THE FAIR DOESN’T REALLY have an official entrance. It has a field that turns into a parking lot that funnels between the buildings that were stables, now used to sell ticket stubs for rides and games. There’s a storage shed of first-aid equipment off to the side of the stables/ticket booths, and past that, nothing but trees.
Through the old stables, the space opens up to fields where once a year, for two weeks, the booths come to life and the Ferris wheel looms, proud and majestic. In the fall, hot-air balloons rise up, tethered to the earth. It was the place we went to touch the sky.
The air tonight was full of noise: kids cheering or whining, parents laughing and shouting. Music from the rides, bells from the game booths. Teenagers calling to each other across the grounds—from a picnic table, from the front of the portable restrooms, from the top of the Ferris wheel. My breath caught, seeing it circle from the parking lot. Unlike most things that appeared smaller now that I’d grown, the Ferris wheel looked bigger. More untouchable. I tried to picture a girl hanging from the outside of the cart. I’d be panicked. I’d be sick. I’d be furious.
A girl in a skirt on the outside of the cart, her best friend whispering in her ear, her boyfriend watching from below. Maybe we did bring it on ourselves.
This right here was the closest I’d felt to Corinne in a long time. I could feel her cold hands at my elbows, hear her breath at my ear, smell the spearmint gum on her whisper. If I could just close my eyes and reach across time and hold her wrist. Wrap my arms around her for no reason at all. I wouldn’t dare. I never dared.
Someone slammed into my side—a little kid, maybe three years old, colliding with me before changing trajectory, running into someone else on his rush inside. His parents gave me a hurried sorry and chased after him. The sun was low, almost gone, and the field lights turned on as I stood there watching. The grounds were garish and exposed, my eyelids slamming closed in response.
I walked between the ticket booths. The grass had always been worn away here; it was mostly dirt with small patches of green. Right near the entrance, right here in this dirt, this was where I fell to my side. This was where Daniel hit me in full view of the Ferris wheel. I spun around, pictured Annaleise leaning against the side of this building, eating her strawberry ice cream. Watching us all.
Me running for Tyler.
Tyler waiting for me.
And Daniel grabbing me by the arm, hitting me across the face.
Tyler lunging, punching Daniel in the face, then crouching beside me. His hands pulling my twisted arm away from my body. “You okay? Nic, are you okay?”
“I don’t know. I don’t . . .” Frantically scrambling in the dirt, standing, leaning on Tyler, feeling everything realign, the burn of the hit, the sting of the moment. “I’m okay,” I said. His hands were everywhere. Pushing my hair aside, over my face, down my neck, my arms, my waist. He glanced over my shoulder, his jaw set, and I saw Corinne jogging toward us. Bailey was in the distance, weaving through the crowd.
I didn’t know if Annaleise was still there. I hadn’t looked again. Maybe she was just outside the entrance. Maybe she’d run behind the building, watching through the stable slats that I could see now, with her doelike eyes. Yes, she had confirmed our alibi, but I was wondering if she had also witnessed what came next.
Tyler had pulled me up, checked me again, asking over and over if I was okay. “Wait here,” he’d said. He stood over my brother, put a hand down, and leaned toward him, said something in his ear. Daniel looked straight at me, straight into me, so I had to look away. “Nic,” he pleaded from across the way, but by then Corinne was already there.
“Bailey, go find some ice,” Corinne had called as she approached, and I could feel her presence taking over, taking control.
I’d walked away. I’d left, taking Tyler with me, and we found the first-aid shed where a man sat in a folding chair, a lump of tobacco in the side of his mouth.
“You kids okay?” he asked, not standing.
“Do you have ice?” Tyler asked.
The man opened a blue cooler at his feet, used a plastic cup to scoop some ice into a Ziploc bag for me.
Tyler checked me over again, asked me if I was okay again, his hands running everywhere.
“Tyler,” I said. “Your hand.” Two knuckles were scraped, as if they’d hit the wrong angle on one of Daniel’s sharp edges, and his fingers were discolored. I asked the attendant for Band-Aids.
He eyed Tyler’s hand. “Might be broke,” he said.
“It’s fine,” Tyler said, pulling me away. “Come on.”
But I could see the man was right; it was swelling and red, and Tyler kept it hanging limply by his side.
“Tyler—”
“I’ll take a bag of ice, too,” he mumbled.
“At least go wash it off,” I said.
He nodded. “Okay. You won’t move?”
“I’ll be right here,” I said. But the second he was out of sight, all I could picture was Daniel sitting in the dirt, his bloody nose, and the way he said my name. The way he looked at me. I had to talk to him. We had to talk. About this. Right now. Even back then, I could sense how pivotal this moment was. How our entire futures somehow hung in the balance of this conversation.
I’d gone out to the dirt circle to find Daniel, but nobody was there. I thought maybe they’d all been escorted out, or someone had called security on us. I walked past the stables and didn’t see him anywhere in the parking lot, either.
I turned to go back in, back to Tyler, when I heard Corinne’s soft words somewhere out of sight. I passed the stables to my right—her voice, her laughter, drawing me in.
I saw Corinne first. Behind the building just outside the fair, holding a wet paper towel to my brother’s face. Her head on his shoulder. Her other hand under his shirt, at his waistband, trailing over his skin. I watched her gently press her lips to his jaw and whisper something in his ear. And from her posture, from the way my brother was relaxed against the wall, I knew this wasn’t the first time. I knew he saw me because he moved his hands quickly and ineffectively, pushing her off, before I spun away. And I heard her words cut into him in displeasure as he pushed her back. But it was too late.
He lied, and he knows I know it. He knows I lied for him, too. Never, I said. Never.
I wondered if Annaleise saw that. If she was in the trees somewhere. Or crouched between the cars in the parking lot. She was too young to get home on her own. She would have needed an adult. She must’ve been nearby.
I wondered what it looked like to her at the age of thirteen—what did she think was happening from the distance, from her hiding spot? And if she revisited it as an adult, did the memory shift on her? Grow into a different understanding? I had thought I was the only one who knew about Corinne and Daniel, but maybe I wasn’t.
I never knew exactly what happened between the two of them, or with Bailey, after that. I ran back inside, was beside the shed before Tyler came out. We left in his truck, and he let me drive because of his hand, and we passed a bunch of kids from school who teased Tyler. “Damn, letting your girl drive your truck?” A girl added, “Now, that’s true love.”
I didn’t know how Daniel and Corinne got separated, when or how Corinne met up with Jackson, or why Daniel was driving Bailey home. I didn’t dare ask. None of us asked.
* * *
I PEOPLE-WATCHED FROM THE entrance for a long time, trying to imagine how these moments might look through the lens of a camera. What would I see if this moment were frozen? What would I think? Of the mother grabbing the child’s arm, one step from disappearing into the crowd; of the teenagers in line for the Tilt-A-Whirl, kissing while the others looked away; of the woman with long black hair, holding the hand of a little girl, frozen in the middle of the crowd, watching me back.
Her face sharpened in my mind, gaining context, and I was jarred into action, wa
lking toward her. “Bailey?” I called. Bailey. Her face turning away, black hair cascading in an arc as she spun around . . .
It wasn’t in church but in moments like this when I maybe believed in God or something like that. Some order to the chaos, some meaning. That we collide with the people we need, that we meet the ones who will love us, that there’s some underlying reason to everything. Bailey standing in the middle of the fair on the one night I was there. Bailey, whom I hadn’t seen since I graduated from college. Bailey, who had been here with us the night we all fell apart.
My whole body tingled with the feeling that I was meant to be here, that the universe was laying out the pieces for me, that time was showing something to me.
I knew she’d seen me, had frozen just as I had, but she was moving away through the crowd. I was halfway to her now, pushing through the kids running for the next ride.
“Bailey!” I called again.
She stopped when I’d nearly reached her, looked over her shoulder, made herself look surprised to see me. “Nic? Wow. Long time,” she said.
We stared at each other, neither speaking, the little girl still holding her hand. “You have a daughter?” I asked, smiling at the girl. She clung to Bailey’s leg, half her face hidden, one hazel eye staring up at me.
“Where’s Daddy?” she asked, her face tilted up to her mother.
“I don’t know,” Bailey said, scanning the crowd. “He should be here.”
“I didn’t know you got married,” I said.
“Well, you missed it. Divorced now. Getting one, anyway.” She scanned the crowd again, I assumed for her ex. “What about you?” she asked, still searching. “Married? Kids?”
“No and no,” I said, though I didn’t think she was listening.
“There,” she mumbled as she raised her hand over her head. “Peter!”
Peter was clean-cut, clean-shaven, square-jawed, and taller than average, and I disliked him on sight. Maybe from the way he walked, like he knew he was something worth looking at. Maybe from the way he grinned at Bailey as their daughter ran to him, like he was keeping score of something and she was losing.
“You’re late,” she said. She thrust an overnight bag at him. “She has swimming lessons at ten.”
“I know,” he said. Then he looked at me and smiled. “Hi, I’m Peter.” I raised an eyebrow at him until his smile faltered. “Okay, well, come on, sunshine. Let’s leave Mommy to her fun.”
Bailey squatted close to the ground, grabbed the girl, held her tight. “See you tomorrow, love,” she said. She stood slowly and watched them move deeper into the fair. “Well, it was good seeing you, Nic. I’ve got to get going.”
“I need to ask you something. About Corinne.”
Her eyes widened. Then she turned and walked toward the exit.
“Bailey.” I caught up with her at the side of the Tilt-A-Whirl, the cars coming dangerously close to the edge of the track before being yanked back.
“No, Nic. I’m done with that. We’re all done with that.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “Bailey, just answer the fucking question and I’ll be gone.” I was talking to her like Corinne would’ve talked to her, the words out before I could stop them.
And she was waiting, like she always did. I almost didn’t want to press her, but I had to know. “Annaleise Carter. Do you remember her?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I hear she’s missing.”
“Did she ever try to talk to you? About Corinne? About that night?”
She started to shake her head, then stopped. Her eyes shone.
“What?” I asked.
“It was weird,” she said. “I mean, I barely knew her then. And I don’t live there anymore. But a few months ago I ran into her at the farmers’ market in Glenshire?” Bailey always ended sentences like that, like she was excusing us for something we might not know. I nodded, waiting for her to go on. “Or I guess she ran into me. I didn’t really recognize her. But she said, ‘Bailey? Bailey Stewart?’ like we’d been friends. Really, I think it was the first time she ever spoke to me.”
“What did she want?” I asked. “Did she ask about Corinne?”
“No, not at all,” she said. She scrunched up her face. “She asked me to lunch. Asked if I ever needed a babysitter for Lena. It was like she wanted . . . to be my friend.”
“Did you do it? Go out to lunch? Ask her to babysit?”
“No. I’m too old for friends like that . . . for people from home.” She stared into my eyes. “I grew up, Nic. I’m not the same girl.”
“Do you remember—”
She put up her hand. “You said one question. You said you’d be gone . . .” Her voice trailed off and she lost her confidence, her mouth slightly ajar, her eyes following something just past my shoulder.
I caught sight of the back of a man walking alone. Cigarette in hand, hair falling in a mop over his face. Something so familiar about the way he walked with his shoulders hunched forward. “Is that Jackson?” I asked.
“Hmm?” She was jarred back to the conversation. “Oh, I don’t know. Haven’t seen him in ages.”
“Last I heard, he was working at Kelly’s,” I said.
She shrugged. “I don’t go there anymore.”
“He didn’t do it, Bailey,” I said.
Bailey took a step away so her back was up against the side of a hot dog stand. “I know that,” she said, which surprised me. It was her words that had landed the suspicion on him. Her answers to Hannah Pardot. Her accusations.
“Then why did you make everyone think he did?”
“They told me she was pregnant! Jackson lied about it. And then the cops came in, demanding answers. I was just a kid!” she yelled.
“No, you were eighteen. We were all eighteen. Everything you said became evidence. Everything. You ruined him.”
“Everyone had a motive, Nic. If it wasn’t him, who do you think it would’ve been?”
Bailey was smarter than I gave her credit for being back then. But she was just as capable of deceit as I remembered. “Really? What was your motive, Bailey? God, you’re terrible.” But I thought I knew. The man walking behind us. Jackson Porter. What does the monster make you do? Does it make you dream of them? Of boys who aren’t yours?
“It wasn’t me. She was the monster. Can’t you see that now? We’re all better off without her,” Bailey said.
“Don’t say that.”
Truth is, I believed Bailey was lucky. For Bailey Stewart, life with Corinne could’ve gone two very different ways. Bailey was gorgeous—naturally alluring. But Cooley Ridge was Corinne’s. The attention was always hers. Bailey could either submit to Corinne, let her push her around, or Corinne could destroy her. Bailey was lucky she was weak. That she bent and folded so easily. There were worse things than being a door mat.
But Bailey also had a darkness in her that let her be manipulated, that wanted out. She was lucky to be loved by Corinne.
“Truth or dare, Bailey.” Corinne moved the soda straw from side to side in her mouth.
Dare, I thought. Take the dare.
“Truth,” Bailey said.
Corinne’s smile stretched wide. “Jackson or Tyler? And explain.”
There was no right answer. There never was.
“I changed my mind,” Bailey said. “Dare.”
“No, no, no, Bailey, my dear. Truth or you can leave. Now, tell me, which of our boyfriends would you like to make yours?”
I’d leaned back on my elbows, watching Bailey shift in discomfort. Corinne caught my eye and grinned.
“Always take the dare, Bails,” I said.
“Tyler,” Bailey said, her high cheekbones tinged red.
I laughed. “Liar.”
She set her eyes on me. “You get a free pass everywhere, Nic. People think you’re b
etter than you are because of him. That’s my reason. Tyler.”
Corinne laughed. “Well played, Bailey.” She pulled Bailey toward her, wrapped her arms around her from the side, and squeezed. “God, I love you to death. The both of you. You’re horrible.”
I hated that Bailey acted so beyond it now. That she would call Corinne a monster as if she could strip out the rest. “Tell yourself whatever you want, Bailey. You always were an excellent liar.”
“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. I heard her,” Bailey said. “I heard what she said at the top of the Ferris wheel.”
I shook my head, pretending not to remember.
“Who says something like that?” she asked. “She was sick, Nic. And she was contagious.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
She laughed like the joke was on me now. “I gotta go.”
“Wait,” I said. “Can I call you later? We can meet up someplace. Without all this?” Meaning the fair, meaning the Ferris wheel looming above as we talked, turning us harsh and defensive.
“No,” she said. “Let it go.”
Bailey knew something more, I was sure of it. I wished Everett were here to push her, convince her to lay bare her secrets, to absolve herself. I grabbed a napkin from the nearest booth, found a pen in my purse, and scribbled my number on it. “If you change your mind, I’m in town for a while. Helping out with my dad.”
She slid the napkin into her back pocket. God, she was beautiful. Every movement of her body looked choreographed. “Goodbye, Nic.”
“Your daughter is beautiful,” I said.
She started leaving, tossed her hair over her shoulder, gave me one last searing look. “I hope she isn’t like us.”
I heard the ride beside us, the gears shifting, metal on metal as the cars came to an abrupt stop and began spinning the opposite way. The squeals of delight from inside. I tried to focus on that, on every individual sound, so I wouldn’t think about me and Bailey and Corinne at the top of the Ferris wheel.
I must’ve seemed so pathetic to Bailey, standing here pretending not to know what she was talking about when that whispered word had become louder and louder over the years. So that sometimes when I thought of Corinne, it was the only thing I heard.
All the Missing Girls Page 20