I bring my hand to my own shirt and it’s hot in this room, the air weighs on me, more than normal heat, pushing on me from the outside, from the inside, something I want to separate myself from. The next photo, the girl is looking up, up, up, eyes searching for something she’s not finding. Her hands rest uselessly at her sides. She looks so small and exhausted.
In the next photo, her shirt is open.
The pink-and-black lace push-up bra.
There are hands on her shoulders, keeping her upright, keeping her from slouching forward just so everyone can see.
But that skin has been shed now. That skin, all of that touched skin has been shed now, cells have regenerated. Those hands aren’t on her anymore.
Whatever was on her then is gone, now—
My head throbs. The kind of headache that makes you want to vomit, but I swallow against that feeling and click forward and I imagine it how it must have been that night, all these people around this girl, trying not to laugh, but it’s too hard. It’s so hard not to enjoy this because how can you put something so golden, a girl who can barely open her eyes or her mouth—how can you put something like that in front of them and expect them to be better people?
Because in the next photo—the last photo—the girl’s hands are at her bra, her red nails teasing the clasp and I think wildly that I could reach through and grab her wrist, like I could stop her and take her away, because no one else is doing it. Because no one else did it.
I put my hand to the screen, covering hers.
We’re wearing the same color nail polish.
i sit at my desk with everything I need for my nails and every application of polish ends up feeling the same, ends up feeling like it’s leading me back to the water. Over and over, I paint the color on and each time I finish, it’s still too close. I have to take it off, try again until it’s right, because I can’t give up the red. It’s mine. It makes me.
“Romy, you’re going to be late.”
I press the brush heavily against my nails, letting my hand shake the color on. Something I never do. It doesn’t make for the best manicure, but the weight of the polish feels differently than it normally does and then I’m ready.
At school, I stand in the entranceway, and I think the heat outside would be better than choking on the same breathed air of the people who crowded around me, saw me with my shirt open. My eyes skim their faces, their hands—hands on my shoulders. Whose hands? Who was holding my phone, taking photos with it to send to the school? I close my eyes and hear a muddle of voices and try to imagine which one said they should, because that’s how it started, didn’t it? No. First it’s a thought, a thought in someone’s head and then said aloud, and then me, on the ground, with my shirt open.
“Jesus, Grey. When aren’t you in the way?”
Brock is behind me and Alek lags behind him. They’re both carrying two hefty baskets full of bright yellow T-shirts with bold black lettering across the front. FIND PENNY YOUNG. And underneath that in tinier, but still visible letters, GREBE AUTO SUPPLIES. I move and they shuffle past before they’re waylaid by some underclassmen who ask about the shirts as an excuse to get a closer look at Alek’s haggard face.
“They’re for anyone who wants ’em,” Brock says. He nods at Alek. “Mrs. Turner had them made. They’re free. If you take one, make sure you wear it for the search on Monday. The news is probably going to be there. This’ll be a chance to—”
“Get Grebe Auto Supplies some free publicity?” I ask.
Alek turns awkwardly, weighed down by his basket.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” he says and the underclassmen look at me like I’m scum, like I disappeared her myself. But they already think that.
“Yeah, because the last goddamn thing a national brand needs is free publicity,” Brock snaps. It probably doesn’t hurt, though. He grabs a T-shirt off the top and whips it at my chest. It drops from there to the ground. The letters get mangled into the folds and the only word still visible is PENNY.
“Pick it up,” Alek says but he’s not talking to me.
Brock turns to him. “What?”
“Don’t leave it on the fucking ground.”
There’s a hint of panic in Alek’s voice, enough for one of the freshmen to snatch it from the dirty floor and put it back in Brock’s pile.
“Man, I didn’t—”
But Alek is already walking away.
By midday, the halls are a sea of yellow, making Penny a part of every single moment, a relentless reminder for everyone of what they think I took from her search.
I get so tired of the constant glares that at lunch, I hide in the bathroom, in the stall farthest from the door and become a tableau of a girl crouched stupidly on a toilet seat, so she won’t be seen. Over the hour, girls come in and out, in and out. I can’t stand every boring, worthless piece of conversation I overhear because they make me wish I could be a part of them, be some nobody girl with nothing to say.
After a while, Sarah Trainer and Norah Landers come in.
“This shirt looks awful on me. They should have different colors to pick from,” Norah says. Sarah makes a sympathetic sound. I peer through the crack in the door. “You think if I asked him, Brock would get me more Georgia Home Boy?”
Norah smirks, makes air quotes when she says Georgia Home Boy.
“He said that was just a Wake Lake thing.”
“But I’m having Trey over this weekend.”
Sarah laughs. “What, you planning to wine, dine, and date-rape him?”
“Fuck off. Wake Lake was amazing and if you hadn’t been too chicken shit to try it, you’d know it. All in the dosage.”
“That still didn’t answer my question.”
“Shut up. I’m going to ask him.”
“He’ll probably make you blow him for it.”
Norah considers it. “There are worse things.”
They inspect their reflections in the mirror and then they leave. I take my phone out of my pocket and search Georgia Home Boy.
Georgia Home Boy
Slang for Gamma Hydroxybutyrate (GHB)
* * *
leon texts while I’m getting ready for work, lets me know he swapped shifts with Brent Walker and won’t be in tonight. I text BUT I’M OFF FOR THE WEEKEND like he doesn’t know after all the time we’ve worked together, I get the weekends off. & MONDAY FOR THE SEARCH PARTY.
It upsets me in a way I’m not proud of, but I don’t know why. Is it weak to want to see him? It can’t be wrong to want to see someone because you like the person you are when you’re around them. That’s probably one of the best reasons you could have.
At Swan’s, the air-conditioning plays tricks again, on and off, on and off. Every time we pass Tracey’s office, we hear her swearing about it through the door.
“You’re going to the search party on Monday?” Holly asks while I put on my apron. She fans her overheated face with her hands.
“How’d you know?”
“I’m picking up your shift.”
“Thanks.”
“Money for me.” She shrugs. “You think you’re going to find anything?”
My fingers fumble with the apron strings and I have to start the bow over. I fight with the question because I’ve barely thought about the searching, let alone any finding. It doesn’t really matter if I think we will but …
“We have to,” I say.
The night floats by, I float through it, trying to keep my head clear, trying not to think about things like Brock and GHB because I don’t want to think about it. I can’t.
I can’t think about it.
Leon not being here makes that hard.
I do a quick check on the pain-in-the-ass family I’ve been looking after for most of my shift. They’re on their way to something they think I should care about but they’re running late and it’s my fault. Their twin boy toddlers smile at me, making grabby hands at everything they can hold. Their parents don’t smile. They scowl when it ta
kes me five minutes to bring out their drinks, even though it took them over twenty minutes to order them in the first place. The food doesn’t get cooked fast enough for their liking. When I clear their table and get the bill, they write MEAL TIME SENSITIVE, SERVICE TOO SLOW—NO AC!!!!!! on the tip line.
After they leave, the air conditioner rattles on. I turn my back on the diner a minute, enjoying the cool of it, and when I face the room again there’s someone familiar in one of my booths.
Caro.
“Third trimester sucks,” she declares when I reach her. Her hand rests on her stomach and I wonder why pregnant women do that. If it’s out of instinct. Or if it’s out of awe. If it’s out of some need for assurance that the baby is still there. Or maybe they do it because they think they’re supposed to. She smiles at me in the same nice way she did at her place and it puts that night in my head. I feel instantly stupid about it, as if it was happening all over again right now.
“What brings you here?” I ask.
“I used to come in all the time when I was in high school. Sit in a corner booth and be by myself. I got nostalgic.”
“Leon’s not here today.”
“I know. He’s not why I came,” she says. “I’m hungry.”
I take her order, a burger with extra cheese and bacon and caramelized onions on a toasted bun with a side order of fries. She wants to wash it down with a glass of ice covered in a splash of Coke and asks, “Is the air-conditioning on? I’m going to boil my baby.”
“It’s been on and off all day,” I say. “But it’s on now. I can make your order to go, if it’s going to be a problem for you and the…”
“It was a joke, Romy,” she says. “Except I can’t believe Tracey still hasn’t gotten around to fixing it. It’s been broken since I was in high school too.”
“Oh.” I am so awkward.
Her expression turns serious. “Leon said you knew the missing girl, Penny Young. How are you doing?”
There’s so much in everything she’s just said, I don’t know where to start. If Leon told Caro about it—that means they were talking about me. It’s so hard for me to wrap my head around that, them, together, talking about me, like I’m something worth talking about. It flusters me enough to say, “I’m fine. Are you?” Because I guess I’m destined to be stupid around Caro.
She gives me a puzzled look. “Yeah, besides starving.”
“Right.” I walk to the kitchen, my face burning. I put the order in and get the Coke, filling it with as much ice as the glass will hold and by the time I’ve walked it back out to her, she’s playing with her phone and I have another table waiting on me.
“I’ll be back out with your order soon,” I say.
“Thanks, Romy.” She glances out the window at the parched parking lot full of cars and a few semis. The heat turns the air above the pavement all wavy. “It needs to rain.”
“It’s never going to rain.”
She smiles but there’s something off about it. I don’t know Caro, not really, but when someone comes at you the way she did when I first met her, you can see when the spark has dulled, even a little. I look after my other table, then I go back to the kitchen and wait for her order. When I bring it out, I tell her to let me know if she needs anything else.
“I will,” she says.
She doesn’t touch her food, for someone who’s supposedly starving. Two girls come in from a run, panting and ravenous and I look after them. By the time they’re halfway through their meal, Caro still hasn’t eaten a bite of hers. She keeps picking up her phone and putting it back down. When I check on her, she sets the phone down quickly, like she’s done something wrong.
“Is the meal okay? You haven’t touched it…”
“What?” She looks at the food and it’s all so unappetizingly room temperature now. She picks up the burger and ventures a bite but that’s all she can manage. She pushes the plate away. “What a waste.”
“I can reheat it. Or I can pack it up and you could reheat it at home.”
“No, forget it. I should go.”
“Okay. I’ll get the check.” I pick up the plate and hesitate.
Her phone vibrates. She turns it off quickly and presses her lips together and for a minute, I think she’s trying not to cry. Something’s definitely not right, but I don’t know what, if anything, I should do. I feel like I should be like how Caro was with me at her house. I should understand just enough to say the right thing. I stand there instead, the plate of uneaten food in my hand. She saves me, like before.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m being weird, I know.”
“Not weird. Are you okay?”
“I’m overdue.” She points at her stomach. “If nothing starts happening very soon, they’re going to induce me. Maybe they’ll even cut this kid out of me, with my luck.”
“I was a cesarean,” I say unhelpfully.
“Yeah?”
“Yep. I was early, though, like four weeks. And when the doctor made the incision, he actually cut me, so I was the only baby in the maternity ward with a Band-Aid on my ass.”
Caro laughs. “Cute.”
“So you’re okay?”
She shrugs. “I was in a car accident the other day.”
“Oh my God.” I set the plate down. “Leon never said—”
“Leon doesn’t know.”
“Were you hurt? Was it bad?” I peer out at the parking lot and my eyes immediately land on a dark gray sedan with a crumpled bumper. “Is that yours? The sedan?”
“Yep. I’m not hurt.” She looks at the car. “It wasn’t my fault. Some asshole behind me was texting when the light turned red. Today, I was supposed to see my doctor and set an appointment for membrane stripping, which might jump-start my labor. I didn’t show and now Adam’s furious.”
“That’s not good,” I say.
“He’ll get over it,” she says. “I was on my way there before I came here. It just hit me, if it works…” She pauses. “I’m going to have this kid and I’m going to be a mother and … I want that so much, Romy, I can’t even tell you … but the accident made me—I don’t know. I thought I was ready for this and now I guess I feel like it doesn’t need to happen anytime soon, so—” She forces a laugh. “Why not stop in at Swan’s and have a burger? So stupid.”
“It’s not stupid.”
“Well, let’s not talk about it anymore.” Caro’s eyes fix on something behind me, and I realize it’s the MISSING posters. “That’s so sad.”
“There’s a volunteer search party on Monday,” I say. “I’m going. They did a search—the police did, the weekend it happened but…”
“Well, I hope something turns up this time. Something good.”
“Excuse me?” a girl’s voice across the aisle. “Can we get the check?”
The runners are finished. They’ve been finished a while, judging from their crossed arms and unimpressed faces. “With you in a minute,” I say to them, and to Caro, “Is there anything else I can get you or…?”
“Just the check is fine.”
I toss Caro’s uneaten meal and get both tables their checks. After she’s paid, she yawns. “Guess I’ll go deal with my ornery husband.”
“Good luck.”
“Don’t need it. Take care, Romy.”
“You too.”
Before she steps back into the heat, she smiles at me like we have a secret, just us girls. The niceness of it hits me like that kind of niceness does, reminds me of a space that is always open and empty inside me, that didn’t used to be. I watch Caro cross the parking lot. Her enormous belly leads her way and I can’t even imagine what that’s like, having a person inside you, making life. There’s a miracle there, but there’s something so awful about it too, bringing someone into all this now, this world where a girl can’t even trust a drink that passes her lips. I can’t figure out the kind of heart it takes to do something like that.
“are you sure you want to do this?”
I study my refl
ection in the mirror. Mom watches me from my bedroom door. I won’t be wearing yellow today, but I pick up the white Penny ribbon and pin it to my shirt.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“There’s going to be a lot of people there. I don’t think one more is going to make a difference.” She steps into the room. “You don’t need to go, Romy.”
The search will extend into the woods on the opposite side of the lake, and after, depending how it goes, The Find Penny Effort will begin the process of covering the highways and back roads from Grebe to Ibis. Our footsteps pressed in every place we think hers might have been. If we find nothing, do we stop? Or do we run through those places again and again, until we finally see her in them?
“I want to,” I say.
“What if somebody gives you a hard time?”
“Be like any other day, then.”
She winces. “I could go with you.”
“I don’t need you there.”
“Maybe I want to look for Penny too.” But I can see in her eyes that even if she thinks Penny deserves to be found, she doesn’t think Penny deserves to be looked for by us. It’s moments like these I understand my mother the most. I feel like I’m her daughter. “Why do you want to put yourself through this?”
Because they’ll hang me if I don’t. Because they’ll hang me if I do. Because I think Penny would’ve looked for me. Because if I found her—at least this part of it all would be over.
“I have to.”
“Romy…” At first—just by the way Mom says my name—I think she’s going to tell me I’m brave, that I’m a good person for going, but she doesn’t, which is a relief because it’s not the kind of thing you should pat someone on the back for. She sighs. “If you want a ride home, call and we’ll pick you up. Text me when you get there. If you don’t want a ride, text me before you go, so I know you’re on your way back.”
I tell her I will and then I make sure to tell her I love her because more and more, I’m thinking about the last things I say before I leave.