* * *
the traffic to the lake is heavy, so out of place for Grebe on a weekday evening. I keep close to the shoulder and then I make my way up the congested path to the lake, passing the cars that just passed me. I stare at the brown pine needles littering the ground.
I walked here, that night. I remember it. That moment ghosts over this one, makes my skin tight, makes my fingers tingle. Every step forward, I swear I hear the fake click of a cell phone camera’s shutter and a picture flickers behind my eyes: a girl on the ground, surrounded. A girl with her hands at her shirt. A girl—some other girl.
I take the white ribbon off and clutch it in my hand.
When the water comes into view, so does the crowd. I stop at the path’s opening, forcing everyone behind me to go around. There must be over a hundred people: kids from school, some with their parents and siblings, most of them decked out in FIND PENNY shirts.
I see faculty members from both the elementary and high schools: Prewitt, DeWitt, Vice Principal Emerson, deputies from the sheriff’s department. Principal Diaz is talking to reporters. There’s Pam Marston from the Grebe News and I’m pretty sure the guy next to her is from the Ibis Daily. It’s surreal. Cars crawl past and fill up the parking spaces. At the center of it all, there’s a long table under a FIND PENNY banner. Brock is manning it and people mill behind him—
Penny’s parents.
Seeing them makes me forget how to think. A memory of Penny skitters across my heart. The only way you’d get my parents in the same room for longer than thirty seconds is if I—us, in her room, a year ago. Her bedroom—is if I died.
It’s eerie, what Penny took from her parents. She took Mr. Young’s blond hair and his perfectly straight nose, Mrs. Young’s blue eyes and petite frame. There is an ocean between the two of them, a bitter divorce, and it’s awkward, ugly. I wish they’d fake some kind of closeness, just for this day, but they don’t.
Alek comes up, filling the space, and he looks terrible.
Just beyond him is his mother, Helen. Matriarch. Queen of Grebe, Grebe Auto Supplies. My mouth goes dry.
Her black hair is tied into a tight ponytail and she wears a sky-blue GREBE AUTO SUPPLIES shirt with FIND PENNY emblazoned across the front because she’s the kind of woman who would do that. Print up one color for everyone and wear another herself. She’s tall, imposing, hasn’t changed in the seventeen years I’ve known her. At those company picnics I attended when I was so young I barely came up to her knees, she looked exactly like this.
She turns her head my way, her eyes on me. It makes me cold. She was invisible, after, but I could feel her. Sheriff Turner made it clear the second we might’ve wanted to talk it out with her in the room, it would’ve meant lawyers. Helen Turner hates me and the way Helen Turner hates me feels like the worst kind of betrayal. A woman who doesn’t think about daughters she doesn’t have.
There’s a little bit of time for mingling, for people to express condolences to the Youngs. After that part’s out of the way, Brock brings a megaphone to his mouth. The breath he takes before speaking sends an ear-piercing shriek into the air.
“Once you’ve arrived, make sure you’ve signed in.”
People move to the table as slowly as a herd of overheated animals. I’m about to make myself part of them when the last car rolls up and stops me dead in my tracks. My hand opens and the ribbon drops, flutters onto dead grass. I know that car. I know its body, its color, its backseat and its driver.
Leon.
The Pontiac idles momentarily before he finds one of the last parking spots. He waves to me and my hands stay limp at my sides.
He gets out of the car and makes his way over.
No …
I try to figure out where everyone’s eyes are because they can’t be on us. They can’t connect me to Leon because if they connect me to Leon, if they put us together—
“You look not happy,” he says when he’s close enough and when he’s close enough, I step away. I try to smile because I can’t let him know how wrong he’s made everything, except I can’t smile because he’s made everything so wrong. “But that’s probably understandable.”
“What are you doing here?” It comes out harsher than I mean. He frowns.
“I asked Tracey for the night off. I thought I’d come so … you wouldn’t be…” He can’t hide the disappointment in his eyes when how I’m acting isn’t what he wanted. “Moral support. But maybe it wasn’t a good idea.”
It’s not a good idea. It’s a nice one, but now he has to leave, so whatever’s between us can stay nice. I skim the yellow shirts again, make sure more backs are to us than aren’t.
“I’m just—” I take another step away and turn my face from his, so it doesn’t look like I’m talking to him, exactly. “I wasn’t expecting this.”
“Okay,” he says slowly. “But it’s fine with you I’m here, right?”
Brock’s voice blares over the megaphone again, makes me twitch.
“If you haven’t signed in, please sign in. We need everyone accounted for.”
Leon reaches out his hand. I can’t hold his hand.
“Should we do that?”
“No,” I say. One more step back. How many more can I take before he catches on? He lowers his hand, looking more and more confused. “I mean, let me do it for you. I’ll write you in. The guy behind the table is a—he’s an asshole, okay? I’ll be right back. Wait here. Don’t—”
Don’t talk to anyone.
“Just wait here,” I say.
Don’t even look at them.
I leave him there. My heart is beating too fast and my palms sweat badly. I wipe them on my shirt. I reach the table, Brock. He takes me in and he’s so hungry but the only thing he can do in front of all these people is look. It’s enough, though. It’s enough to be looked at by a boy like Brock like you’re meat, like he’d take you to satisfy himself.
“Sign in,” he says. “Or out.”
I stare at the paper. I’m supposed to note my arrival time and there’s a space to fill for when I leave. Next to the binder, there are bottles of water, a pile of whistles (TAKE ONE) and a card with a phone number on it that says POINT OF CONTACT—if you get lost searching, call. It’s the sorriest possibility I never considered: someone going missing during a search.
“Forget your name?” Brock asks, after a minute. “Want me to write it down or are you afraid I’ll get it mixed up with another four-letter word?”
I write my name, but not Leon’s. I don’t want Brock to have it.
I don’t want anyone here to have it.
“How do we do this?” a girl asks beside me. I move down the table quickly, grabbing two bottles of water and whistles. Brock’s attention drifts from the girl to someone behind me—
Leon, behind me.
Brock nods at him. “We’re asking people to sign in—”
I can’t handle it. I move because if the two of them are close, I want to be far, far from it. I’m almost halfway out—am I leaving? I should leave—when Leon catches up.
“Hey! Romy—” He said it, my name. Too loud, like he knows me. “Ro—”
I face him quickly, holding the water out. It keeps him from saying it again, keeps him from asking what’s wrong with me, but I can tell he wants to. He takes the bottle.
“I told you that guy is an asshole,” I say. “I told you I’d sign you in.”
Leon glances back at Brock. “He seemed nice enough to me.” It hurts, that he’d give Brock the benefit of the doubt, instead of trusting what I say. He looks around. “Are those Penny’s parents?”
“Yeah.”
“I could tell from the posters. She really looks like them,” Leon says. “Who’s the boy with them? She have a brother?”
“Boyfriend. He’s the sheriff’s son—” As soon as it’s out of my mouth, it feels like too much information. I hold out a whistle. “Take one of these too.”
He takes it and I pull my hand back too quickly, li
ke our skin would burn if it touched. I look around. Brock is still at the table but—Tina. When did she get here? Tina’s here and she’s sidestepping people, making her way over to … me? My stomach clenches, imagining all the things she’ll say if she sees me with a boy who likes me. I move away from Leon and she—passes us. Waves down Yumi. Leon bridges the distance I’ve created—it’s too noticeable now—and touches my arm.
“Romy, what—”
It’s like Brock senses it, Leon touching me, because he looks at us then. It turns Leon’s closeness against me. My body revolts. I yank my arm away and it makes his eyes widen, makes him step back and I think—good.
The whine of the megaphone sounds again.
“If we could have your attention,” a deputy, Cory Scott, says. His voice is all business and his expression is grim. Leanne Howard stands beside him, looking equally grave. “There’s a few things need to be said before we break you into groups—”
“We shouldn’t search together,” I tell Leon quickly.
“Are you kidding me?” he asks.
The crowd begins filtering between us to get closer to the table.
“We can’t search together,” I say. “We’ll just distract each other.”
“First of all, thank you for coming,” Cory says at the same time Leon opens his mouth to protest it, call me out, something. He closes it, though, because now’s not the time to talk.
Thank God.
I keep my eyes straight ahead. The Youngs are just behind Cory, and Alek and Helen, just behind Leanne. Alek pulls at his fingertips, his eyes darting past faces, toward the opposite side of the lake. There’s something in the way he holds himself that’s—expectant.
“And thank you to Grebe Auto Supplies for funding this search.”
Helen nods stiffly. I hear the soft click of the cameras, from the Ibis and Grebe reporters. They continue to take photos while the deputy speaks on behalf of the Youngs, who are too distraught to talk. Their faces belie everything that’s coming out of Cory’s mouth. He says they believe in us, that we’ll be what brings Penny home, safe and sound, where others couldn’t. Not the law, not some strangers she didn’t know, not the helicopter last weekend. Just us. Here.
Today.
He breaks down how all this is going to happen and I forget Leon’s eyes, still on me. First, we need to program the contact number into our phones. If we get separated or lost, too far out to be heard, this is how to touch base. Call the number and Helen Turner will pick up. The whistle should only be used in the event we find something relevant to Penny, or I guess, Penny herself. If you hear the whistle, we’re to stay where we are and wait until we’re given clearance to move. We should be vigilant in searching and don’t forget to sign out when we leave, so everyone is accounted for. The more Cory talks, the more put-on this feels. It’s a show. It’s like … a funeral, something you only do for—the people left.
“Romy,” Leon says softly, too close again. That’s the price of paying attention to one thing; I lose track of something else. This is too much. Someone turns. Andy Martin. He stares at us, his forehead crinkling, trying to figure out how Leon and I fit. “Can you tell me what’s happening here?”
“A search party.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Nothing.”
“Then why are you—”
“Why am I what?” Dare him to put it to words.
He shifts as the deputies start forming groups. I don’t know how to keep Leon from being in my group but I know he can’t be in anyone else’s.
“Why didn’t you put my name down?” he asks.
“I did,” I lie.
“No. You didn’t. And—” He steps closer and I step back and he does it again and I’m not sure why he’s doing it until I realize he’s proving a point. I hate him a little, for catching on. “You obviously don’t want me here.”
“It’s not about you.”
But it is. It’s about keeping you.
“Then why are you being so—”
“Because this isn’t a date.”
“Jesus, I didn’t come here thinking it was—”
His words start to blur because bodies are shifting, and I’m losing everyone’s places.
“I don’t want you here,” I say and it must be the last thing he really expected me to say, even though he was the one who suggested it in the first place. And Brock, still watching. These worlds can’t meet. They can’t ever meet. “I don’t want you here.”
“Romy—” My name again. He reaches out and grabs my hand, holds it tight. It’s the kind of contact I couldn’t deny to anyone or pretend didn’t happen. It makes my heart go terrible and it makes me do something terrible. I wrench my hand from his and say, too loud, “Don’t touch me—”
The words taste and sound so bad out of my mouth. People stare and Leon backs away. One step back. Two. Three. A man I don’t recognize, with salt-and-pepper hair and a stomach so big it precedes him, comes over. He puts himself between me and Leon, like he’s my savior.
“You know this guy? He bothering you?” he asks. I open my mouth and nothing comes out because I don’t know how to say yes, I do, and no, he’s not, but I need him to leave and in that second’s worth of silence where I should have said something, even if it was just stuttering over nothing, I memorize the hurt on Leon’s face, what I caused, and I feel so sick.
“Maybe you ought to leave.” The man steps closer to Leon. “Look, this is a search for a missing girl. This isn’t the place to be making a scene…”
“Don’t worry,” Leon says, disgusted. “I’m gone.”
He leaves. He doesn’t look back at me once. He gets into his Pontiac and drives as slowly out as he did in, and when he’s gone, the knowledge I’ve fucked things up badly is only second to the relief I feel that none of these people will have him. The girl he knows is still here and she can fix this. I know she can.
“Ms. Grey, we’ll have you over here—”
Principal Diaz is at my side, ushering me into her group with Cat Kiley, a few freshmen, a woman who says she’s friends with Penny’s mom, and a deputy, Mitchell Lawrence.
The search begins.
We’re told to walk in a line, side by side, and every time it goes ragged, if we get too far ahead or behind, Diaz yells for us to straighten out. We round the water and step into the brush and there’s something unsettling about the way we weave ourselves into the trees. The lake is still, behind us. It’s hard to imagine this place meant for anything but this. Not parties, not nice summer afternoons or family picnics. Just searching for the missing girl.
“What even gave you the idea anyone wants you here?” Cat asks, beside me.
I don’t look at her. “Just trying to make up all the time everyone thinks I wasted.”
Then, one of the freshmen, a boy, asks, “Are we looking for a body?”
I want to shove the question down his throat until he chokes on it.
“No,” Mitchell snaps, and the boy flinches.
“We’re looking for a girl,” Diaz tells him.
It’s quiet after that. The farther into the woods we get, the darker it gets, and the air turns just so slightly cooler. Bugs hover curiously at our faces and we wave them away. Diaz holds herself like she’s done this before, but there’s no history of missing girls in Grebe that I know of.
“You can’t,” Cat says to me.
“What?”
We fall back a little. Enough to talk, but not enough to get yelled at for it.
“You can’t make up that time.” She steps over a large tree branch. “They probably would’ve found her if they’d started out with enough people looking for her.”
I think of Cat collapsing on the track, think of her listless in Brock’s arms. How jealous Tina was when Brock carried Cat off and what he said after Tina asked him if he got Cat to the nurse’s office. Eventually. I wonder what Cat would think if she knew Brock said it and how when he did, people were deciding things abo
ut her, things she had no control over.
“I was on a road.” My voice cracks. “I had no idea where I was—”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have gotten so fucking drunk.”
“I wasn’t drunk—” And she rolls her eyes. “I think Brock slipped me GHB.” The thing I didn’t want to think about bubbles off my tongue, nothing I can stop. Cat’s mouth drops open, and then she shakes her head over and over and I imagine her hands around my phone, aiming its lens at me. “Or maybe if I was that fucking drunk, someone should have taken me home—”
Diaz turns, furious. We’ve broken formation and we’re too far behind.
“Ladies, keep up.”
Cat hurries forward.
“So why didn’t you take me home?” I call at her.
“What was that, Ms. Grey?” Diaz asks.
“Nothing.”
The faint rumblings of another group breaking into the brush to our left reach my ears. I turn my attention back to the ground, waiting for something to catch my eye. Garbage all over. Tossed wrappers; dirty, broken red cups. I wonder how old it all is. If it’s from the party and has been rotting away ever since, or if it’s from some party years before.
How can we even be doing this?
We’re combing through trash, looking for a girl.
I stare at a plastic bottle and try to decide if it’s important. Twigs snap underfoot. Something moves above me. A crow flying from one tree to another.
A whistle sounds.
“stay here,” deputy Mitchell says, and he goes.
I imagine Penny, her perfect body, bent and broken in these woods with no life left inside it. I imagine her hair matted with dirt. I imagine her pale face lighting up the ground and her eyes seeing nothing.
The whistle came from behind us, to the left. There’s a flurry of voices. Other groups make themselves known. What is it? Is it her? Did you find her? The questions echo through the trees and after a long moment, a deputy, with the Youngs and Alek behind him, comes scrambling up the path.
A girl wails.
It’s the kind of sound you run from, not to.