Vanishing Girls(10)

“Hi, Mr. Wilcox,” I say, my voice muffled by his shoulder blade, which is roughly the size of a ham hock. Finally I manage to extract myself, though he keeps a hand on my back.

“Please,” he says, beaming. “Here at FanLand, I’m just Greg. You’ll call me Greg, won’t you? Come on, come on. Let’s get you suited up. I was thrilled when your mom told me you were back in town and looking for work, just absolutely thrilled.”

He pilots me toward a small yellow building half-concealed behind a wall of fake potted palms, and in through a door he unlocks with one of the keys he has strung to a massive key ring on his belt. The whole time, he never stops talking, or smiling.

“Here we are, the keys to the castle. This is the front office—nothing too fancy, you’ll see, but it does the job quite nicely. If I’m not out and about, I’ll usually be in here, and we’ve got some first aid kits, too, if anybody loses a finger. Kidding, kidding. But we do have first aid kits.” He gestures to the saggy shelves above a desk cluttered with receipts, rolls of ride tickets, and various scrawled drawings that look to be from children thanking “Pirate Pete” for such a great day. “Don’t touch the Coke in the fridge, or Donna—she’s my secretary, you’ll meet her soon enough—will have your head, but you’re welcome to any of the waters, and if you want to BYO lunch and keep it cold, go right ahead.” He slaps the refrigerator to emphasize the point. “Same thing with valuables—phone, wallet, love letters—kidding, kidding!—we can lock ’em up right here at the start of your shift and they’ll be safe as anything. Here you are. Throw this on”—this, as he tosses me a scratchy red T-shirt emblazoned with an image of Pirate Pete’s grinning face, which I can tell is going to sit right over my left boob—“and we’ll get you started. Welcome to the team! Bathrooms are just past the photo booth on the left.”



I leave my bag in the office with Mr. Wilcox and head to the bathrooms, which are indicated by means of a wooden parrot sign. I haven’t been to FanLand since I was maybe eight or nine and much of it feels unfamiliar, though I’m sure it hasn’t changed, and I have a brief flash of memory as soon as I enter the bathroom stall of standing with Dara in our wet bathing suits, water pooling on the concrete, shivering and giggling after a long day in the sun, our fingers sticky with cotton candy, running ahead of our parents, holding hands, while our flip-flops slapped on the puddled pavement.

Just for a second, I feel a moment of grief so intense it hollows me out: I want my family back. I want my Dara back.

I quickly swap out my T-shirt for the official uniform, which is about three sizes too big, and return to the office, where Mr. Wilcox is waiting for me.

“Nick!” he booms, as if he’s seeing me for the first time. “Looking good, looking good.”


He wraps an arm around my shoulder and pilots me down one of the paths that wind through the park, past fake shipwrecks and more plastic palm trees, plus rides with names like Splish ’n’ Splash or the Plank. I see a few other employees, quickly visible in their vivid red, sweeping leaves from the boardwalk or changing filter traps or calling out instructions to one another, and I have the weird sense of walking backstage just before a play and seeing all the actors in half makeup.

Then Mr. Wilcox is pumping an arm high in the sky and calling out to another girl, roughly my height, wearing all red. “Tenneson! Over here! Tenneson! New meat for ya!” He lets out a booming laugh. The girl begins jogging toward us, and Wilcox fires out another explanation: “Tenneson’s my right-hand man. But a girl, of course! This is her fourth summer with us at FanLand. Anything you need, you ask her. Anything she can’t answer, you don’t need to know!” With another laugh he releases me and retreats, waving again.

The girl looks maybe half-Asian and has long black hair, worn in multiple braids, and a tattoo of a snail just below her left ear. She looks like someone Dara would know, except that she’s smiling and she has the bright eyes of someone who really likes mornings. Her front teeth overlap a little, which makes me like her.

“Hey,” she says. “Welcome to FanLand.”

“I’ve heard that a few hundred times already,” I say.

She laughs. “Yeah, Greg’s a little . . . enthusiastic about the new recruits. About everything, actually. I’m Alice.”

“Nicole,” I say. We shake hands, even though she can’t be much older than I am. Twenty, tops. She gestures for me to follow her, and we turn right toward the Cove, the “dry” half of the park, where all the big rides, plus the game booths and food vendors, are. “Most people call me Nick.”

Her face changes, an almost imperceptible switch, as if a curtain has come down behind her eyes. “You’re—you’re Dara’s sister.”

I nod. She turns away, making a face as if she’s sucking on something sour. “I’m sorry about the accident,” she blurts out at last.

My whole body goes hot, like it always does when someone brings up the accident, as if I’ve just walked into a room where people have been whispering about me. “You heard, huh?”

To Alice’s credit, she looks sorry to have mentioned it. “My cousin goes to Somerville. Plus, since John Parker . . .”

Hearing Parker’s name—his full name—makes something glitch in my chest. I haven’t thought of Parker in months. Or maybe I’ve been trying not to think about him for months. And nobody calls him by his full name. He and his older brother have been Big Parker and Little Parker for as long as I can remember. Even his mom calls her sons the Parkers.