Vanishing Girls

Weirdly, though, I’m not totally hating her company. There’s something comforting about the never-ending rhythm of her conversation, and the way she treats every subject as equally important or equally trivial; I’m not sure which. (Her response earlier this summer to finding out I was in a psychiatric ward: “Oh my God! If they ever make a movie version of your life, I totally want to be in it.”) She’s like the emotional equivalent of a lawn mower, digesting everything into manageable, uniform pieces.

“How’re you holding up, Nick?” Parker, who’s helping dismantle the awnings at one of the pavilions, cups his hands to his mouth to shout to me across the park. I give him a thumbs-up and he grins wide, waving.

“He is so cute,” Avery says, inching her sunglasses down her nose to stare. “Are you sure he isn’t your boyfriend?”

“Positive,” I say, for the hundredth time since Parker dropped us off. But even the idea makes me feel warm and happy, like I’ve had a sip of really good hot chocolate. “We’re just friends. I mean, we’re best friends. Well, we were.” I exhale hard. Avery is staring at me, eyebrows raised. “I’m not sure what we are now. But . . . it’s good.”

We have time. That’s what Parker said to me last night before I went home, taking my face in his hands, planting a single kiss, lightly, on my lips. We have time to figure this out.

“Uh-huh.” Avery looks at me appraisingly for a second. “You know what?”

“What?” I say.

“You should let me do your hair.” She says this so firmly, so adamantly, as if it’s a solution to the whole world’s problems—exactly the way Dara would have said it—I can’t help but laugh. Then, swiftly, I get the deep ache again, the dark well of feeling where Dara should be and always has been. I wonder if I’ll ever think of her again without hurting.

“Maybe,” I tell Avery. “Sure. That would be nice.”

“Awesome.” She unfolds, origami-like, from her lounge chair. “I’m going to get a soda. You want something?”

“I’m okay,” I tell her. “I’m almost done here, anyway.” I’ve been stacking chairs around the wave pool for the past half hour. Slowly, FanLand is collapsing in on itself, or retreating, like an animal going into hibernation. Signs and awnings come down, chairs get carted into storage, the stands are shuttered and the rides padlocked. And it will remain, silent and still and untouched, until May—when once again, the animal will emerge, sloughing off its winter skin, roaring with sound and color.

“Need any help?”

I turn and see Alice moving down the walkway toward me, hauling a bucket of filthy water in which a sponge is bobbing slowly across the surface. She must have been scrubbing down the spinning carousel; she insists on doing it by hand. Her hair is in its trademark braids, and with her ripped T-shirt (Good things come to those who hustle, it reads) and visible tattoos, she looks like some gangster version of Pippi Longstocking.

“I got it,” I say, but she sets the bucket down anyway and falls in next to me, slinging the chairs easily into towering Tetris formations.

I’ve only seen her once since I came back from the hospital, and then only from a distance. For a minute, we work together in silence. My mouth feels suddenly dry. I’m desperate to say something, give her some explanation or even apology, but I can’t come up with a single word.

Then she says abruptly, “Did you hear the good news? Wilcox finally approved new uniforms for next summer,” and I relax, and know that she won’t ask me anything, and doesn’t think I’m crazy, either. “You are coming back next summer, aren’t you?” she says, giving me a hard look.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I hadn’t thought about it.” Strange to think there will even be a next summer: that time is moving on, and carrying me along with it. And for the first time in over a month, I get just the barest flicker of excitement, a sense of momentum and good things coming that I can’t yet see, like trying to catch the tail end of a colored streamer dancing just out of reach.

Alice makes a disapproving noise, as if she can’t quite believe that everyone else doesn’t have the next forty years mapped, plotted, planned, and adequately scheduled.

“We’re going to get the Gateway up and running, too,” she says, heaving the last chair into place with a grunt. “And you know something? I’m going to be first in line to ride that puppy.”

“Why do you care so much?” I blurt out, before I can stop myself. “About FanLand and the rides and . . . all of it. I mean, why do you love it?”

Alice turns to stare at me, and blood rushes to my face; I realize how rude I must have sounded. After a moment, she turns, lifting her hand to her eyes to shield them from the sun. “See that?” she says, pointing to the row of now-shuttered game booths and snack vendors: Green Row, we call it, because of all the money that changes hands there. “What do you see there?”

“What do you mean?” I say.

“What do you see there?” she repeats, growing impatient.

I know this must be a trick question. But I say, “Green Row.”

“Green Row,” she repeats, as if she’s never heard the term. “You know what people see when they come to Green Row?”

I shake my head. I know she doesn’t really expect an answer.

“They see prizes. They see luck. They see opportunities to win.” She pivots in another direction, pointing at the enormous image of Pirate Pete, welcoming visitors to FanLand. “And there. What’s that?” This time, she waits for me to respond.