by Cylin Busby
Azul raised her brows. “I don’t think I would say that—I might have mentioned that you would not see her on this plane of existence anymore. What is your name again?” she asked.
“It’s Nico Morris. My sister’s name is Sarah. Sarah Morris.”
“Right.” She nodded. Then suddenly, recognition. “Oh, I remember. You all are over by MacArthur Park, right? That missing girl, blond girl. There was that big article about her in the paper.”
The newspaper article. I realized all at once that the emails hadn’t been from Azul. They couldn’t have been. She had gotten her $250 and she was gone. She didn’t care about us. She didn’t even remember Sarah or me.
“Did you send me a letter or something?” I asked, just to be sure.
“No, sweetie.” She tilted her head to the side. “If you paid for the visit, there would be no invoice mailed or anything. Unless you want one. Is that why you’re here?”
I shook my head. “I have to go.” I pushed the chair back hard, the wooden legs screeching on the floor. “This was a mistake.”
“Well, you come back if you ever do want a tarot reading, okay?” she called after me as I raced through the curtain.
The guy at the counter said nothing to me as I pulled the door open, clanging the stupid brass bells against the wall. I ran down the now-icy sidewalks, skidding to the bus stop, where I waited under the cold bluish light for my bus to come. My cheeks burned red, not from the cold but from embarrassment. How stupid I had been! Of course it wasn’t Azul. And suddenly, I felt sick, my school lunch rising up my throat. I threw up into the black-lined garbage pail next to the bus stop, knowing just one thing: If Azul hadn’t sent those emails, someone else had. Someone who knew. Someone who saw.
Now I knew who that person was. Two years ago, when the article came out, Azul had obviously picked it up. Took my parents for suckers, and her plan worked. But Paula had been mentioned in the article too. A photo of her and Max together, smiling. And the questions started: Why was Sarah’s best friend dating her boyfriend? Did she know something—did they both know something? The speculation. All eyes were on Paula. I remembered the fallout afterward. How colleges rejected her, how her friends even looked at her differently. Her parents separated, finally divorced. Instead of making her life better, Sarah’s disappearance had made things worse, much worse. Max was the only one she could go to. And me. Then Sarah came back, and everything was about her, even Max. The fragile life Paula had built was crumbling again. She wanted someone to blame. But now she had gone further than vague emails; she had gone to the police.
“Nico?” Sarah asked again, yanking me from the dark memories, back into the situation we were facing. “Why do you think it’s Paula?”
“Because, she . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence, couldn’t tell her. “Because she knows,” I burst out. I leaned into Sarah and cried on her shoulder while she gently patted my back, asking for no more details.
She pulled back from me and put her hands on my face, looking me straight in the eye. “Nico, we’re going to fix this. Don’t worry. We’re a team, right? Me and you,” she said, pulling me in and wrapping her arms around me. “We’re a team.”
SARAH
IT WAS JUST A game. That’s what Ma said, like dress-up. Sometimes we pretend to be other people. The first time we played was when the Very Special Visitor came to the house. I answered her questions the way Ma said to, even if it wasn’t totally the truth. But it wasn’t lying because I was playing, pretending. Pretending to be someone else, a little girl who was happy, who hadn’t been burned and broken. And it worked.
Later, it became more complicated. We had to move when I was in second grade because Ma had written some checks that the landlord tried to take to the bank too soon. “I told him to wait until Friday—now look what happened!” she screamed as she tossed our clothes into garbage bags that would have to work as luggage and hauled them out to her van.
When we went to the new place, an apartment with only one bedroom, Ma told me how to act, how to be, what to say. I was her sister’s kid, she said. Her sister was dying of cancer, we were just collecting money to help take care of her. People gave and gave, sympathetic looks and dollar bills. “No checks,” Ma said. “Cash.”
Of course, Ma didn’t even have a sister, but nobody had to know that. It was the Stranger Game. We were strangers, and could be anyone we wanted—anyone you wanted us to be.
“You’re awfully good at this.” Ma eyed me as we sat in the front of the van, counting the money in the coffee can she had given me to hold on the street corner. There was a Polaroid of a sick-looking woman taped to the front, and a note that said Please Help My Mommy. I was eight years old, and flipped through the bills, doing the math in my head. I handed the stack to Ma, announcing, “That’s seventy-eight dollars, or about forty dollars an hour.”
Ma took the wrinkled bills and straightened them on her lap, shaking her head. “You’re almost too good at this, Libby.”
Later, when I was in eighth grade, my math teacher, Ms. Lay, pulled me aside after class one day. She told me I had a special skill—an ability to do math problems, even complicated ones, in my head without scratch paper. “How long have you been able to do this?” she asked.
I looked at the clock—I was about to be late for PE. “I dunno.” I remembered counting out bills for Ma, organizing our fake cancer collection into denominations, from the time I was six or seven years old. “Forever, I guess.”
Ms. Lay wanted to talk to me after school, about something called the Mathletes. “It’s a group of kids I’ve put together, my best students. We go to competitions, all around the state. I think you’d be perfect for it.”
When I told her I’d think about it, she went ahead and got in touch with Ma directly. Ma was actually pretty proud of me, to my surprise. “Your math teacher says you’re something special, some kind of genius or something,” she told me when I came home. Ma was usually only interested in how things could make money for her, so a math competition in another town was not high on her list of things to do. But she said I could go, if Ms. Lay drove me.
So I went, in Ms. Lay’s car with a couple of other kids, eighth graders. Her car was nice, a silver color on the outside and had AC inside—unlike Ma’s old van. We quizzed one another on the ride there, throwing out hard equations. Even though I did pretty good in the car, I was nervous before the competition. I’d never been on a stage in my life, and here we were, face-to-face with another group of math kids, competing. Ms. Lay must have noticed, and she sat with me backstage.
“Libby, I need to tell you something.” She took off her thick glasses as she spoke. “You aren’t just good at math, you’re the best, most promising student I’ve ever had.” She gave me a weak smile, then leaned over and hugged me before I went on stage. “You can do this,” she said quietly. “I believe in you.” I carried the feeling of that hug, of her arms around me, onto the stage and into the competition.
The first few questions were tough, but then I got the hang of it and worked with my team, bringing in lots of points. We demolished them, winning a small silver cup and a certificate. Ms. Lay took us to a burger place on the way home where we celebrated. She dropped into step beside me as we walked back to the car. I was the only girl on the team. “I’m profoundly proud of you, Libby,” she said. And I could tell from her eyes that she meant it. She was profoundly proud.
On the ride home, and for days after, I would repeat that sentence in my head, over and over again. Even after we had to move, suddenly—another eviction—and I went to a new school midyear, Ms. Lay stayed in touch, encouraging me to continue my studies, to push myself. I lost touch with her when I dropped out of high school a few years later. But sometimes, when Ma was yelling at me, or I just felt like a loser, I would close my eyes and let the memory of that day, of Ms. Lay’s words wash over me. I’m profoundly proud of you. That feeling. I did something great, someone cared about me, believed in me. I made someon
e proud.
CHAPTER 23
SARAH WAS FAST, ORGANIZING everything in an order that I could follow, even though my mind was racing. “First, you’re going to go upstairs, throw some water on your face. No crying,” she cautioned. “Then change out of your swimsuit—when Mom gets here, we’re not going to be home.”
“We don’t have a car,” I pointed out. Dad had taken his to work, Mom had hers at the gym.
“Right.” Sarah nodded, looking over at me. “Put on something you can walk in, hiking clothes.”
Mom would never believe we had gone on a hike in this humid weather. But maybe a bike ride. “We can take the bikes,” I said. Sarah’s bike had never come back from the police, but she could take Mom’s.
“Great idea—go, go.” She motioned for me to go upstairs and she went out to open the garage. When I came down, changed, moments later, I heard the familiar tick-tick-tick as she led my ten-speed out of the garage. I looked out the window and saw her blond head, the white tennis shorts she wore over her swimsuit. Sarah taking her bike out of the garage. Tick-tick-tick. The sound of the garage closing.
“Nico?” she called to me, snapping me out of my memories. I pulled on my shoes and swallowed back the bile that was coming up my throat. “Just follow me, okay?” she said. “Don’t ask questions, just follow.”
We got on the bikes without a word and turned left from the driveway. After we rode in silence for a few moments, Sarah turned right, and I knew where she was taking us. And I knew why.
It was time for the truth.
MacArthur Park.
The last place Sarah was seen, where her bike was found.
But I didn’t want to go there, I couldn’t go there. I hadn’t been inside the park in four years. I almost couldn’t even look at it—when we drove by, I closed my eyes and held my breath. On Sarah’s birthday, my parents made me go, but just to the entrance.
I saw you.
Paula’s email flashed in my brain like a neon sign.
I saw you.
Of course she couldn’t tell the cops, couldn’t say she was there that day. She knew how that would look. She had called Sarah—threatened her. But she did go, she went there to confront Sarah, to hurt her, and instead she saw . . . what?
I kept pedaling toward the wrought iron fence ahead, the archway over the main entrance, the gates swung open. People were coming and going, sitting on the edge of the big fountain just inside the gates. Picnic blankets spread on the grass, toddlers in a playgroup chased bubbles. A group of campers in matching green T-shirts lined up for a hike as a counselor counted them. It could have been that day. Years had passed, but it was all the same.
Sarah stopped her bike and got off next to the big gate. She looked back at me, her sunglasses so dark I couldn’t see her eyes. As I pulled my bike up alongside her, she said quietly, “Do what I do. Act normal, okay?”
I nodded, but she didn’t even look over at me. She walked to a guy with a handcart. “Got any lemon pops today?” she asked brightly.
The guy slid open the lid and pulled out a frozen lemonade. “This do?”
“Two please, one for me and one for my sister,” she said. I watched her slip a carefully folded twenty from her pocket into his hand. He made change and she pocketed only the bills, giving him back the coins as a tip. “Thanks.”
We took the frozen pops and sat on a nearby bench. I felt sweat run down my back under my tank top. Sarah opened her frozen lemonade and ate it like nothing was wrong. After a few moments, I had to ask, “What are we going to do?”
Sarah let out a sigh. “Well, we’re going to do what we need to do, right?”
I shook my head.
“Nico, eat your pop, you’ll feel better.” She let out a light laugh. “Listen, the detective has questions, we’re going to give him answers. Okay?”
I peeled back the paper on the frozen lemonade and the first bite was so sour and good, it went straight to my brain, as if turning it on for the first time in a long while.
Sarah kept talking. “Paula told him some things, he needs answers to those specific things—whatever they are. Then it will be fine. You’ll see.”
“But what did she tell him?” I asked.
Sarah turned to me and balled up her wrapper. “I don’t know—you tell me, Nico.”
SARAH
I DIDN’T COME UP with a plan to take Sarah’s place. And Ma didn’t either. To be honest, I don’t think either one of us had the smarts to come up with an idea like that. It just happened, by accident. We were at a Best Buy near Gainesville with a new credit card and a new ID for me. Of course, the fake ID, stolen with the card, had me listed at twenty-five and I was only sixteen, but places like Best Buy almost never ask for ID; if they do, they just glance at the photo to see that it matches the name on the card, and mine did.
Ma was busy looking at flat screens, pretending that we were outfitting our new house—her favorite version of the Stranger Game—when a salesperson came over to help. In the middle of explaining the latest technology, he turned to me. “You know who you look like—that girl who went missing from Pennsylvania, what was her name? Blond girl.” He squinted at me suspiciously.
I just shook my head, having never heard about the case. “I don’t know,” I told him honestly, and I didn’t. He seemed to let it drop, so we went on shopping. When we were done, it took a clerk with a flatbed cart to wheel all the stuff out to the van: new huge screen, a surround sound system, DVD player. The works. And the credit card had gone through no problem.
But as the guy was loading up Ma’s van, two Gainesville police cars pulled into the lot and we knew it was trouble. “Ditch the cards,” Ma whispered to me, so I opened my purse and tossed the credit card and ID under the car next to ours in one swift motion. A shame, as the fake ID had been a tough one to make and it looked pretty damn perfect.
“Evening, ladies.” One officer approached us. Two other cops went into the store.
“Yes, can we help you?” Ma said, clutching her receipt tightly.
“Oh, it’s not about your purchases here tonight—we just had a report that your daughter matched a missing person report from another state and we wanted to come and check it out.”
“Who, Libby?” Ma laughed, looking over at me. “Well, she’s not missing, I can tell you that!” She laughed a little too loudly—relieved that the cops were here for some nonsense and not the fact that we were basically stealing thousands of dollars of merch from the electronics store.
The cop took out a small black notebook and asked me a couple of questions, and I answered them—giving a fake last name, but not the one on the credit card. Where did I go to school? What was my birthday? He jotted down a few things in his notebook. He looked up at me, studying my face, then looking at a folded piece of paper he had in his hand. “Yeah, I can see the similarity”—he shook his head—“but you’re not her,” he said finally.
“Who are you looking for?” I asked. Ma shot me a look that said to shut my mouth and get into the car.
“This girl, she’s about your age.” He showed me the piece of paper. It was an image of a pretty blond girl, her name across the bottom and the words Missing and Possible Kidnapping stood out to me. I just glanced at it quickly before he folded the paper and put it back into his notebook.
“Hate to say it, but they should be looking for a body at this point,” the cop said quietly. “She’s been gone months, and, well, you know how these things go. Anyhow, sorry to have bothered you. Y’all have a good evening now.”
He nodded at Ma and headed back to his cruiser. Ma handed the guy with the cart a five-dollar tip. “Thanks for your help—we’re so excited to get all this set up at home!” she added cheerfully. I knew that we wouldn’t be setting up anything, we would sell it, probably by tomorrow morning, at a discount price. Still, it would be a cash sale, and that money would be ours. We casually climbed into the van and pulled out of the lot, Ma watching for lights behind us.
“I
was hoping to hit the liquor store on the way home, but now I don’t know—we should just get on,” she grumbled. I knew she was mad about the ID and the credit card, but there was always more where that came from.
CHAPTER 24
I CLOSED MY EYES and tried to block out the bright, hot morning sun, the sounds of the park around me. It could not have been more like that day if I had planned it. That had to be a sign. But a sign of what? “Okay,” I finally said quietly—not so much to Sarah as to myself.
I stood up from the bench and Sarah followed my lead, pulling her bike over to the rack. I knew where her bike had been on that fateful day, and carefully moved us to the other side. I couldn’t do that, let her lock the bike in the same spot.
Without speaking, I walked woodenly past the group of campers, third or fourth graders. They had been told, I was sure. A girl went missing here, years ago, and they never found her. So walk in a line, no going off the path . . .
Past the fountain, the oak tree with the plaque commemorating a long-ago battle that took place here, to the slope at the back of the park, where the trails began. I knew where the back trail was, the one that led up to the picnic area. It was shorter than the main trail by half a mile, but it was steep. Too steep for bikes. The goat trail, we had called it.
I stood at the bottom of the main trail, looking at the sign for a moment. Carved in wood:
CRYSTAL LAKE 0.5 MILES
PICNIC AREA 0.8 MILES
We started up the main trail, then needed to cut right. I surprised myself by remembering exactly where to go, like I was in a dream.
“This way.” I moved through the brush at the side of the trail, stepping over a low wooden railing, where a path had been worn by feet and had no sign.
“Careful,” I told Sarah, realizing she wouldn’t know, “sometimes there’s poison ivy here.”
We started up in silence, the slope of the trail gaining as we went, so narrow you had to put one foot in front of the other. It grew so steep, the earth below us almost formed steps, carved into the hills. I stopped to catch my breath, wishing that we had brought water. The tart sweetness of the lemonade pop lingered in my mouth, making it feel dry and tacky. Sarah looked up at me, leaning on her knees and breathing hard.