Alex (5 page)

There were only 107 people in their graduating class, out of the 150 who'd started at Carp High freshman year. And she didn't even know his name.

So he stayed where he was, working his toes into the ground, waiting for the dark, waiting for the whistle to blow and for the games to begin.

He was going to win Panic.

He was going to do it for Dayna.

He was going to do it for revenge.

Read on for an excerpt of LAUREN'S upcoming novel
Vanishing Girls
, a gripping story about two sisters inexorably altered by a terrible accident.

MARCH 27

Nick

“Want to play?”

These are the three words I've heard most often in my life.
Want to play?
As four-year-old Dara bursts through the screen door, arms extended, flying into the green of our front yard without waiting for me to answer.
Want to play?
As six-year-old Dara slips into my bed in the middle of the night, her eyes wide and touched with moonlight, her damp hair smelling like strawberry shampoo.
Want to play?
Eight-year-old Dara chiming the bell on her bike; ten-year-old Dara fanning cards across the damp pool deck; twelve-year-old Dara spinning an empty soda bottle by the neck.

Sixteen-year-old Dara doesn't wait for me to answer, either. “Scoot over,” she says, bumping her best friend Ariana's thigh with her knee. “My sister wants to play.”

“There's no room,” Ariana says, squealing when Dara leans into her. “Sorry, Nick.” They're crammed with a half-dozen other people into an unused stall in Ariana's parents' barn, which smells like sawdust and, faintly, manure. There's a bottle of vodka, half-empty, on the hard-packed ground, as well as a few six-packs of beer and a small pile of miscellaneous items of clothing: a scarf, two mismatched mittens, a puffy jacket, and Dara's tight pink sweatshirt with
Queen B*tch
emblazoned across the back in rhinestones. It all looks like some bizarre ritual sacrifice laid out to the gods of strip poker.

“Don't worry,” I say quickly. “I don't need to play. I just came to say hi, anyway.”

Dara makes a face. “You just got here.”

Ariana smacks her cards faceup on the ground. “Three of a kind, kings.” She cracks a beer open, and foam bubbles up around her knuckles. “Matt, take off your shirt.”

Matt is a skinny kid with a slightly-too-big-nose look and the filmy expression of someone who is already on his way to being very drunk. Since he's already in his T-shirt—black, with a mysterious graphic of a one-eyed beaver on the front—I can only assume the puffy jacket belongs to him. “I'm cold,” he whines.

“It's either your shirt or your pants. You choose.”

Matt sighs and begins wriggling out of his T-shirt, showing off a thin back, constellated with acne.

“Where's Parker?” I ask, trying to sound casual, then hating myself for having to try. But ever since Dara started . . .
whatever
she's doing with him, it has become impossible to talk about my former best friend without feeling like a Christmas tree ornament has landed in the back of my throat.

Dara freezes in the act of redistributing the cards. But only for a second. She tosses a final card in Ariana's direction and sweeps up a hand. “No idea.”

“I texted him,” I say. “He told me he was coming.”

“Yeah, well, maybe he
left
.” Dara's dark eyes flick to mine, and the message is clear.
Let it go
. I guess they must be fighting again. Or maybe they're not fighting, and that's the problem. Maybe he refuses to play along.

“Dara's got a
new
boyfriend,” Ariana says in a singsong, and Dara elbows her. “Well, you do, don't you? A
secret
boyfriend.”

“Shut up,” Dara says sharply. I can't tell whether she's really mad or only pretending to be.

Ari fake-pouts. “Do I know him? Just tell me if I
know
him.”

“No way,” Dara says. “No hints.” She tosses down her cards and stands up, dusting off the back of her jeans. She's wearing fur-trimmed wedge boots and a metallic shirt I've never seen before, which looks like it has been poured over her body and then left to harden. Her hair—recently dyed black, and blown out perfectly straight—looks like oil poured over her shoulders. As usual, I feel like the Scarecrow next to Dorothy. I'm wearing a bulky jacket Mom bought me four years ago for a ski trip to Vermont, and my hair, the unremarkable brown of mouse poop, is pulled back in its trademark ponytail.

“I'm getting a drink,” Dara says, even though she's been having beer. “Anyone want?”

“Bring back some mixers,” Ariana says.

Dara gives no indication that she's heard. She grabs me by the wrist and pulls me out of the horse stall and into the barn, where Ariana—or her mom?—has set up a few folding tables covered with bowls of chips and pretzels, guacamole, packaged cookies. There's a cigarette butt stubbed out in a container of guacamole, and cans of beer floating around in an enormous punch bowl full of half-melted ice, like ships trying to navigate the Arctic.

It seems as if most of Dara's grade has come out tonight, and about half of mine—even if seniors don't usually deign to crash a junior party,
second semester
seniors never miss any opportunity to celebrate. Christmas lights are strung between the horse stalls, only three of which contain actual horses: Misty, Luciana, and Mr. Ed. I wonder if any of the horses are bothered by the thudding bass from the music, or by the fact that every five seconds a drunk junior is shoving his hand across the gate, trying to get the horse to nibble Cheetos from his hand.

The other stalls, the ones that aren't piled with old saddles and muck rakes and rusted farm equipment that has somehow landed and then expired here—even though the only thing Ariana's mom farms is money from her three ex-husbands—are filled with kids playing drinking games or grinding on each other, or, in the case of Jake Harris and Aubrey O'Brien, full-on making out. The tack room, I've been informed, has been unofficially claimed by the stoners.

The big sliding barn doors are open to the night, and frigid air blows in from outside. Down the hill, someone is trying to get a bonfire started in the riding rink, but there's a light rain tonight, and the wood won't catch.

At least Aaron isn't here. I'm not sure I could have handled seeing him tonight—not after what happened last weekend. It would have been better if he'd been mad—if he'd freaked out and yelled, or started rumors around school that I have chlamydia or something. Then I could hate him. Then it would make
sense
.

But since the breakup he's been unfailingly, epically polite, like he's the greeter at a Gap. Like he's
really
hoping I'll buy something but doesn't want to seem pushy.

“I still think we're good together,” he'd said out of the blue, even as he was giving me back my sweatshirt (cleaned, of course, and folded) and a variety of miscellaneous crap I'd left in his car: pens and a phone charger and a weird snow globe I'd seen for sale at CVS. School had served pasta marinara for lunch, and there was a tiny bit of Day-Glo sauce at the corner of his mouth. “Maybe you'll change your mind.”

“Maybe,” I'd said. And I really hoped, more than anything in the world, that I would.

Dara grabs a bottle of Southern Comfort and splashes three inches into a plastic cup, topping it off with Coca-Cola. I bite the inside of my lip, as if I can chew back the words I really want to say: This must be at
least
her third drink; she's already in the doghouse with Mom and Dad; she's supposed to be staying out of trouble. She landed us both in
therapy
, for God's sake.

Instead I say, “So. A new boyfriend, huh?” I try and keep my voice light.

One corner of Dara's mouth crooks into a smile. “You know Ariana. She exaggerates.” She mixes another drink and presses it into my hand, jamming our plastic cups together. “Cheers,” she says, and takes a big swig, emptying half her drink.

The drink smells suspiciously like cough syrup. I set it down next to a platter of cold pigs in blankets, which look like shriveled thumbs wrapped up in gauze. “So there's no mystery man?”

Dara lifts a shoulder. “What can I say?” She's wearing gold eye shadow tonight, and a dusting of it coats her cheeks; she looks like someone who has accidentally trespassed through fairyland. “I'm irresistible.”

“What about Parker?” I say. “More trouble in paradise?”

Instantly I regret the question. Dara's smile vanishes. “Why?” she says, her eyes dull now, hard. “Want to say ‘I told you so' again?”

“Forget it.” I turn away, feeling suddenly exhausted. “Good night, Dara.”

“Wait.” She grabs my wrist. Just like that, the moment of tension is gone, and she smiles again. “Stay, okay?
Stay
, Ninpin,” she repeats, when I hesitate.

When Dara gets like this, turns sweet and pleading, like her old self, like the sister who used to climb onto my chest and beg me, wide-eyed, to wake up, wake up, she's almost impossible to resist. Almost. “I have to get up at seven,” I say, even as she's leading me outside, into the fizz and pop of the rain. “I promised Mom I'd help straighten up before Aunt Jackie gets here.”

For the first month or so after Dad announced he was leaving, Mom acted like absolutely nothing was different. But recently she's been
forgetting
: to turn on the dishwasher, to set her alarm, to iron her work blouses, to vacuum. It's like every time he removes another item from the house—his favorite chair, the chess set he inherited from his father, the golf clubs he never uses—it takes a portion of her brain with it.

“Why?” Dara rolls her eyes. “She'll just bring cleansing crystals with her to do the work. Please,” she adds. She has to raise her voice to be heard over the music; someone has just turned up the volume. “You
never
come out.”

“That's not true,” I say. “It's just that you're
always
out.” The words sound harsher than I'd intended. But Dara only laughs.

“Let's not fight tonight, okay?” she says, and leans in to give me a kiss on the cheek. Her lips are candy-sticky. “Let's be happy.”

A group of guys—juniors, I'm guessing—huddled together in the half-dark of the barn start hooting and clapping. “All right!” one of them shouts, raising a beer. “Lesbian action!”

“Shut up, dick!” Dara says. But she's laughing. “She's my
sister
.”

“That's definitely my cue,” I say.

But Dara isn't listening. Her face is flushed, her eyes bright with alcohol. “She's my sister,” she announces again, to no one and also to everyone, since Dara is the kind of person other people watch, want, follow. “
And
my best friend.”

More hooting; a scattering of applause. Another guy yells, “Get it on!”

Dara throws an arm around my shoulder, leans up to whisper in my ear, her breath sweet-smelling, sharp with booze. “Best friends for life,” she says, and I'm no longer sure whether she's hugging me or hanging on me. “Right, Nick? Nothing—
nothing
—can change that.”

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