The Stranger Game

by Cylin Busby

When it was time to wrap up for the night, we left together, stepping out into the cool spring night, our breath visible as we left the warmth of the lobby. “Nico, I just want to say thank you so much,” Shivani said as she headed to her parents’ car. “This means, like, everything to me.”

  I suspected the freshman girl would tell her friends at school that we were friends—that we volunteered together—as if it was a badge of honor and prestige. She would likely brag about it, but that didn’t bother me. I had noticed since Sarah’s return that some people, especially kids at school, were interested in me in a new way, intrigued. For a few, that faded once Sarah had been home a couple of weeks. But for others, it was as if I had been invisible before and now they saw me. One of them was Daniel.

  Ever since the party at Liam’s, he had been acting differently toward me at our yearbook meetings. For one thing, he actually knew my name. On days when we met after school, Wednesdays, I spent forever getting ready, trying on uniforms in the long mirror on the back of my door in the morning, trying to find one where the skirt fit just right, my navy cardigan snug over a white top. I would wash and blow out my long, blond hair and wear it down, instead of up in a ponytail or a loose bun like I usually did.

  “Must be Wednesday,” Tessa teased, scooting in next to me in homeroom, taking in my carefully crafted appearance.

  “Is it?” I would joke back, pretending to look at the calendar by the teacher’s desk. Of course Tessa knew that I liked Daniel, but unlike the way I encouraged her crush on Liam, she was decidedly negative about my feelings. “He’s got a different girlfriend every week,” she pointed out. “Not a good sign. The best you can hope for is to be that girl—for one week. Really? You want that?”

  The truth was that I didn’t want that, I wanted more—something I couldn’t even confess to Tessa or Sarah, that I could barely admit to myself. I watched Daniel closely, and yes, he did seem to date a different girl every weekend and flirt expertly, with just about everyone. But as far as I knew, he hadn’t found anyone to ask to the senior prom yet. As the date approached, a fantasy grew in my mind. We would be working on the yearbook, scanning in photos, and he would lean over my shoulder, checking something on the computer screen. “This looks good, can you move this one a little to the left to make more space for the header?” and I would hold my breath, waiting for it, with his body so close to mine. For him to look in my eyes the way he had at the party. To see that hungry smile.

  Sometimes he did. Especially if I stayed late, if we were a small group and ordered in something for dinner with Mr. Stillman, our art teacher, as the only chaperone. When he sat next to me at the long design table, teasing me about being the youngest person on the staff. “This one here is trouble,” he would joke, putting his hand on my back. “She looks so innocent and pretty—if anyone is going to sneak a prank into the yearbook, it’s Nico.” I would blush and mumble something. But for all his flirting, he never actually made good on the imagined promise, the dream that he planted in my head at Liam’s party, that maybe I was something special to him.

  One rainy day, when we had PE inside, I heard the girls in the locker room talking about prom and someone mentioned Daniel. He did have a date, and had for weeks, a girl he had gone out with a few times. She was a sophomore, too, but dark haired, curvy—the polar opposite of me. I ducked into the bathroom and felt tears sting my eyes. How could I have been so stupid? It became clear to me, all in a rush, that Daniel had only noticed me in the first place because Sarah had returned. All the time I had been dreaming about him he had probably not thought about me once.

  As the date of the prom approached, Mom and Dad were actually wondering if Sarah wanted to attend, since she had missed hers, but she laughed off the idea. “That’s okay,” she admitted. “I don’t feel like I need prom pictures to round out my teenage experience.” On one of our Friday nights, we had just watched an old ’90s movie about a prom gone wrong, and I think Sarah was happy to have nothing to do with that nonsense.

  There were all kinds of prom after parties, and Tessa managed to somehow get us invited to the one at Liam’s house—her long-held fantasy of being together with him had not faded. “He’s going to be a senior next year, and I’ll be a junior—it’s perfect,” she explained to me and Sarah while we were getting ready.

  Sarah nodded, standing behind her in the mirror and braiding Tessa’s curly hair into a halo around her head. “A woman with a plan, I like it,” she said. “And what about that guy you were into, Nico? Is he going to be there tonight?”

  “Daniel.” I shrugged, trying to act very nonchalant. Inside, I was nervous he would come to Liam’s party, but this time with his date. I had to look perfect, just in case he noticed me. Maybe there was still a chance to make him wonder why he hadn’t paid better attention. To show him he’d made a big mistake, he had asked the wrong sophomore to the prom.

  “He’s super hot, but kind of skeezy,” Tessa added, pushing a stray curl off to the side of her face. “Nico can for sure do better than Daniel Simpson.”

  Sarah glanced over at me, trying to read my face. “I’ve always loved the name Daniel, and that story with the lion’s den.” She smiled.

  “What lion’s den?” Tessa asked.

  Sarah was searching through her makeup bag absentmindedly. “You know, in the Bible story, Daniel, the lion’s den—they put him in there, but the lions don’t eat him because God protects . . .” She looked up suddenly at me and saw no sign of recognition on my face.

  “Oh, I don’t know the Bible at all. My family isn’t very religious,” Tessa admitted.

  It was on the tip of my tongue to say that our family wasn’t either, but I caught myself. Tessa leaned in to look at her hair in the mirror, turning to Sarah. “Will you do my eyes like you did at the mall?”

  Sarah held up the tube of liquid liner.

  “You should come to the party with us,” I suddenly said to her. “Come and meet Daniel and Liam for yourself.”

  Sarah looked like she was actually considering it for a moment, then smiled and shook her head. “Too weird,” she said. “Besides, I’ve actually got to study.”

  Tessa and I both groaned. She was taking her GED studies so seriously. Though I wouldn’t admit it, I was actually super proud of her. So were Mom and Dad, who remembered all too well the Sarah from before—the girl who wouldn’t crack a book unless she was threatened with all kinds of curfews and punishments.

  When I got home from the party later and found Sarah sitting at the kitchen table with her GED book out, I slumped down next to her. “You didn’t miss anything,” I had to confess. “And my feet in these heels are killing me.”

  “Daniel?” Sarah asked, raising her eyebrows.

  I shrugged, getting up to grab a drink from the fridge. “He showed up,” I said. How much should I tell her? That he was drunk, that his date was a mess, with smeared lipstick staining both her mouth and his? The truth was, when he finally got there, I was already having fun talking to a guy in my grade from my tennis team, Kyle. And there was something else, something bigger and darker that loomed in my thoughts when I looked at Daniel now. A realization that made him repulsive to me.

  “He’s a senior anyhow, he’s got a month left in this town and then he’s gone,” I reminded her. “I don’t want that—can you imagine Mom and Dad? It would be like . . .” I shook my head. At the party, I’d had a horrible epiphany when Daniel walked through the door, his arm draped over the curvy brunette.

  He was a senior, she was a sophomore.

  It was Sarah and Max all over again. I had craved it, dreamed about it, wanted to follow in her footsteps, without even realizing it. How could I have been so naive? When I looked into the mirror, I saw the same face, the same figure Sarah had when she was fifteen, but I wasn’t her, and I never would be.

  “But I didn’t go to prom with Max,” Sarah said, and I watched her face as she figured it out on her own. “They wouldn’t let me,” she said, looking at me for confir
mation.

  “That was when you guys first ran away, to the cabin—you were so mad. It was like you had planned it for months, and then they didn’t let you get your prize, to show him off.”

  Sarah nodded, as if remembering. “And the matching tattoos, they came after that, right?” She closed her book on the table. “There will be other Daniels, I promise you, Nico,” she finally said. “When you’re ready.”

  Before school let out for the summer, Sarah managed to ace her GED on the first try and also helped me win second place on my science fair project. There was even a picture of me, posing like a total dork holding my red ribbon, in the yearbook. I finished the year with an A-minus in math—a first for me.

  Mom and Dad hadn’t put together any special travel plans for the three months I would be off from school, unsure of what Sarah might like to do. But she was content to just lie by the pool most days with a pile of magazines and her sunglasses, or to join me and Mom at the club, where another weird side effect of her amnesia became apparent: she had completely lost her tennis game. She couldn’t even seem to remember how to score, and her old tennis skirts hung loose off her hips. “Sarah, you have to move back to the baseline, this is doubles,” I told her for the tenth time, but she would just smile and bounce to the other side of the court, letting Mom and her tennis partner cream us again. And she didn’t even seem to care—Sarah used to be so competitive, she would slam her racket down and storm off the court in a huff when things didn’t go her way.

  “Thirty–love is bad, right?” she asked, adjusting her visor.

  “Yeah, it’s bad, unless you’re trying to let Mom win,” I said.

  After yet another humiliating loss, Sarah laughed it off in the locker room. “Face it, Nico, you took all the amazing hand-eye coordination, and I got none.”

  “You used to have it,” I pointed out, then quickly caught myself. “Sorry, I . . .”

  Sarah rubbed her neck with a towel and smiled. “I can barely hold up my racket at the end of that beatdown!” She grinned at Mom and her friend Erin as they came into the locker room.

  “The winners have to buy the losers lunch again?” Mom joked, knowing full well that everything at the club went onto their account.

  As soon as we ordered our salads and iced tea, a girl with short blond hair and dark sunglasses approached our table. “Hi, all,” she said, twirling her racket.

  It seemed to take Sarah a moment to remember who Paula was, maybe because of the sunglasses or because we hadn’t seen her in weeks. “Oh, Paula!” She stood and moved to embrace her. “It’s so good to see you.”

  Paula’s smile was tight. “Saw you all out there on the court and I could hardly believe my eyes, Nico. You’ve gotten really good,” she said.

  Sarah spoke before Paula could criticize her. “And I know I’m the embarrassment of the Morris family,” she joked, pulling out a chair for Paula and patting the seat.

  “Not at all,” Mom said quickly, reaching for Sarah’s arm. “You’ll get it back—you’re just rusty.”

  Paula chimed in: “Everyone knows the Morris family can play tennis, right? It’s in your genes.” She paused, glancing at Sarah. “I’m sure it will all come back to you.”

  No one at the table spoke for a moment, until Mom passed a menu over to Paula. “We’ve just ordered, if you’d like to join us.” I could tell from her tone that she was just being polite.

  Paula shook her head. “I can’t stay,” she said quickly. Then she looked over at me. “You know, Nico, I emailed you but I must have the wrong address or something.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” I poked at my salad. I had gotten her emails.

  “There’s a club tournament coming up in a few weeks—you should really sign up for the under sixteen,” Paula said, as if explaining her emails. But her notes hadn’t been about tennis.

  “Oh, Nico, you should,” Sarah encouraged. “You would totally win. I’ll come and watch—and try not to embarrass you.”

  “The sign-up sheet is almost full, so if you want in, you should do it pronto,” Paula pointed out.

  “Go do it, Nico,” Mom said.

  “I’ll show you where you sign up.” She swung her racket in her hands.

  I swallowed hard. “I’ll do it on our way out.”

  “By then it might be full.” Paula smirked at me. “Come on, I’m going that way anyhow.”

  I stood, my legs feeling shaky below me.

  “Good to see you all. Let’s get a game going one of these days, okay?” Paula smiled as she led the way out of the dining room and into the front of the club.

  When we reached the front room, Paula led me to the big dry-erase board, where players were signing up for the tournament. There was an older woman in front of us, putting her information down. We stood there awkwardly for a moment, before Paula spoke quietly.

  “The happy family, out together,” she started. “Where’s Max? Aren’t those two an item again?”

  I shook my head. “They went on a date, or whatever, but . . .” I trailed off, feeling like I had said too much. It was clear that Paula and Max weren’t on speaking terms. I wondered how hard the past few weeks had been for her. To all appearances, it looked like her former best friend had returned and stolen her boyfriend again. I didn’t know how to convey that Sarah hadn’t meant any harm, she didn’t try to break them up. It had just happened. “It’s not like they’re dating,” I added.

  “Oh really,” Paula said in a tense voice. She was registering the fact that Max had broken up with her—his girlfriend of two years—for nothing. Less than nothing. It had to hurt.

  “You know, after Sarah went missing, the cops asked me a lot of questions. Max and me. But especially me. Do you know why?”

  I tried to think back to the days right after Sarah disappeared. They were such a blur. “Because you called her that day?” I guessed.

  “Because my fingerprints were on her bike. Do you remember that?”

  I did remember. “Yeah, but you had borrowed it or something.”

  The old woman moved away and Paula picked up a marker, yanking the top off like she was angry. She handed the marker to me.

  “That’s what I told them, that I had used her bike, but I felt like they didn’t believe me. For a long time, it seemed like they thought I had something to do with Sarah going missing, because we were fighting. Or that Max did. I was questioned twice, once with a lawyer, at the police station. Do you know what that’s like?”

  I had to shake my head. “I’m sure it sucked,” I offered. I looked at the board, trying to figure out where to put my name on the bracket.

  Paula let out a light laugh. “I had to take a lie detector test. And then that reporter with the huge article, making it look like Max and I were murderers. ‘Sucked’ doesn’t quite cover it,” she said. “To be honest, part of me was glad that Sarah was gone—I thought she had probably run away again, but left Max here this time. Maybe he was too small-town for her. I even thought that maybe you had helped her.” She looked at me closely. “That’s why I didn’t tell the cops everything about that day. But they knew I was hiding something. My story just didn’t check out.”

  I held the marker over the board, scared to even write my name. For a moment, I almost wrote Sarah Morris. Her name was a constant, running in the back of my mind, and had been for four years. With Paula standing next to me now, whispering into my ear, I was the one in danger of disappearing—didn’t anyone see that?

  Paula leaned in and whispered, “Do you know what I said when I called Sarah that day?”

  I didn’t answer her, just kept my eyes forward. Nico, I finally scrawled. Nico Morris.

  “No one knows. No one but me. And Sarah.” Her tone changed, her voice grew darker as she whispered. “I told her I was going to be waiting for her at the park. I was so angry at her, I could have killed her.” Paula’s whisper became a hiss. “But I didn’t have to.”

  I focused on breathing, wondering what she was going to say
next.

  Paula looked around us, as if to make sure no one could hear what she was saying. “And now, Sarah is back. Someone kidnapped her, that’s the story—isn’t it? And took her to Florida?”

  I knew it wasn’t really a question from her sarcastic tone, so I focused on the board, slowly writing my contact info into the bracket for my age group.

  “The thing is, Nico”—Paula leaned close to my ear—“as soon as I saw her, I knew. And you knew too, didn’t you?”

  I felt blood rushing into my head, a pulsing sound in my ears. “Knew what?”

  Paula took the marker from my shaking hand and put the top back on. She carefully placed it at the bottom of the dry-erase board before answering.

  “She’s not Sarah.”

  I stopped breathing.

  I felt as if the ground below me would swallow me up, like a big black hole was opening again, the hole Sarah left when she disappeared.

  “So, who is that girl living in your house?”

  SARAH

  SHE SAID TO CALL her Ma, and so after that day, I did, when other people were around. I mostly called her by her first name when it was just us, though. And she called me by my name, the name my real mother had given me, even though I knew she hated it.

  “You know what kind of name that is? A hippie name.” But she didn’t change it, she didn’t ask to change it, and she could have, when she took me for good. Instead, she shortened it to a nickname.

  First we had to be interviewed, though, by the Very Special Visitor. This was the lady who came to the house and asked me all kinds of questions. But Ma had told me just what to say to everything. And she dressed me so that you couldn’t tell my arm had been broken or that I had burns on my back. And she braided my hair so you would never know that, at the age of five, I had cradle cap.

  After the lady asked me lots of questions, she turned to Ma. “Do you think she’s ready to start kindergarten in the fall?” And Ma nodded her head.

  “Oh, she’s a smart one, this girl, smarter than me. Show her that book you like so much, Liberty.”