Then You Were Gone

by Strasnick, Lauren

  “Supper Club,” I say. Weekly potluck at Kate’s place. “Can I have some money? I have to pick up a pie on the way.”

  He pulls a wad of cash from his pocket and hands me a twenty.

  “Thanks,” I say. Smile. On second thought: “Hey.”

  “Hmm?”

  “She was kicking the car?”

  “Yup, the wheel.”

  “You’re sure you didn’t see the guy?”

  “Sorry.”

  Discouraged, I start down the hall to my room. Then, “Hey, Sam?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You remember what kind of car?”

  I hear a couple of pots clink together, then the faucet goes on. “It was a Bug.”

  “A bug?”

  “Yeah. An old VW Beetle. I had the same car when I was sixteen.”

  Huh. “Color?”

  “Yellow,” Sam shouts. Then, so soft I almost don’t hear: “Mine was red.”

  4.

  In my room, on my bureau, a photograph. I’ve got dozens of these, but keep coming back to this one: Dakota and me, fourteen, side by side on my stoop. She’s blowing a kiss at the camera. Her lips are purple and puckered, her eyes lined with liquid black. She’s wearing boots and blue tights and a dark, floral mini. I’m in an oversized white tank and taupe shorts and she’s shoving me down. My head’s to my knees and she’s gleeful, her eyes shining.

  5.

  Kate lives in Hancock Park, where they’ve got streetlamps and wide lawns and big stone homes. Her house is tall and covered with soft green moss. She has two parents, a pool, and a potbellied pig named Darla. Every Thursday we make a shit-ton of food, serve it up on nice china, and drink ourselves sick.

  Tonight it’s me, Lee, Kate, Teddy Walker, Margaret Yates, and pretty, wispy Alice Reed, who’s across the table, next to Lee, fake smoking a giant breadstick.

  “She has it all,” Kate whispers, smelling like crackers and strawberry gloss and Nag Champa incense. “Brains, boobs . . .” Kate’s being shitty. Alice Reed is flat and dumb. “Feels nice, right? Rounding out our social circle?”

  “Round enough as is, no?”

  “We’re too exclusionary,” Kate says, sighing. I smear a dab of pie custard onto her nose. “Mmm,” she says, stretching her tongue over her upper lip. “Chocolate.”

  A piercing laugh from across the table.

  “Do it again,” shrieks Lee. Alice sucks, inhales, then exhales—forming her mouth into a pleasing, pouty O.

  “Bravo.”

  Smoke ring pantomime. We all clap.

  Teddy Walker—rich, stuck-up, into boys, into clothes—passes Alice the lentil salad. “Here,” he says. “Smoke this.”

  She takes the dish, serves herself, serves my boyfriend.

  “A toast!” Kate’s filling my cup to its brim with red wine.

  “To?” I say, slurping the overflow off the top.

  She faces me and, with a hand to her heart, says: “You.”

  “Oh, to me?” I fan my face with my free hand. “Really?”

  “To Adrienne!” everyone screams, gulping wine and clanking cups.

  Kate’s fat, surly piggy waddles past me and plops down on the Persian carpet.

  “To Darla!” shouts Lee.

  “To Darla!” we echo. And for the first time all week I feel the teensiest bit happy.

  We keep toasting. To sunny skies and starry nights. To taco trucks and cigarette breadsticks. To Dr. Strange, our principal. To Gwen Murphy’s baby. To the Cannons, Kate’s parents, for supplying us with booze but then taking our car keys. To Margaret’s debate win. To Wyatt Shaw, Kate’s crush. “To Dakota Webb!” screams Teddy. And with that, my buzz fizzles.

  “Where is that girl?” Alice asks.

  “On the lam,” says Teddy.

  “Yeah? What’s she running from?”

  “Sex,” he says, laughing.

  “Running from sex?” I say, super annoyed while everyone giggles. “Not funny.” I rearrange my silverware. “Doesn’t even make any sense . . .”

  “No, wait—” Teddy again. “Drugs.”

  More laughter.

  “Running from drugs?” he ponders. “Running with drugs?”

  “Moving on,” Kate interjects. “Pass the peas, please?”

  No peas. But Lee passes the lentils and the bread basket.

  I watch my lap. Sip some wine. Kate drills two knuckles into my kneecap. “Yeah?”

  “You’re wanted.”

  I look up. More giggles. More plate-passing and blue-cheese/tomato-salad/dry-salami/lentil-eating. Lee’s wiggling one brow at me, mock seductively. I grin a little. What? I mouth. He points left.

  “Bathroom,” I say to Kate.

  “Sure, slut.”

  I stand. Lee follows. We go to the guest bath down the hall. Lee locks the door. Lifts me onto the vanity. “You okay?” he asks.

  “I’m okay,” I say.

  “You wanna talk about it?”

  “Nope.” I lean forward, rub my nose against his nose. “Eskimos,” I whisper.

  “Eskimos,” he says back. He licks my face. I kick him closer with one foot. We kiss slow, so slow, the slowest, most slippery kiss. I wrap my arms around his neck; my body settles. “Let’s stay here for a while, okay?”

  “Okay,” Lee says.

  I shut my eyes.

  6.

  Everyone’s saying it: suicide. All those sneaky s sounds.

  From the LA Times blog:

  Eighteen-year-old Langley senior and Los Angeles resident Dakota Webb has gone missing. Webb fronts the local indie band Dark Star. Just last month, Dark Star played to packed audiences during its Monday-night residency at the downtown all-ages venue the Smell.

  Webb’s abandoned Jeep was discovered early Friday morning in a pay lot off Pacific Coast Highway. A note, allegedly written by Webb, was found inside the vehicle. The note’s contents have not been disclosed.

  Last month, another Los Angeles teen, Crossroads sophomore Cassidy Chang, disappeared. Her Ford sedan was found in the same beach parking lot.

  “I’m taking you home,” Lee tells me. He’s holding one hand and Kate’s holding the other. “You’re gonna be okay,” they say. And: “Adrienne, hey, don’t go crazy with this.”

  Principal Strange, moments ago: “Let’s say a silent prayer for our shining star, Dakota Webb.”

  Two squad cars are parked by the auditorium exit.

  “Knox, hey, they have a note, that’s all.”

  Absolutely not, no way, not possible. “She would never—not ever—” I hear myself stutter. Only, I dunno, would she? “Pills before razors. Razors before ropes,” we used to joke. But drowning? Rocks in pockets? She didn’t even like the beach. “You guys?” I’m being escorted somewhere. Lee’s car? We’re crossing the quad. Kate’s palm trees swoosh overhead.

  “Knox.” Which one says this? Both their faces look flat and gloomy. “Knox, it’s okay . . . sit.”

  I get in. Lee’s to my left. Kate stays outside, one hand touching the car door.

  “It’s hot in here, are you hot?” I roll down my window. I’m shaky and flying and spaced out. Two girls dressed in funeral black shiver and clutch each other by the old oak near the exit. “You’re coming, right?”

  “I gotta stay,” Kate says, leaning forward, kissing my cheek. “Call you later?”

  I feel like a fucking hot-air balloon. “She didn’t kill herself,” I blurt. Lee rubs my shoulder. “No way would she copy some sad sophomore from Crossroads.”

  • • •

  At home, Lee sits with me in the den.

  “You want anything?”

  We’re waiting on my mother, who’s heading home from a design job in the Valley.

  “Is this my fault?” I ask Lee.

  “No.” The o in the ‘no’ is long and insistent.

  “I waited. I waited four days to call back. She wanted help and I just—”

  “You don’t know what she wanted,” Lee says. And, “Hey.” His hand move
s to my thigh. “She wasn’t nice, Knox. She was shitty to you.”

  True and not true. She was shitty, sure. Also? She was funny and magnetic and nutso-crazy fun. “Don’t say ‘was.’” I flick his fingers away.

  Keys jingle, the door creaks, and: “Hello? Babe?”

  Lee stands, says, “In here,” then greets my frazzled mom with a quick, loose hug.

  “You guys okay?” She’s at my side now, rocking me, smothering my face with kisses. “Babe, you okay?”

  I say, “Yes, okay,” then shoot Lee a frosty look. Mom’s face is inches from my face. “Oh, babe.” She looks so brokenhearted. Everything about her looks gray and miserable, even her hair. “She wasn’t a happy girl.”

  I stand up, stepping backward. “Stop saying ‘was.’” I’m furious and dizzy and completely perplexed. Why’s no one asking questions? What if she’s been abducted or hurt or worse? What about the yellow Bug Sam saw Sunday night? “Where’s Sam?” I say.

  “On his way.”

  “You called him? You told him?”

  “Babe, come’ere, yes.” She clutches my head to her chest. Something wet drips into my hair part.

  “Are you crying?” I sit up. “Stop it.” She’s blubbering. Her boobs are heaving and she’s swiping her tears away faster than they’re falling. “We don’t know anything yet. Don’t act like that.”

  “She was so small, when you guys were kids, remember? Just—really tiny.”

  “Stop!” I have to sit on my hands to keep myself from slapping her. The sadder she gets, the more miserable I feel. I don’t want to picture small, sweet Dakota. Ten years old—stringy hair, at the back of the bus with her lunch pail. That girl faded once puberty hit, and in her place grew something dark and shiny and diamond-hard.

  “She needed parents, better guidance, love—”

  “Please,” I plead, and Lee yanks me to my feet, pulling me away from my mother and into the kitchen.

  “Look at me,” he says sharply, grabbing my chin and backing me against the fridge. “She loved her too, okay?”

  Immediate remorse. Lee exhales and I wind my arms around his torso.

  “We don’t know anything yet, okay?”

  “Okay,” I say. I cling a little tighter.

  7.

  Sam spends all Saturday afternoon buying me crap. Stuff I normally love that I just can’t choke down now—chocolate croissants from Casbah Café, hazelnut gelato from that place on Hyperion, a fish taco from my favorite stand on Sunset. I take two bites and he finishes the rest. Later on, we walk the Silver Lake Reservoir twice. It takes about an hour, and I make Sam tell me all over again each detail from the previous Sunday.

  “She kicked the car, you’re sure?”

  “Right, a couple of hard kicks,” Sam says.

  “And you’re sure it was yellow?”

  “Absolutely,” he says with a firm nod. “Yellow and dented and old.”

  I watch the lake: stagnant, glossy, black. Nothing like seawater. Still, I make myself see it: Dakota floating faceup. Facedown. Drifting along the cement shoreline. The image won’t stick. Doesn’t feel real.

  • • •

  Sunday’s like this:

  Lee picks me up at ten a.m. and takes me to Kate’s place. They’ve plotted my perfect day: packaged snacks from Little Tokyo (rice crackers, red-bean cakes, mochi balls), Zeppelin and Deep Purple on the stereo (seventies metal, my fave), G&Ts by the pool (a tradition Kate cooked up last year after reading Play It As It Lays by Didion: afternoon cocktails, sixties casual-wear, bleak tête-à-tête). Kate even gives me my very own copy of The Secret Language of Eating Disorders by Peggy Claude-Pierre, a book she’s been inexplicably obsessed with since tenth grade health ed.

  “Thanks,” I say. I flip through the book, sip my G&T, watch Kate and Lee stuff their faces with powdery rolls of mochi.

  “Have some.”

  “No.”

  They look at each other. They look at the pool, they look at the pig. “Darla,” Kate coos, and Darla waddles across the lawn, toward me. “She’s incredibly sensitive,” Kate insists, licking white dust off her fingertips. “She wants to kiss away your woes . . .”

  I pat the pig’s rump, then scooch forward, slipping my feet into the cool pool.

  “Should we swim?” Lee says.

  “That’s okay.”

  “Play something?” Kate offers. “Boggle? Apples to Apples?”

  “No.”

  “Want to go somewhere?”

  “Not really.”

  “Bake something?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  They’re stumped. Wound up. They want me fine again but can’t figure out a way to make me feel fine.

  “What do you miss?” Lee asks, abruptly.

  “What do you mean?” I say back.

  “About Dakota.” He’s forcing a small mound of dirt between two clay patio tiles. “What, specifically, do you miss?”

  “I don’t know,” I mumble, unable to come up with anything definitive on the spot. She wasn’t the nicest person, or the most loyal or loving or true, but we spent years knowing only each other. Why can’t that count?

  “Can I use your computer?” I say to Kate.

  “It’s in the den,” she says, reaching for my hand and squeezing my pinkie. “Knox, hey.”

  “Hmm?”

  “It’s gonna be okay,” she says.

  I give a small smile and squeeze back. Then I pull my feet from the pool.

  • • •

  Later, around nine, Lee parks his mom’s Range Rover half a mile from my house. “You’re sure you feel like it?” he asks, killing the engine. We’re on the edge of Elysian, overlooking Dodger Stadium.

  “Sure I’m sure.” I climb over the armrest and into the backseat. “Get my jeans?” I undo my fly and let Lee tug down my pants. I pull off my cardigan and frayed white tank. “Take off your shirt,” I tell him. He doesn’t. Instead, he kisses me.

  Is this love? Shouldn’t I feel happy or high or both? Is Lee’s love worthy of song lyrics and sonnets? Is this what love was like for Jane and Rochester? Or Dakota and Julian? Did their love feel safe and smothering, like a blanket?

  “Adrienne?”

  “Hmm?”

  He slides a hand between my legs.

  8.

  Monday, and I’m back at school pondering cars. Everyone here looks pale and shell-shocked. The place even smells off—different disinfectant? Whatever it is, it smells sad.

  “You’re here.” It’s Kate, at my locker.

  “Yeah, well, it was either this, or stay home and stare at the ceiling.”

  She sips her cafeteria coffee. “There’s an assembly last period. Suicide prevention.”

  My stomach goes bananas. “Walk me to lit?”

  We stroll. The halls are silent, like church. We stop just shy of Murphy’s classroom. “You’ve got a sub,” Kate says, peering past me.

  I whip around. “That guy.” Bald, spacey suspender dude. “That guy subbed my human development class last spring. Super-hands-on.”

  “Really?” Kate passes me her coffee cup, then uses both hands to tuck her T-shirt into her jeans.

  “I’m kidding.”

  “Oh.” She takes the cup back. “Maybe Gwen had her kid?”

  “Maybe,” I say, picturing a squished newborn version of Nick Murphy. “When do you have trig?”

  “After lunch. So we’ll see, I guess.”

  Babies. Suicides. “Life cycles, right?”

  Kate blinks, tilts her head, walks off. I take two steps toward class, then, rethinking, quickly pivot and head outside to the student lot.

  Within minutes, I’m weaving between cars, searching for rusty and round and yellow. I touch the ones I like. A diesel Mercedes. A Carmengia. An old Land Rover. A khaki Jeep. I walk and I weave and I wade for a while, but no yellow Bug materializes.

  • • •

  Suicide-prevention brochures, warning-sign checklists, crisis-center locations, We miss you, Dakota W
ebb.

  I’m at the back of the auditorium with Kate, Lee, and Alice Reed. Lee’s holding my hand but I don’t like how it feels: clammy and warm and too tight. Dr. Strange is at the podium babbling mopey nonsense. Two kids two rows back are heatedly debating Dakota’s vanishing: suicide vs. murder vs. runaway madness. I get up.

  “Where’re you going?” Kate whispers.

  “Bathroom.”

  “I’ll come.” She starts to stand—

  “Don’t. Please?”

  —then drops back down.

  “I’ll be back. I’m okay. I just—I can pee on my own.”

  I’m off. Out the tall double doors, into the blue, bright hallway, past the restrooms, out the exit. I’m not even sure where I’m headed, but at least now no one’s watching me or clutching my hot hand.

  I end up across the quad, Dakotaland, where the weirdos hang out. And look, there’s Julian Boyd, crouched on the ground, five feet from a Hacky Sack circle, smoking and biting his cuticles and just looking generally low.

  I bum a cigarette. I don’t smoke, but I bum one off some lanky skateboarder wearing a belt made of rope. He lights it for me. I inhale. My head fills with white space. “Hi, hello,” I hear myself saying, not to the skateboarder, but to Julian. He doesn’t respond. So I try again. “Julian,” I say, louder this time. He looks at me, grinds his cigarette into the grass, and walks off.

  I wonder what kind of car he drives.

  9.

  Mom is at the kitchen counter, chopping white onion for guacamole. “. . . the props guy is new. We met up with Locations earlier—we’re trying to get a concrete feel for the space.” She stops, nibbles a piece of parsley, turns to me. “Too much?”

  “What?” I look up from my mound of mashed avocado.

  “Work talk. You look bored.”

  “I’m just”—I laugh a little—“out of my freakin’ mind, ya know?”

  She cracks one knuckle. Passes some parsley. “Eat that. It’ll ground you.”

  I eat it. “Tastes like weeds,” I say, swallowing, grabbing two tomatoes out of the sink. “What am I doing with these?”