September 27
“Oh my God.” Avery, Cheryl’s daughter and my maybe-soon-to-be stepsister, shakes her head. “I can’t believe you got to work here all summer. I had to be at my dad’s insurance company. Can you imagine?” She mimes holding a phone to her ear. “‘Hello, and thank you for calling Schroeder and Kalis.’ I must have said that, like, forty times a day. Holy shit. Is that a wave pool?”
When I told Avery I was going to spend the day helping shut down FanLand, I assumed she would want to reschedule our mandated girl time. To my surprise, she volunteered to help.
Of course, her version of helping has so far involved stretching out on a lawn chair and occasionally switching positions to maximize sun exposure, while offering up a stream of random questions (“Do you think there are so many one-legged pirates because of sharks? Or is it, like, malnutrition?”) and observations that range from absurd (“I really think purple reads more nautical than red”) to bizarrely astute (“Have you ever noticed that really happy couples don’t feel the need to, like, hang on each other all the time?”).
Weirdly, though, I’m not totally hating her company. There’s something comforting about the never-ending rhythm of her conversation, and the way she treats every subject as equally important or equally trivial; I’m not sure which. (Her response earlier this summer to finding out I was in a psychiatric ward: “Oh my God! If they ever make a movie version of your life, I totally want to be in it.”) She’s like the emotional equivalent of a lawn mower, digesting everything into manageable, uniform pieces.
“How’re you holding up, Nick?” Parker, who’s helping dismantle the awnings at one of the pavilions, cups his hands to his mouth to shout to me across the park. I give him a thumbs-up and he grins wide, waving.
“He is so cute,” Avery says, inching her sunglasses down her nose to stare. “Are you sure he isn’t your boyfriend?”
“Positive,” I say, for the hundredth time since Parker dropped us off. But even the idea makes me feel warm and happy, like I’ve had a sip of really good hot chocolate. “We’re just friends. I mean, we’re best friends. Well, we were.” I exhale hard. Avery is staring at me, eyebrows raised. “I’m not sure what we are now. But . . . it’s good.”
We have time. That’s what Parker said to me last night before I went home, taking my face in his hands, planting a single kiss, lightly, on my lips. We have time to figure this out.
“Uh-huh.” Avery looks at me appraisingly for a second. “You know what?”
“What?” I say.
“You should let me do your hair.” She says this so firmly, so adamantly, as if it’s a solution to the whole world’s problems—exactly the way Dara would have said it—I can’t help but laugh. Then, swiftly, I get the deep ache again, the dark well of feeling where Dara should be and always has been. I wonder if I’ll ever think of her again without hurting.
“Maybe,” I tell Avery. “Sure. That would be nice.”
“Awesome.” She unfolds, origami-like, from her lounge chair. “I’m going to get a soda. You want something?”
“I’m okay,” I tell her. “I’m almost done here, anyway.” I’ve been stacking chairs around the wave pool for the past half hour. Slowly, FanLand is collapsing in on itself, or retreating, like an animal going into hibernation. Signs and awnings come down, chairs get carted into storage, the stands are shuttered and the rides padlocked. And it will remain, silent and still and untouched, until May—when once again, the animal will emerge, sloughing off its winter skin, roaring with sound and color.
“Need any help?”
I turn and see Alice moving down the walkway toward me, hauling a bucket of filthy water in which a sponge is bobbing slowly across the surface. She must have been scrubbing down the spinning carousel; she insists on doing it by hand. Her hair is in its trademark braids, and with her ripped T-shirt (Good things come to those who hustle, it reads) and visible tattoos, she looks like some gangster version of Pippi Longstocking.
“I got it,” I say, but she sets the bucket down anyway and falls in next to me, slinging the chairs easily into towering Tetris formations.
I’ve only seen her once since I came back from the hospital, and then only from a distance. For a minute, we work together in silence. My mouth feels suddenly dry. I’m desperate to say something, give her some explanation or even apology, but I can’t come up with a single word.
Then she says abruptly, “Did you hear the good news? Wilcox finally approved new uniforms for next summer,” and I relax, and know that she won’t ask me anything, and doesn’t think I’m crazy, either. “You are coming back next summer, aren’t you?” she says, giving me a hard look.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I hadn’t thought about it.” Strange to think there will even be a next summer: that time is moving on, and carrying me along with it. And for the first time in over a month, I get just the barest flicker of excitement, a sense of momentum and good things coming that I can’t yet see, like trying to catch the tail end of a colored streamer dancing just out of reach.
Alice makes a disapproving noise, as if she can’t quite believe that everyone else doesn’t have the next forty years mapped, plotted, planned, and adequately scheduled.
“We’re going to get the Gateway up and running, too,” she says, heaving the last chair into place with a grunt. “And you know something? I’m going to be first in line to ride that puppy.”
“Why do you care so much?” I blurt out, before I can stop myself. “About FanLand and the rides and . . . all of it. I mean, why do you love it?”
Alice turns to stare at me, and blood rushes to my face; I realize how rude I must have sounded. After a moment, she turns, lifting her hand to her eyes to shield them from the sun. “See that?” she says, pointing to the row of now-shuttered game booths and snack vendors: Green Row, we call it, because of all the money that changes hands there. “What do you see there?”
“What do you mean?” I say.
“What do you see there?” she repeats, growing impatient.
I know this must be a trick question. But I say, “Green Row.”
“Green Row,” she repeats, as if she’s never heard the term. “You know what people see when they come to Green Row?”
I shake my head. I know she doesn’t really expect an answer.
“They see prizes. They see luck. They see opportunities to win.” She pivots in another direction, pointing at the enormous image of Pirate Pete, welcoming visitors to FanLand. “And there. What’s that?” This time, she waits for me to respond.
“Pirate Pete,” I say slowly.
She squawks, as if I’ve said something funny. “Wrong. It’s a sign. It’s wood and plaster and paint. But you don’t see that, and the people who come here don’t see that, either. They see a big old pirate, just like they see prizes and a chance to win something on Green Row, just like they see you in that awful mermaid costume, and for three and a half minutes they let themselves believe that you’re actually a frigging mermaid. All of this”—she turns a circle, sweeping her arms wide, as if to embrace the whole park—“is just mechanics. Science and engineering. Nuts and bolts and gears. And you know it, and I know it, and all the people who come here every single day know it, too. But for just a little while, they forget to know it. They believe. That the ghosts on the Haunted Ship are real. That every problem can be solved with a funnel cake and a song. That that”—she turns and points to the high metal scaffolding of the Gateway, stretching like an arm toward the clouds—“might really be a gateway to heaven.” She turns back to me and suddenly I feel breathless, as if she’s not looking at me but into me, and seeing all the ways I’ve screwed up, all the mistakes I made, and telling me it’s all right, I’m forgiven, I can let go now.
“That’s what magic is, Nick,” she says, her voice soft. “It’s just faith. Who knows?” She smiles, turning back to the Gateway. “Maybe someday we’ll all jump the tracks and lift off straight into the sky.”
“Yeah,” I say. I look where she’s looking; I try to see what she sees. And for a split second I find her, silhouetted by the sky, arms outstretched like she’s making snow angels in the air or simply laughing, turning in place; for a split second, she comes to me as the clouds, the sun, the wind touching my face and telling me that somehow, someday, it will be okay.
And maybe she’s right.
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About the Authors
Photo © Mike Holliday, 2013
LAUREN OLIVER is the author of the teen novels Before I Fall and Panic and the Delirium trilogy: Delirium, Pandemonium, and Requiem, which have been translated into more than thirty languages and are New York Times and international bestselling novels. She is also the author of two novels for middle grade readers, The Spindlers and Liesl & Po, which was an E. B. White Read Aloud Award nominee. Lauren’s novel Panic has been optioned for film by Universal Studios. A graduate of the University of Chicago and NYU’s MFA program, Lauren Oliver is also the cofounder of the boutique literary development company Paper Lantern Lit. You can visit her online at www.laurenoliverbooks.com.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Books by Lauren Oliver
Before I Fall
Liesl & Po
Panic
The Spindlers
THE DELIRIUM SERIES
Delirium
Delirium Stories: Hana, Annabel, and Raven
Pandemonium
Requiem
FOR ADULTS
Rooms
Credits
Cover art © 2015 by Anastasia Volkova
Cover design by Erin Fitzsimmons
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Although many of the larger geographical areas indicated in this book do, in fact, exist, most (if not all) of the streets, landmarks, and other place names are of the author’s invention.
Photographs by: here Petrenko Andriy/Shutterstock;
here PhotographyByMK/Shutterstock;
here iStock.com/KMahelona, here George Burba/Shutterstock, here, here Sandra Cunningham/Shutterstock, here Robert Ranson/Thinkstock;
here iStock.com/joreks0, here, here Melissa King/Shutterstock;
here Inti St. Clair/Getty Images, here © 2015 Caroline Purser/Getty Images;
here Anastasiya Domnitch/Shutterstock;
here BonneChance/Thinkstock;
here Fuse/Getty Images;
here © 2015 Cal Crary/Getty Images, here Marilyn Volan/Shutterstock;
here Stefanie Timmermann/Getty Images, here David S. Carter
VANISHING GIRLS. Text copyright © 2015 by Laura Schechter. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Oliver, Lauren, date
Vanishing girls / Lauren Oliver. — First edition.
pages cm
Summary: “Two sisters inexorably altered by a terrible accident, a missing nine-year-old girl, and the shocking connection between them”— Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-06-222410-1 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-06-237818-7 (int’l ed.)
EPub Edition © February 2015 ISBN 9780062224125
[1. Sisters—Fiction. 2. Missing children—Fiction. 3. Dissociative disorders—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.O475Van 2015
2014028437
[Fic]—dc23
CIP
AC
The artist used Adobe Photoshop to create the digital illustrations for this book.
1516171819PC/RRDH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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Lauren Oliver, Vanishing Girls
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