I say, “Hi, Holly.”
She heads into the diner. She’s not speaking to me and that makes me think Penny must’ve faded from her mind, turned into some faceless blonde just passing through, like so many before.
Holly’s cold shoulder is contagious. Some of the other girls keep their eyes pointedly off me. Even the ones that don’t really talk to me—there’s an edge in how they’re not doing it now. I glance at Leon, who’s missing exactly none of it.
“Break later?” I ask, because I want Leon to take the feel of this off me but I don’t mean it in a way that wants his hands everywhere—even though I think I want that too.
“Better not,” he says. He tells Annette to watch the grill for a second and then he comes over. He lowers his voice. “Work through your break.”
“What?”
“Work through your break, Romy,” he tells me. “Now you’re back, everyone’s got time to be mad about it. Let them cool off and show them you’re not going to mess around.”
“But I wasn’t—I didn’t.”
He gives me a look that stings, but—in his version of Friday night, I guess I did.
“I know it sucks, but look at it this way—they’re mad because they care.”
“Okay,” I say.
“I mean it. Holly was a mess. She’d go out, do her tables, and come back in and lose it. You got to let them be mad and you’ve got to try to make good.”
“Then I’ll work through my break.”
“That’ll help, especially with Tracey. Holly might be tougher to crack, but she’ll come around and once she does, everyone else will calm down,” he says. “And then you just never have to do anything that stupid again.”
There’s a roughness to his voice when he says it, and I guess maybe he’s still a little pissed about all of it too. “Thanks for the advice.”
“I’m not going to be here tomorrow,” he says. “I’ve got to take Caro to see her doula.”
“What’s a doula?”
“They support the mother, like throughout the pregnancy and the labor. Emotionally, more than medically. Caro says it helps a lot.”
“How close is she?”
Annette gestures for him to come back to the grill. He nods in acknowledgment. “She’s about overdue. That kid doesn’t seem in any rush to get out.”
“Can you blame it?”
He laughs a little, like I just told a joke.
i trudge through the heat, my skin and eyes dry with it. It’s unending. We’re going to turn to dust wishing we’d worried about the weather sooner and maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing. Grebe High looms ugly ahead and it’s not until I’m halfway across the parking lot I notice Jane and John have been dismantled. An unsettling blank space where school spirit used to be. Penny’s gone and she took it with her. Inside, there’s a notice board by the stairs; now the party is over, a new call to action.
FIND PENNY
VISIT THE LIBRARY
BEFORE 1st PERIOD OR LUNCH
TO FIND OUT HOW YOU CAN HELP
Wake up.
There’s a photograph of Penny underneath. It makes her seem less real somehow. Her eyes and smile flat, her hair so pixelated from being so blown out, it’s lost its sheen. I close my eyes and try to picture it another way. Instead of her face, I see a sign that says FIND ROMY. I wonder what it’s like to be missed. Wherever Penny is now, she has to know what she’s inspired, that she’s being searched for because people want her back. What would happen if it was me? Maybe they’d forget. Maybe they’d like me better. Would that even be possible? I think I’d trade places with her to find out. Either way, I’d get to disappear.
The door swings open behind me and then a shoulder meets my back, shoving me forward. I’m too far out of the way for that to have been an accident, and when I turn—Tina.
“There’s going to be a volunteer search party,” she says. “Next week.”
“So?”
“You going?”
“Why would I?”
“It’s the least you could do.”
“Is that right?”
“I don’t care who’s out there looking for Penny, just so long as they’re looking.”
“Maybe you should see if Alek feels the same way,” I say. She goes shamefaced, didn’t think that one totally through. “He back?”
She doesn’t answer, so he’s back. I’m surprised he hasn’t dressed the school in his grief, painted it black. Tina stares at the notice.
“Should’ve been you,” she says.
I bite my tongue but I want to hurt her so bad. A few other people come in and start crowding the board. It’s as good a time as any to rid myself of the moment, so I walk away.
“Did you see her last tweet?” I hear a girl ask.
“Whose?” Tina asks.
“Penny’s. It was creepy.”
I’m at my locker when “Time-wasting bitch,” gets hissed at my back. I turn and there’s Trey Marcus, his eyes fixed steadily ahead, like he didn’t say it. It’s another cut and if I know anything, I have to cut back where I can, even if that puts me in places I don’t want to be. I head for the library. I’ll make myself part of their effort, see who calls me a time-wasting bitch to my face then.
They can’t have it both ways.
The Required Reading display is gone and three tables have been pushed together in its place. A small crowd has gathered in front of it, and standing behind the tables are Alek and Brock. Brock is so close to Alek, he could be his puppeteer. He mutters something in Alek’s ear. Alek nods grimly. He’s trying to hold himself tall, trying to look like a man commanding a crisis, but he’s so see-through. He’s The Stricken Boyfriend. His usual pressed-to-perfection self is rumpled and there’s a staleness about him, like he spent the night in his clothes, awake. There are dark circles under his bloodshot eyes and the red makes the green of them more vivid. His lips are as pale as his face. He’ll fester soon. If he’s already this bad, and it’s just the start—if she doesn’t come back, he’ll let it eat at him until he’s nothing. He straightens a little, tries to put on a braver face and I wonder who it would be, if it was me? Who would stand at this table, looking even a little broken about it?
Her.
There’s a basket of white ribbons in front of Alek, for us to pin to ourselves. (What color would mine be?) A stack of MISSING posters and a sign-up sheet. Andy Martin hovers close by, his camera hanging heavily around his neck. His fingers tease the button, like he’s not sure if this is something he should be taking pictures of, for the yearbook.
I edge up to the table and everyone looks at me. Everyone. Alek’s breath gets caught in his throat. I hear it, the catch. Brock reaches across him and moves the ribbons away. I grab the basket before he can get it entirely out of my reach. I take a ribbon and pin it to my shirt.
“Take it off now,” Alek says. I move to the posters, grab a handful of them. He goes to snatch them back but stops himself when I clutch them to my chest. He takes a deep breath. “You take the ribbon off and give those back.”
“No. Tina told me I should help.”
Alek looks at Brock and I know Tina’s in for it later, so my work here is done. Cat Kiley steps forward, nudging me out of the way. Her doe eyes zero in on Alek.
She says, “I am so sorry about Penny.”
“Thank you,” Alek says faintly. He’s still staring at me.
“She’ll come back, though. I know she will.” She nods at the sign-up sheet next to the posters. “What happens when I put my name down?”
This is all becoming too much for Alek, so Brock takes over.
“You leave your e-mail and phone number and we’ll send you any and all updates relating to Penny, calls for action—like putting posters up in surrounding areas—and we’ll be in touch about the volunteer search party at the lake next Monday. Big stuff like the search party will also go out to the GHS student announcement listserv, but Diaz told us not to overwhelm it, so…”
“Wa
it, I thought the police already searched? You think they missed something?”
“I’m sure Sheriff Turner didn’t miss anything,” Brock says. “But a second look can’t hurt.”
Cat turns red. “I didn’t mean it like that.” She scribbles her name and then hurries away. I pick up the pen. It’s warm from her grasp. I stare at the paper. I think I did this wrong. I shouldn’t have come here but it’s too late to take back.
I put my name down.
“i went to the lake, now it’s settled down over there.”
It’s how Mom greets me when I come home from school. She’s at the door, like she’s been there for hours. I imagine her peering down the street, waiting for a glimpse of me, unwilling to believe I’ll be home until I am home, right in front of her. I take the missing posters out of my book bag before tossing it on the floor, so they don’t get wrecked.
“I looked everywhere,” she says. “But I didn’t find your phone.”
“You didn’t have to do that. Thank you.”
She squeezes my shoulder. “Could still turn up. It’s red, it’s got your name engraved on it. It’d be hard to miss, if it didn’t end up in the water.”
“I wasn’t by the water.”
But I don’t know if that’s true. I want to believe it is. I want to believe that whatever happened at the lake, no matter what anyone says to my face or said online, there were moments I could count on myself, even for something stupid like staying away from the water wasted.
She’s surprised. “You weren’t?”
I hesitate. “No.”
But it gives me away and all the sympathy I don’t want is in her eyes. The posters in my hand become a perfect distraction. I give her one and she holds it as carefully as a newborn, running her thumb over the side of Penny’s grainy face.
“You should take these to Swan’s, if there aren’t some already there.”
“Yeah,” I say.
But I don’t take the posters to Swan’s with me, not at first.
They stay on my desk and it’s worse, having them there, because I keep thinking about what else Tina said to me, half the sheriff’s department looking for me. Better hope that wasn’t the half that would’ve made the difference. Maybe there’s some trucker who’s seen Penny, and they’ll come through Swan’s and the only thing in the way of his saying so is whether or not the posters are up. I don’t know. I just want them both—Penny and Tina—taking up less of my thoughts, so I give in and bring the posters to work and Tracey gives me the go-ahead to tape them to the notice board out front. She looks at the awful black-and-white photo of Penny and sees Penny alive in it in all the ways I don’t. She murmurs, beautiful, she’s so beautiful and it makes me feel like the level of tragedy here is directly proportionate to Penny’s looks. I ask for Monday off, for the search party, even though I haven’t decided if I’ll go. She says, of course and on my way out of her office, adds, “It makes you think, doesn’t it? You’re lucky, Romy.”
I wonder if that means she thinks I’m beautiful enough to be as tragic.
But I say, “Yeah,” because it’s what she wants me to say.
Leon has time before his shift starts, so he helps me put the posters up, manning the tape while I clear away out-of-date flyers to make room.
“How is it in Grebe?” he asks, taping Penny’s corners down.
“How you’d expect.” I place another poster right beside the one I just put up. People will overlook one, but maybe not two or three. “Sad. There’s a volunteer search party next Monday. How was the doula appointment?”
He grimaces. “Gross. I mean, it was good. But now I know about something called a mucus plug? So…”
“Oh. Ew.”
“Yeah. I could’ve gone a little longer being ignorant of that.”
“How’s Caro doing?”
“She’s getting quiet,” he says. He tapes the last corner of the third poster down, smiling a little. “Never known my sister to be quiet.” He nods toward the kitchen. “I have to get ready. You coming back?”
I tell him I’ll be there in a minute and take the tape from him. I stare at the posters for a long moment. Three lined up, side by side, almost kind of like modern art. But that’s good, that’s eye catching, I think. I wonder how it looks just coming in, so I step outside, walking backward until I can’t see the posters through the door and then I move forward like I’m anyone stopping in for a bite. I want to know the exact moment my eyes register MISSING and Penny’s face—but then Holly comes out and blocks my view.
“You walking out on us again?” she asks. It’s the first she’s spoken to me since Friday night. I point to the posters behind her.
“I just wanted to see how they looked.”
“You said you didn’t know her,” Holly says.
“What?”
She crosses her arms. “Penny Young. She was in here, that Friday. As soon as I saw her in the paper, I recognized her. You sat right across from her in that booth and then you both got upset about something and you both left, one after the other. Now she’s gone. I keep waiting for you to say something about it, but you were never going to, were you?”
My heart stops. I thought Penny got past Holly, but nothing gets past Holly. I was stupid to believe it could.
“No,” I finally say. “I wasn’t going to.”
She’s not expecting an honest answer. It catches her off guard enough that I can slip by her. She reaches for me. “Romy, just a minute—”
“Leave it, Holly.”
But another thing about Holly is she doesn’t know how to leave anything. She follows me to the kitchen, right at my heels. When we’re behind the door, she starts in on me.
“Did you at least tell the police she was here?”
This gets everyone looking. Leon’s head turns my way. Girls on their way out—order pads and pencils in hand—stop to hear what Holly’s got to say.
“Did you tell the police Penny Young was here?” she demands again.
I go from zero to a hundred, in a second flat. “Holly, would you shut up?”
“Hey,” Leon says sharply and Holly’s mouth hangs open because I’ve never mouthed off at her before. He sets his spatula down, wipes his hands on his apron. “What’s going on?”
“Penny Young was in this diner the night she disappeared,” Holly tells him, pointing at me. “She’s the customer Romy looked after, before she walked out and she told me she didn’t know her. Now I’m wondering if she’s been as honest with the police.” She looks at me. “You don’t mess around with this kind of stuff, Romy. It’s serious.”
“It’s also none of your business,” I say. “Yes, I told the police about it, but this wasn’t the last place she was seen so it didn’t matter and I’m not your fucking daughter and I don’t work for you, so back. Off.”
I storm out of the kitchen, through the back door. It swings shut behind me. I kick the Dumpster. My foot meets the metal hard, the impact recoiling up my legs. That felt too close, like my mom almost getting in the car with Todd the day of his accident. I shouldn’t have hung those posters up. Try to do good for a girl who never did me any favors and it turns out worse than it ever needed to be. Fuck you, Penny. Just—fuck you.
I rub my palm over my mouth and then the panic hits, so ingrained after a year of hypervigilance—you wrecked your lips, fix it—that my other hand finds my pocket, then my lipstick, and I trace my mouth with it because after a year of hypervigilance, I know its shape enough to know how to make do without mirrors.
Leon comes out just as I’m ready. I pocket my lipstick and move away from the Dumpster. I try to look sorry, but I know it won’t be enough.
“What the hell was that?”
“She was in my face—”
“No, she was asking you a question. A good one,” he interrupts. “You don’t talk to Holly like that. You know the kind of shit she’s going through at home, Romy. Come on. She doesn’t need this.”
“I don’t need it, either. S
he was getting in my face,” I repeat, because I don’t know what else to say, but I have to put something out there so the last thing isn’t his chastising me, because if it is, I’ll get mad enough to do something dumb. I don’t need any boy telling me how to talk to other people, but I don’t want to be dumb around Leon, either.
“That’s not what I saw,” he says.
“That’s what it felt like.”
He exhales and looks up, like he’s plucking all the words he wants to say next from the sky. I hope they’re the right ones. “I don’t think you get what you put us through here. You walked out on your shift to get drunk. Just think about that for a second—”
“Leon—”
“No, just think about it,” he says and I shut my mouth, but I can’t make myself think about it. Maybe I got drunk, but I didn’t leave my shift to get that way, Leon. And everything that happened after—I didn’t leave for that, either. “You’ve got people in there who want to give you the benefit of the doubt because they can’t believe you’d do something like that in the first place. You’re not making it easy tonight, Romy.”
“Neither is she,” I say.
“She doesn’t owe you that. And she’s not the only one you’re making it hard for.”
He’s angry with me. No. Is this where I lose Leon? I don’t want to lose Leon. He’s the boy who stopped and I’m the girl he stopped for and what happens to her, if he goes away?
“Oh,” I say.
I press my hands against my face and split myself in two. Push away the side that’s the truth because that’s the side that wants to be angry at him for how wrong he is because of all the things he doesn’t know. I focus on the side I’ve shown to him. There’s so much missing, but it’s better that it’s missing. And as long as it’s missing, that makes everything he’s saying to me now—right. I take a breath.
“You’re right.” I lower my hands. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
My apology turns him so relieved, like he was worried I’d make this a bigger fight, worried this was going to be the part where I’d lose him too.
“I’m not the one you need to apologize to.”