“You know what the hardest part of being a parent is?” Mom asks after a minute. “It’s not being able to…”
She doesn’t finish. She doesn’t have to. She’s said this to me before. It’s this: it’s not being able to protect your kid from The Bad Stuff. To stand by, helpless, while they’re suffering and not being able to do a damn thing about it. But that’s life and life happens. Only one thing’s going to stop it.
“If I were the Youngs, I don’t know what I’d do. You were gone, Romy. I lost my mind. I can’t even tell you how it felt to sit here and not know where you were or if you were okay…”
“I’m sorry.”
“I thought you just … had enough of everything. And then I thought—of course she would. Of course she would. Why wouldn’t she? I could’ve done so much better.”
“Don’t start that again,” I whisper.
But once she starts, she can’t stop. “I kept trying to justify it. It’s better to have two parents, even if one … isn’t much of one. And I’d see you shouldering it all. You just accepted it. That’s so unfair.”
“It’s not that simple.”
It couldn’t have been. It was complicated. We were all so much more complicated than that because if we weren’t—
Then it should have been so much easier.
“Maybe,” she says. “But it shouldn’t have been like that. And now you just take everything on and you don’t ask me to take it from you, even when you can barely stand it. You scare me, Romy. You take the car and you just go. You get drunk at Wake Lake and picked up off a road and you don’t remember anything about it.”
For her, I should paint a party, a crowd, music, stars in the sky, a girl dancing in the middle of it all, wanted. Maybe she’s drunk but maybe in this version—people looked after her. Except even my mother wouldn’t fall for that. Not me, not in this town.
“Romy.” The way she says it, I know what question is coming next and I want to be gone from here before she asks it. “If anything happened to you, please tell me.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You were in the bathroom for a long time.”
“Don’t—” I force it out. “Don’t make it into something it wasn’t.”
“But you’d tell me? You would tell me if … something happened to you. If you woke up on that road, and something wasn’t right? Because I’d help you … I’d…”
No. I nod and twist away from her, because I can feel it, the guilt she’s carrying and I don’t want to feel it anymore. I don’t want to feel anything.
“You really don’t know how you got on that road? Penny wasn’t with you?”
“Don’t make me say it again,” I say.
“We have to take you down to the sheriff’s tomorrow,” she says. “You’re going to have to say it again then … unless something comes to you. Maybe something will come to you.”
“Maybe,” I say.
leanne howard calls while I’m asleep, tells Mom they received new information ruling out a connection between me and Penny but she wasn’t at liberty to say what it was. I want to know what it was. I want to know why one girl came back and one didn’t. Todd says Grebe is leveled by Penny’s disappearance and when I look out the window, our street is quieter than usual. Everyone stayed inside their houses, kept there, silent by the shock of it.
“They’re doing a hell of a search,” Todd tells us. “I saw Dan Conway at the drug store this morning and he said they’re covering ground and air—getting a helicopter. There were a few reporters and news cameras trolling around the lake too. Penny was supposed to end up in Ibis at her mother’s house and she never got there.”
I pick at some loose threads on the couch and try to picture it. Penny on her way to her mother’s in the dark, and me, headed in the opposite direction under that same sky.
I hope she’s still missing by Monday.
Another one of those thoughts in my head, so easy it has to have come directly from my heart like I hate you and I hope it’s not a girl. I hope she’s missing. What kind of thought is that to have? It’s not that I don’t want her to be found, but I want my moment to expire first. I want everyone so distracted at the start of the week no one’s thinking about me, how I was at the lake, however I was at the lake, because I don’t want to find it out from them. At all.
But if it’s bad, I’ll find it out from them no matter what.
“How Dan finds this stuff out, I’ll never know,” Mom says from the kitchen. I wonder if Dan Conway’s heard anything about me.
“Didn’t I tell you? His son, Joe, works at the sheriff’s department now,” he says. “Just makes coffee by the sound of it, but they’re paying him well to do it.”
“Joe Conway? They’re letting him work there?”
“Well, come on. The Turners always look after their sycophants,” Todd says. “No matter how goddamn stupid they are.”
Todd eases himself into the recliner across from me, wincing. His back is hurting him bad and he won’t say it’s because of all the time he spent in the car, searching for a girl who isn’t even his daughter. I should apologize to him, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I ask him if he needs anything instead.
“Nope. You feel okay?”
“I’m fine.”
He looks at me skeptically. “You two were best friends.”
“Were,” I say.
But I keep my eyes off him when I say it. My hand dips into my pocket for my phone out of habit, just so I can push buttons, maybe get Todd to stop looking at me, but then I remember it’s gone. Missing. Anger washes over me, more anger than a lost phone deserves, considering everything else that’s happened this weekend. Still. It makes me want to go somewhere and wreck something with my bare hands.
“Romy, get the door?” Mom asks.
“What?”
“Someone’s here.”
I glance at Todd and he’s eyeing me still. I get off the couch and make my way down the hall, past the kitchen, and when I see the Pontiac through the screen door, my chest tightens.
I turn and Mom’s there, guilty.
“We called Swan’s first when you didn’t come home. Todd met Leon. Leon went out looking for you too. He was still looking when I called him to tell him we found you. I invited him to lunch today. I hope that’s okay with you.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because if there’s a boy,” she says, her eyes flickering away, “I want to meet him.”
I open my mouth and then I close it and I feel an all-over sick, inside and out.
I face the door. Leon’s out of the Pontiac, leaning against it and staring uncertainly at the house. No—me. He can see me through the screen and I wonder what that looks like from here. The shaded-out figure of a girl in a sloppy shirt that’s longer than her shorts.
I run my hands through my hair and then I push through the doors. I meet him on the walk and take him in taking me in. The way his eyes go over my torn-up legs and past my abdomen. I cross my arms, like he could see through my shirt, see a hint of what was written there. He frowns. He brings his hand to my cheek and the way he’s looking at me feels wrong, goes all the way to his touch. It’s like when you’re a kid and you start testing the taps, turning the water on as hot or as cold as you can get it and holding your hands underneath for as long as you can stand it. I don’t know which one of us is outlasting the other.
He lowers his hand.
“Holly said you had a bad customer and you got upset. Thought you went to the parking lot to cool off,” he says. “It was break, but I figured maybe you’d want some space. It wasn’t until after we realized you’d left. I called you and you didn’t pick up.”
“I lost my phone,” I say.
“And then your mom called and then Todd came—”
“You want to go inside?” I ask quickly, as a car rounds the corner. It could be anyone, but odds are it’s someone who knows me. Welcome to Grebe, Leon. No. They can’t ever know y
ou here. “We should go in.”
“But—”
“Let’s go in.” I grab his hand. “My mom wants to see you.”
“Romy—”
“Leon, I know.” I lead him in, sensing his confusion, but I offer him nothing more for it. Todd is up and about now, setting the table. Mom moves away from a cutting board of veggies and gives Leon a warm if restrained smile, like she’s meeting someone likable at a funeral.
“Leon.” She wipes her hands on a cloth and then grasps him by the arm. “Not just a voice on the phone. It’s so good to meet you.”
“It’s good to meet you too, Mrs.—”
“Alice Jane, please. Or just Alice. No need to be so formal.”
He smiles and I stand there awkwardly, introductions taken right out from under me. Todd reaches out his hand for Leon’s and they shake. I built this and I wasn’t even there when I did it. It’s like I’m living in two different spaces at once, that I’m here, but I’m not here. I bring my hand to my mouth and—I’m not wearing my lipstick.
No wonder Leon wasn’t looking at me right.
“I’ll be right back.” I gesture over my shoulder. “I just have to…”
“Sure,” Mom says. “You want something to do, Leon?”
“Absolutely. How can I help?”
She sets him to work chopping vegetables for the salad she’s making. I head upstairs to the bathroom where I open the drawer Todd set aside just for me and find my lipstick. I take the cap off and bring it to my mouth and then stop. The tip, all smashed into nothing. I tighten my grip on the tube, but I can’t get myself to put the color on. I stare at it and I see words, vivid on skin even in the dark. A girl on the road with her shirt open and her bra undone, waiting to be read. If I put this on and open my mouth, what will come out?
The red makes me, though.
That’s what Leon said.
And he stopped for that girl.
“Romy,” Mom calls. “You coming down?”
I toss the lipstick into the garbage and then I go into the drawer for another unopened tube. I rip the plastic off the cap and twist the bottom until that burst of color appears and it’s different. Same color, but not the same lipstick and that matters. It matters that there’s only one place this lipstick will have touched. I put it to my bottom lip. From the center out, I think. From the center of the lip out. My hand shakes. I tighten my grip. Pressure. Just give it some pressure. I push in, make my lips red, and it doesn’t feel there. I don’t feel ready.
But maybe it’s like the nail polish now.
Maybe I need something to seal it in.
“Romy?” Mom.
I tell her yes, I’m coming, and I run the water, rinse my hands. I hurry down the stairs and find food on the table. When Leon looks my way, he sees the red—he smiles. We sit and eat a salad that tastes like summer, even though it’s not.
“So,” Mom says to Leon. “How long have you worked at Swan’s?”
“I’ve worked there for a while. I worked there through high school and stopped for college—briefly—and then came back.”
“You’re not in school now?”
He shakes his head. “Wasn’t my thing.”
“Wasn’t mine, either,” Todd says.
“What is your thing?” Mom asks Leon.
“Uh.” He gives a nervous sort of smile, like he’s not selling himself so well here, but he looked for me last night. They’re already sold. He says, “I kind of run this Web site design and development business, actually. That’s my thing.”
“What?” I stare at him stupidly. “I didn’t know.”
“Really?” Mom asks.
“Yeah. I have a knack for coding and design, I guess. I started out making themes for blogging platforms and selling them and one of my themes got really popular about a year and a half ago and now I’ve extended my business into designing and developing personal and professional Web sites.”
“Nice,” Todd says. “So it’s doing well?”
“Yeah. I’m doing some author and up-and-coming band sites, some local businesses in Ibis. My sister sends all her friends my way,” he says. “I’ve got a few in the works right now. It looks like I’m on an upswing and I’d like to keep it going and turn it into my primary source of income. Scale back on hours at Swan’s.”
I’m stuck between the surprise of this and the guilt of finding it out, like I should’ve known or asked. I don’t know what to say.
“Well, that’s fantastic,” Mom says. “Holding two jobs like that. You like Swan’s?”
“It’s all right. I like the pace. Very fast. I like the people.”
“Like my daughter.”
Leon’s fork hovers over his plate.
“Mom,” I say.
He smiles. “Yeah, like your daughter.”
“You like my daughter,” she says. I kick her lightly under the table, which doesn’t feel like the natural order of things. She doesn’t even blink. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you going out there and looking for her.”
“Of course.”
Silence. Awful, awful silence. What am I supposed to say? Sorry? Again? Except I didn’t even say it to Leon once. I stab my fork through some cucumber and tomatoes and shove them in my mouth because I can’t say it at all if my mouth is full.
“That other girl,” Leon says. “Penny Young.”
I swallow. “You know about that?”
“Yeah. Her mom lives in Ibis. She’s there on the weekends—”
“Did you know her?”
“No. But everyone’s talking about it in town. I guess Grebe’s Sheriff’s Department is working with Ibis’s. What are we coming up on? Forty-eight hours? That’s never good.”
I set my fork down, appetite gone. I don’t know if it’s because it’s such a bad thing for him to say or because part of me still wants her to be missing on Monday in spite of it.
“Romy knows her,” Todd says.
“What?” Leon asks. “You do?”
“We go to school together. She’s in my grade.”
“They were very close at one time,” Mom says.
“Oh,” Leon says. I keep my eyes on my plate. “I’m so sorry.”
Mom and Todd wash up, leave Leon and me to our own devices. He suggests I show him Grebe but I tell him I’m feeling tired and show him our backyard instead. We sit on the dried-up lawn and stare at the neighbor’s fence.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me about the Web site stuff?”
He shrugs. “I thought I’d show you at some point.”
I run my palm over the grass. When I look up, he’s watching me in a way that tells me we’re going to talk about things best left alone. I’m an expert when it comes to that look on people’s faces.
“I’m sorry for sticking my foot in it about Penny Young. I should’ve thought—”
“It’s okay,” I say. “We’re not close. Her and me. Not anymore.”
“I was going to say, inside … waking up and hearing about that—about Penny, after driving around all night looking for you. I mean, it was something else, looking for you, but hearing about this girl that didn’t make it home. I don’t know. Got me thinking. I called your mom and asked if I could come see you.” He pauses. “I had to see you.”
“Here I am.”
“What happened, Romy?”
I rip up a tuft of grass. I want to say nothing, but I guess I have to give him more than that, even if it’s all going to amount to nothing anyway. At least—it better. “You know about Wake Lake? About the party? We have it every year…”
“I know about it,” he says. “Ibis has dumbass traditions too. Stupid.”
“Well, stupid me.”
“You walked out on your shift to go to a party?”
“Yep.”
“Seriously?” He sounds so unimpressed. I just nod. He shakes his head. “I feel like I’m missing something here, Romy, because—”
“You ever do anything stupid before?”
“Well, yeah, but—” His forehead crinkles. He stares at the ground like he’s angry at it and it makes me angry with him because I can tell he’s not just going to leave it which means I need to be lies ahead of any of his questions and I’m not sure I can think that fast today. “When your mom called, she said they found you on a road thirty miles out from Godwit. She said you were…”
“Drunk?”
That quiets him a second. “No. Just wrung out.”
I stare at the fence, try to fill the blank space with the right kind of lie; the right kind of lie for Leon. Jack Phelps. It comes to me, in Turner’s voice.
“This guy, Jack Phelps—he’s kind of a legend around here. Be my mom’s age now. When it was his turn at the lake, he got drunk and ended up in Godwit. Seemed like a neat idea to see if I could get that far.” God, it sounds just stupid enough to my ears, it could be true. “I bet you’re sorry you looked for me now.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Because a real girl is missing.”
“What?”
“Because a girl is really missing and I was okay.”
“You’re telling me you were so wasted you thought heading to Godwit on your own was a good idea? Doesn’t really sound to me like you were all that okay.”
“I’m okay now.”
“Well, good.” He looks at me and I make myself look back. I need the girl he was looking for to be the one he’s seeing now. He says, “I’m not sorry I looked for you.”
You. You. Me.
Her.
He leans over and gives me a small kiss. Seals it in.
i get up quietly. I get myself ready.
I brush my teeth and then my hair, pulling it into a ponytail that makes the bruise on my cheek more pronounced because they’ll tear me apart if they think I’m trying to hide anything. Downstairs, Todd’s making coffee. He glances at me. Grabs two mugs and holds one out. I shake my head and he puts it back.
“Thought I’d let your mom sleep in. She didn’t get much shut-eye this weekend.”