The Stranger Game

I looked over to Sarah and saw that her mouth was set in a thin line. Part of me wanted to be happy, to see Sarah not get her way—for once. To have Paula sitting there with Max, claiming him as hers. But this wasn’t Sarah, even though she looked like her—not the same Sarah from before—this girl did not deserve to be hurt by her friends. The image of that little round scar on her back flashed into my mind.

Mom broke the tension by asking if she could get drinks for everyone. “I’d love a beer, if you’ve got any,” Max said. At first I thought he was joking but then quickly remembered that he was over twenty-one now.

“I’ll check. Nico, care to help me?” Mom gave me a look that told me it wasn’t really a question.

The moment we got into the kitchen, Mom slammed open the fridge. “Who does that girl think she is to come here—this was supposed to be for Sarah and Max.” She moved some bottles around and found one of Dad’s beers.

“Mom, they’re a couple, they’ve been together for years.”

“Still, she couldn’t let Sarah have half an hour with him alone—an hour? That’s too much?”

I shrugged. “I’m sure they were so excited to see her that they just didn’t think about it. They were all friends, remember?” I said, but my mind kept replaying Paula looking over at Max, that little smug smile on her face. She didn’t have to do that.

“You’re right,” Mom said with a sigh. “I’m just thinking of Sarah—I wish we could make everything like it was for her. But that’s not going to happen, is it?”

I shook my head and went to pick up the tray Mom had fixed. What had happened at the mall was still haunting me. It was a long time ago. “Don’t you think it’s weird how she’s so . . .” The word wouldn’t come to me. “How Sarah’s so different now?”

Mom tilted her head. “Different how?”

Was it possible that she hadn’t picked up on everything I had, all the things I was seeing? “Just, the clothes she wanted to get, and well . . .” I thought of the other things: her hair being darker, her shoes too small. When I really thought about it, they were all easily explained away. The shoes were Mom’s. Or her feet had grown. The hair—someone dyed it an ashy blond, trying to disguise her. All of those little things were not as strange as how she was acting: Nice. Loving. Like a real sister. And how I was feeling about her: Protective. Defensive.

“We all wish our old Sarah was back, that everything was just like before, but this is the Sarah we’ve got,” Mom said. “And I am so happy that I just don’t want to compare things to how they were before.” She added some ice to the water glasses on the tray. “Yes, she’s different. She’s older, for one, and we don’t know what she’s been through. But she’s back, she’s with us, she’s safe, and that’s what’s important.” Mom stopped moving and talking for a moment. She put her hands on her hips and took in a deep breath. I watched as she arranged her tense features into a more pleasant face, a small fake smile replacing the line of her lips.

Her eyes met mine and I knew. Of course she had noticed the differences, all the strange little things that didn’t add up. But Sarah was back now, the black hole in our family had been filled. And that was all that mattered.





CHAPTER 15


AFTER PAULA AND MAX left, I helped Mom clear the living room. “Your phone was buzzing,” she said to me, fluffing the pillows on the couch. She arranged them so that everything was perfect again, as if the short, awkward visit never happened. “You had a bunch of text messages. Not that I was looking at your phone—it was just in the kitchen.”

I put Max’s empty beer bottle and Paula’s glass on the tray. I knew that Mom checked my phone. She had the pass code, she probably scanned through it every night. I could tell, sometimes, by what had been left open—the photos or my email was the last thing looked at—when I had closed those apps. It didn’t bother me because I knew what she was looking for. It wasn’t coming from a place of distrust or her concern that I was going to disappear like Sarah had. She wasn’t suspicious about secret boyfriends or if I was doing drugs. She and Dad were worried about something else, in the opposite direction: that I wasn’t having a normal teenage life. That I didn’t have friends. That I didn’t go out, wasn’t invited to things. They both worried—well, mostly Mom—that Sarah’s disappearance had ruined any chance for me of being a regular teen girl. And while Mom always reminded me that what happened to Sarah wasn’t our fault, I know she blamed herself for how they handled it and how much of my life had been lost in that mix.

I brought the tray into the kitchen and picked up my phone, scanning through the text messages from Tessa. Mom came in and started loading the dishwasher. I knew she was dying to ask who the messages were from.

Finally, I broke the suspense. “It’s just Tessa, some party tonight . . .” I started to say.

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