Vanishing Girls

It’s already hot, even though the sun has just edged over the horizon and the sky is still stained a deep blue. The crickets are going crazy, threshing the air into layers of sound. I peel the banana I pulled from the kitchen before realizing it’s rotten. I chuck it into the woods.

On the bus, which is mostly empty, I take the last seat. Someone has carved the initials DRW into the window, big. Dara’s initials. I briefly imagine her sitting where I’m sitting, bored, taking a penknife to the glass while on her way to God knows where.

The number 22 goes from Somerville all the way down the coast, and curves along Heron Bay and its clutter of cheap motels and faux-timber resorts, past a long blur of diners and T-shirt shops and ice cream parlors, into East Norwalk, a place thick with bars and shitty lingerie stores and XXX-video stores and strip clubs. FanLand is right off Route 101, only a mile or so away from the crash site: a no-name place of low-lying marshland and twisted shrubbery and studded outcroppings of rock, carried down to the beach by some long-ago glacier, still getting sawed slowly into sand by the motion of the waves.

I don’t know what we were doing there. I don’t remember why we crashed, or how. My memory is looped over a single moment, like a thread snagged on something sharp: the moment my hands were off the wheel and the headlights lit up a wall of rock. Dad suggested not too long ago that I visit the site of the crash, said that I might find it “healing.”

I wonder if my license plate is still there, lying mangled in the sun-bleached grass, if there’s glass still glittering between the rocks.

By the time we reach FanLand—which shares a parking lot with Boom-a-Rang, the state’s Largest Firecracker Emporium, according to the sign—the only other person on the bus is an ancient man with a face the color of a tobacco stain. He disembarks with me but doesn’t even glance up, just heads slowly across the lot toward Boom-a-Rang, head down, as if he’s moving against a hard wind.

Already I’m sweating through my T-shirt. Across the street, the gas station parking lot is full of cop cars. One of the sirens is turning soundlessly, sweeping the walls and pumps with intermittent red light. I wonder whether there was a robbery; this area has gotten worse over the years.

FanLand has a mascot, a pirate named Pete who’s featured on billboards and placards all over the park, warning people not to litter and about the height minimum for various rides. The first thing I see when I enter the park through the gate, which is unlocked, is Mr. Wilcox, scraping gum off a twelve-foot-tall Pirate Pete grinning a welcome down to park visitors. A big, glossy sign is tacked to Pirate Pete’s shoulder, concealing the parrot I know should be there. It reads CELEBRATING 75 YEARS!!

“Nick!” When he sees me, he puts an arm above his head to wave, as if I’m four hundred feet away from him instead of fourteen. “Great to see you. Great to see you. Welcome to FanLand!” He pulls me into a crushing hug before I can resist. He smells like Dove soap and, weirdly, car oil.

Two things about Mr. Wilcox: he always says things twice, and he obviously missed a few educational seminars on sexual harassment. Not that he’s a creep. He’s just big into hugs.

“Hi, Mr. Wilcox,” I say, my voice muffled by his shoulder blade, which is roughly the size of a ham hock. Finally I manage to extract myself, though he keeps a hand on my back.

“Please,” he says, beaming. “Here at FanLand, I’m just Greg. You’ll call me Greg, won’t you? Come on, come on. Let’s get you suited up. I was thrilled when your mom told me you were back in town and looking for work, just absolutely thrilled.”

He pilots me toward a small yellow building half-concealed behind a wall of fake potted palms, and in through a door he unlocks with one of the keys he has strung to a massive key ring on his belt. The whole time, he never stops talking, or smiling.

“Here we are, the keys to the castle. This is the front office—nothing too fancy, you’ll see, but it does the job quite nicely. If I’m not out and about, I’ll usually be in here, and we’ve got some first aid kits, too, if anybody loses a finger. Kidding, kidding. But we do have first aid kits.” He gestures to the saggy shelves above a desk cluttered with receipts, rolls of ride tickets, and various scrawled drawings that look to be from children thanking “Pirate Pete” for such a great day. “Don’t touch the Coke in the fridge, or Donna—she’s my secretary, you’ll meet her soon enough—will have your head, but you’re welcome to any of the waters, and if you want to BYO lunch and keep it cold, go right ahead.” He slaps the refrigerator to emphasize the point. “Same thing with valuables—phone, wallet, love letters—kidding, kidding!—we can lock ’em up right here at the start of your shift and they’ll be safe as anything. Here you are. Throw this on”—this, as he tosses me a scratchy red T-shirt emblazoned with an image of Pirate Pete’s grinning face, which I can tell is going to sit right over my left boob—“and we’ll get you started. Welcome to the team! Bathrooms are just past the photo booth on the left.”

I leave my bag in the office with Mr. Wilcox and head to the bathrooms, which are indicated by means of a wooden parrot sign. I haven’t been to FanLand since I was maybe eight or nine and much of it feels unfamiliar, though I’m sure it hasn’t changed, and I have a brief flash of memory as soon as I enter the bathroom stall of standing with Dara in our wet bathing suits, water pooling on the concrete, shivering and giggling after a long day in the sun, our fingers sticky with cotton candy, running ahead of our parents, holding hands, while our flip-flops slapped on the puddled pavement.