, a singsong whisper.

I freeze. The Gateway rises above me, steel and shadow, a tower made of silver cobweb. I remember what Alice told me. They say she still cries out at night.

Nothing. Nothing but the crickets hidden in the underbrush, the faint hiss of wind. It’s almost eleven and I’m tired. That’s all.

But as soon as I start moving again, the sound returns, like the faintest cry or a whisper of a song. I whirl around. Behind me is a solid wall of growth, an intricate geometric pattern of woods that divides the Gateway from the Ship Breaker’s Pavilion. My stomach is a hard, high knot and my palms are sweating. Even before I hear it again, all the hair on my arms stands up, as if something invisible has just brushed against me. This time the noise is changed, anguished, like a distant sob heard from behind three locked doors.

“Hello?” I choke out. Instantly the sound stops. Is it my imagination, or does something move in the shadows, a bare ghost-impression in the deeper dark? “Hello?” I call out again, a little louder.

“Nick?” Parker materializes out of the darkness, suddenly and harshly illuminated as he steps into the circular glow of a lamp. “You almost done? I’ve got a virtual half-constructed Roman-style temple waiting for me at home. . . .”

I’m so relieved, I nearly throw myself into his arms, just to feel that he’s solid and real and alive.

“Did you hear that?” I blurt.

Parker, I see, has already changed out of his work T-shirt. His old backpack, made of corduroy so faded it’s impossible to tell what color it once was, is slung over one shoulder. “Hear what?”

“I thought I heard—” I break off abruptly. Suddenly I realize how silly I’ll sound. I thought I heard a ghost. I thought I heard a little girl crying out for her father as she fell through empty space. “Nothing.” I peel off the gloves, which have made my fingers smell sour, and brush my hair back from my face with the inside of a wrist. “Forget it.”

“Are you all right?” Parker does the thing he always does when he doesn’t believe me: tucks his chin down, stares at me with eyebrows half-raised. I have a sudden flashback of Parker, aged five, looking at me just that way when I told him I could jump across Old Stone Creek, no problem. I broke my ankle; I misjudged the bank height, crashed straight into the water, slipped, and Parker had to carry me home on his back.

“Fine,” I say shortly. “Just tired.”

And it’s true: suddenly I am—aching with an exhaustion so deep I can feel it in my teeth.

“Need help?” Parker gestures to the two bags I’ve piled next to me: the last remaining load I have to cart out for pickup. He doesn’t wait for me to respond before leaning forward and swinging the heaviest bag over his other shoulder. “I told Gary we’d lock up,” he says. “Actually, there’s something I want to show you real quick.”