Vanishing Girls

“You think this is a fucking game?” I say out loud, and then feel a sudden chill, as if someone has blown air down my back. That’s almost exactly what Unknown said in response to my text.

You think this is a fucking joke?

I stand up, kicking my way through piles of her crap, looking for anything out of place, anything that might be a clue about where she’s gone and why. Nothing. Just the usual clothing and garbage, the same tornado-style chaos Dara leaves behind everywhere. There are four new cardboard boxes piled in the corner—I guess Mom finally asked her to pick up her shit—but they’re empty. I kick one of them and have a short-lived burst of satisfaction when it sails across the room and thuds against the opposite wall.

I’m losing it.

I take a deep breath and, standing in the corner, look again at her room, trying to mentally overlay an image of the room I saw just a few days ago, like fitting slides together and seeing if something doesn’t align. And then something clicks. There’s a plastic bag at the foot of her bed I’m sure wasn’t there earlier in the week.

Inside the bag is a random assortment of stuff: a curling iron, a travel-size bottle of hair spray, a sparkly thong I remove with my pinkie, not sure whether it’s clean or dirty. Four business cards, all of them for random businesses like house painters or actuaries. I flip them all onto the bed, one by one, hoping to find some kind of message.

The last card is for a bar, Beamer’s. I know the place. It’s right off the 101, a half mile south of FanLand, and only a mile or so up the coast from where Dara and I had our accident.

I flip the card over, and right then the whole world sharpens and condenses, funnels down to a name, Andre, and a few numbers scratched in ballpoint. Again, I get that little twinge, like a hidden part of my brain is firing up.I know that number. I texted it less than two hours ago.

U better keep ur mouth shut or else!!!

Weirdly, I don’t even feel afraid. I don’t feel much of anything at all.

It’s not even eleven, and the drive to Beamer’s will take me less than twenty minutes.

Plenty of time.

Nick

11:35 p.m.

As soon as I pull into the parking lot at Beamer’s, I’m disappointed. I was hoping to see another clue, an immediate sign of Dara’s connection to this place. But Beamer’s looks like any one of the dozens of bars that clutter East Norwalk, only lonelier: this close to Orphan’s Beach, where the currents are vicious and deadly, visitors are fewer and so are businesses. Still, the parking lot is full of cars.

Flyers in the darkened windows advertise Ladies’ Nights and drinks with names like Fuzzy Nipple and a VIP party uncreatively named Blackout. There’s even a velvet rope in front of the glass doors, which is ridiculous considering there’s no one waiting to get in, and the single patron who lingers in the parking lot, smoking a cigarette and talking on his phone, is wearing dirty jeans and a sleeveless Budweiser shirt.

I watch Budweiser stub his cigarette out in a bucket presumably provided for that purpose, exhaling smoke through his nose, dragon-style. I’m about to get out of the car and follow him when the door swings open and I see a bouncer, roughly the shape and size of a humpbacked whale, intercept Budweiser on his way in. Budweiser holds up his hand, probably showing him a stamp, and the bouncer withdraws.

I hadn’t counted on needing ID. But of course I do. For a moment, a wave of exhaustion hits me and I think about turning around, angling the car back in the direction of home, leaving Dara to go to hell.

But there’s a stubborn part of me that refuses to give in so quickly. Besides, Dara doesn’t have a fake, at least as far as I know. She always bragged she didn’t need one and could flirt her way into any bar.

If she can do it, I can do it, too.

I flip down the mirror, regretting now the plain scoop-neck tank top and shorts I changed into before leaving the house again, and the fact that I decided to skip anything but a little ChapStick and some mascara. I look pale, and young.

I twist around and reach into the backseat. Like Dara’s room, the upholstery is covered in a thick layer of accumulated clothing and trash. It doesn’t take me long to find a sequined tank top, some lip gloss, and even a cracked three-pack of dark eye shadow. I smear on some dark color with a thumb, trying to remember what Dara always said the few times she convinced me to let her do my makeup, and I emerged from the bathroom unrecognizable and always vaguely uncomfortable, like she had slipped me into a whole different skin: Blend from the bottom, go darker in the crease.

I slick on some lip gloss, take my hair down from my ponytail and finger-comb it, and, after checking to make sure that the parking lot is empty of people, swap out tank tops. Dara’s sequined tank top hangs so low that a bit of my bra—black, thankfully, and not the printed yellow one I usually wear with a coffee stain directly over my left nipple—peeks out from the top.

I check my reflection one last time and get a momentary shock. Dressed in Dara’s clothes, wearing Dara’s makeup, I look more like her than I would have thought possible.

I take a deep breath, grab my bag, and step out of the car. At least I changed out of my sneakers to go to dinner, knowing my dad would lecture me if I didn’t. My gold gladiator sandals even have a teensy bit of a heel.

The bouncer materializes even before I can get a hand on the door, seemingly rising out of the dark murk beyond the glass panes like an underwater creature surfacing. A rush of sound accompanies him out the door: thudding hip-hop music, women laughing, the chatter of dozens of drunk people.

“ID,” he says, sounding bored. His eyes are at half-mast, low-lidded, like a lizard’s.