She grabs my arm. I stare at her hand on my skin. She lets go. I put my hand where hers was, aware of the parts of me that are covered and the parts that aren’t.
I need the places that aren’t covered to be—covered.
“Do you know where you are?” She grabs the bottle of water off the ground, holds it out to me. “Drink that. You need it.”
I look around, wait for the here of this place to reach me, this place I ended up, but the road says nothing. The trees on either side of it say more of the same.
“It’s Taraldson Road. You’re about thirty miles from Godwit—”
“Grebe—” No. Godwit? “But—”
“You know how you got out here?”
Godwit. Grebe. Wake Lake—did I … how—
I’m thirsty, I’m too thirsty to think. I take the water from her and she looks relieved I’m doing that much. I unscrew the cap and drink slowly, small sips. It’s lukewarm but it brings me back a little, just enough to tell her again I’m not going to the hospital in a voice I almost believe.
She crosses her arms. “So what I’m getting from you is you blacked out, you don’t know how you got like this, and you don’t think you should go to a hospital?”
The question goes bone deep. Got like this. This. My thoughts turn into vultures and those vultures circle, one ugly possibility after the other. What happened to me? I can’t—
I can’t think about that right now.
“You know how it is at the lake. What—” I force a laugh and it sounds so wrong. “Take me to the hospital for a hangover? Turner would love that.”
She hesitates, just enough for me to know I have her. Rookie.
“You guys don’t have anything better to do today, really?” I ask. “I’m telling you, Leanne. He’s going to hate it if you waste any time on me, you know that.”
“Well, how about I ask him, huh? I have to call this in.”
She walks to the Explorer and I feel like I’m slowly coming online, all the things she’s said to me so far hitting me a second time.
“What about Penny?”
She doesn’t answer, so I stay where I am while she calls Sheriff Turner, calls me in. My bra shifts in a way it shouldn’t, itching at my skin, and the steady parts of me, what little reserve I have left, disappear. My eyes burn. I blink. After a minute, Leanne comes back, uncertain.
“I’m taking you home. The sheriff’s going to meet us there—”
“Why is he going to meet us there?”
“Come on,” she says. I stare at the water in my hand and I can’t find it in me to move until she says, “Your mom’s sick about this, so let’s not keep her waiting.”
Oh, that’s a magic word. Mom. Okay, let’s not keep Mom waiting. Leanne lets me sit in the front. Hauls herself in. The engine rumbles on and the car rolls forward. She tells me to buckle up and I do. The seat belt feels too tight and I can’t breathe against it. I close my eyes.
“Still with me?” She sounds nervous. I open my eyes. “Say something and let me know it or I will take you to the hospital. I don’t care what my orders are.” She pauses, mutters, “I should be taking you there, anyway.”
But she won’t. Everyone bows to the Turners.
Thank God, just this once.
“It’s hot.”
My eyes drift to the clock on the dash. Eleven. Eleven in the morning. I’ve lost—too many hours. Leanne reaches over and turns the air-conditioning on. I lean into it and wait for it to turn me to ice, but I don’t feel anything but hot and caught between the road I ended up on and Grebe, somewhere still ahead of us. I pull at my seat belt, trying to figure out what it is my body wants. It wants out of this car, but it’s too late for that. I push my legs out, press my feet against the floor. I need home. I have to go home. I need to see myself.
My teeth sink into a cut on my lip that I don’t know how it got there. This feels like … hungover, but—worse. Because I don’t remember drinking, but … I rest my hands in my lap, my palms up. The scrapes remind me of when I was small, running down the street, tripping on my shoelaces, skidding across the sidewalk and my dad—was there.
I stare at my legs. The space between them.
i can’t see myself.
My head rests against the window, the side-view mirror of the SUV so grimy, there’s not a hint of me through it. I need to see myself.
The sheriff’s Explorer is parked in front of the house.
Todd and Mom wait on the steps. Turner is close, but not, and didn’t we just do this? No, not really. What I thought was bad then is nothing compared to now. Mom brings her hand to her mouth when she sees me. She’s in yesterday’s clothes and they’ve gotten too big for her overnight. Todd too, still in the same shirt and jeans he was wearing when I said good-bye to him, before I left for Swan’s.
They’ll see it before I do, whatever’s on me. I’ll be the last to know.
I open the door and get out slowly. My legs are rubbery, like they haven’t walked enough or they’ve walked too much. I count steps forward, trying to assure myself the ground is there, crossing over from sidewalk to walkway, my feet on vines.
Home.
Mom hurries to me, taking in everything I can’t hide. She reaches for my face, lightly brushing her fingers over my cheek before pulling me to her, the weight of this reunion half-lost on me because I didn’t even know I was gone. Turner’s eyes drift over me, whatever he’s seeing, and he frowns. He turns his attention beyond us.
“You say you found her where?” he asks.
“Taraldson Road,” Leanne answers.
“Okay, Howard. Thank you. I’ve got it from here.”
The sound of his voice is so awful, more awful than it’s ever been. It makes me want to be sick. Mom whispers in my ear. Let’s get you inside, baby, come on, and I must look bad. I must not look right. My legs itch to run, to find a place I can deal with this on my own. On the way up the steps, Todd reaches for me. Puts his hand to my arm and squeezes it. Their relief is more than I can take right now. I need to see myself.
Leanne is gone by the time we’re inside. I head for the stairs, reach the banister and grip it tight, pull myself up that first step when Mom says, “Romy, where are you going?”
“I have to…” I can see the bathroom door from here. I just need to be behind one closed door, so I can see myself. “I have to…” I look back at them and the three of them look at me like they don’t know what I am. I can’t tell them what I need. “I don’t feel well.”
“Okay.” Mom steps forward and rests her hand over mine, her touch warm on my warm skin. “You have to talk to the sheriff first.” I shake my head. “Romy, you have to. I’m sure it won’t take long and then you can go to bed—isn’t that right, Levi?”
“We’ll see.”
“Please,” I whisper. She flinches. It hurts her. It hurts her because she can’t give it to me and I never ask her for anything. “Can’t it wait until tomorrow or—”
“No,” Sheriff Turner says. “This is important.”
“I’m sorry,” Mom whispers, guiding me from the stairs. No choice. I have no choice. She leads me to the kitchen and sits me at the table and I rest my head in my hands while they talk coffee, coffee and no, thank you, Alice. The perfunctory politeness of it makes me want to break—everything. I don’t want this. I want to see myself.
“What’s he doing here?” I ask and I’m met with silence and the silence makes me too aware of my body, and I can feel my head trying to assess hurts I can’t see, of whether or not certain places—if they—if.
“I need to ask you some questions, Romy, and then I’ll be on my way.”
He pulls out the chair across the table from mine. He sits. I don’t look at him.
“You hurt?” he asks and I shake my head because he’s the last person I’d take anything like that to now. And it works out because he doesn’t want me hurt in a way he’s got to worry about. Sure enough: “So just a little roughed up and a lot hungover. How’
d you end up on Taraldson Road?” I don’t say anything, can’t think of anything to say. The impulse is to lie, but I’m working with so much nothing, I can’t. And I don’t know what the truth is. He clears his throat. “Alice.”
“Romy,” Mom says.
I stare at the table. “I don’t remember.”
“You remember being with anyone?”
“No.”
“What’s the last thing you do remember?”
“Being at the lake.”
The path, the lights, in my head again. Bodies at the lake. The memory dissolves slowly, can’t hold itself to an entire night …
“You left work, middle of your shift without telling anyone, to go to Wake Lake?”
“Holly said you ran out,” Mom says. “She said you seemed upset.”
They’re going to know this at Swan’s. Of course they will. Mom would’ve called them first, asking where I was. I have to make this something I can take back to Swan’s.
I have to make this something that’s not as terrible as it is.
“I had a bad customer. I went outside to cool off and then I kept going.”
“You kept going.”
“Biggest party of the year,” I say. It’s weak.
“So you stayed at the party and decided to get drunk,” he says and I recoil because I don’t know how he’d know that, if I don’t. Mom and Todd, they don’t look shocked, so … they knew it too. “We have quite a few accounts of you at Wake Lake, that you were extremely intoxicated—”
“What is this about?” I ask because I don’t want to hear that. I don’t care if they know, but I don’t want to be in the room with them, hearing that. “I don’t understand—”
“Penny didn’t come home last night, either,” Mom says.
I lean back in my seat, letting it sink in but I don’t know how news like this is supposed to sink in. I don’t know how to receive it. I swallow, bring my hand just to my mouth. “She didn’t?”
“Morning after the biggest party of the year is always the biggest mess. Kids, they get wasted, they wander, they come back and I’ve got to sort out the real emergencies from the rest of it.” Turner doesn’t bother hiding his contempt. “Sorry to break it to you, but Jack Phelps holds the record. He made it all the way to Godwit blackout drunk, his turn at the lake.”
“Jesus, Levi,” Todd says. “I’m sure she was going for the record. Should we talk about what you did when it was your turn?”
“Bartlett, there’s no need—”
“No, there wouldn’t be if you’d do your goddamn job. You didn’t even start looking for her until the Youngs called you this morning about Penny, and then you had to. I was out there all night doing your fucking work—”
“And it was still one of my people brought her home,” Turner snaps, his face cycling through every shade of red there is. Todd huffs out a breath and for a second, it looks like he’ll leave, but he stays. The sheriff turns to me. “It’s like this. Two girls were reported missing on the same night. One still is. I’m going to want to find out whether there’s a connection there so we can start narrowing down where to look, you understand? Is there any possibility Penny was with you at any point or is there anything you might be able to tell us that would help?”
I think of her in the booth, at the diner.
What she said to me.
You speak against a Turner, you best pray you never need help in this town.
“Where was she last seen? Was it with me?”
“At the lake,” Turner says. “But not with you, not that we know, so far.”
After she saw me.
“At the lake,” I say.
After.
So I don’t have to tell them what she was doing before.
“I don’t remember anything, but I doubt I was with her. We’re not friends.”
“If you do remember, you need to tell me,” Turner says. “But, right now, it’s looking like you got drunk, scared the shit out of your mom, and tied up a good part of my department for the morning.”
“Yeah, that’s what it looks like,” I say. My stomach turns. I swallow hard. “Can I please go?”
“I’ll do you a favor, Romy, because I can tell you need to sleep it off. I’ll let this be enough for now, but I’ll still need you to come down to the station tomorrow and go over this with us, if she’s still missing.” The chair screeches as he pushes out from the table. He stands slowly, like his holster is too heavy. He’s known Penny since she was a little girl. “And it’s damned foolish, getting as drunk as people say you were. I ever catch you at it, I will write you up.”
“See yourself out, Levi,” Todd says.
It goes quiet while we wait for him to walk the length of the hall, for the slam of the screen door to signal his exit. I pull at my skirt, under the table.
I need to see.
“Romy,” Mom says and I stop.
remember.
I keep my head down, let my gaze wander, let it skim over the floor tiles and walls, to my hands, to my white knuckles gripping the edge of the sink counter, to the sink itself, to the water slowly dripping from the leaky tap. I press my finger against its opening, stem the flow. I hear every breath pass through my lips and vaguely, beyond that, Mom in my room.
My body speaks to my missing hours, but I don’t understand what it’s saying. I just need the night to come back, that’s all. Just one single night. Remember. Just let me remember. It’s there, inside me, and I only have to remember it. I tap my teeth together and close my eyes.
I raise my head and I open them.
My bottom lip is swollen, puffy and cut, a sour pain. My right cheek, there’s a bruise. No, the road. It has to be the road. The road is on my face. I turn the faucet on, hold my hands underneath the cold stream of water, soothe the sore skin. I wet my cheek and rub. It aches, but it doesn’t come off.
A bruise.
My hand drifts slowly from my face to the collar of my shirt. I pull at it and it’s so heavy, this is all too heavy, that I close my eyes again. Feel the awkward hold of my bra around me, but loose. Drunk. Said I was drunk. I want that memory, I want the memory of that stupid—stupid—girl. Me, drinking. How little did it take this time?
Stupid.
I’m missing two buttons.
The last two.
No. No, no …
My fingers fiddle with their absence until I have to believe they’re gone. Two of the buttons on my shirt are gone and my bra is undone.
I lower my hands and then I unbutton the rest of my shirt slowly. When it’s halfway open, I see a deep red stain on my stomach—blood? Is it—my fingers turn frantic, make quick work of the buttons left and I pull off my shirt and my bra curtains apart.
My trembling hand moves toward my abdomen, hovering above the red on me, the red words on me. Not in blood, not dried blood. Not that kind of red. I press my finger to one of the letters and my hand jerks back, like I’ve been stung. I fumble in my pockets until I find the black tube. I rip the cap off and twist the bottom until the lipstick appears, its tip flattened and ruined. I let it clatter into the sink and stumble, the back of my legs hitting the edge of the tub. My reflection still in the mirror. The red on my body—letters. Letters on my skin, reversed in the glass, turning themselves into this—
RAPE ME
I bring my fingers to my stomach, digging into the skin until I feel red under my red nails, red, my red, me, until what I feel is something outside of me, until it’s something I’ve done to myself. I move away from the sink, my hands in my hair, room tilting, trying to get a sense of myself. I lift my skirt, clutching at the thin material and I bite my lip until I taste blood but my throat is too tight to swallow, so it sits on my tongue, heavy and coppery. My cheeks are damp. I drop my skirt and wipe at my face. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do it.
Knock on the door. “Romy?”
I take a shuddering breath and pull my skirt up until I see my pink underwear. I don’t want do this.
I pull it down. Slowly. Clean.
I swallow the blood in my mouth.
“Romy?”
I slip my hands between my legs and my fingers find my tampon string easily and my legs are weak with it still being there—it’s still there. I stare at the light overhead until it’s all I see and then I look away until the world burns itself back.
“I’m going to take a shower,” I say.
“If you need anything, let me know?”
“Okay.”
I take the old tampon out and get rid of it. I slip out of my bra numbly, let it fall to the ground next to my underwear.
All that’s left are the words on my stomach.
I turn to the tub, my hands struggling with the faucet, trying to get the water hot enough, then pull the diverter out. I step in and lower myself slowly until I’m sitting. I reach for the soap and I scrub it across my stomach hard until the lather turns pink, until the pink turns white, until it disappears.
i sit in my bed, rest my head against my window. The light outside is weak and getting weaker, the sun a sliver of pink on the horizon. Still the same day. It’s not done with me yet.
On my nightstand, a half-empty bottle of water. Mom wanted to take me to our family doctor, at the very least, and I got vicious about it, told her we’ve seen worse hangovers or had she forgotten. After that, she pulled the blanket over my legs, told me to sleep. I slept and I woke up and when I did, all I could think was wake up. But this is it now.
My bedroom door opens.
Mom slips in, hesitates when she sees I’m awake.
“Did Penny come home yet?” I ask.
“Haven’t heard,” she says and it’s in my gut, this strange mix of shock and longing. My head tells me I still hate Penny but my body must’ve wanted a different answer.
Mom sits on my bed, moves back until she can put her arm around me and pull me close. She rests her head against the top of mine. I listen to her heartbeat and I think of Penny, if she’s still out there or if she ended up like me, if she’s on a road somewhere, waiting for her turn to be found. It doesn’t make sense. Penny is not a lost girl.