Vanishing Girls

“You,” he spits out, and I can’t move, can’t react. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He takes two steps toward me, releasing his hold on the banister. I don’t think. I just run. I barrel past him and he stumbles backward, giving me just enough space to reach the stairs.

Down, down, down, the metal steps chattering like teeth under my weight, little bursts of pain exploding in my ankles and knees.

“Hey! Stop! Stop.”

I hurtle out onto the beach, a sob working its way out of my throat, turn right, fighting blindly up the shore. Andre bursts out of the lighthouse after me.

“Listen. Listen. I just want to talk to you.”

I lose my footing on the rocks and go down, accidentally releasing my hold on the bracelet. For one terrifying second, I can’t find it again; I rake blindly through the wet sand and the shallow swirls of water, dragging like fingers back toward the ocean. I can hear Andre’s footsteps drumming on the beach behind me, the shallow huff of his breathing.

My fingers close on metal. The bracelet. I scoop it up and push back to my feet, ignoring the hard ache in my legs, cutting up the slope toward the highway. Sandwort nips at my bare skin, but I ignore that, too.

I pull myself up between the rocks, using thick ropes of beach grass for purchase, sand slipping beneath my feet, threatening to send me tumbling backward. The growth is so thick, I can barely make out the highway: just the sudden dazzle of headlights, lighting up a vast network of Virginia creeper and sea oats, as a car sweeps by. I keep pushing, holding one arm up to my face to shield it, feeling like I’m the knight in a fairy tale, trying to fight my way through an enchanted forest that just keeps growing thicker and thicker.

But this isn’t a fairy tale.

Andre crashes through the underbrush, cursing. But he’s falling back. I risk a glance behind me and see a cluster of switchgrass tossing violently as he attempts to work his way around it. At last the growth releases me and all at once the highway is there, the smooth ribbon of pavement glistening like oil in the moon.

I scramble the last few feet up to the road, doubling over, crunching over empty cans and plastic bags. I hop the divider and turn left—away from Orphan’s Beach, away from Beamer’s, toward the empty coastline where the houses are unfinished and the beach splinters increasingly into huge formations of stone. I can lose him out there in the darkness. I can hide until he gives up.

I take off down the road, sticking close to the divider. A car blasts by me in a hot rush of sound and exhaust, windows rattling with bass, blaring the horn. Somewhere in the far distance, police sirens are wailing—someone hurt or dead, another life destroyed.

I twist around. Andre has made it up to the highway now. It’s too dark to see his face.

“Jesus Christ,” he shouts. “Are you out of your—”

But whatever else he says gets whipped away as another car blows by.

More sirens now. I haven’t been this far south since the night of the accident, and everything looks unfamiliar: on one side of the highway, spiky stones rising up from the beach; on the other, craggy hills and pine tree.

Did Madeline Snow run this way? Did he catch her and bring her back to the lighthouse?

Did she scream?

I turn around again, but there’s nothing behind me but empty road: Andre has either given up or fallen back. I slow down, heaving in breaths, my lungs burning. The pain is everywhere now; I feel like a wooden doll about to splinter apart.

The night around me has turned very still. If it weren’t for the sirens, still shrieking—getting closer?—the world would feel like an oil painting of itself, perfectly immobile, clothed in dark.

It must have been right around here that Nick and I crashed. A strange feeling comes over me, like there’s a wind blowing straight through my stomach. But there’s no wind: the trees are motionless. Still, a chill moves down my spine.

Pull over.

Bright starbursts of memory: images suddenly illumined, like comets in the dark.

No. Not until we finish talking.

We are finished talking. For good.

Dara, please. You don’t understand.

I said, pull over.

Ten feet ahead of me, the divider twists away from the highway. A portion of metal has been snapped clean away. Faded silk ribbons hang side by side along the portion that’s still intact. They sway ever so slightly, like weeds disturbed by an invisible current A battered wooden cross is staked in the dirt, and the huge rock face just beyond the breach is covered in scraps of paper and bits of fabric, mementos, and messages.

Several new bouquets are grouped around the cross, and even from a few feet away I recognize a stuffed animal that belongs to Ariana. Mr. Stevens: her favorite teddy bear. She even buys him a Christmas present every year—always a different accessory, like an umbrella or a hard hat.

Mr. Stevens has a new accessory: a ribbon around his neck, with a message inked in marker on the fabric. I have to squat down to read it.

Happy birthday, Dara. I miss you every day.

Time yawns open, slows down, stills. Only the sirens shatter the silence.

Notes, water-warped, now indecipherable—faded silk flowers and key chains—and in the center of it all—

A photograph. My photograph. The yearbook photo from sophomore year, the one I always said I hated, the one where my hair is too short.

And beneath it, a shiny metal plaque screwed into the stone.

RIP, DARA JACQUELINE WARREN. YOU’LL LIVE IN OUR HEARTS FOREVER.

The sirens are screaming now, so loud I can feel the noise all the way in my teeth—so loud I can’t think. And then, all at once, noise returns to the world in a rush of wind, a tumult of rain that comes sweeping in from the ocean, blowing me backward. The world is lit up in flashes. Red and white. Red and white.