The Stranger Game

by Cylin Busby

  “How’d it go?” I asked. I meant to say something more casual—How was dinner? But really what I wanted to know was: Are you two back together? Can you just pick up where you left off and be that golden couple again? I was dying to know if Max had really broken up with Paula and if he had done it for Sarah.

  From Sarah’s tense expression, I could already tell the answer was no. But she put on a smile for Mom and Dad as they came in from the den. They stood silently waiting, but Sarah wasn’t talking, so we all just stood there awkwardly.

  “How was that new restaurant?” Mom asked, her smile strained. “Dad and I have been thinking of trying it.” She wanted this so much, wanted it for Sarah, for all of us.

  “It was good, kinda expensive, but nice.” She nodded. Everyone was silent for a moment or two, hoping she would go on. “Well, you didn’t have to wait up,” she finally said, then she stopped herself. When she lifted her head again, her cheeks were streaked with tears. “I’m sorry, you guys, I don’t think he likes me anymore—” Her voice caught in her throat. “Maybe I’m just too different now.”

  Dad opened his mouth, then closed it. “I’ll go get her something to drink,” he said, turning to the kitchen. Mom and I pulled Sarah to the couch where we could sit on either side of her.

  “It’s okay, Sarah, it’s okay.” Mom pushed her hair back from her face. I saw the makeup she had so carefully applied just hours before, eyeliner and mascara, clumping under her eyes now, smears of green and black. I’d never seen my sister break down like this. Mom hadn’t either. Even when Sarah was super angry and threw a tantrum, it didn’t usually include tears. It was heart-wrenching to watch her thin shoulders shake with each sob; she was so broken already.

  “Did something happen?” Mom asked, rubbing her back.

  Sarah took the tissue I offered her and blew her nose, shaking her head. “No, nothing like that. He’s super sweet, he’s so nice.”

  Dad came back in with a seltzer for Sarah and put it on the table, but Mom waved him away. He stood looking down at us for a moment.

  “Maybe some tea would be good,” Mom finally suggested, giving him something to do.

  As soon as Dad left the room, Sarah went on quietly. “It’s just so clear that he doesn’t find me attractive anymore. He didn’t try to kiss me.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything!” Mom protested. “He could just be taking things slow. Give it time.”

  Sarah looked over at me, her eyes red rimmed and raw looking. She grabbed my hand. “Nico, you know what I mean, right? When you can just tell a guy doesn’t want you?”

  I nodded, remembering Daniel’s hand on my back at the party, his hungry smile. Did he want me? I almost had to shake my head to clear the memory.

  “I think maybe I’ve changed too much.” She looked down at my hand in hers and squeezed hard.

  “No, it’s not your fault,” Mom said softly. “It might take a little while to click again. People change, that’s all.”

  But Sarah shook her head, and I had a sad feeling she was right. She wasn’t that same girl anymore, and Max couldn’t pretend not to be disappointed.

  When she was calm enough and we had all had a cup of chamomile tea, I led Sarah upstairs. She sat on the edge of the tub in her new outfit. “Can you help me get this crap off my face?”

  I took out the bottle of makeup remover and a few cotton balls. I tipped the bottle onto the cotton and slowly, gently wiped it over her eyes and cheeks, taking the smears of color away. I studied her face while her eyes were closed, how her lashes brushed her cheeks, the small freckles that now dotted her nose, the acne scars.

  “Done,” I told her, tossing the cotton balls into the can under the sink. I stood to go, but she pulled me back.

  “Stay,” she asked. So I sat on the closed lid of the toilet while she splashed water on her face, then brushed her teeth. She looked at herself with toothpaste suds still on her lips. “You know, I spent like two hours getting ready for tonight. I shaved. Everything.” She shot me a look and I got what she meant. “What a waste.”

  I had to laugh a little. It was such a drag, putting in the time for someone who didn’t appreciate it. I had been spending an extra fifteen minutes every morning getting ready for school, just in case I saw Daniel. So far, if I did the math, I had wasted over two hours making myself look good for him and had only seen him twice since the party.

  “You know what?” She spat angrily into the sink. “Now I’m getting a little bit mad. Who does he think he is? Like he’s so awesome? Maybe I don’t like him anymore.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, he’s not all that,” I agreed. But picturing Max’s handsome face in my mind, I had a hard time convincing myself. He was pretty hot. “I think you could do better, really. I mean, he’s your high school boyfriend, right? Maybe you’re over that.”

  Sarah dried her face and looked at herself closely. “Maybe I am,” she said. She tipped her chin up and looked at herself from the side in the mirror. “Maybe I am.”

  The next morning at breakfast, Mom couldn’t help herself. She brought up Max, and the possibility of giving him another chance.

  “We’ll see,” Sarah said quietly, looking down into her yogurt bowl. “I doubt he’s going to call me, and I’m not calling him.”

  “Why not?” Mom asked.

  I let out a laugh. “You guys didn’t even want her dating Max before, remember? Now you’re bummed that they’re not deeply in love.”

  “Nico,” Mom said sharply, “that’s not true. We always liked Max.”

  I exchanged a look with Sarah across the table. “I just hope he doesn’t feel like he waited around for me or anything,” she said.

  “He wasn’t waiting, he was with Paula,” I mumbled. I wanted Mom to stop pushing for this. Why couldn’t she let it go?

  “Okay, Nico, I’ve had enough. Are you trying to be hurtful?” Mom asked.

  I pushed my chair back and brought my bowl over to the sink without answering her. Why did anyone think it would be easy for Sarah to just slip back into her old life? For any of us to do that? I didn’t want the old Sarah back, even if Max and my parents did.

  Gram finally pulled it together enough to visit us that next week, and I couldn’t wait to see her. It had been almost a year, and while I knew she had been sick, it was still a shock to see her coming off the plane at the airport in a wheelchair.

  “I’m fine, I’ve got it,” she said in a wavering voice as she stood from the wheelchair at the baggage claim, using a cane. Overnight, she had become an old woman. I hardly recognized her.

  As if reading my thoughts, Gram murmured, “Getting old is a terrible thing.”

  “Maybe you should sit until your bags come,” Mom offered, but Gram shot her an icy look.

  Gram took Sarah’s face into her hands and looked up at her, getting as close as she could, squinting behind her thick glasses. “Now, they said you looked different, but I don’t think so. You’re still my little Sarah, aren’t you?”

  Gram asked me about school as Mom searched the baggage carousel for her suitcase. “Her grades are really good,” Sarah jumped in. “She’s doing awesome.”

  I glowed under her praise. “I admit, I’m not in love with the advanced algebra,” I added. “But Sarah’s been helping me some with my homework, so at least I sort of understand it.” I trailed off, looking over to Sarah to see how she would react to my crediting her, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was watching a guy sitting behind us in a chair near the baggage claim.

  I followed her gaze and saw him tapping a pack of cigarettes against his palm. His eyes were on Sarah as he pulled open a plastic tab on the box and slid a cigarette out. He tipped it into his lips with a quick motion and cupped the end, lighting it with a small plastic lighter. He put the lighter back into his jacket pocket and gave Sarah a little half smile. Sarah seemed in a trance, watching him. The smell of burning paper, of sulfur, met my nose.

  He shook one cigarette from the pack and extended it
to Sarah, wordlessly. She stood numb, unblinking.

  “You can’t smoke in here, young man,” Gram huffed, turning slightly away from him. “My goodness.”

  The guy leaned back into his chair and pulled a hard drag from his cigarette, keeping his eyes on Sarah’s. I noticed a dark tattoo that wound around his wrist and underneath his jacket sleeve.

  “Found it!” Mom said in a singsong voice, rolling Gram’s dark pink suitcase up alongside us. She seemed not to notice the guy with the cigarette. “Let’s go—your dad should be right out here with the car.” She walked to the door and I turned to follow, but Sarah didn’t move, as if she was locked into place.

  Mom took a few steps before she realized it, looking back at her. “Sarah?” she said quietly, pulling her from her daze.

  Her face softened as she looked at Mom. She smiled and moved quickly, taking Gram by the elbow, helping her out to our car at the curb. When the glass doors closed behind us, I turned back and saw that the guy was still there, blowing smoke—watching Sarah.

  After we got Gram all set up in the guest room and she had some time to rest, she kept insisting on taking us out for ice cream. This was something she used to do when Sarah and I were little—on every visit, we would get into whatever car she had rented (usually something bright and convertible), and she would take us to the dairy farm about half an hour away. I realized later that she was probably giving my parents a break; we would be gone for a couple of hours. And it also gave us time to visit with Gram on our own, just the three of us.

  I loved when Gram came because Sarah was always on her best behavior. Gram would not allow any “nonsense,” as she called it, so Sarah knew not to act like such a raging bitch when she was around. I also felt that, unlike my parents, Gram saw Sarah for what she was, and took my side a lot. She would shoot Sarah a look sometimes that said I see through your bullshit, and that would usually shut Sarah up in a way I’d never seen from anyone else. The drive out to the farm meant listening to the radio with the top down, the wind in our hair. I never even argued with Sarah for the front seat or control of the stations—just let her have it, so we could avoid any fights.

  “Yogurt? I don’t want yogurt, frozen or otherwise,” Gram complained when Dad explained that the old dairy farm had closed last year and offered to drive us to the fro-yo place instead. We finally settled on an old-fashioned ice-cream and coffee shop downtown. Dad parked and Sarah and I both had to help Gram climb out, pulling her up from the seat. When I put my hand on her arm, I felt her skin, warm and soft, under my palm.

  The place was filled with twentysomething hipster types drinking cappuccinos and lattes. But Gram, unintimidated, strode up to the counter and placed our order loudly. “Two pistachio nut ice creams in bowls, and one mint chip in a sugar cone,” she recited.

  When the ice creams came, I took my cone and carried Gram’s bowl to a table. Sarah looked down at the other pistachio, confused. “Is this for me? I thought it was for you.” She glanced at Dad.

  Gram stopped stock-still on her way to the table and turned to look at Sarah. “It’s your favorite, dear, mine too. That’s what we always get.” Sarah reluctantly picked up the bowl of green ice cream and sat at the table. While we ate, Gram filled us in on her latest medical problems and test results. It was all slightly hard to understand—her calcium levels were up, her bone density was down, she had a pinched nerve and a bad hip. Dad asked questions and nodded, sipping his coffee while Sarah and I exchanged a look over the table. She rolled her eyes as Gram went on complaining and I hid my smile behind my ice cream. It was nice not being the only grandchild, having all the focus on me, as it had been for the past four years. Gram didn’t ask anything sensitive. It was as if we all just slipped back into our old roles. Sarah left her pistachio nut almost untouched on the table, but no one else really seemed to notice.

  When we got home, Gram asked that we get her settled out on the back porch “just for a spell,” even though the evening spring air was still nippy. “Sarah, come out here and visit with me,” Gram said. “Close that door behind you.”

  Mom started dinner and Dad mixed them both drinks while Sarah and Gram chatted outside. I could hear their muted voices from the kitchen. “Nico, can you set the table? Let’s put Gram on the end here, so she can get in and out of the chair with her cane.”

  I walked around the table, carefully laying out cloth napkins and silverware and trying to catch what was being discussed outside, but I could only hear murmurs, not much more. Eventually, Mom flicked on the porch light and opened the door. “Dinner in ten minutes, you two.”

  In a few moments, Sarah led Gram back inside, holding her elbow as before. When they came to the table, I noticed that Gram’s eyes were watery and red. Sarah’s mascara had smeared under her lower lashes.

  “You’ve got some . . .” I motioned under my eyes.

  Sarah ran her index finger under her lower lids, asking, “Better?”

  I nodded.

  When we all sat down, Gram asked that we take hands. “Let us pray, and give thanks that our Sarah, my grandbaby, is finally back with us,” she said, her eyes filling again as she bowed her head.

  CHAPTER 20

  DAYS OF SARAH BEING back turned into weeks, and soon the cool spring air started to change over to summer heat. Dad spent a weekend getting the pool ready and trimming back the shrubs in the yard while Sarah and I went shopping for new swimsuits at the mall with Tessa.

  “Are they still really bad?” Sarah said, turning her back to us in a string bikini. Mom had been taking her to the dermatologist for laser treatments on her burns, but they were still there.

  Tessa’s eyes narrowed. “I can barely see anything, I would never notice,” she said, looking to me to chime in.

  “Much better,” I lied, looking at the pink and peeling spots. They had said full healing could take months or years, and even then the scars would still be visible, just not as bad as before.

  When we grabbed lunch at the food court, Sarah seemed more relaxed. Gone were the days when she was so nervous in public—scared of crowded places, of anyone recognizing her. We hit up the makeup samples at Sephora after lunch, and Sarah expertly applied a cat’s-eye with dark liner to Tessa’s lids, making her look like an old-fashioned movie star. As I snapped a few photos with my phone, I saw what anyone else would see: three teen girls, having fun together on a Saturday afternoon.

  Tessa leaned in to hug Sarah. “I’m buying this,” she said, palming the liner. “But can you come over, like, every morning and do my eyes?”

  “Of course!” Sarah smiled.

  Later, Tessa would tell me how much she loved my sister. “She is awesome, you’re so lucky. I wish I had a sister.” She had never known Sarah before, and I was thankful that she had forgotten—or chosen to forget—the portrait I’d painted of my sister before she’d returned.

  As the weather warmed and the days lengthened, everything got easier, just like Dr. Levine had predicted. The detectives and reporters stopped calling. It seemed that the investigation into Sarah’s reappearance was following the same course as her disappearance—slowly falling away from people’s minds.

  And Dr. Levine was good for something else too—a bit of marriage counseling for Mom and Dad. They started a new Friday “date night,” at her recommendation, leaving me and Sarah to do our own thing. We usually ordered a pizza and rented a movie, nothing special—sometimes Tessa came over, too, but mostly it was just me and Sarah. The only thing that was off-limits was horror movies—anything where girls were being chased or in peril. They seemed to set off Sarah’s nightmares, which still came about once a week or so, but could happen all night if she watched anything scary before bed.

  Even though it wasn’t a big deal, I found myself looking forward to our nights on our own. I began planning our pizza order, discussing movies with Sarah days before. Once I came home on a Friday afternoon to find a rack of chocolate chip cookies cooling on the counter. “You know, for movie nigh
t,” Sarah said, scrubbing the cookie pan in the sink. I knew that she looked forward to it too.

  I decided I was ready to go back to work at the teen help line, and went one spring evening after the time change—it felt weird to be there while the sun was still up, filling the call center room after a long winter of dark afternoons. It was like a new place. That wasn’t the only thing that was different: as soon as I walked in the door, Marcia came over to pull me into a hug, a warm embrace that felt real, and she held me for a few moments. “I want you to meet someone, Nico,” she said softly. She led me to the seat where I usually took calls, but it was already taken by a petite girl with short dark hair.

  “This is Shivani. She’s your trainee.” Marcia smiled.

  “Hi, I’m Nico.” I shook the girl’s hand and added, “I love your bangs,” noting the thick straight cut she was pulling off—it was striking.

  Shivani blushed. “I know who you are.” She smiled. “You’re, like, famous.”

  I swallowed, caught off guard. Famous for what? Then I realized: Sarah. Marcia cut in, “Shivani specifically asked to train with you, and I think it’s a great idea.”

  I didn’t know what to say to either comment. The fact that Marcia thought I was ready—and good enough—to train someone else at the help line, or that Shivani considered me a mentor. I pulled over a chair, sitting close to her, and found a splitter for our headphones. “We’ll take some calls together to start, sound good?”

  I surprised myself by how quickly I slid into the role, the older student, the trainer to the trainee. It had only been a year ago that I was in Shivani’s place—how much had changed over the past few months. As if by some other divine act of good fortune, the calls we took together were really routine: a girl who was thinking of running away, another whose parents’ divorce was sending her into a spiral of depression. Nothing that Marcia had to step in for. As I gave advice and spoke to each caller, I heard the calm confidence in my voice over the headphones—it surprised even me.