The Stranger Game

And nights—not every night, but a couple of times a week—she would wake with screaming night terrors. Mom usually went in to her and was able to calm her down quickly, but the whole house was awake until it was over, every time, her voice cutting through the dark: “LET ME OUT, STOP IT, STOP IT.”


When I got home most days after tennis or yearbook, she and Mom were in the kitchen fixing dinner. Sarah often sat with me and helped with my homework, her calm, simple way of explaining things a welcome relief from Mom’s shrill complaints that the teachers gave us too much work (covering for the fact that she was just as confused as I was about the math and science). Somehow, Sarah had a firm grasp on the subjects, and what was expected. “Next I bet you’re going to have plate tectonics,” she said, paging through my science textbook. And she was right. The teacher jumped ahead two chapters, just as Sarah had predicted.

“You should really be a teacher,” I told her one night, and Sarah shook her head.

“Me?” she asked, the southern lilt returning, just for an instant. “I like to help you, but that’s because you’re my sister. I could not handle a whole classroom of kids.” I liked the way she said sister. My sister. She pulled out the GED prep book Mom had picked up for her, and we studied together.

I had told everyone about Max and Paula, how it looked like they might not be an item anymore, and I could tell from Mom’s face that she was pleased, but she would never admit it. “Well, I’m sure it was something going on before, and not Sarah’s fault,” she said.

Sarah was harder to read; I had thought she would be thrilled with the possibility that Max could be hers again, but instead she seemed cautious. Max had planned to return on the following weekend and wanted some time with her—alone. The prospect of Sarah being out of the house with anyone but family was terrifying for all of us and became the main topic of conversation when Dr. Levine, the counselor from the center, returned on Wednesday night.

“Again, if Sarah feels ready for it, she probably is,” Dr. Levine counseled. This applied to a visit from Gram as well, who was anxious to see Sarah even though her declining health made it almost impossible for her to travel. She had plans to come in the next week or two to see her oldest grandchild and stay with us for a few days.

That night, when I finished brushing my teeth, Sarah called me into her room. She was sitting on the bed, still reading Rebecca, only halfway through now. “Can you tell me . . .” She bit her lower lip and smiled a little. “God, this is so embarrassing!”

I sat on the bed and waited for her to go on.

“It’s just . . . about Max, how I was with him, what we did together,” Sarah started to say. “I don’t remember any of it, and I’m just worried. I don’t want to disappoint him, he’s gone through a lot, right?”

She didn’t know—couldn’t know—how much.

“It’s just weird to go on a date with someone you haven’t been with in four years,” Sarah went on.

I nodded, thinking back over their relationship. What could I tell her? “You guys ran away once, to a cabin,” I said. But Sarah cut me off.

“Yes, we went to his parents’ cabin, up in the mountains and stayed overnight, right? That was why they thought I had maybe run away again, when I went missing. They thought I did it again.”

The way Sarah explained it, I knew she had gotten that information not from her memory but from some newspaper story about her case. She couldn’t know—wouldn’t remember—how much that one night had changed all our lives. Even though it was four years ago, the memories were still so clear. Mom and Dad were frantic. When it got to be around two in the morning and Sarah hadn’t come home, wasn’t picking up her phone, they called the police. Then Mom called the local hospitals, giving Sarah’s description, but they didn’t have any patients who matched. Of course they didn’t. I already knew that.

Because I knew exactly where she was. That time.

Sarah was with Max, at his family’s cabin up north. A two-hour drive away. She wasn’t in a hospital, she hadn’t been in an accident, abducted, raped, left for dead somewhere. She was with her boyfriend.

Finally, after waiting up for hours, I couldn’t take it anymore. My parents were in agony. So I told. Mostly because it wasn’t fair for Mom to think her precious daughter had been hurt, or was lying in a morgue somewhere, but part of me also wanted Sarah to get in trouble.

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