Vanishing Girls

“Sorry,” I say, dropping her arm quickly, even as her mother—a woman wearing denim overall shorts and pigtails, even though she must be in her forties—comes jogging over, her sandals slapping on the wet pavement.

“Addison? Addison!” She drops to her knees on the pool deck and reaches out a hand for her daughter, glaring at me like I’m some pervert. “Get over here. Now.”

“Sorry,” I say again. The woman only shoots me another dirty look as the girl, Addison, hauls herself out of the pool. Over the constant noise of shouting and laughter, I hear my name again; when I turn, I see Rogers, frowning, skirting the edge of the pool, trying to make his way over to me. I slosh out of the water, suddenly exhausted, feeling like an idiot, and flop onto the deck, my tail dribbling all over the pavement. A little girl wearing a diaper points and laughs delightedly.

“What’s going on?” Rogers takes a seat next to me. “You gonna faint on me again?”

“No. I thought I saw—” I break off, realizing how ridiculous I’ll sound. I thought I saw Madeline Snow underwater. I work the zipper down to my feet and stand up, holding the tail closed so I don’t wind up flashing anyone and getting arrested for indecency. I feel a little better, though, now that my legs aren’t suctioned together. “Did I really faint?”

Rogers straightens up, too. “Dropped like a pile of rocks,” he says. “Don’t worry, the kids thought it was part of the show. You eat any lunch?”

I shake my head. “Too hot.”

“Come on,” he says, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s get you out of the sun.”

We pass two clowns and a juggler on our way back to the office—all of them subcontracted from a local entertainment company, though I know Doug is out there somewhere, suited up like a magician, doing card tricks—surrounded by thick knots of delighted children.

Still more people are arriving: so many people, it makes you wonder how all of them could exist, how there can be so many individual lives and stories and needs and disappointments. Looking at the line snaking down from the Plank, while the Whirling Dervish spins around on its track, hurling its passengers in tight ellipses and sending sound waves peaking and crashing, I have the weirdest moment of clarity: all the search parties, all the news stories, all the twenty-four-hour updates and tweet blasts from @FindMadelineSnow are pointless.

Madeline Snow is gone forever.

I find Alice in the office, taking her own turn in front of the AC. Donna is not there, thankfully, and the phone keeps ringing, barking shrilly four times and then falling silent again when the automated message—Hello and welcome to Fantasy Land!—kicks on. Rogers insists that I drink three cups of ice water and eat half a turkey sandwich before clocking out.

“Can’t have any accidents on the way home,” he barks, standing over me and glowering as though by the sheer force of eye contact he could make me digest faster.

“You’ll come back for the fireworks, right?” Alice says. She has her shoes up on the desk, and the small room smells faintly sour. Alice has explained, with a shrug, that she was working the Cobra when a girl teetered off the ride, grinning, turned to Alice, and puked directly on her shoes.

“I’ll be back,” I say. The park has extended hours for the anniversary party: we’ll be open until 10:00 p.m., with fireworks beginning at nine. I’m starting to get nervous. Only a few more hours to go. “I’ll be back for sure.”

Tonight Dara and I wake the beast together. Tonight we ride the Gateway up to the stars.

FEBRUARY 22

Dara’s Diary Entry

Ariana and I went to the Loft to hang out with PJ and Tyson, and then she spent the whole night shoving her tongue down Tyson’s throat and trying to convince us to skinny-dip even though it was, like, fifty degrees. There was another guy there who owns a club in East Norwalk called Beamer’s. He even brought champagne, the real kind. He kept saying I could be a model, until I told him to stop feeding me horseshit. Models are, like, ten feet tall. Still, he was cute. Older, but definitely cute.

He said if I ever needed a job I could waitress for him and make two or three hundred a day, easy. (!!) That sure as shit beats babysitting Ian Sullivan every other day and trying to keep him from putting his cat in the microwave or burning caterpillars with matchsticks. I swear that kid is going to be a serial killer when he grows up.

PJ was in a bad mood because he was supposed to get mushrooms, but I guess his guy ran out. Instead we just drank Andre’s champagne and took shots of some nasty shit this girl brought home from France, which tasted like swallowing licorice and rubbing alcohol at the same time.

I know Dr. Lick Me would tell me I was just trying to avoid my feelings again, but let me tell you something: it didn’t work. All night I kept thinking about Parker. Why the hell is he acting like I have some flesh-eating disease all of a sudden? Hot and cold doesn’t even begin to describe it. More like lukewarm and frigid.

So I kept puzzling out little hints and vibes he’s been giving me in the past couple of weeks, and all of a sudden I had this moment of total clarity. I’ve been such a fucking idiot.

Parker’s in love with somebody else.

Nick

7:15 p.m.

I’m meeting Mom and Dad at Sergei’s, since they’ll both be coming straight from work. I have no idea how Dara’s planning to get there, but she isn’t home when I stop in to change. The AC unit is going full blast and all the lights are off; still, the house is old, and just like it has its own rhythms, patterns of creaks and groans and mysterious banging sounds, it has its own internal temperature, which today seems to have settled at around eighty degrees.