Vanishing Girls

“Have some,” she says, as if she can tell what I’m thinking; and passes me a flask from her back pocket. “You look like you need it.”

“What is it?” I uncap the bottle and take an experimental sniff. Alice laughs when I make a face.

“Jame-o. Jameson. Go on,” she says, nudging me with an elbow. “Take a load off. FanLand turned seventy-five today. And it doesn’t taste that bad, I promise.”

I take a swig—not because FanLand turned seventy-five, but because she’s right, I do need it—and immediately start coughing. It tastes like lighter fluid going down.

“That’s disgusting,” I choke out.

“You’ll thank me later,” she says, patting me on the back.

She’s right: almost immediately, a fizzy warmth travels from my stomach to my chest, settling somewhere just between my collarbone, like a giggle I’m trying to hold back.

“Wanna come watch from the hill?” she says. “It’s the best view. And Rogers even brought”—she lowers her voice—“like an ounce of pot. We’re taking turns in the maintenance shed.”

“I’ll be there soon,” I say. Suddenly the insanity of what I’m about to do—what Dara and I are about to do—hits me. Then I really do feel the urge to laugh. I take another swig of Jameson before passing the flask back to Alice.

“Come now,” she says. “You’ll never find us.”

“Soon,” I say again. “I promise.”

She shrugs and starts skipping backward down the path. “Up to you,” she says, and raises the flask high, so it momentarily picks up the colored reflection from the sky: this time, a sudden dazzle of pink embers. “Happy anniversary party!”

I raise a pretend glass and watch until she has merged into shadow with the rest of the crowd. Then I take a shortcut, pushing into the stretch of woods that keeps the Gateway relatively isolated: a part of the park once designed, like every other overgrown area, to look tropical and exotic. Stepping off the path feels like stepping into another world. Unlike the other wild stretches, this one has been allowed to grow riotous, and I have to swat creeper vines out of my way and duck underneath the fat, broad leaves of palmetto trees, which reach out like hands to slap me when I pass.

Almost instantly the sound is muffled, as though by a thin sheen of water; the gnats and crickets are buzzing from unseen places, and I can feel the feather-thin sweep of moth wings beating against my bare arms. I shove through the growth, stumbling a little in the dark, keeping my eye on the Gateway’s shimmering point. Distantly I hear a pop-pop-pop and the roar of the crowd: the finale. All of a sudden the sky is a crazy patchwork of colors, colors with no name, blue-green-pink and orange-purple-gold, as the fireworks come hard and fast.

There’s a rustle to my left and muffled laughter; I turn and see a boy hitching up his pants and a girl, laughing, pulling him by the hand. I freeze, terrified for no reason that they’ll think I was spying; then I’m alone again, and I move on.

The final display of fireworks goes up as I fight through the last of the growth; in its glow, a sudden shower of bright green that lights the underside of the clouds the same color as a murky ocean, I see that someone is standing by the Gateway, looking up at its high point.

My heart flips. Dara. Then the tendrils of green light fizzle out again and she becomes nothing but a dark brushstroke, a spiky silhouette against the landscape of steel.

I’ve covered half the distance between us before I realize that it isn’t Dara—of course it isn’t—the posture’s all wrong, and the height, and the clothes, too. But by then it’s too late to stop, and already I’ve half shouted so when he turns around—he—I draw up, horrified, with nothing to say and no excuse to give.

His face is very thin and covered with stubble that in the half-dark looks just like shadow smeared across his jaw. His eyes are sunken and yet weirdly overlarge, like pool balls dropped only halfway into their pockets. Even though I’ve never seen him before, I know him instantly.

“Mr. Kowlaski,” I say reflexively. Maybe I need to name him. Otherwise seeing him, coming across him here, in this way, would be too awful. Like how Dara and I used to name the monsters in our closet so we wouldn’t be so frightened of them, silly names that reduced their power: Timmy was one, and Sabrina. Because there is something awful about him, something haggard and also haunted. It’s as if he’s looking not at me but at a photograph showing a terrible image.

Before he can say anything, Maude appears, shoving past me and immediately linking an arm through Mr. Kowlaski’s, as if they’re partners at a square dance about to do-si-do. She must have been sent to intercept him. As soon as he starts to move, I can tell he’s drunk. He’s stepping extra carefully, like people only do when they’re worried about seeming sober.

“Come on, Mr. Kowlaski,” Maude says, sounding surprisingly cheerful. Funny how she only seems happy during a crisis. “The show’s over. The park will be closing soon. Did you drive here?” He doesn’t answer her. “How about a cup of coffee before you go?”

As they move past me, I have to turn away, hugging myself. His eyes are like two pits; and now I feel as if I’m the one who’s seeing terrible things, seeing all the times I tried to help Dara, to save her, to keep her safe: the times I lied to Mom and Dad for her, scoured her room for Baggies full of white residue or green nubs, confiscated her cigarettes and then, relenting, gave them back when she put her arms around me and her chin on my chest and stared up at me through those silky-dark lashes; the times I found her passed out in the bathroom and brought her instead to bed, while she exhaled the sharp stink of vodka; the notes I forged for her, excusing her from gym or math class, so she wouldn’t get in trouble for cutting; all the bargains I made with God, who I’m not sure I even believe in, when I knew that she’d gone out joyriding, drunk and high, with the random collection of freaks and losers who accumulated around her like a heavy snow, guys who bounced at clubs or managed sleazy bars and hung around high school girls because all the girls their age were too smart to talk to them. If Dara gets home safe, I promise I’ll never ask for anything again. So long as nothing bad happens to Dara, I promise to be extra good. And what happened at the Founders’ Day Ball will never happen again.