Vanishing Girls(44)

I don’t answer. I just sit there, squeezing my fists so hard my nails dig into the soft flesh of my palms, gripped by a terrible, out-of-control feeling. What the hell is wrong with me?

“Nick . . .” Aaron’s voice softens. I look up. He has his hoodie on now, the green one he got doing Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans the summer after sophomore year, the one that always mysteriously smells like the ocean. And in that moment I nearly break. I can see he’s thinking the same thing. Scrap the whole thing. Let’s pretend this never happened.

Upstairs, a door slams. Then Parker shouts, “Hey! Anybody home?”

Just like that, the moment vanishes, skittering away into the shadows, like an insect startled by a footstep. Aaron turns away, muttering something.

“What’d you say?” My heart is going again, like it’s a fist just itching to punch something.

“Nothing.” He zips up his hoodie. Now he won’t look at me. “Forget it.”

Parker must hear us, or sense us. He’s pounding down the stairs before I can yell up to him to stop. When he sees Aaron, he freezes. His eyes tick to me, and to my bra, still lying on the musty carpet. His face goes white—and then, a split second later, completely red.

“Oh, shit. I didn’t mean—” He starts to backpedal. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay.” Aaron looks at me. I know all his moods—but this expression I can’t identify. Anger, definitely. But there’s something else, something deeper than that, as if he’s finally figured out the answer to an impossible math problem. “I was just leaving.”

He takes the stairs two at a time, forcing Parker to squeeze himself against one wall so Aaron can pass. Parker and Aaron don’t like each other and never have. I don’t know why. The moment they’re together on the stairs feels electric, charged and dangerous; out of nowhere, I’m afraid that Aaron will hit Parker, or vice versa. But then Aaron keeps going and the moment passes.

Parker still doesn’t move, not even after the front door slams again, indicating Aaron has left. “Sorry,” he says. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”

“You didn’t.” My cheeks are hot. I wish I could reach out and take my stupid bra—pink, with patterns of daisies on it, like a twelve-year-old’s bra—and shove it under the sofa, but that would be even more conspicuous. So instead we both pretend we don’t notice.

“Okay.” Parker draws out the word, superlong, as if he knows I’m lying. For a second he says nothing. Then, slowly, he comes down the stairs, edging closer, as if I’m an animal who might be rabid. “Are you all right? You seem . . .”

“I seem what?” I look up at him then, experiencing a hot flash of anger.

“Nothing.” He stops again, a good ten feet away from me. “I don’t know. Upset. Angry or something.” His next words he pronounces very carefully, as if each one is glass that might shatter in his mouth. “Is everything okay with Aaron?”


I feel stupid sitting on the couch when he’s standing, like I’m at a disadvantage somehow, so I stand up, too, crossing my arms. “We’re fine,” I say. “I’m fine.” I’d been planning on telling Parker about the breakup—the second I saw his stupid Surf Siders on the stairs, I knew I would tell him, and maybe even tell him why, cry and confess that there’s something wrong with me and I don’t know how to be happy and I’m an idiot, such an idiot.

But now I can’t tell him. I won’t. Then I say, “Dara’s not home.” Parker flinches and turns away, a muscle working in his jaw. Even midwinter, he has the kind of skin that always looks tan. I wish he looked worse. I wish he looked as bad as I feel. “Well, you’re here for her, aren’t you?”

“Jesus, Nick.” He turns back to me then. “We need to . . . I don’t know . . . fix this. Fix us.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I say, squeezing my ribs, hard. I feel like if I don’t, I might just come apart.

“You do know what I mean,” he says. “You are—were—my best friend.” With one hand, he gestures to the space between us, the long stretch of basement, where for years we built pillow forts and competed to see who could withstand tickle wars the longest. “What happened?”

“What happened is you started dating my sister,” I say. The words come out louder than I intended.

Parker takes a step toward me. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he says, his voice quiet, and for a second I want to close the distance between us and bury myself in the soft place between his arm and shoulder blade, and tell him how dumb I’ve been, and let him cheer me up with bad renditions of Cyndi Lauper songs and weird trivia about the world’s largest hamburgers or freestanding structures built entirely from toothpicks. “I didn’t mean to hurt either of you. It just . . . happened.” He’s practically whispering now. “I’m trying to stop it.”

I take a step backward. “You’re not trying very hard,” I say. I know I’m being a bitch, but I don’t care. He’s the one who ruined everything. He’s the one who kissed Dara, who keeps kissing her, who keeps telling her yes, no matter how many times they break up. “I’ll let Dara know you came by.”

Parker’s face changes. And in that moment I know I’ve hurt him, maybe just as much as he’s hurt me. I get a sick rush of triumph that feels almost like nausea, like catching an insect between folds of paper towel and squeezing. Then he just looks angry—hard, almost, like his skin has suddenly tightened into stone.