Vanishing Girls(48)

Still more people are arriving: so many people, it makes you wonder how all of them could exist, how there can be so many individual lives and stories and needs and disappointments. Looking at the line snaking down from the Plank, while the Whirling Dervish spins around on its track, hurling its passengers in tight ellipses and sending sound waves peaking and crashing, I have the weirdest moment of clarity: all the search parties, all the news stories, all the twenty-four-hour updates and tweet blasts from @FindMadelineSnow are pointless.

Madeline Snow is gone forever.

I find Alice in the office, taking her own turn in front of the AC. Donna is not there, thankfully, and the phone keeps ringing, barking shrilly four times and then falling silent again when the automated message—Hello and welcome to Fantasy Land!—kicks on. Rogers insists that I drink three cups of ice water and eat half a turkey sandwich before clocking out.

“Can’t have any accidents on the way home,” he barks, standing over me and glowering as though by the sheer force of eye contact he could make me digest faster.

“You’ll come back for the fireworks, right?” Alice says. She has her shoes up on the desk, and the small room smells faintly sour. Alice has explained, with a shrug, that she was working the Cobra when a girl teetered off the ride, grinning, turned to Alice, and puked directly on her shoes.

“I’ll be back,” I say. The park has extended hours for the anniversary party: we’ll be open until 10:00 p.m., with fireworks beginning at nine. I’m starting to get nervous. Only a few more hours to go. “I’ll be back for sure.”

Tonight Dara and I wake the beast together. Tonight we ride the Gateway up to the stars.





FEBRUARY 22


Dara’s Diary Entry


Ariana and I went to the Loft to hang out with PJ and Tyson, and then she spent the whole night shoving her tongue down Tyson’s throat and trying to convince us to skinny-dip even though it was, like, fifty degrees. There was another guy there who owns a club in East Norwalk called Beamer’s. He even brought champagne, the real kind. He kept saying I could be a model, until I told him to stop feeding me horseshit. Models are, like, ten feet tall. Still, he was cute. Older, but definitely cute.

He said if I ever needed a job I could waitress for him and make two or three hundred a day, easy. (!!) That sure as shit beats babysitting Ian Sullivan every other day and trying to keep him from putting his cat in the microwave or burning caterpillars with matchsticks. I swear that kid is going to be a serial killer when he grows up.

PJ was in a bad mood because he was supposed to get mushrooms, but I guess his guy ran out. Instead we just drank Andre’s champagne and took shots of some nasty shit this girl brought home from France, which tasted like swallowing licorice and rubbing alcohol at the same time.

I know Dr. Lick Me would tell me I was just trying to avoid my feelings again, but let me tell you something: it didn’t work. All night I kept thinking about Parker. Why the hell is he acting like I have some flesh-eating disease all of a sudden? Hot and cold doesn’t even begin to describe it. More like lukewarm and frigid.

So I kept puzzling out little hints and vibes he’s been giving me in the past couple of weeks, and all of a sudden I had this moment of total clarity. I’ve been such a f*cking idiot.

Parker’s in love with somebody else.





Nick


7:15 p.m.

I’m meeting Mom and Dad at Sergei’s, since they’ll both be coming straight from work. I have no idea how Dara’s planning to get there, but she isn’t home when I stop in to change. The AC unit is going full blast and all the lights are off; still, the house is old, and just like it has its own rhythms, patterns of creaks and groans and mysterious banging sounds, it has its own internal temperature, which today seems to have settled at around eighty degrees.

I take a cold shower, gasping when the water hits my back, and then throw on the coolest thing I own, a linen dress that Dara has always hated, saying it makes me look like I’m either going to a wedding or about to be sacrificed as a virgin.

Sergei’s is a ten-minute walk—fifteen if you go slowly, which I do, trying not to break a sweat. I go around the house and through the backyard, glancing, as always, at the oak tree, half searching for a red flag entwined in its branches, for a secret message from Parker. Nothing but leaves crowd along the heavy branches, shimmering emerald-like in the weakening sun.

I cut into the thicket of trees that divides our property from our neighbors’. It’s obvious that Dara has been sneaking out recently. There’s a straight path through the growth where branches have been snapped away and the grass trampled.

I emerge onto Old Hickory Lane two houses down from Parker’s. On a whim, I decide to stop by and see if he’s okay. It isn’t like him to flake on work. His car is in the driveway, but the house is quiet and I can’t tell if he’s home. The curtains in his window—navy-blue stripes, selected by Parker at age six—are shut. I ring the doorbell—the first time I’ve ever used it, the first time I’ve ever noticed the Parkers have a doorbell—and wait, crossing my arms and uncrossing them, hating that I suddenly feel nervous.

Upstairs, I think I see the curtains twitch in Parker’s room. I take a step backward, craning my neck for a better view. The curtains are swinging slightly. Someone’s definitely up there.