Vanishing Girls(71)

I take off down the road, sticking close to the divider. A car blasts by me in a hot rush of sound and exhaust, windows rattling with bass, blaring the horn. Somewhere in the far distance, police sirens are wailing—someone hurt or dead, another life destroyed.

I twist around. Andre has made it up to the highway now. It’s too dark to see his face.

“Jesus Christ,” he shouts. “Are you out of your—”

But whatever else he says gets whipped away as another car blows by.

More sirens now. I haven’t been this far south since the night of the accident, and everything looks unfamiliar: on one side of the highway, spiky stones rising up from the beach; on the other, craggy hills and pine tree.

Did Madeline Snow run this way? Did he catch her and bring her back to the lighthouse?

Did she scream?

I turn around again, but there’s nothing behind me but empty road: Andre has either given up or fallen back. I slow down, heaving in breaths, my lungs burning. The pain is everywhere now; I feel like a wooden doll about to splinter apart.

The night around me has turned very still. If it weren’t for the sirens, still shrieking—getting closer?—the world would feel like an oil painting of itself, perfectly immobile, clothed in dark.

It must have been right around here that Nick and I crashed. A strange feeling comes over me, like there’s a wind blowing straight through my stomach. But there’s no wind: the trees are motionless. Still, a chill moves down my spine.

Pull over.

Bright starbursts of memory: images suddenly illumined, like comets in the dark.

No. Not until we finish talking.

We are finished talking. For good.

Dara, please. You don’t understand.

I said, pull over.

Ten feet ahead of me, the divider twists away from the highway. A portion of metal has been snapped clean away. Faded silk ribbons hang side by side along the portion that’s still intact. They sway ever so slightly, like weeds disturbed by an invisible current A battered wooden cross is staked in the dirt, and the huge rock face just beyond the breach is covered in scraps of paper and bits of fabric, mementos, and messages.

Several new bouquets are grouped around the cross, and even from a few feet away I recognize a stuffed animal that belongs to Ariana. Mr. Stevens: her favorite teddy bear. She even buys him a Christmas present every year—always a different accessory, like an umbrella or a hard hat.

Mr. Stevens has a new accessory: a ribbon around his neck, with a message inked in marker on the fabric. I have to squat down to read it.

Happy birthday, Dara. I miss you every day.

Time yawns open, slows down, stills. Only the sirens shatter the silence.

Notes, water-warped, now indecipherable—faded silk flowers and key chains—and in the center of it all—

A photograph. My photograph. The yearbook photo from sophomore year, the one I always said I hated, the one where my hair is too short.

And beneath it, a shiny metal plaque screwed into the stone.

RIP, DARA JACQUELINE WARREN. YOU’LL LIVE IN OUR HEARTS FOREVER.

The sirens are screaming now, so loud I can feel the noise all the way in my teeth—so loud I can’t think. And then, all at once, noise returns to the world in a rush of wind, a tumult of rain that comes sweeping in from the ocean, blowing me backward. The world is lit up in flashes. Red and white. Red and white.

The sirens have stopped. Everything feels like it’s going in slow motion—even the hard slices of rain seem to be frozen in the air, a sheet of water turned diagonal. Three cars have pulled onto the shoulder. People are running toward me, turned by the headlights into faceless shadows.

“Nick!” they’re shouting. “Nick! Nick!”

Run.

The word comes to me on the rain, on the soft tongue of the wind against my face.

So I do.





BEFORE





Nick


The summer I was nine was a wet one. For weeks it seemed to rain nonstop. Dara even got pneumonia, and her lungs slurped and rattled whenever she inhaled, as if the moisture had somehow gotten inside her.

On the first sunny day in what seemed like forever, Parker and I crossed the park to check out Old Stone Creek—normally shallow and flat-bottomed and barely two feet across—now transformed into a roaring, tumbling river, barreling over its banks, turning the whole area to swampland.

Some older kids had gathered to throw empty cans in the creek and watch them twirl, bobbing and resurfacing, in the current. This one guy, Aidan Jennings, was standing on the footbridge, jumping up and down, while the water pummeled the wooden supports and went swirling up across his feet.

And then, in one instant, both Aidan and the bridge were gone. It happened that quickly, and without sound; the rotting wood gave way, and Aidan was swept up in a swirl of splintered wood and churning water, and everyone was running after him, shouting.

Memory is like that, too. We build careful bridges. But they’re weaker than we think.

And when they break, all our memories return to drown us.

It was raining, too, on the night of the accident.

I didn’t mean for it to happen.

He was waiting for me at home after Ariana’s party, jogging up and down a little on the front porch, his breath crystallizing in the air, his sweatshirt hood tugged up over his head, casting his face in shadow.