Vanishing Girls

“What?” I ask finally.

She bends over, setting down the smoothie on the stairs. When she straightens up again, she reaches for my hands. “She isn’t mad at you, you know. She just misses you.”

Her hands are freezing, but I don’t pull away. “She told you that?” Aunt Jackie nods. “You—you talk to her?”

“Almost every day,” Aunt Jackie says, shrugging. “I spoke with her for a long time this morning.”

I pull away, taking a step backward, nearly tripping on Aunt Jackie’s bag, which is slumped, body-like, in the middle of the hall. Dara used to make fun of Aunt Jackie for her patchouli smell and weird vegan concoctions and endless chatter about meditation and reincarnation. And now they’re besties? “She won’t talk to me at all.”

“Have you asked?” she says, with a pitying look. “Have you really tried?”

I don’t answer. I brush past Aunt Jackie, take the stairs two at a time up both flights to Dara’s room, which is also dark, also empty. The birthday card is still sitting on her pillow, exactly where it was this morning. Could she have been out since last night? Where could she have gone? To Ariana’s, maybe. Or maybe—suddenly the answer is so obvious I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me before—she’s with Parker. They’re probably together on some crazy Dara-inspired adventure, trying to make it to North Carolina and back in twenty-four hours, or camped out together in an East Norwalk motel, throwing potato chips to the gulls from their window.

I pull out my phone and dial Dara’s number. It rings five times before going to voice mail. So either she’s busy—if she is with Parker, I don’t want to think about what she’s busy with—or ignoring me.

I text her instead.

Meet me in front of the Gateway @ FanLand. 10 p.m.

I hit send.

There. I’ve asked, just like Aunt Jackie said I should.

Downstairs, Aunt Jackie has retreated to the den. I root around in the kitchen for a key to Dara’s car. Finally I find a spare nestled in the back of the junk drawer, behind a bunch of highlighters and half a dozen matchbooks.

“You going somewhere?” Aunt Jackie calls as I head for the door.

“Work,” I call back, and don’t wait for her reply.

Dara’s car smells earthy and strange, like there’s fungus growing beneath the seat cushions. It’s been months since I’ve been behind the wheel of a car, and a tiny shiver of dread passes through me when I turn the key in the ignition. The last time I drove was on the night of the accident, down on that bleak portion of 101 that shoulders up to the stone-rutted coast, with its thick nests of sandwort and gnarled beach plum trees. I haven’t gone back there; I haven’t wanted to.

That road leads nowhere.

I back out of the driveway, careful to avoid the trash cans, feeling awkward and a little jumpy behind the wheel. But after a few minutes, I relax. Rolling down the windows, turning onto the highway, gathering speed, I feel the tension in my chest break apart slightly. Dara still hasn’t responded to my text, but that doesn’t mean anything. She’s never been able to resist a surprise. Besides, the 22 goes straight to FanLand. She may have blown off dinner just to get to the park a little early.

At FanLand, the parking lot is still packed, though immediately I can tell the crowd has changed: there are fewer minivans and SUVs, more beat-up secondhand Accords, some thumping with bass, some releasing fine plumes of sweet-smelling smoke from the cracked windows, as kids pass back and forth into the lot to drink or get high. As soon as I park, I start scanning for Dara, ducking low to try and see past the fog-patterned windows without trying to look like I’m looking.

“Hey, sweetheart. Nice ass!” a guy shouts from a nearby car, and his friends erupt into laughter. I can hear a girl shriek in the backseat, “She does not.”

Three boys, maybe a little younger than I am, are standing in front of Boom-a-Rang’s, lighting off sparklers right on the pavement and throwing snaps as hard as they can so they crack off in a cloud of gas.

The fireworks have started. As soon as I pass through the FanLand gates, a huge shower of gold lights up the sky, trailing long tentacles like a glittering sea creature pinned up in the sky. The next one is blue, and then red, these brief, tight bursts, small fists of color.

Dara must be here. She must have come.

I push through the crowds still milling down Green Row, lining up to shoot basketballs through hoops or to try their hand on the strength hammer. It’s all lights and flash, the ring-ring-ring of games starting and ending, kids shrieking with joy or disappointment, the sky lit up green or purple or startling blue as the fireworks attain some height and, miraculously, transform, scattering like ashes across the underbelly of the clouds. I wonder how high they know to go.

I turn toward the Gateway: it, too, is lit up in flashes, its high point gleaming like a burnished nail.

The lawns are crowded with blankets and picnicking families. I’m skirting the merry-go-round when someone hooks an arm around my neck. I spin around, thinking Dara, and am disappointed when it’s just Alice, laughing, her hair coming loose from her braids. Immediately, I can tell she’s a little drunk.

“We did it!” she says, flinging an arm out as though to take in the sky, the rides, everything: and I remember what she said, that she wanted to die at the very top of the Ferris wheel. “Where’d you go?”

“I had a thing,” I say. She has changed out of her work shirt and is wearing a flowing tank top that shows off two more tattoos, wing tips peeking out beneath her shoulder straps. I’ve never seen her without her uniform before, and in that moment she looks almost like a stranger.