All the Rage(45)

Because they’ll hang me if I don’t. Because they’ll hang me if I do. Because I think Penny would’ve looked for me. Because if I found her—at least this part of it all would be over.

“I have to.”

“Romy…” At first—just by the way Mom says my name—I think she’s going to tell me I’m brave, that I’m a good person for going, but she doesn’t, which is a relief because it’s not the kind of thing you should pat someone on the back for. She sighs. “If you want a ride home, call and we’ll pick you up. Text me when you get there. If you don’t want a ride, text me before you go, so I know you’re on your way back.”

I tell her I will and then I make sure to tell her I love her because more and more, I’m thinking about the last things I say before I leave.

*

the traffic to the lake is heavy, so out of place for Grebe on a weekday evening. I keep close to the shoulder and then I make my way up the congested path to the lake, passing the cars that just passed me. I stare at the brown pine needles littering the ground.

I walked here, that night. I remember it. That moment ghosts over this one, makes my skin tight, makes my fingers tingle. Every step forward, I swear I hear the fake click of a cell phone camera’s shutter and a picture flickers behind my eyes: a girl on the ground, surrounded. A girl with her hands at her shirt. A girl—some other girl.

I take the white ribbon off and clutch it in my hand.

When the water comes into view, so does the crowd. I stop at the path’s opening, forcing everyone behind me to go around. There must be over a hundred people: kids from school, some with their parents and siblings, most of them decked out in FIND PENNY shirts.

I see faculty members from both the elementary and high schools: Prewitt, DeWitt, Vice Principal Emerson, deputies from the sheriff’s department. Principal Diaz is talking to reporters. There’s Pam Marston from the Grebe News and I’m pretty sure the guy next to her is from the Ibis Daily. It’s surreal. Cars crawl past and fill up the parking spaces. At the center of it all, there’s a long table under a FIND PENNY banner. Brock is manning it and people mill behind him— Penny’s parents.

Seeing them makes me forget how to think. A memory of Penny skitters across my heart. The only way you’d get my parents in the same room for longer than thirty seconds is if I—us, in her room, a year ago. Her bedroom—is if I died.

It’s eerie, what Penny took from her parents. She took Mr. Young’s blond hair and his perfectly straight nose, Mrs. Young’s blue eyes and petite frame. There is an ocean between the two of them, a bitter divorce, and it’s awkward, ugly. I wish they’d fake some kind of closeness, just for this day, but they don’t.

Alek comes up, filling the space, and he looks terrible.

Just beyond him is his mother, Helen. Matriarch. Queen of Grebe, Grebe Auto Supplies. My mouth goes dry.

Her black hair is tied into a tight ponytail and she wears a sky-blue GREBE AUTO SUPPLIES shirt with FIND PENNY emblazoned across the front because she’s the kind of woman who would do that. Print up one color for everyone and wear another herself. She’s tall, imposing, hasn’t changed in the seventeen years I’ve known her. At those company picnics I attended when I was so young I barely came up to her knees, she looked exactly like this.

She turns her head my way, her eyes on me. It makes me cold. She was invisible, after, but I could feel her. Sheriff Turner made it clear the second we might’ve wanted to talk it out with her in the room, it would’ve meant lawyers. Helen Turner hates me and the way Helen Turner hates me feels like the worst kind of betrayal. A woman who doesn’t think about daughters she doesn’t have.

There’s a little bit of time for mingling, for people to express condolences to the Youngs. After that part’s out of the way, Brock brings a megaphone to his mouth. The breath he takes before speaking sends an ear-piercing shriek into the air.

“Once you’ve arrived, make sure you’ve signed in.”

People move to the table as slowly as a herd of overheated animals. I’m about to make myself part of them when the last car rolls up and stops me dead in my tracks. My hand opens and the ribbon drops, flutters onto dead grass. I know that car. I know its body, its color, its backseat and its driver.

Leon.

The Pontiac idles momentarily before he finds one of the last parking spots. He waves to me and my hands stay limp at my sides.

He gets out of the car and makes his way over.

No …

I try to figure out where everyone’s eyes are because they can’t be on us. They can’t connect me to Leon because if they connect me to Leon, if they put us together— “You look not happy,” he says when he’s close enough and when he’s close enough, I step away. I try to smile because I can’t let him know how wrong he’s made everything, except I can’t smile because he’s made everything so wrong. “But that’s probably understandable.”

“What are you doing here?” It comes out harsher than I mean. He frowns.

“I asked Tracey for the night off. I thought I’d come so … you wouldn’t be…” He can’t hide the disappointment in his eyes when how I’m acting isn’t what he wanted. “Moral support. But maybe it wasn’t a good idea.”

It’s not a good idea. It’s a nice one, but now he has to leave, so whatever’s between us can stay nice. I skim the yellow shirts again, make sure more backs are to us than aren’t.