The Leaving(60)

“I heard about your penny, and someone recognized you?” Kristen flipped a page in the magazine she wasn’t really reading.

“It was a crazy feeling.” Everything about the guard’s face—his stained teeth, his unruly brows—was now etched in her mind. She’d felt the spark of a new, amazing feeling when his eyes showed recognition of who she actually was. She was not just some missing child, newly returned, not some walking headline.

“And you’re sure he didn’t just see you on the news?”

“He described a jacket I used to wear,” she said. “How it was homemade. And I went home and sat down at Tammy’s sewing machine, and it turns out I know how to sew. Like, I think I made the jacket.”

“Do you remember the jacket?” In spite of her questions, Kristen seemed to be losing interest; she looked at her magazine and flipped a few pages. She landed on a page with a row of models wearing formal gowns.

“I don’t.” Scarlett liked the fabric of one of the dresses, the color of another. “But I think you just gave me an idea. I should make it again.”

It was, at the very least, something concrete she could do.

“But you just said you don’t remember it.”

“No, but I could just make a jacket that I’d like to make. My taste. See how it turns out. See if maybe it’s the kind of thing more people would recognize or something.”

“It’s a stretch.” Kristen closed her magazine.

“Everything’s a stretch,” Scarlett said back.

“So.” Kristen lay back in her chair. “You can sew. Sarah can maybe draw, we think? Lucas has this camera and tattoo thing going on even though I have no idea how that might lead to anything. And you swallowed a penny. What kind of clue do I have?”

“You really can’t think of anything?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been writing a lot. Like I started keeping a journal. I saw a blank book and I just picked it up and started writing.”

Fascinating.

But how would . . . ?

“Maybe you kept one when we were gone?”

“But where is it? And also what about Adam? What does Adam have? What if we need all these things to work together to even mean anything?”

“Maybe we only need a few,” Scarlett said. “Maybe we had no idea what we would or wouldn’t remember and were trying to cover our bases.”

A girl walking along the beach, flip-flops dangling from her hands, stopped. She was flanked by two other girls. She had long blond hair and wore pink sunglasses, which she lifted off her face and perched atop her head. “Ohmygod, Scarlett?”

“No comment,” Kristen said.

But it wasn’t media. Just girls.

Normal girls.

Who looked like maybe they were on their way to a party.

The look of them made Scarlett self-conscious.

Were her eyebrows all wrong?

Hair all wrong?

She had no idea.

Thought she didn’t care.

Maybe she did.

“I’m Vanessa,” she said. “We used to be friends. You know, when we were little.”

Scarlett recognized her from a photograph in her bedroom. She said, “I have a picture of us holding these ridiculously big stuffed horses.”

Vanessa nodded. “My parents took us to the circus.”

Kristen stood. “Do you remember me? Were we friends?”

Vanessa stiffened. “I’m sorry. I don’t think so.”

“Oh, don’t be sorry.” Kristen grabbed cigarettes from her bag. “I’m going to take a walk.” She marched off toward the water.

“How are you holding up?” Vanessa took Kristen’s seat and pulled her sunglasses back down. Her friends had lost interest and wandered off.

“As well as can be expected, given the circumstances.”

“I heard your mom went off the deep end.”

“Indeed she did.”

“Is she back now? Now that you’re back?”

“We’re working on it.”

“You think they’re ever going to find Max? Figure the whole thing out?”

“I honestly have no idea.”

Vanessa said, “You gave me a necklace right before. It was one of those best-friend hearts cut in half. I still have it.”

“I’ll have to look around upstairs.”

She nodded. “For a long time my mother told me you’d just moved. I didn’t understand why you didn’t say good-bye. I cried a lot. Wasn’t that an awful thing of her to do?”

“How else was she going to explain?”

“I don’t know.” Vanessa shrugged. “It just seems like the truth is always the better option.”

“Oh, sorry, honey, your best friend and five other kids just disappeared without a trace tonight. Night-night!”

Vanessa laughed. “You’re funny. You were always funny.”

“First I’ve heard of it,” Scarlett said.

“I should go.” Vanessa stood and wagged a flip-flop down the beach, where her friends had stopped to wait.

“Sure,” Scarlett said. “Have fun. Thanks for stopping.”

By the water, Kristen was standing and smoking, her ankles buried in sand. Scarlett tried to let her gaze go fuzzy while she watched again for slick gray arched backs to pop up out of the water.