Vanishing Girls

But now I can’t tell him. I won’t. Then I say, “Dara’s not home.” Parker flinches and turns away, a muscle working in his jaw. Even midwinter, he has the kind of skin that always looks tan. I wish he looked worse. I wish he looked as bad as I feel. “Well, you’re here for her, aren’t you?”

“Jesus, Nick.” He turns back to me then. “We need to . . . I don’t know . . . fix this. Fix us.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I say, squeezing my ribs, hard. I feel like if I don’t, I might just come apart.

“You do know what I mean,” he says. “You are—were—my best friend.” With one hand, he gestures to the space between us, the long stretch of basement, where for years we built pillow forts and competed to see who could withstand tickle wars the longest. “What happened?”

“What happened is you started dating my sister,” I say. The words come out louder than I intended.

Parker takes a step toward me. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he says, his voice quiet, and for a second I want to close the distance between us and bury myself in the soft place between his arm and shoulder blade, and tell him how dumb I’ve been, and let him cheer me up with bad renditions of Cyndi Lauper songs and weird trivia about the world’s largest hamburgers or freestanding structures built entirely from toothpicks. “I didn’t mean to hurt either of you. It just . . . happened.” He’s practically whispering now. “I’m trying to stop it.”

I take a step backward. “You’re not trying very hard,” I say. I know I’m being a bitch, but I don’t care. He’s the one who ruined everything. He’s the one who kissed Dara, who keeps kissing her, who keeps telling her yes, no matter how many times they break up. “I’ll let Dara know you came by.”

Parker’s face changes. And in that moment I know I’ve hurt him, maybe just as much as he’s hurt me. I get a sick rush of triumph that feels almost like nausea, like catching an insect between folds of paper towel and squeezing. Then he just looks angry—hard, almost, like his skin has suddenly tightened into stone.

“Yeah, all right.” He takes two steps backward before turning around. “Tell her I’m looking for her. Tell her I’m worried about her.”

“Sure.” My voice sounds unfamiliar, as if it’s being piped in from somewhere a thousand miles away. I broke up with Aaron. And for what? Parker and I aren’t even friends anymore. I’ve screwed up everything. Suddenly I think I might be sick.

“Oh, and Nick?” Parker pauses at the foot of the stairs. His expression is impossible to read—for a second, I think he might try and apologize again. “Your shirt’s on inside out.”

Then he’s gone, sprinting up the stairs, leaving me alone.

JULY 29

Birthday Card from Nick to Dara

Happy birthday, D.

I have a surprise for you.

10 p.m. tonight. Fantasy Land.

What comes down, must go up.

See you at dinner.

Love,

Nick

P.S. It’ll be worth it.

AFTER

JULY 29

Nick

On Dara’s birthday, I wake up even before my alarm. Tonight is the night: when Dara and I go back in time. When we become best friends again. When everything gets fixed.

I haul out of bed, pull on my FanLand T-shirt (clean, thankfully) and a pair of jean shorts, and throw my hair into a ponytail. My whole body is sore. In the short time I’ve been at FanLand, I’ve already grown stronger, thanks to carting trash and scrubbing out the Whirling Dervish and jogging the claustrophobic network of FanLand pathways. My shoulders ache like they do after the first few weeks of field hockey season, and I have both muscles and dark, splotchy bruises I haven’t noticed.

In the hall, I can hear the shower running in Mom’s bathroom. This week she’s been going to bed at 8:00 p.m.—right after the evening news, and the daily reports about the Madeline Snow case: whether Nicholas Sanderson, the police’s only kind-of suspect, is hiding anything; whether it’s a good or a bad thing that the police haven’t turned up her body; whether she might, possibly, still be alive. Anyone would think Madeline was her kid.

I take the stairs to the attic, staying on my tiptoes, as if Dara might startle if she hears me coming. All last night, I thought about what I would to say to her. I even practiced whispering the words to my bedroom mirror.

I’m sorry.

I know you hate me.

Please, let’s start over.

Surprisingly Dara’s bedroom door is open a crack. I ease the door open with a foot.

In the murky half-light, it looks like a weird alien planet, crowded with mossy surfaces and solid, unidentifiable heaps. Dara’s bed is empty. The birthday card I left for her last night is still arranged neatly on her pillow. I can’t tell whether she’s read it or not.

For years, Dara has been falling asleep in the den—we’ll find her the next morning on the couch, enfolded in a blanket, an infomercial spouting off about an all-in-one kitchen knife or a bathroom toilet seat warmer. Once, last year, I came downstairs to the stink of vomit, and found that she’d puked in Mom’s Native American clay pot before falling asleep. I cleaned her up, wiping the corners of her mouth with a damp towel, picked off the fake eyelash clinging, furry and caterpillar-like, to her cheek. At one point she just barely woke up and smiled at me through half-lidded eyes.

“Heya, Seashell,” she said, using the nickname she’d made up for me when she was a kid.

That was me: the family janitor. Always cleaning up Dara’s messes.