All the Rage(44)

“No, forget it. I should go.”

“Okay. I’ll get the check.” I pick up the plate and hesitate.

Her phone vibrates. She turns it off quickly and presses her lips together and for a minute, I think she’s trying not to cry. Something’s definitely not right, but I don’t know what, if anything, I should do. I feel like I should be like how Caro was with me at her house. I should understand just enough to say the right thing. I stand there instead, the plate of uneaten food in my hand. She saves me, like before.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m being weird, I know.”

“Not weird. Are you okay?”

“I’m overdue.” She points at her stomach. “If nothing starts happening very soon, they’re going to induce me. Maybe they’ll even cut this kid out of me, with my luck.”

“I was a cesarean,” I say unhelpfully.

“Yeah?”

“Yep. I was early, though, like four weeks. And when the doctor made the incision, he actually cut me, so I was the only baby in the maternity ward with a Band-Aid on my ass.”

Caro laughs. “Cute.”

“So you’re okay?”

She shrugs. “I was in a car accident the other day.”

“Oh my God.” I set the plate down. “Leon never said—”

“Leon doesn’t know.”

“Were you hurt? Was it bad?” I peer out at the parking lot and my eyes immediately land on a dark gray sedan with a crumpled bumper. “Is that yours? The sedan?”

“Yep. I’m not hurt.” She looks at the car. “It wasn’t my fault. Some * behind me was texting when the light turned red. Today, I was supposed to see my doctor and set an appointment for membrane stripping, which might jump-start my labor. I didn’t show and now Adam’s furious.”

“That’s not good,” I say.

“He’ll get over it,” she says. “I was on my way there before I came here. It just hit me, if it works…” She pauses. “I’m going to have this kid and I’m going to be a mother and … I want that so much, Romy, I can’t even tell you … but the accident made me—I don’t know. I thought I was ready for this and now I guess I feel like it doesn’t need to happen anytime soon, so—” She forces a laugh. “Why not stop in at Swan’s and have a burger? So stupid.”

“It’s not stupid.”

“Well, let’s not talk about it anymore.” Caro’s eyes fix on something behind me, and I realize it’s the MISSING posters. “That’s so sad.”

“There’s a volunteer search party on Monday,” I say. “I’m going. They did a search—the police did, the weekend it happened but…”

“Well, I hope something turns up this time. Something good.”

“Excuse me?” a girl’s voice across the aisle. “Can we get the check?”

The runners are finished. They’ve been finished a while, judging from their crossed arms and unimpressed faces. “With you in a minute,” I say to them, and to Caro, “Is there anything else I can get you or…?”

“Just the check is fine.”

I toss Caro’s uneaten meal and get both tables their checks. After she’s paid, she yawns. “Guess I’ll go deal with my ornery husband.”

“Good luck.”

“Don’t need it. Take care, Romy.”

“You too.”

Before she steps back into the heat, she smiles at me like we have a secret, just us girls. The niceness of it hits me like that kind of niceness does, reminds me of a space that is always open and empty inside me, that didn’t used to be. I watch Caro cross the parking lot. Her enormous belly leads her way and I can’t even imagine what that’s like, having a person inside you, making life. There’s a miracle there, but there’s something so awful about it too, bringing someone into all this now, this world where a girl can’t even trust a drink that passes her lips. I can’t figure out the kind of heart it takes to do something like that.





“are you sure you want to do this?”

I study my reflection in the mirror. Mom watches me from my bedroom door. I won’t be wearing yellow today, but I pick up the white Penny ribbon and pin it to my shirt.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“There’s going to be a lot of people there. I don’t think one more is going to make a difference.” She steps into the room. “You don’t need to go, Romy.”

The search will extend into the woods on the opposite side of the lake, and after, depending how it goes, The Find Penny Effort will begin the process of covering the highways and back roads from Grebe to Ibis. Our footsteps pressed in every place we think hers might have been. If we find nothing, do we stop? Or do we run through those places again and again, until we finally see her in them?

“I want to,” I say.

“What if somebody gives you a hard time?”

“Be like any other day, then.”

She winces. “I could go with you.”

“I don’t need you there.”


“Maybe I want to look for Penny too.” But I can see in her eyes that even if she thinks Penny deserves to be found, she doesn’t think Penny deserves to be looked for by us. It’s moments like these I understand my mother the most. I feel like I’m her daughter. “Why do you want to put yourself through this?”