All the Rage(39)

“I didn’t know you and Penny Young had a history,” she says. “I might have done things a little differently if I had.”

“I shouldn’t have run my mouth at you like that. I’m sorry, Holly.”

She nods. She pats the space of wall next to her. I lean against it.

“You’re right,” she says after a minute. “You’re not my daughter, but I’ll be damned if I don’t worry about you girls. I worry about my daughter and the shit she seems determined to get herself into, lately. I worry about Annette and that loser she’s decided to move in with. I worry about you when you wander off and now I’m worried about this Penny Young, who I don’t even know, because I have a daughter. Anytime something bad happens to a woman close to me, it’s how I think. I have a daughter.”

“You have a son.”

She shakes her head. “It’s not the same.”

“They’re going to find her,” I say. “Alive.”

She tosses the cigarette and grinds it out.

When it’s time for me to clock out, I leave through the front door, try to get a good look at those posters again. My eyes are on Penny and her eyes are on me, until I round the building. I’m unlocking my bike from the bike rack when a truck pulls up beside me. There’s a parking spot so close, I don’t realize the man inside the truck is talking to me until he’s repeating himself.

“I said, where you headed on that bike, this late?” I turn. His arm hangs lazily over his open window. He looks young—early thirties, maybe—but the kind of young that’s been in the sun too long. He sniffs. “Not safe to be out this late around here. A girl’s missing.”

I imagine her getting into a truck like this. Getting into this truck.

“What would you know about that?” I ask him.

He smiles, taps his fingers against the outside of the door for a long minute, and then he shakes his head and drives away.





todd is on the front porch when I get home.

He sits on the lawn chair, his feet propped up on the blue cooler, a half-drunk bottle of beer resting between his thighs. His head is tilted back and his eyes are closed. It looks like a life worth having and it’s strange, appreciating his repose. Whenever I’d see a glass or bottle in my father’s hands, my whole body would steel itself for the inevitable drama of a man who didn’t know when to say when. Todd—I know he’ll stop here, at this one drink, and if he doesn’t, he won’t go past two. I push through the screen door and he cracks his eyes open.

“Your mom’s running errands. How was school?”

“It was school.”

But it wasn’t, not really. Penny’s absence is changing the landscape and it feels less and less like a place we go to learn and more a place we exist just to soak in the shock of it.

This morning, I watched Alek watch himself on the video announcements. His chin rested in his clasped hands as he mouthed along to his lines about the search party next week as he spoke them on-screen. It was like he was dying in two realities—on TV and in the flesh.

Brock, who always waits for Alek between classes they don’t share, who always plays errand boy for Alek for whatever Alek might need, who always provides a barrier between his best friend and the rest of the world like a personal bodyguard, now filters this routine through her disappearance. Brock waits by doors dutifully, so Alek won’t walk alone, Brock stands in the lunch line and gets two lunches so Alek won’t have to receive sickly sweet condolences from the cafeteria workers who slop food onto his tray, and Brock stands in front of any questions about Penny Alek might not want to answer himself.

“You doing okay?” Todd asks.

“Sure.”

He picks at the label on his bottle. I can tell he doesn’t buy it, but I don’t know what Todd’s definition of okay is. Maybe it’s some impossible standard we’re all going to fail to meet. Besides, I don’t see how I’m not okay, all things considered.

Before he can reply, the phone rings from the kitchen and a half second later, the ring echoes upstairs. The landline is a holdover from Mary’s time. Mom tried to convince Todd to get rid of it because we all have cell phones now—well, most of us—and it’s just one extra bill to pay, but Todd refuses. He says the day one of us needs an ambulance or something will be the day every cell phone in our place dies. The way our luck runs, I think he might be right.

He gets up slowly and follows me in. I toss my bag on the floor while he goes into the kitchen to answer the call.

“Bartlett here,” he says and it makes me smile. I don’t even really know why. I slip out of my shoes. “Uh, just a—hey. Romy?”

I turn and he stands in the hall, the phone cord stretched all the way from the far kitchen wall, the receiver pressed against his chest. He looks at me weird. It makes my skin prickle.

“It’s for you,” he says. “It’s the sheriff’s department.”

*

the grebe sheriff’s Department is hidden behind the main street, across the road from the post office. I coast up to the small building on my bike, hop off and rest it flat on the sidewalk, blocking the entrance. I hesitate at the front door, my palm flush against it. It’s not that I expect everything to stop when I walk in. It will go on like however it always does, but whoever sees me— When I’m gone, they’ll open their mouths.