All the Missing Girls(64)

A girl in a skirt on the outside of the cart, her best friend whispering in her ear, her boyfriend watching from below. Maybe we did bring it on ourselves.

This right here was the closest I’d felt to Corinne in a long time. I could feel her cold hands at my elbows, hear her breath at my ear, smell the spearmint gum on her whisper. If I could just close my eyes and reach across time and hold her wrist. Wrap my arms around her for no reason at all. I wouldn’t dare. I never dared.

Someone slammed into my side—a little kid, maybe three years old, colliding with me before changing trajectory, running into someone else on his rush inside. His parents gave me a hurried sorry and chased after him. The sun was low, almost gone, and the field lights turned on as I stood there watching. The grounds were garish and exposed, my eyelids slamming closed in response.

I walked between the ticket booths. The grass had always been worn away here; it was mostly dirt with small patches of green. Right near the entrance, right here in this dirt, this was where I fell to my side. This was where Daniel hit me in full view of the Ferris wheel. I spun around, pictured Annaleise leaning against the side of this building, eating her strawberry ice cream. Watching us all.

Me running for Tyler.

Tyler waiting for me.

And Daniel grabbing me by the arm, hitting me across the face.

Tyler lunging, punching Daniel in the face, then crouching beside me. His hands pulling my twisted arm away from my body. “You okay? Nic, are you okay?”

“I don’t know. I don’t . . .” Frantically scrambling in the dirt, standing, leaning on Tyler, feeling everything realign, the burn of the hit, the sting of the moment. “I’m okay,” I said. His hands were everywhere. Pushing my hair aside, over my face, down my neck, my arms, my waist. He glanced over my shoulder, his jaw set, and I saw Corinne jogging toward us. Bailey was in the distance, weaving through the crowd.

I didn’t know if Annaleise was still there. I hadn’t looked again. Maybe she was just outside the entrance. Maybe she’d run behind the building, watching through the stable slats that I could see now, with her doelike eyes. Yes, she had confirmed our alibi, but I was wondering if she had also witnessed what came next.

Tyler had pulled me up, checked me again, asking over and over if I was okay. “Wait here,” he’d said. He stood over my brother, put a hand down, and leaned toward him, said something in his ear. Daniel looked straight at me, straight into me, so I had to look away. “Nic,” he pleaded from across the way, but by then Corinne was already there.

“Bailey, go find some ice,” Corinne had called as she approached, and I could feel her presence taking over, taking control.

I’d walked away. I’d left, taking Tyler with me, and we found the first-aid shed where a man sat in a folding chair, a lump of tobacco in the side of his mouth.

“You kids okay?” he asked, not standing.

“Do you have ice?” Tyler asked.

The man opened a blue cooler at his feet, used a plastic cup to scoop some ice into a Ziploc bag for me.

Tyler checked me over again, asked me if I was okay again, his hands running everywhere.

“Tyler,” I said. “Your hand.” Two knuckles were scraped, as if they’d hit the wrong angle on one of Daniel’s sharp edges, and his fingers were discolored. I asked the attendant for Band-Aids.

He eyed Tyler’s hand. “Might be broke,” he said.

“It’s fine,” Tyler said, pulling me away. “Come on.”

But I could see the man was right; it was swelling and red, and Tyler kept it hanging limply by his side.

“Tyler—”

“I’ll take a bag of ice, too,” he mumbled.

“At least go wash it off,” I said.

He nodded. “Okay. You won’t move?”

“I’ll be right here,” I said. But the second he was out of sight, all I could picture was Daniel sitting in the dirt, his bloody nose, and the way he said my name. The way he looked at me. I had to talk to him. We had to talk. About this. Right now. Even back then, I could sense how pivotal this moment was. How our entire futures somehow hung in the balance of this conversation.

I’d gone out to the dirt circle to find Daniel, but nobody was there. I thought maybe they’d all been escorted out, or someone had called security on us. I walked past the stables and didn’t see him anywhere in the parking lot, either.

I turned to go back in, back to Tyler, when I heard Corinne’s soft words somewhere out of sight. I passed the stables to my right—her voice, her laughter, drawing me in.

I saw Corinne first. Behind the building just outside the fair, holding a wet paper towel to my brother’s face. Her head on his shoulder. Her other hand under his shirt, at his waistband, trailing over his skin. I watched her gently press her lips to his jaw and whisper something in his ear. And from her posture, from the way my brother was relaxed against the wall, I knew this wasn’t the first time. I knew he saw me because he moved his hands quickly and ineffectively, pushing her off, before I spun away. And I heard her words cut into him in displeasure as he pushed her back. But it was too late.

He lied, and he knows I know it. He knows I lied for him, too. Never, I said. Never.

I wondered if Annaleise saw that. If she was in the trees somewhere. Or crouched between the cars in the parking lot. She was too young to get home on her own. She would have needed an adult. She must’ve been nearby.