Vanishing Girls(13)

Seeing his car, so familiar, so him, I have a quick flash of memory, like an explosion in my brain: the windshield fogged up, patterned with rain and body heat; Parker’s guilty face; and Dara’s eyes, cold and hard, gloating, like the eyes of a stranger.

“That’s all right,” I say quickly.

“You sure?” He pops open the driver’s-side door.

“I have Dara’s car,” I say quickly. The words come out before I can think about them.

“You do?” Parker seems surprised. I’m grateful the lot is crowded, so my lie isn’t immediately obvious. “All right, then. Well . . . I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” I say, willing away another image of that night, of the way it felt to know, deep down, that everything had changed; that nothing would ever be the same between the three of us again. “See you.”

I’ve already started to turn away—lingering, now, so that Parker won’t see that I’m headed toward the bus stop, when he calls me back.

“Look,” he says, all in a rush. “There’s a party at the Drink tonight. You should come. It’ll be super low-key,” he goes on. “Like twenty people, max. But bring whoever you want.” He says the last part in a funny voice, half-strangled. I wonder whether it’s a hint, and he’s asking me to bring Dara along. Then I hate myself for having to wonder it. Before they hooked up, there was never any weirdness between us.

One more thing that Dara ruined because she felt like it, because she had an itch, an urge, a whim. He’s so f*ckable, I remember her saying one morning, out of the blue, when we’d all gone across the street to Upper Reaches Park to watch his Ultimate Frisbee game. Did you ever notice that he’s undeniably f*ckable? As we were watching him run across the ball field, chasing the bright red disk of the Frisbee, arm outstretched—the same boy-body-arm I’d known my whole life was transformed, in an instant, by Dara’s words.

And I remember looking at her and thinking that she, too, looked like a stranger, with her hair (blond and purple, then) and the thick dusting of charcoal eye shadow on her lids, lips red and exaggerated with pencil, legs stretched out for miles underneath her short-shorts. How could my Dara, Little Egg, Nosebutton, who used to wrap her arms around my shoulders and stand on my toes so we could pretend to be one person as we staggered around the living room, have turned into someone who used the word f*ckable, someone I barely knew, someone I feared, even?

“It’ll be just like old times,” Parker says, and I feel a hard ache in my chest, a desperate desire for something lost long ago.

Everyone knows you can’t go back.

“Yeah, maybe. I’ll let you know,” I say, which I won’t.

I watch him get into his car and drive off, waving, smiling big behind the glare, and pretend to be fumbling for keys in my bag. Then I walk across the parking lot to wait for the bus.





BEFORE





FEBRUARY 9


Nick


“Ow.” I open my eyes, blinking furiously. Dara’s face, from this angle, is as big as the moon, if the moon were painted in crazy colors: coal-black eye shadow, silver liner, a big red mouth like a smear of hot lava. “You keep poking me.”

“You keep moving. Close your eyes.” She grabs my chin and blows, gently, on my eyelids. Her breath smells like vanilla Stoli. “There. You’re done. See?” I stand up from the toilet, where she’s installed me, and join her at the mirror. “Now we look like twins,” she says happily, putting her head on my shoulder.

“Hardly,” I say. “I look like a drag queen.” Already I’m sorry I agreed to let Dara do my makeup. Normally I use ChapStick and mascara—and that’s only for special occasions. Now I feel like a kid who went crazy at a carnival face-painting booth.

The funny thing is that Dara and I do look alike, mostly—and yet, everywhere she’s delicate and well-made and pretty, I’m lumpy and plain. Our hair is the same indeterminate brown, although hers is currently dyed black (Cleopatra black, she calls it) and has previously been platinum, auburn, and even, briefly, purple. We have the same hazel eyes spaced a little too far apart. We have the same nose, although mine is a teensy bit crooked, from where Parker accidentally clobbered me with a softball in third grade. I’m actually taller than Dara is, though you’d never know it—currently, she has on a pair of crazy wedge platform boots with a translucent dress that barely clears her underwear, plus black-and-white-striped tights that on anyone else would look idiotic. Meanwhile, I’m wearing what I always wear to the Founders’ Day Ball: a tank top and skinny jeans, plus comfortable ankle boots.

That’s the thing about Dara and me: we’re both similar and worlds apart. Like the sun and the moon, or a starfish and a star: related, sure, but at the same time totally and completely different. And Dara’s always the one doing the shining.

“You look beautiful,” Dara says, straightening up. On the sink, her phone starts vibrating and does a half turn next to the toothbrush cup before falling silent again. “Doesn’t she, Ari?”

“Beautiful,” says Ariana, without looking up. Ariana has long, wavy blond hair and a facial-cleanser-and-Swiss-Alps kind of complexion, which makes her tongue ring, nose ring, and the tiny stud above her left eyebrow always seem out of place. She’s perched on the edge of the bathtub, stirring her warm vodka orange juice with a pinkie. She takes a sip and gags expressively.