Vanishing Girls

Anger itches its way up through my skin. “You’re not serious.” At the start of the summer, I landed a job behind the concessions kiosk at the Palladium, the movie theater at Bethel Mall just outside of Main Heights: the world’s easiest, stupidest job. Most days the whole mall is empty except for moms in spandex pushing baby strollers, and even when they come to the Palladium they never order anything but Diet Coke. All I have to do is show up and I get $10.50 an hour.

“I’m dead serious.” Mom folds her hands on the table, her knuckles gripped so tightly I can see every bone. “Your father and I think you need a little more structure this summer,” she says. Amazing that my parents can only find time to stop hating each other to team up against me. “Something to keep you busy.”

Busy. Like stimulated, that word is parent-speak for: supervised at all times and bored out of your mind.

“I’m busy at the Palladium,” I say, which is a complete lie.

“You mix butter into popcorn, Nicki,” Mom says. A crease appears between her eyebrows, as if someone has just pressed a thumb to her skin.

Not always, I nearly say.

She stands up, cinching her bathrobe a little tighter. Mom runs summer-school sessions Monday through Thursday. I guess since it’s Friday she didn’t bother getting dressed, even though it’s after 2:00 p.m. “I’ve spoken to Mr. Wilcox,” she says.

“No.” The itch has become a full-blown panic. Greg Wilcox is a creepy old guy who used to teach math at Mom’s school, until he chucked academia for a job managing the world’s oldest, most pathetic amusement park, Fantasy Land. Since the name makes it sound like a strip club, everyone calls it FanLand. “Don’t even say it.”

Apparently she isn’t listening. “Greg said he’s short-staffed this summer, especially after—” She breaks off, making a face as if she’s sucking on a lemon, meaning she almost said something she shouldn’t have. “Well, he could use an extra pair of hands. It’ll be physical, it’ll get you outside, and it will be good for you.”

I’m getting pretty sick of my parents forcing me to do things while pretending it’s for my benefit.

“This isn’t fair,” I say. I almost add, You never make Dara do anything, but I refuse to mention her, just like I refuse to ask where she is. If she’s going to pretend I don’t exist, I can do the same for her.

“I don’t have to be fair,” she says. “I’m your mom. Besides, Dr. Lichme thinks—”

“I don’t care what Dr. Lichme thinks.” I shove away from the table so hard the chair screeches on the linoleum. The air in the house is thick with heat and moisture: no central air. This is what my summer will be like: instead of lying in Dad’s spare bedroom with the AC cranked up and all the lights off, I’ll be sharing a house with a sister who hates me and slaving away at an ancient amusement park solely attended by freaks and old people.

“Now you’re starting to sound like her, too.” Mom looks totally exhausted. “One is enough, don’t you think?”

It’s typical of Dara that she can become not only the topic of but also a force in the conversation even when she isn’t in the room. For as long as I can remember, people have been comparing me to Dara instead of the other way around. She’s not as pretty as her younger sister . . . shyer than her younger sister . . . not as popular as her younger sister . . .

The only thing I was ever better at than Dara was being ordinary. And field hockey—like running a ball down a field is a great basis for a personality.

“I’m nothing like her,” I say. I leave the kitchen before Mom can respond, almost tripping on the stupid gardening boots in the hall before taking the stairs two at a time. Everywhere are signs of the unfamiliar, little details missing and others added, like several plastic gnome-shaped night-lights outside Mom’s room and nothing but a bare patch of carpet in the office where Dad’s favorite, ugly-ass leather chair used to sit, plus more and more cardboard boxes full of junk, as if another family is slowly moving in or we’re slowly moving out.

My room, at least, is untouched: all the books organized spine-out and the powder-blue coverlet nicely folded and my stuffed animals from when I was a baby, Benny and Stuart, propped up on my pillows. On my bedside table, I spot the framed picture of Dara and me from Halloween when I was a freshman; in it, we’re both dressed like scary clowns, and in our face paint, grinning, we look nearly identical. I cross the room quickly and turn the picture facedown. Then, thinking better of it, I slide the photograph into a drawer.

I don’t know which is worse: that I’m home and so much is different, or that I’m home and so much feels the same.

Overhead, I hear a pattern of creaks. Dara, moving around her attic bedroom. So she is home. Suddenly I’m so angry I could hit something. This is all Dara’s fault. Dara’s the one who decided to stop speaking to me. It’s Dara’s fault I’ve been walking around feeling like I’ve got a bowling ball in my chest, like at any second it might drop straight through my stomach and spill my guts on the floor. It’s her fault I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, and when I do I just feel nauseous.

Once upon a time, we would have laughed together about Dad’s girlfriend, and Dara would have made up a mean code name so we could refer to her without her knowing. Once upon a time, she might have come to work with me at FanLand just to keep me company, just so I wouldn’t have to deal with scrubbing out old-person smell and little-kid vomit from the ancient rides all by myself, and we would have competed over who could spot the most fanny packs in an hour or drink the most Coke without barfing.