The Night She Disappeared

  Gabie moves her finger down to my name. “Wow—they really cut your hours.”

  “Yeah, it’s going to suck,” I say. Which is an understatement. A lot of the other kids work at Pete’s for spending money or maybe to add to a college fund. For me, my hours mean food on the table and lights that come on when I flip the switch.

  Before, I worked on Tuesdays and Wednesdays with Gabie. Kayla and I worked together Friday nights. And pretty much everybody worked Saturdays. But now I’m only scheduled on Fridays and Saturdays. And the two weekdays I normally work with a girl who does deliveries have been given to Miguel. I look over at him. He’s still staring down at the schedule. He’s a senior, too, but he’s always looked older than any of us. He’s over six feet tall, and his dark hair is buzzed right down to his scalp. His long, close-trimmed sideburns follow the angle of his jaw. Miguel’s been shaving since sixth grade. He catches me looking at him, and I turn away. But not before I see his mean little smile.

  Gabie looks up at me. “Do you have a driver’s license?” Her eyes are an unusual color. Not green, not blue, not gray, not hazel. They’re the kind that can look different depending on the day and the lighting and the color of a sweater.

  I shrug. “Yeah, but what difference does that make? Pete doesn’t have a car we can use for deliveries.”

  “You could use my car,” she says, and then looks away.

  I can’t believe it. Gabie and me, we get along fine, but it’s not like we’re good friends. I don’t even know why she works. She doesn’t need to. Her parents have money—they’re both doctors. Surgeons, I think. Her black Mini Cooper is probably only six months old.

  Most of the rich kids at our school are popular, too. But Gabie’s not in that group. She’s not part of any group, really. She’s quiet, always holding back, always watching.

  Kind of like me.

  “No,” I say, but it comes out too hard. She flinches. Mentally, I curse myself. “I mean, sorry, but no thanks.”

  She straightens up so we’re almost eye to eye. “I’m serious.” She looks around until she spots Miguel. He’s in the front, talking to Thayer. She turns back, and her voice gets lower. “I would much rather work with you. When I work with Miguel, all he does is slack off. Plus, he’s always making vulture pies.” Vulture pies are pizzas so bad they’re suitable only for vultures or employees. “And then at the end of the day he takes them home. I’ve seen him do that with as many as three pizzas.”

  “I’m surprised Pete hasn’t figured that out yet.” Pete’s incredibly cheap. Once Danny found some glass in a five-pound can of mushrooms. Instead of telling him to throw them out, Pete offered him a dollar for every piece of glass he found. Danny ended up with fourteen bucks and a big cut on his thumb.

  Gabie shrugs. “Pete’s been taking inventory more often, so he might be catching on. So please? Please use my car and save me from Miguel?”

  I hesitate. The truth is, I need the money. Sometimes I even think about doing a fake pizza order myself. Even though by now I’m totally sick of pizza. Pete already lets us make a personal pizza for our breaks if we work more than four hours. Lately, I’ve been putting anchovies on mine or leaving off the cheese and putting on twice as much sauce. Anything so it doesn’t taste like the thousand pizzas I’ve eaten before.

  Gabie takes a deep breath. Then she says in a rush, “Besides, I like working with you.”

  I’m so surprised that for a moment I don’t say anything. When we work together, she has a cautious way of looking at me. Like she thinks I might be dangerous. If I make a joke, she waits a second before she laughs. It always makes me wonder if she is going to laugh.

  And then when she does, low and throaty, it’s the kind of laugh you want to hear again.

  “Would that really be cool with your insurance?”

  “I could check and see.” Gabie shrugs. “Besides, if you didn’t get into an accident, it wouldn’t matter. Nobody would know. And I’ll bet you’re a careful driver.”

  Is Gabie Klug flirting with me? With me, Drew Lyle?

  “You’ve never seen me drive. How do you know I’m careful?”

  “I can tell.” She looks up at me through her lashes.

  I can’t believe it. She is flirting. “Why would you do that for me?”

  And then she’s suddenly serious. “Because I’ve seen enough to know you deserve it.”

  The Fourth Day

  Gabie

  DREW AND I have to wait to talk to Pete. Amber is talking to him, or more at him, waving her hands.

  Finally it’s our turn. “Can we talk to you about the schedule?” I ask.

  “Both of you?” Pete looks at me, then Drew, then back at me.

  “Yes,” I say firmly.

  “Come into my office.”

  Office is kind of an overstatement for a space that’s ten feet by ten. The desk is covered with receipts and a printing calculator. Boxes of pineapple and olives are stacked next to the walls. Since there’s only one chair and Pete sits in it, Drew and I lean against the boxes.

  I take a deep breath. “I think you should give Drew back the days you cut.”

  Pete shrugs. “Sorry, but he doesn’t have a car. And I’m not letting you or any girl make deliveries.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Not after what happened to Kayla.”

  “He can use my car.”

  Pete looks as surprised by this news as Drew did a few minutes ago.

  “I don’t know….”

  “Come on,” I say. “I don’t want to work with Miguel.”

  “Why not?’

  “Because I wouldn’t feel safe with him. If any bad guy came into the restaurant, I would have to be the one to protect Miguel.”

  It’s true, too. Miguel may look like an adult, but when Danny cut his thumb, Miguel almost passed out. And if it was a choice between protecting me and running away, Miguel would run so fast his shoes would smoke.

  Pete puts his hand up to his mouth, but not before I see the smile underneath his big black mustache.

  “Well, I can’t afford to have you decide you don’t want to work here, too. Amber just told me she’s not coming back.” He looks at Drew. “So obviously that schedule I passed out is already out the window. Would you be interested in extra hours?”

  “Sure.” Drew never says no to extra hours.

  “I appreciate you guys sticking it out. I can see how it might affect you. Both of you,” Pete says. His eyes, which turn down at the corners, make him look like a sad hound dog.

  “That’s all I think about,” Drew says softly. I don’t say anything, just nod.

  Pete leans closer. “I’ll tell you guys something, but you can’t tell anyone.”

  “Okay,” we both say. Drew shoots a glance at me, and I can tell he feels like I do. Like maybe he doesn’t really want to know.

  “They found a spot down by the river, not far from Kayla’s car. A place where the river bank was all torn up. Like there was a struggle. They also found a rock about the size of a fist with blood on it. They’re running tests on it now. They’re getting DNA from Kayla’s toothbrush or something to see if it matches. But if it is blood, it’s probably hers.”

  “A rock?” Drew echoes. “Next to the river?”

  Pete nods. I don’t know about them, but I’m thinking about the river, how deep and wide and fast it is. Parts are over a hundred feet deep. The spring snowmelt has been high this year.

  Pete adds quickly, “But don’t tell anyone. It could be a coincidence.”

  “Do her parents know?” Drew asks.

  “Of course,” Pete says, already looking like he’s sorry that he told us. “But no one else. I really shouldn’t have said anything.” He busies himself straightening up some papers. It’s clear we’re being dismissed. “I’ll talk to Miguel and tell him the schedule’s changed back.”

  Outside Pete’s office, I turn to Drew. “Want to go to Starbucks?”

  DREW’S MOM came into Pete’s a couple of weeks ago.
Drew was in the back, grating mozzarella on the Hobart. I didn’t know it was his mom. He and I went to different elementary schools, which is about the last time you see people’s parents.

  My first thought wasn’t that she was anyone’s mom. Her dishwater blond hair hung in tangled curls in front of her skinny face, and her blue eyeshadow was smeared over one eye. She had on jeans, a black down jacket, and scuffed high heels.

  “Hey, is Drew working today?” She had a smoker’s voice, and she smelled like one too.

  “He’s in the back,” I said. “Do you want me to get him for you?”

  Everyone at school knew you could buy weed off Drew Lyle. But it was all pretty casual, a couple of joints. It wasn’t like he was some big dealer. He only sold pot. But now it looked like he was selling it to adults as well as kids, and somehow that was different. Plus, I’d never seen him sell at work before. I didn’t like that idea at all.

  Instead of answering me, she suddenly bellowed, “Drew! Come out here! Drew!”

  I winced. There was only one other customer in the place, some guy in his thirties who was eating a slice at the counter and reading an old People magazine. He had tried to hit on me earlier. I pegged him for recently divorced. And probably for good reason. I had communicated with him as little as possible, and he had given up, his shoulders slumping. Maybe he had finally realized how ridiculous he was being, trying to flirt with a seventeen-year-old girl at a pizza place. Now he looked up with an expression of annoyance that quickly changed to one of contemplation. Fresh meat. Or not so fresh.

  She opened her mouth to yell again. “I’ll get him,” I said quickly, not wanting to hear another nasal bray.

  But Drew came out at a run.

  “Mom, what are you doing here?”

  Mom? She didn’t look any older than thirty.

  And the look Drew shot me couldn’t be characterized. Embarrassed, defiant, pleading.

  “I need,” Drew’s mom announced in a haughty voice, “to borrow some money.”

  The Fourth Day

  Drew

  AT STARBUCKS, Gabie insists on paying. I wish I’d ordered a house coffee instead of a grande mocha.

  “Are you guys related?” the barista says as she hands over identical coffees.

  We laugh, say no, and then look at each other. We do kind of look alike. I’m two inches taller, but we both have straight chin-length hair that’s the same nothing color, not blond, not brown, with bangs some people might think are too long.

  “Thanks for the coffee, cuz.” I lift the cup toward Gabie, like I’m making a toast. She smiles. We go out and sit at one of the small round metal tables. The sun feels good, like a warm, flat hand on my back.

  The only other person outside is a guy smoking and talking on a cell phone. Still, Gabie lowers her voice. “One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is I feel like you’re the only one who understands about Kayla. I mean, he wanted me, right? He asked for the girl in the Mini Cooper. He didn’t ask for Kayla. She was an innocent bystander.”

  “He did ask about you.”

  Gabie’s throat moves up and down as she swallows. She’s quiet for a long time, but then she says in a rush, “Sometimes I think—what if he still wants me? What if he comes back?” Her knees are going again. I want to put my palm on them, like you would try to soothe a frightened animal.

  “Well, you won’t be making deliveries anymore,” I point out. “But if you feel scared, you could just quit.”

  Her mouth twists. “What good would that do? If he wants me, he can get me whether I’m at Pete’s or not. In fact, it’s probably better that I’m at work, because at least there are other people around.”

  “What about your parents?”

  “They’re hardly ever home. They do a lot of trauma surgery, which means they’re on call twenty-four hours.” She picks at the lip of her paper cup, uncurling a tiny section. “I’ll wake up in the morning and realize I’m the only one in the house and have been all night. It’s spooky, even if the alarm is on.”

  I nod. It’s not the same, but sometimes my mom goes home with some guy she’s met. Still, the end result is the same: you wake up in an empty house.

  “Have you talked to the police? Maybe they could get you a bodyguard.”

  “Oh, right.” She rolls her eyes. “They seem to think it was someone who knew Kayla. You heard them today. They think the reason she got out of the car was because she knew the person. But he asked for me.” Gabie stabs her chest with her index finger. She’s wearing some kind of white gauzy blouse with a pink tank top underneath.

  “Maybe he asked for you to throw the cops off the scent like Thayer said. Maybe whoever it was already knew Kayla was working that night.”

  I don’t really believe it, but Gabie looks a tiny bit relieved.

  “Then who would it be?” Her eyes narrow. “Do you think it could be Brock? Kayla just broke up with him. Isn’t that when there’s the most danger for violence?”

  I try to imagine Brock angry, angry enough to hurt or kill Kayla. Underneath his half-closed eyes and barely passing grades, maybe there’s a coil of energy and rage, just waiting to spring out.

  But I don’t think so.

  “He could just wait until after school or go over to Kayla’s house on a weekend or something,” I point out. “Why go to all the trouble of calling in a fake pizza order?”

  “The same reason anyone would do it,” Gabie says darkly. “So they would have privacy, out there in the middle of nowhere. So they could do whatever they wanted to her with no witnesses.” She stands up, chugs the rest of her mocha in a single gulp, and tosses it in the garbage can. “Will you go somewhere with me?”

  I’ve worked with Gabie for fourteen months, but today I’ve said more to her than in all those months put together. Plus she keeps surprising me.

  “Sure. Where?”

  “I want to see.”

  “What?” I think I know what she’s saying, but I’m hoping I’m wrong.

  “I want to see the place for myself. Where it happened. Will you come with me?”

  “Okay,” I say and push back my chair. A snake uncoils in my belly. Is this really a good idea? I wonder if we’ll even be able to find where it happened. At Pete’s we have a big map of the area we can check before we go out on an order.

  I have a sudden flash of Kayla looking at it before she left, tracing her finger on a line running parallel to the river. And then she turned and said something to me, didn’t she?

  But I still can’t remember what.

  I’ve never been in a Mini Cooper before. It’s cool. The dash is wood and shaped like a T, with a speedometer as big as a plate. Instead of an annoying beep, beep, beep to remind you about the seat belt, it plays a three-note melody that sounds straight from the disco era. It almost makes me smile.

  As I get into the passenger seat, Gabie hands me some papers. It’s MapQuest directions to the fake address.

  “How did you get it to give you directions?” I ask. “I thought the cops said this address didn’t exist.”

  “I guess MapQuest doesn’t know that. It must just figure out where the address should be and give directions to that spot. Even if it’s not real.”

  Despite the directions, the address is hard to find. Once we get off the main road, we don’t pass a single car. The roads are narrow, barely big enough for two cars to pass, with gravel shoulders. There’s no houses out here, no nothing. Just a sign, pockmarked with bullet holes, warning there’s a five-hundred-dollar fine for dumping trash. The road where the house supposedly was is next to what the Internet says is a Superfund site. Fifty years ago, companies dumped tar and creosote into the river before conveniently going bankrupt so they wouldn’t have to pay for any cleanup.

  I see something white in the distance, but it takes a while to recognize it. Someone has put up a white cross next to the road, the way people do to mark where someone died in a car accident. We park about twenty feet away. After getting out of the ca
r, we walk toward it without saying anything. Our feet crunch on the gravel. The river rushes on our right, but I can’t see it.

  Looking at the cross is creepy. Crosses mean dead people, but no one has said Kayla’s dead. Maybe Kayla’s parents already know more than Pete, know that it is her blood, or have even already identified her body. I imagine her being pulled from the water, her skin so white it’s nearly violet, her tangled black hair covering her face.

  Kayla’s senior picture is glued to the center where the two wooden sticks meet. One arm of the cross says Kayla in purple glitter. The other arm says cutler. A purple teddy bear is propped at the base.

  “When I think of Kayla, I don’t think of white crosses or purple teddy bears,” I tell Gabie. Kayla never talked about religion, and she doesn’t seem like the kind of girl who still likes stuffed animals.

  “You never know.” Gabie takes a deep breath and her lips tremble. “Chase me.”

  I hear what she says, but I can’t understand it. Or I understand it all right, but I can’t believe it. “What?”

  “Chase me. Chase me down to the river.”

  I stop pretending I don’t know what she means. “It’s still light out,” I point out. “It was dark then. It’s not the same.”

  “Please,” she urges, “chase me.” She runs a few steps, stops. Her eyes are shiny.

  “That’s crazy. That’s sick. You heard the cop. He wanted Kayla.”

  Gabie shakes her head so hard her hair whips out. “I don’t think so.” Her face wrinkles up. She presses her fingers against her lips. She looks like she’s going to cry or throw up. “It was supposed to be me,” she whispers from behind her fingers.

  I puff air out of my lips. “But why do you want me to chase you?”

  “I’m freaking out, Drew! I can’t stop thinking about it. I need to know what it was like for Kayla.”

  The Fourth Day

  Gabie

  I IMAGINE KAYLA running. I’ve seen her run the bases before. She’s fast. Tricky. She takes chances, takes a lead off the base, daring the pitcher to pick her off. She steals when she can. Always with a grin.