Vanishing Girls(70)

I drag the lamp toward the staircase. In the light, it looks like a serpent. Then I start to climb.

The red sofa has been removed from the room at the top of the stairs. Even before I find another lamp, I can tell that a large object has been recently dragged across the room—tracks are visible in the dust—and worked, somehow, down the staircase.

But the lamps remain—four of them, with huge bulbs exposed, like lights on a movie set—and the old coffee table, ringed with stains from drink glasses. The AC is still squatting in the corner, its grille choked with dust, and cinder blocks and plywood are stacked just to the left of the stairs, probably from the planned renovations that never materialized. Balled into one corner is a girl’s bra—yellow, faded, with bumblebees patterned across the cups.

I stand for a second in the center of the room, fighting the sudden urge to cry. How did I get here? How did any of us get here?

It’s all over now: the lying, the struggling, the sneaking around. I remember when my sister and I used to race on our bikes to get home, the burning in my legs and thighs by the time we rounded the final corner, the desire not just to end but to give up, to stop pedaling, to let momentum carry me those final blocks. That’s what I’m feeling now—not the triumph of a win but the relief of no longer trying.

But there’s one more thing I have to do.

I move around the room, looking for something to tie Andre to Madeline Snow. I’m not sure what, exactly, I’m hoping to find. The truth will out. That phrase keeps running through my head. No. It’s the truth will set you free. Blood will out.

Blood.

Near one wall is a dark stain, maroonish-brown. I squat down, feeling slightly nauseous. The stain is about the size of a child’s palm, and long absorbed into the plank floors. Impossible to tell how old—or new—it is.

Downstairs, the door bangs shut. I stand up quickly, my heart rocketing into my throat. Someone’s here. Nick wouldn’t have slammed the door. She would be moving carefully, quietly.

There’s only one place to hide: behind the stack of plank wood and cinder blocks piled together at the head of the stairs. Moving as quietly as I can, wincing whenever the floor creaks beneath me, I slip into the narrow, dark space between the construction materials and the wall. It smells like must and mouse droppings. I maneuver awkwardly into a crouch, waiting, straining to hear sounds from below—someone moving, walking, breathing.

Nothing. Not a whisper, creak, or breath. I count to thirty and then back down to zero. Finally I shuffle out of my hiding place. The wind must have dislodged the rock from the door.

As I’m straightening up, I catch a glimmer of something silver, half-wedged beneath one of the pieces of plywood. I work it free with my fingers.

The world shrinks down to a narrow point, to a space no wider than a child’s outstretched hand.

It’s Madeline Snow’s charm bracelet—the one we so carefully combed the beach for, back when I joined up with the search party. Her favorite charm bracelet.

I stand up on shaky legs, gripping her bracelet. I edge out into the open.

“What the f*ck?”

Andre’s voice takes me completely by surprise. I haven’t heard him approach. He’s standing at the top of the stairs, gripping the banister with white knuckles, his face distorted, monstrous with rage.

“You,” he spits out, and I can’t move, can’t react. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He takes two steps toward me, releasing his hold on the banister. I don’t think. I just run. I barrel past him and he stumbles backward, giving me just enough space to reach the stairs.

Down, down, down, the metal steps chattering like teeth under my weight, little bursts of pain exploding in my ankles and knees.

“Hey! Stop! Stop.”

I hurtle out onto the beach, a sob working its way out of my throat, turn right, fighting blindly up the shore. Andre bursts out of the lighthouse after me.

“Listen. Listen. I just want to talk to you.”

I lose my footing on the rocks and go down, accidentally releasing my hold on the bracelet. For one terrifying second, I can’t find it again; I rake blindly through the wet sand and the shallow swirls of water, dragging like fingers back toward the ocean. I can hear Andre’s footsteps drumming on the beach behind me, the shallow huff of his breathing.

My fingers close on metal. The bracelet. I scoop it up and push back to my feet, ignoring the hard ache in my legs, cutting up the slope toward the highway. Sandwort nips at my bare skin, but I ignore that, too.

I pull myself up between the rocks, using thick ropes of beach grass for purchase, sand slipping beneath my feet, threatening to send me tumbling backward. The growth is so thick, I can barely make out the highway: just the sudden dazzle of headlights, lighting up a vast network of Virginia creeper and sea oats, as a car sweeps by. I keep pushing, holding one arm up to my face to shield it, feeling like I’m the knight in a fairy tale, trying to fight my way through an enchanted forest that just keeps growing thicker and thicker.

But this isn’t a fairy tale.

Andre crashes through the underbrush, cursing. But he’s falling back. I risk a glance behind me and see a cluster of switchgrass tossing violently as he attempts to work his way around it. At last the growth releases me and all at once the highway is there, the smooth ribbon of pavement glistening like oil in the moon.

I scramble the last few feet up to the road, doubling over, crunching over empty cans and plastic bags. I hop the divider and turn left—away from Orphan’s Beach, away from Beamer’s, toward the empty coastline where the houses are unfinished and the beach splinters increasingly into huge formations of stone. I can lose him out there in the darkness. I can hide until he gives up.