Vanishing Girls(9)

Please join me in praying that Madeline makes it home safe—and soon—to her family.

This article is surprisingly undetailed. Was she with her parents when she was “abducted”? Statistically, it’s usually the parents’ fault when a child disappears.

posted by: alikelystory at 9:45 a.m.

Thanks for your comment, @alikelystory. The police haven’t released any further details, but I’ll be sure to update as soon as they do.

posted by: admin at 10:04 a.m.

@alikelystory “It’s usually the parents’ fault when a child disappears.” Where do you get this so-called “statistic”?

posted by: booradleyforprez at 11:42 a.m.

Poor Madeline. The whole congregation at St. Jude is praying for you.

posted by: mamabear27 at 1:37 p.m.

Hey all, for up-to-the-minute info, go to www.FindMadeline.tumblr.com. It looks like they just got the site up and running.

posted by: weinberger33 at 2:25 p.m.





see additional 161 comments.





JULY 20


Nick


My new job starts on Monday, bright and early.

Mom’s still sleeping when I leave the house at seven. Dara, too. In the two days since I’ve been home, Dara’s done a near-perfect job of avoiding me. I have no idea what she does up in her room all day—sleeps, most likely, and of course Mom never bugs her about it; Dara’s off-limits since the accident, as if she’s a glass figurine that might break if we handle it—and every morning I see broken rosebuds in the garden, evidence that she’s been shimmying up and down the trellis again.

I know her only by the trace evidence: iPod left blaring through the speakers in her room, footsteps overhead, the things she leaves behind. Toothpaste crusted on our shared bathroom sink, because she always uses too much and never bothers to put the cap on. A bag of chips, half-eaten, discarded on the kitchen table. Thick wedge heels lying on the stairs; the faint smell of pot that filters down from the attic at night. This way I form an impression of her, of her life, of what she’s doing, the way we used to rush downstairs on Christmas morning and know Santa Claus had come because the cookies we’d left had been eaten and the milk consumed. Or the way an anthropologist does, constructing whole civilizations out of the scraps of pottery they left behind.

It’s already hot, even though the sun has just edged over the horizon and the sky is still stained a deep blue. The crickets are going crazy, threshing the air into layers of sound. I peel the banana I pulled from the kitchen before realizing it’s rotten. I chuck it into the woods.

On the bus, which is mostly empty, I take the last seat. Someone has carved the initials DRW into the window, big. Dara’s initials. I briefly imagine her sitting where I’m sitting, bored, taking a penknife to the glass while on her way to God knows where.

The number 22 goes from Somerville all the way down the coast, and curves along Heron Bay and its clutter of cheap motels and faux-timber resorts, past a long blur of diners and T-shirt shops and ice cream parlors, into East Norwalk, a place thick with bars and shitty lingerie stores and XXX-video stores and strip clubs. FanLand is right off Route 101, only a mile or so away from the crash site: a no-name place of lowlying marshland and twisted shrubbery and studded outcroppings of rock, carried down to the beach by some long-ago glacier, still getting sawed slowly into sand by the motion of the waves.

I don’t know what we were doing there. I don’t remember why we crashed, or how. My memory is looped over a single moment, like a thread snagged on something sharp: the moment my hands were off the wheel and the headlights lit up a wall of rock. Dad suggested not too long ago that I visit the site of the crash, said that I might find it “healing.”

I wonder if my license plate is still there, lying mangled in the sun-bleached grass, if there’s glass still glittering between the rocks.

By the time we reach FanLand—which shares a parking lot with Boom-a-Rang, the state’s Largest Firecracker Emporium, according to the sign—the only other person on the bus is an ancient man with a face the color of a tobacco stain. He disembarks with me but doesn’t even glance up, just heads slowly across the lot toward Boom-a-Rang, head down, as if he’s moving against a hard wind.

Already I’m sweating through my T-shirt. Across the street, the gas station parking lot is full of cop cars. One of the sirens is turning soundlessly, sweeping the walls and pumps with intermittent red light. I wonder whether there was a robbery; this area has gotten worse over the years.

FanLand has a mascot, a pirate named Pete who’s featured on billboards and placards all over the park, warning people not to litter and about the height minimum for various rides. The first thing I see when I enter the park through the gate, which is unlocked, is Mr. Wilcox, scraping gum off a twelve-foot-tall Pirate Pete grinning a welcome down to park visitors. A big, glossy sign is tacked to Pirate Pete’s shoulder, concealing the parrot I know should be there. It reads CELEBRATING 75 YEARS!!

“Nick!” When he sees me, he puts an arm above his head to wave, as if I’m four hundred feet away from him instead of fourteen. “Great to see you. Great to see you. Welcome to FanLand!” He pulls me into a crushing hug before I can resist. He smells like Dove soap and, weirdly, car oil.

Two things about Mr. Wilcox: he always says things twice, and he obviously missed a few educational seminars on sexual harassment. Not that he’s a creep. He’s just big into hugs.