WHEN I GOT A chance, I looked up the missing girl, Sarah from Pennsylvania. It didn’t take long to find all kinds of links about her, and the huge sum of money her family was offering for her return.
She did look like me, but prettier. Her hair was thick and blond where mine was a drab brown. Her eyes were a light hazel and mine had a muddied green-brown shade. Her skin was perfect and glowed, and I had the complexion of someone who ate a lot of fast food—and some days didn’t really eat at all. The shape of our eyes was the same. And the nose. I was a little bit shorter than her and weighed about ten pounds less. But we could have been sisters, or maybe cousins. We were even the same age, give or take six months. I saw why the clerk at the store thought I could be her. Because I could.
Every now and then, when I had some time and nothing else to do, I would look her up online and see what was going on with her case. I wondered what it was like to be so loved, to have a family that missed you, wanted you back. I scanned through the photos of her beautiful, perfect parents, her sister. The news articles about her boyfriend, so handsome and worried, leaving the police station after questioning. Her best friend, with fingerprints on the bike, pinched face like a sour lemon. But after a while, there was nothing new to report. Just the same old pictures over and over, two years old, then three. It was starting to look like they were never going to find Sarah Morris, dead or alive. Until suddenly, they did.
CHAPTER 25
I HAD AN IMPULSE to try and get the sweater, but how? The sides of the cliff were too steep, rocky, dangerous. My sister was going to be so mad, this was my fault. She would make it my fault.
“What happened then?” Sarah asked. It was the first thing she had said to me since we started up the trail.
“I just stood there. Maybe it was only for a few seconds. It all happened so fast,” I admitted. “My whole body was shaking, my head.” I reached back, feeling for the tiny scar that only I knew was there. The words caught in my throat.
I waited for her. I thought she would come back around the corner of the trail. Say: Nico, you giant baby, you should see your face right now! Come on, let’s go. Don’t tell Mom and Dad about this, or you know what you’ll get. She had played tricks on me before. I waited for her to jump out and scare me. But she didn’t.
Maybe it wasn’t that bad. Maybe she was okay. The tick-tick-tick sound of her bike tire slowing down pulled my eyes from the lake.
“Then what?”
I looked at Sarah, trying to read her face, but her sunglasses hid her eyes from me.
“I didn’t know what to do, so I picked up her bike and I rode it down, fast. I was looking for someone, to get help. At first. But then . . .” I stopped. This part was so hard to explain.
When I came out of the darkness of the path and into the light of the park, it was filled with kids and happy families, picnicking and swinging and playing at the fountain. I suddenly realized that if I got someone to help, and we went to get Sarah, how it would look. What my parents would think. What could I say? What had happened? I didn’t really know. I only knew that it looked bad, the way Sarah and I always fought. Maybe she did go on to meet Max without me. Maybe she was fine. I tried to tell myself that, but the image of her sweater, in the dark water . . .
It had all gone wrong. So wrong. Unless I was never there.
“I rode her bike all the way down to the gate and I locked it on the rack. I checked the handlebars, to make sure they weren’t stained with my blood. Then I unlocked my bike and took off for home.”
As soon as I got back, I stripped and threw my clothes into the washing machine. I rinsed my sneakers with the garden hose. The scrapes on my elbows were easily covered with a shirt. I showered and gently washed my hair, the water running red from a small cut that I could feel with my fingertips, just at the back. It formed a lump just beneath the surface that hurt for days, through all the days of the police asking questions, the first days of Sarah being missing. But it healed, after a while, like all wounds do.
“How did you go?” Sarah asked, pulling me from the memories. “How did you ride home? Did you take the same route we just did to get here?”
“Uh, yeah.” I tried to remember. “I think so.” I liked how she was being so calm, so exact. Not emotional. Not saying How could you, Nico. What is wrong with you? Did you even look for her? Why didn’t you call someone?
“So anyone coming to the park that day could have seen you,” she said, looking out over the lake. She held her hand up to shield the glare. “How deep is this lake?” Sarah asked.
“It’s about thirty feet, some places deeper,” I said, my voice breaking. “It’s part of the park now, so there’s no boats or fishing or anything allowed.”
“Swimming?” Sarah looked at me and I could see my own face reflected in her sunglasses, a warped shadow image of myself.
I shook my head. “Part of it is in the Seneca reservation, so nobody is allowed.”