Vanishing Girls(18)

Across the circle, I see Aaron Lee, a guy Nick was with for a while before the accident: nice guy, decent body, hopeless nerd. His eyes light up and he waves, arm up, as if hailing a taxi. He must think I brought Nick with me.

“I’m good,” I say. The beer isn’t having its usual effect. Instead of feeling warm and loose and careless, I just feel queasy. I dump the rest of my beer onto the ground. Parker takes a quick step backward to avoid getting splashed. “I’m actually not feeling so hot. I might head home.”

Now his smile is all-the-way gone. He tugs on his left ear. Parker-speak for not happy. “You just got here.”

“Yeah, and I’m just leaving.” More and more people are swiveling in my direction, sneaking quick, curious looks before turning away again. My scars are burning, as if a flashlight has been shone on them. I imagine them glowing, too, so that everyone can see. “Is that okay with you, or do I need a hall pass?”

I know I’m being mean, but I can’t help it. Parker ditched me. He’s been avoiding me ever since the accident. He can’t parade back into my life and expect me to throw confetti at his feet.

“Wait.” For a moment, Parker’s fingers, ice-cold from touching the beer, graze the inside of my wrist.

Then I pull away, turning clumsily in the uneven grass, dodging areas lumpy with deteriorating stone, pushing through a crowd that parts for me easily, too easily. As if I’m contagious.

Colin Dacey’s trying to get a fire going in the pit, a blackened depression lined with gravel and nubs of stone. So far, he’s succeeded mostly in sending huge, stinking geysers of smoke toward the sky. Stupid. It’s already too hot, and cops are always patrolling in summertime. Girls back away from the fire, shrieking with laughter, fanning away the smoke. One of them, a sophomore whose name I can’t remember, comes down hard on my toe.

“I’m sooo sorry,” she says. Her breath smells like amaretto. And then Ariana, barely sidestepping me, smiling huge and fake and overly nice, like she’s a salesperson trying to douse me with perfume, says, “You’re leaving already?”

I don’t stop. And when I feel a hand close down on my arm, I spin around, shaking off the grip, and say, “What? What the hell do you want?”

Aaron Lee takes a quick step backward. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—sorry.”

My anger immediately sizzles down to nothing. I’ve always felt vaguely sympathetic toward Aaron, even though we’ve barely spoken. I know what it’s like to trot after Nick, to worship her from three steps behind. I’ve been doing it since I was born.

“That’s all right,” I say. “I was just leaving.”

“How’ve you been?” Aaron says, as if he hasn’t heard me. He’s nervous; that’s obvious. He’s holding his arms rigidly by his sides, like he’s waiting for me to order him on a march. Aaron is six-four, the tallest Chinese guy in school—the tallest Chinese guy I’ve ever met, actually—and in that moment he really looks it. Gangly and awkward, too, like he’s forgotten what his arms are for. Even before I can answer, he says, “You look good. I mean, you always looked good, but considering—”

Just then, someone screams.

“Cops!”

All at once, people are running, yelling, laughing, scattering down the hill and into the trees even as beams of light come cutting across the grass. The chant rises up on the night, swelling the way the crickets did when evening fell.

“Cops! Cops! Cops!”

Someone rockets into me, knocking me off my feet; Hailey Brooks, barefoot and laughing, disappears into the woods, her blond hair streaming behind her like a banner. I try to protect my wrist when I fall and wind up crashing down on my elbow instead. A cop has Colin Dacey bent over double, arms behind his back, crime show–style. Everyone is screaming and the cops are shouting and there’s a blur of bodies everywhere, silhouetted against the smoke and the sweep of flashlights. Suddenly there’s a moon-big glow directly in my eyes, dazzling.

“All right,” the cop—a woman—says. “Up you go.”

I roll away to my feet just as she gets a hand around the back of my sweatshirt, dropping her flashlight in the process.

“Gotcha.” But she’s breathing hard, and I know that even on damaged legs I’ll be able to outrun her.

“Sorry,” I say, half to her, half to Nick, because this sweatshirt is her favorite. Then I unzip and wriggle my arms free, one after the other, as the cop stumbles backward with a short cry of surprise and I run, limping, bare-armed, into the heavy wet darkness of the trees.





FEBRUARY 11


Dara’s Diary Entry


Today in Remedial Science—wait, sorry, Science Exploration, since we can’t use the word remedial anymore—Ms. Barnes was droning on and on about the forces that keep all the planets circling around the sun and the moons circling around Saturn and all the different orbits carved out like railroad tracks in the middle of a great big piece of nothing, keeping everything from smashing together and imploding. And she said it was one of the greatest miracles: that everything, every bit of matter in the universe, could stay in its little circle, imprisoned in its own individual orbit.

But I don’t think it’s a miracle. I think it’s sad.

My family’s like that. Everyone’s just locked up in a spiraling circle, spinning past everyone else. It makes me want to scream. It makes me hope for a collision.