by Phoebe North
“Annie . . . ,” I begin. I want to tell her that he’s gone. I want to tell her that she needs to live for herself. I want to tell her that she could be so fucking fantastic that it hurts to even think about it, like it makes my stomach clench and the air feel thin in my lungs.
But she doesn’t let me. She shakes her head again. “Can we just lie down?” she asks, and tucks herself under the covers on the far side of her twin bed. Then, hesitating only a moment, she reaches up to turn off the light.
I hesitate, too. I’m still wearing my jeans, my hoodie, my bra. In the darkness, where Annie can’t see how big my belly is, or the fact that I haven’t shaved in a few days, I shimmy out of my jeans. Then I leave my hoodie and my bra in a pile on the floor, too, and slide under the covers beside her.
My heart is beating so loud I swear she must hear it. Her breathing is light and quick. She lets out a giggle. I do, too. I’m so nervous to touch her, and to be touched. It’s never been like this with anyone, really. I feel like a kid with her, until I scooch closer, and our legs touch, and electricity shoots through me.
Annie, too, I think. She jumps a little.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She giggles again. “Okay” is her answer.
I put my hands around her slender waist and pull her close to me. We’re kissing and we’re kissing, tangling our bodies tight.
Sometime after, I see a thin light through the window, and hear the garage door open. We’re still all stuck together, sore and sweet, but I turn at the sound of the car rattling up the driveway.
“Just Mom,” Annie says, her voice full of sleep. Then she pushes her lips against my neck, not so much kissing me as breathing me in. I’m not sure what to do, what the script is. Should we be scrambling for our clothes, rushing for cover, like Keira and I used to? But Annie doesn’t seem bothered. She’s frozen and calm against me, her hands heavy against my naked skin.
“Okay,” I say, and relax back into her, because really, it’s all I want, too, to just be here with her, our hearts slow and syrupy and beating together. I feel her lips at my throat again. This time, she is kissing me, and then she says something soft and I almost don’t hear it at first.
“What?” I whisper into the darkness.
She lets out a low chuckle. “You’re amazing,” she says. I feel myself grinning, feel a thousand feathers dance in my belly. You, too, I think, but before I can say it, she adds: “I can’t believe we’re going to get him back. I’ve missed him so bad, Vidya, you have no idea.”
I have some idea. I’ve missed him, too. But at the same time, it’s different for her, and I know it. Because I’ve never had a brother. And I’ve never lost one, either.
So I don’t pull away from her. I just let her hold me, her hands warm and steady, even though my heart’s gone to ice in my chest.
Thirteen
WHEN I WAKE UP, THE room’s hot with autumn late-morning sunlight through the curtains, and Annie’s gone. But I hear movement downstairs, the sound of dishes and water. I smell coffee, too. So I get up and pull on my dirty jeans, then my bra and my hoodie. I start toward the door, stop, find deodorant on Annie’s desk and smear some on to mask my smell, like sex and sweat, now hidden under baby-powder sweetness. Then I head downstairs.
I stand in the hallway for a minute, listening. Annie’s talking to her mom.
“Birthday breakfast,” her mom is saying. “What do you want, sweetie?”
“Not pancakes. They always make me feel kind of sick.”
“Bacon? Or is Miranda still vegetarian?”
“She is, but she’s not here.”
There’s a long pause, filled only with a clattering of dishes. I realize I’m holding my breath, waiting for Annie to say it.
“Oh,” her mom asks. “Did she decide not to stay last night?”
Annie takes her time in answering. It’s funny to hear her like this. She’s been so open with me. But things are different with her mom, I guess. At least when it comes to me.
So I decide it’s up to me to help her. I walk into the kitchen, my smile broad, like I belong there.
“Hi, Mrs. [Redacted].”
“Hello.” Annie’s mom is frowning, like she doesn’t quite understand, and why should she? But Annie’s grinning. I resist the urge to go to her and press a kiss to her cheek. It should be up to her, how much she shows to her mom. Up to her how much she reveals about herself.
“Mom, you remember Vidya,” Annie says. “Right?”
I put my hands on the center island, waiting for a response. Annie’s mom is chewing this over. In the late-morning light, I can see a thousand lines in her face. She’s older than I thought she was at the funeral, even more tired. And confused now, too.
“Jamie’s girlfriend?” she asks.
That’s the question that I knew was coming, and it’s like a punch in the gut. But I keep my smile steady. I’m not his girlfriend, not anymore.
And Annie agrees. “No,” she says, and she walks over to me and puts her hand over mine on the counter. “She’s mine.”
Annie’s mom is staring at us. The water is still running, but she finally goes and turns it off. With her hand on the cold water faucet, she looks at us. I can see how her brain is churning over this, putting the pieces together.
“Oh,” she says at first, flatly and without emotion. And then she adds, with dawning realization: “Oh.”
She turns back to the sink. There’s a window there, looking out to the yard, and the woods beyond. She’s distant when she speaks next.
“Vidya, do you eat bacon?”
Breakfast is the worst, like the most awkward possible, because no one is talking about the big stinking pile of shit in the middle of the table, as my dad might say, which is the fact that I dated James and now I’m dating Annie and that’s weird as hell. Like, instead their mom is asking me about Madrigals and Elijah inhales most of the plate of bacon and no one else really eats anything except Annie, who keeps tearing the crusts off her toast to dip them in raspberry jam and eating only those.
Awkward.
I’m telling Mrs. [Redacted] all about our Madrigals trips, but giving her the most sanitized version, without Kings or Quarters or David Henley’s massive purple bong. These are things I might share with my own parents, because they’re safe, but I don’t know what she’s like, not at all, except right now it seems like she’s being careful and I am, too. I don’t want to get Annie in trouble. And I’m also not talking about the boy in all those pictures on the wall, the boy with the haunted eyes, and how I knew his lips and the way his hips dipped into the waistband of his pants and how it’s nothing like the way his sister’s hips dip into the waistband of her pants even though it’s all I can think about. I’m sure it’s all written in my face anyway, a big blinking sign over my head:
Bad news bad news this girl is bad news and she has hooked up with two-thirds of your children and everyone at this table knows it bad news bears
After breakfast, Annie clears the table without being asked. She’s so damned responsible, and I want to kiss her for it, but I can’t, not in front of her mom and little brother. It’s just too much. So instead, I scrape the plates for her, and when her mom leaves the room, she comes over and puts her hand on the back of my neck.
“That went so well,” she says, and from the way her eyes are glowing I can tell that she means it even though my stomach is a hard burnt pile of bacon and anxiety.
But I kiss her temple anyway. “I’m glad,” I lie, even though I’m anything but glad right now. “I should call my mom for a ride soon,” I add. I just need to get out of there, even though my parents are probably getting ready to go to my uncle’s and they aren’t expecting me for hours still. “I’m supposed to visit my grandparents today. Mom usually leaves by ten.”
“Oh.” Annie’s face looks a little sucked in. “Is it something I did?”
Her freckles are bright in the white light of the kitchen. A few of them disappear as she wrinkl
es her nose in worry. She’s not the problem, not at all. It’s her mom, and this space, and her brothers, both of them, the ghost and the strange sullen almost-teenager. It’s the way the police treated me the last time they dragged me to the station—asking me questions that I knew came from James’s mother. With Keira, all I wanted was to meet her family and be accepted as one of them. But right now, I just want to get out of here.
Still, it’s not Annie’s fault. I lean over and kiss her deeply. “It’s fine. I’ll see you Monday, promise.”
Annie licks the spit off her lips, letting her mouth curl up at the edges. Before she can say anything, I hear her mom clear her throat behind us.
“Vidya, do you need a ride? I can give you one.”
“No, that’s fine—” I start, but Annie’s mom shakes her head.
“No, I insist. I’ll get my keys.”
“I’ll come, Mom!” Annie calls out, starting to follow, but her mother shuts that down fast.
“Stay here and watch Elijah,” she says.
I look at Annie, shrugging. But inside, my heart’s a frantic bird’s wing, wildly fluttering in my chest.
Fourteen
MRS. [REDACTED]’S CAR LOOKS LIKE it hasn’t been cleaned since Elijah was a baby. The seats are crunchy with crumbs. There are fossilized French fries scattered over the floor mats. As I buckle myself up, she puts on the radio, and it plays one of those ’90s alternative bands that my dad calls a “pale imitation of real music.”
“What’s your address?” she asks. I tell her, and she makes a face, like where I live says something about me. And I guess it does, even though I’ve never really thought about it. Even though Annie’s family lives in one of the bigger houses in their neighborhood, theirs is mostly blue collar and working class. The kids on her bus are just as likely to be in 4-H and Gun Club as they are in GSA, whereas there are only a few teenagers on my street, and we’re all the artsy sons and daughters of professors.
Mrs. [Redacted] rolls down the driveway, not looking at me, and I know for sure she’s got something on her mind that goes beyond the neighborhood where I live.
“Nice weather . . . ,” I say softly, desperately, because I can’t even begin to channel my mom right now. I don’t have it in me to be polite. I wonder if Annie’s mom is going to tell me that I can’t see Annie anymore, that I shouldn’t be corrupting her little girl with the sex and the drinking and the touching like I did with her son. That I shouldn’t ruin her like I did with her son. That I’m dangerous. That I might make her disappear. I’m sure she can see it all, what kind of person she thinks I am, written in huge letters across my forehead.
But when her mom speaks, it’s not about Annie at all. It’s like she said. She’s invisible in this family.
“Do you know about wheresjames[redacted].com?” she asks.
I feel my stomach clench. “Me and my friend Harper looked at it a few times right after he disappeared.” I pause. The word is hanging between us like one of those dangly air fresheners, which, honestly, this car could use. “After he died, I mean. Sorry.”
My cheeks turn hot. I don’t know which way Mrs. [Redacted] wants to look at it. To Annie, he’s alive. But her parents paid for that funeral and everything. Their mom is hardly listening to me anyway, just drumming nervous hands on the steering wheel, not quite on the beat.
“There was a comment there about a year ago that I can’t stop thinking about. I thought maybe you left it.”
“No, I never left a comment!” I say, maybe a little too quickly. But I didn’t. And I’m so, so sick of them treating me like I’ve committed some kind of crime. Like I was the one who made James disappear. Like it was all my fucking fault. Not that leaving a comment on some website is a crime, anyway. But I didn’t even do that, and still I get blamed. I do not want to talk to her about this. It’s one thing to talk about it with Annie. But this conversation brings back bad memories, how his parents kept sending the police to talk to me and I’d have to sit there, under humming fluorescent lights, next to Dad’s lawyer in my nicest clothes so that they’d think I was wholesome and normal, explaining again and again that I had no idea where he went. Honestly, I wish I had known what happened to James. Then I could have told them, and made the whole thing stop.
But none of us could stop it. It was a hell we had all been trapped in. Me, Neal, Annie, their whole family. And apparently, I’m trapped in it still.
“There was no email,” his mom goes on, like she doesn’t even notice my discomfort. “I sent the comment to the police, but they couldn’t trace it. The person said their name was Jack.”
I don’t say anything. That name means nothing to me.
“Stop looking, it said. Your son is dead and gone. There is no more James [Redacted].”
A shiver runs up my spine. We’re on my street now, pulling slooooooooowly up to my house. It’s a beautiful autumn day, leaves all gold-tipped and perfect. But my hands are cold. I hate this. I hate her. I want to get out of here. But the child safety lock is on, and she’s looking at me, waiting for me to answer.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That sucks, but . . . it wasn’t me.”
Mrs. [Redacted] looks at me for a long time. Her eyes are circled and circled again by wrinkles and bags, like she hasn’t slept in years, and I bet she hasn’t.
“I believe you,” she says finally. “I never thought you were the enemy, you know. Not like my husband does.”
I bite my lip. What can I say to that? Nothing.
“He’s kind of racist,” she adds, and then laughs, even though I’m not laughing and it’s not funny. Then she holds a hand up over her eyes and shields them. I’m afraid she’s going to cry, but she doesn’t. She just shakes her head. “Anyway, I’d hoped it was just you and your friends, fucking around. I remember what it’s like to be a teenaged girl, you know.”
For a second, my anger weakens, and I can almost see it. She would have been nothing like Annie, I think. More like Harper. Saucy and brave, but more as an act than a real identity. Mrs. [Redacted] would have been the kind of girl who would egg someone’s house for you in a minute. The kind of girl who would leave a mean comment on someone’s web page for their dead, missing kid, just for a laugh. Just to fuck with them.
“I’m sorry. I wish I could tell you who left it.”
“It’s okay,” she says. “I really need to let it go, anyway.”
Neither of us says anything. We both know she can’t.
“My mom’s waiting for me,” I eventually say. Mrs. [Redacted] unlocks the car door for me. I hop outside, kind of vaguely waving, because she’s a grown-up, because it feels like the right thing to do.
“I’m glad we had this talk,” she says, before I slam the car door and she drives away. I race up my front steps and burst through the door.
“Mo-om?” I call, and run straight into her, coming down the stairs. She’s got her purse over her shoulders.
“Vidya?” she says, laughing as I bury her in a hug. “How was Harper’s?”
I feel a deep tug of guilt. My mom raised me to be better than this, didn’t she? But somehow, I never am any better. I keep making the same mistakes with the same people. The freaking [Redacted]s.
When I don’t answer, she laughs more. “I didn’t expect you back so early. Naniji and Nanaji will be so pleased to see you today.”
“Mmmf” is all I say, giving my mother a squeeze. She squeezes me back. She’s warm and safe and predictable. Not like Annie’s mom—who’s going to be stuck for the rest of her life hunting down ghosts.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah, fine,” I say quickly. “I’ll go get changed.”
I run up the stairs to my room, sure that when I come down, my old, familiar mom will be waiting for me.
Fifteen
ANNIE IS EVERYWHERE ON MONDAY. I see her in the parking lot as I hustle off the bus and in the hall between classes, bumbling through the crowd, pushing her hair out of those dark, boyish eyes. And half of
me is thrilled to see her. I feel a jolt of electricity run down my spine and straight into my belly when her eyes seek me out through the crowd.
But I pretend I haven’t seen her. I look away.
I haven’t told anyone about my conversation with Annie’s mother. All through the car ride with my own mom, I sat with my feet up on the dash, fiddling with the playlist, talking too loudly about the Velvet Underground. I acted so sunny and centered at my uncle’s house that I think Naniji even suspected something was up.
“Vidya, what’s gotten into you?” she asked, giving my mother a pointed look. That look said drugs. It’s one she’s given me before. The two of them started bickering then, taking the pressure off me. And thank God, because I don’t think I could explain if I tried.
I was a fool to get involved with Annie. I see that now. I shouldn’t have done it, and that conversation with Annie’s mom is just the price I had to pay for being so damned stupid.
Harper notices something’s weird with me. Lunch rolls around, and I’m not looking at anyone as I unroll the crinkly ends of my paper lunch bag to pull out a yogurt and a sandwich and a seltzer, peeling the foil off my sandwich like my life depends on it. She lowers her voice so the emo boys can’t hear.
“You hung out with Annie this weekend, right? I tried texting you but you didn’t answer. How’d it go? Vee, did something happen?”
I know that Harper texted me—eight or nine times. I didn’t know how to explain any of it then, and I don’t know, so I just pretended not to see them. But I guess I don’t have to explain anything to her. Because when I lift my eyes to look at Harper, Annie is standing right behind her, clutching a lunch tray in hand.
Shit, Harper mouths when she follows the line of my eye up and spots Annie. And then: Should I take care of this?
I shake my head.