The Roanoke Girls

  I followed right on her heels, screaming as I jumped. The water was more lukewarm than cold, but still felt amazing against my sweaty, itchy skin. I came up spouting, Allegra treading water next to me. We played like children, even though we were on the cusp of growing up, freed because there was no one watching us. We found a fat bullfrog in the mud and tossed rocks to watch him jump. We dunked each other and played endless games of Marco Polo, then ate the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and pretzels we’d packed earlier, washing them down with a couple of beers we’d snagged from the fridge when Sharon’s back was turned.

  “I’m going to be so fried,” Allegra said, pressing her fingers into her shoulder.

  “Me too.”

  Allegra glanced over at me, set her beer down in the grass, and stuck her chest out. “I think my boobs are bigger than yours. A little.”

  I looked down, then over at her. “Maybe.”

  “But seriously, though, isn’t it weird how much we look alike? I mean, head to toe? I bet if you blindfolded Tommy and Cooper and had them feel us up when we were naked, they wouldn’t be able to tell us apart.”

  I choked on my beer, foam burning my nose. “Cooper and I have only kissed, so it would be kind of an unfair test for him.”

  “But one I’m sure he’d enjoy,” Allegra said, wiggling her eyebrows. She leaned back on her elbows, not shy at all about flaunting her naked body. “Did it make you all tingly inside when he kissed you?” she asked.

  “Pretty much.” I tried not to grin and failed.

  “Oh my God, I love that feeling,” Allegra said. “Like your heart’s about to beat out of your chest and you want him naked and smashed up against you.” She lay back with a sigh, stretched her arms above her.

  I turned my head away, watched the wind ripple across the surface of the water. I knew exactly what feeling she was talking about, the one I got when Cooper touched me. The one that made me realize my body was really in control and, in the end, I would do whatever it demanded of me.

  “Wanna know a secret?” Allegra asked, her voice a whisper only slightly louder than the breeze. She was still lying on the ground, her eyes closed.

  “Sure.”

  “Even if it’s the worst secret in the world? Even if it’s terrible?” Her eyes opened, found mine across the small space between us.

  “What? You actually love Sharon’s cooking?”

  She didn’t smile, not even a slight curve of her lips. “Actually, it’s the best and worst secret. Both at the same time.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Allegra nodded. Her eyes looked sad and very old. Older than Gran, older than the world. “It’s the secret of all the Roanoke girls,” she said. “It’s what makes us special.” I noticed she was pinching herself, the tender skin of her forearm sacrificed between her nails.

  I reached over and touched her hand, pried her fingers apart. “Stop,” I said, as gently as I could. Like I was talking to one of the horses when they were acting skittish. “Tell me.”

  She looked at me, and I waited, tried not to breathe. I could hear the blood swooshing through my head, the rapid pulse of my heart.

  Allegra opened her mouth, and I tensed. She sat up, my hand falling away from her arm. When she smiled at me, sudden and wide, it didn’t reach her eyes. “Last one in is a rotten egg!” she yelled right in my face, making me jump. I watched her run away from me, her long legs bicycling against the sky before she dropped into the water.

  I got up and stood on the edge of the swimming hole. “What was that?” I called. “I thought you had a secret.”

  Allegra laughed. “I do. You’re a rotten egg. Now get back in here!”

  “Allegra…”

  She dove, her body a pale arrow beneath the surface. I hesitated and then dove after her, the water green and sparkling against my closed eyelids. We stayed until almost dinnertime, ended the day floating on our backs and watching stray white clouds skim across the sky.

  —

  For better or worse, Roanoke was a house you could get lost in. There were days I’d lose track of Allegra or my granddad or Gran for hours at a time, like the house had swallowed them up and I wouldn’t see them again until it was ready to spit them back out. But it worked to my advantage also, when I wanted to be alone. There was always a nook or cranny, a whole tucked-away room, where I could retreat if I needed the relief of quiet. Sometimes Allegra disappeared at night, took off alone with Tommy or vanished after dinner not to be seen until morning, when she would shrug off my questions about where she’d been. On those nights I usually curled up with a bowl of popcorn and a movie in the living room, or sat out on the screened porch and watched the fireflies come out, listened to the sounds of the country: cicadas and coyotes, owls and distant train whistles. I didn’t mind those nights alone, Gran and Granddad hidden somewhere inside the big house. Sometimes I even slept on the old wicker couch on the screened porch, woke in the morning with a stiff neck and cramped legs.

  Tonight I drifted downstairs after dark, Allegra gone who knows where, to do who knows what. I was too restless for a movie, and my bedroom was too hot for sleeping. I settled onto the couch on the screened porch, tied my hair up on my head, hoping for some relief from the heat. The backyard was dark, the moon only a sliver in the sky. My heart tripped in my chest when I saw something move, a black smudge against the blacker background.

  “Hey, Lane,” Cooper said from the darkness, his drawl more pronounced, somehow, when I couldn’t see him. “Want some company?”

  I sucked in a breath, stood up and pushed open the door to the screened porch. “What are you doing all the way out here?” I asked.

  Cooper climbed the steps to the porch. He let his hand linger at my waist as he moved past me. “I hadn’t seen you in a few days,” he said. “Figured I’d visit.”

  “Tommy’s been working nights a lot,” I said, motioning him to the couch. Trying like hell to pretend this was a normal occurrence and my heart wasn’t flipping and flopping inside my chest like a hooked fish. “And Granddad won’t let me drive the truck into town yet. We’ve been kind of stranded.”

  “Where’s Allegra?”

  “Who knows? Maybe with Tommy?”

  Cooper shook his head. “He’s working tonight.”

  “Oh, well then, I don’t know.” I sat down on the couch sideways, facing him. He smiled at me, tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear. I waited for him to kiss me, but he reached behind him and pulled a flask from his back pocket instead. “Want some?”

  “What is it?”

  “Vodka.”

  “Sure.” He passed me the flask, and I unscrewed the lid and took a swallow. It burned on the way down, and my stomach boiled when the liquor reached its destination. Cooper took his own swallow, set the flask on the floor at our feet.

  “What’ve you been up to?” he asked me. “How’s your head?”

  I blushed and was glad of the darkness. “It’s fine. That was days ago.”

  “I know, but you conked the hell out of it.”

  “It’s not funny,” I said, when I saw the flash of his teeth.

  “It’s a little funny,” he said, “now that it’s over and you’re okay.” He held up his hands for protection when I leaned over to swat at him.

  “Yesterday Allegra and I went to the swimming hole,” I told him. “You ever been there?”

  He nodded. “Once or twice. Not for a few years. The weeds still grab your ankles while you’re swimming?”

  I laughed. “A little bit, but it didn’t bother me.” Without permission, my mind turned to Allegra and the secret she’d almost told me, the one she swore later had been only a joke.

  “What?” Cooper asked, giving my toe a tweak where it rested next to his thigh.

  “Nothing, I just…” I reached down and grabbed the vodka, took another big gulp. “You said my family was fucked up.”

  Cooper ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, well, all families
are fucked up.”

  “No, but…you meant it when you said it about mine.”

  He looked at me, rested his hand on my bare ankle. “Yeah, I meant it.”

  “But what is it? What makes us so messed up?”

  Cooper shook his head. “I can’t answer that for you, Lane. I don’t know. But I do know that Allegra…I know you love her, but she isn’t right.”

  “I’m part of this family,” I whispered. “My mom was, too. Which means I’m probably as fucked up as the rest of them.”

  There was a long pause, so long I thought he might not speak at all. “My dad used to beat the shit out of me. My mom and sister, too. For anything, for nothing.” He leaned to the side and lifted the edge of his T-shirt, took my hand and ran my fingers along his warm skin. “Feel that?”

  “Yeah,” I breathed, the feathery scrape of scar tissue under my fingers.

  “Cigarette burns,” he said. “That was the last time he ever touched any of us. About a year ago. The next time he tried, I beat him until he couldn’t stand up, blood fucking everywhere.” He dropped his shirt, but I didn’t move my hand away. “My mom and sister finally pulled me off him, but I wanted to keep going.” His eyes glowed in the faint moonlight. “I wanted to kill him.”

  “Cooper…”

  “We’re all fucked up, Lane, one way or another. It’s only a matter of degree.”

  I didn’t hesitate, leaned over and pulled him on top of me, hands working under his shirt, lifting it up and away. His mouth was hot and wet against mine. His tongue tasted of the bitter sting of alcohol. I spread my legs, made room for his body between them. His weight pressed me into the couch, and I buried my face in his neck to muffle my moans as we rocked against each other.

  All my life, the advice I’d received about sex was simple: Don’t. Don’t let a boy take advantage. Don’t let him touch you. Don’t give it away. Don’t be a slut. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Back in New York, there’d been one boy I’d fooled around with a few times after school. Nothing major, just kissing, one fumbling foray under my shirt. I hadn’t even liked him much, had been curious more than anything. Testing the limits of my own boldness. But he always backed off before we went too far, more scared than I was of what came next.

  But unlike that other boy, when his moment came Cooper didn’t falter or back away. He didn’t feel guilt for claiming something that did not belong to him. He took it without asking, as though it was meant for him all along, and I was glad to give it up—to finally be rid of the burden of deciding what kind of girl I would become.

  Leaving California, I had a vague hope that I would roll into Kansas and Allegra would show up a few days later, laughing at everyone’s worry. We’d all chastise her, she’d give a lame apology, and I’d be back in L.A. in less than a week. That’s not the way it’s worked out, of course. And now I can’t go back until I know what’s happened to her. I wait until nine o’clock California time, a respectable hour for a Saturday morning, to make the call.

  The phone’s picked up after three rings, Jeff’s perky new wife on the other end.

  “Hi, Maggie,” I say. “It’s Lane. Can I talk to Jeff for a minute?”

  She pauses, sets the phone down with a clunk. I hear the murmur of their voices. I haven’t called Jeff in over a year, not since I moved into a smaller, cheaper apartment and needed to know if he wanted his old armchair. He didn’t.

  “Hello, Lane,” Jeff says, when he comes to the phone. “What’s up?” His voice is brisk, not rude but not friendly, either. It’s hard for me to fathom we once slept in the same bed, saw each other naked, whispered together in the dark. Hearing his voice now brings only a tired sadness. When I first met Jeff—ten years older, safe, and respectable—he felt like salvation, a way to stop running from one crappy job, one run-down apartment, to the next. Except marrying him was just another kind of running, a fact I was too stupid to figure out until later.

  “Sorry to bother you. Apologize to Maggie for me.” I’ve met Maggie only once; she’s a streamlined brunette whose good looks owe more to the magic of money and makeup than to actual beauty. But there is no denying she’s a better match for Jeff. Hell, anyone would be.

  “Yeah, okay,” Jeff says. “What is it?”

  “Listen, I had to leave L.A. in a hurry. I thought I’d be back by now, but I’m kind of stuck here.”

  “Where’s here?”

  I take a deep breath. Jeff knows only the vaguest outlines of my time in Kansas, my mother’s family. I don’t think I ever said the names Roanoke or Allegra to him. “Kansas. I have a cousin who’s in some trouble.”

  I can hear Jeff processing the information, probably deciding whether it’s worth it to say something shitty about all the secrets I keep. In the end, he’s more mature than I would be in his place. “What do you need?”

  “I need to pay my rent for next month. Could you cover it and I’ll pay you when I get back to L.A.?”

  Jeff laughs. “Seriously? Can’t you send them a check?”

  “I could if I had any money in my account,” I snap at him. “I don’t exactly have a job at the moment.”

  “Then how are you planning to pay me back?”

  I close my eyes, grit my teeth. “I’ll figure something out. Do me this favor, please?”

  “Don’t you have anyone else you can call?”

  “No.” I know he’s thinking about our former neighbor, the one I fucked a dozen times before Jeff finally caught us.

  “You’re a real piece of work, you know that?” Jeff says. I wonder if he thinks he’s telling me something I don’t already know. I hear a drawer slam, the rattle of pens. “Fine, give me the address and the amount.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “One time, Lane. I’ll do this one time.”

  “I appreciate it. I wouldn’t ask if I had another choice.”

  “You always have choices, Lane,” Jeff says, weary. “You just keep making the wrong ones.”

  —

  I’m passing the late afternoon in a heat stupor, sprawled out on the front porch swing, when Tommy pulls up to the house in a cloud of dust.

  “Hey, Tommy,” I call, once he’s out of the patrol car.

  “Lane.” His voice is formal, and I bolt upright, my hand rising to shade my eyes so I can see him better. “Is it Allegra?” I ask, my heart suddenly beating triple time. Pale dots dance in my vision from sitting up too fast. “Did you find her?”

  “No,” Tommy says. He’s climbing the porch steps, one hand out like he’s trying to calm me down. “But there is some news.” He looks toward the front door. “Are your grandparents here?”

  “Yeah. Let me go get them. Or do you want to come in?”

  “I’m fine out here.”

  I scramble into the house, calling for my granddad and Gran. I’m breathless by the time I make it back out to the front porch, my grandparents trailing behind me. “Tommy’s here,” I’m telling them. “He says he has news about Allegra.”

  “What is it?” Granddad barks, and Tommy shoots me a look.

  “Don’t go getting your hopes up. It’s not big news,” he says.

  “Well?” Gran says. “Go on.”

  “We got the surveillance tape from the drugstore in Parsons, and Allegra was there a few weeks before she disappeared.”

  “What in the world would she have driven all the way to Parsons for?” Granddad asks, the same question he’s had on a loop since I told him about the receipt I found.

  “Well, from the video we were able to pinpoint which clerk rang Allegra up, and the videotape helped refresh her memory.” Tommy tugs at his uniform collar, where a thin line of sweat has darkened the fabric.

  “And?” I ask.

  Tommy looks at me, shifts his gaze to my grandparents, who are standing behind me. “She bought a pregnancy test,” he says. The words hang in the air for a minute, before landing with a sharp thud.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus,” Granddad says. When I turn around, he’s sunk onto
the porch swing, his head dipping low.

  “A baby?” Gran asks, voice quiet, the color drained from her face.

  “We don’t know for sure,” Tommy says. “No way to know what the result of the test was. But it’s another piece of the puzzle. Another thread for us to pick away at.”

  “Did the clerk say anything else?” I ask.

  “Only that Allegra was friendly, but not very talkative.”

  “What now?” My voice sounds like it’s coming from somewhere outside my body. Maybe Allegra and I aren’t the last Roanoke girls after all.

  “We keep doing what we’re doing,” Tommy says. “Asking questions, searching. Maybe this information will help knock something loose.” He walks over to my granddad and shakes his limp hand, gives my gran a quick pat on the shoulder. “I’ll be in touch,” he says.

  I follow him down the porch steps, all the way to his car. “What do you think it means?” I ask him.

  “I don’t know yet.” He scrubs at his face with one hand, stubble rasping against his palm. He looks beat down, even worse than on the day of the search, eyes bloodshot and skin pasty. “But babies tend to make the girls around here run. Your great-aunt, your aunt, your mo——”

  I interrupt him before he can finish the list. “I already told you she wouldn’t have left Roanoke.” I want to imagine Allegra sunning herself on a beach in Florida or strolling the busy Chicago sidewalks. But she was tied to Roanoke, maybe tighter than any of the rest of us. It’s impossible for me to envision her anywhere but here, especially if she had a baby on the way.

  “It’s just a theory, Lane.” Tommy opens his car door, puts one foot inside, his arm balanced on the roof. He looks at me over his shoulder. “If she was pregnant, I wish I’d known,” he says, not quite meeting my eyes, a dark flush working its way up from underneath his collar.

  My heart skips a beat, then gallops against my ribs. “Why? Why would it have mattered to you?”

  He doesn’t answer, folds himself into the patrol car and starts the engine. “Tommy…” I put both hands on the edge of his open window as if I can hold him there, force him to talk.