All the Rage

He smiles. “Yeah, like your daughter.”


“You like my daughter,” she says. I kick her lightly under the table, which doesn’t feel like the natural order of things. She doesn’t even blink. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you going out there and looking for her.”

“Of course.”

Silence. Awful, awful silence. What am I supposed to say? Sorry? Again? Except I didn’t even say it to Leon once. I stab my fork through some cucumber and tomatoes and shove them in my mouth because I can’t say it at all if my mouth is full.

“That other girl,” Leon says. “Penny Young.”

I swallow. “You know about that?”

“Yeah. Her mom lives in Ibis. She’s there on the weekends—”

“Did you know her?”

“No. But everyone’s talking about it in town. I guess Grebe’s Sheriff’s Department is working with Ibis’s. What are we coming up on? Forty-eight hours? That’s never good.”

I set my fork down, appetite gone. I don’t know if it’s because it’s such a bad thing for him to say or because part of me still wants her to be missing on Monday in spite of it.

“Romy knows her,” Todd says.

“What?” Leon asks. “You do?”

“We go to school together. She’s in my grade.”

“They were very close at one time,” Mom says.

“Oh,” Leon says. I keep my eyes on my plate. “I’m so sorry.”

Mom and Todd wash up, leave Leon and me to our own devices. He suggests I show him Grebe but I tell him I’m feeling tired and show him our backyard instead. We sit on the dried-up lawn and stare at the neighbor’s fence.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me about the Web site stuff?”

He shrugs. “I thought I’d show you at some point.”

I run my palm over the grass. When I look up, he’s watching me in a way that tells me we’re going to talk about things best left alone. I’m an expert when it comes to that look on people’s faces.

“I’m sorry for sticking my foot in it about Penny Young. I should’ve thought—”

“It’s okay,” I say. “We’re not close. Her and me. Not anymore.”

“I was going to say, inside … waking up and hearing about that—about Penny, after driving around all night looking for you. I mean, it was something else, looking for you, but hearing about this girl that didn’t make it home. I don’t know. Got me thinking. I called your mom and asked if I could come see you.” He pauses. “I had to see you.”

“Here I am.”

“What happened, Romy?”

I rip up a tuft of grass. I want to say nothing, but I guess I have to give him more than that, even if it’s all going to amount to nothing anyway. At least—it better. “You know about Wake Lake? About the party? We have it every year…”

“I know about it,” he says. “Ibis has dumbass traditions too. Stupid.”

“Well, stupid me.”

“You walked out on your shift to go to a party?”

“Yep.”

“Seriously?” He sounds so unimpressed. I just nod. He shakes his head. “I feel like I’m missing something here, Romy, because—”

“You ever do anything stupid before?”

“Well, yeah, but—” His forehead crinkles. He stares at the ground like he’s angry at it and it makes me angry with him because I can tell he’s not just going to leave it which means I need to be lies ahead of any of his questions and I’m not sure I can think that fast today. “When your mom called, she said they found you on a road thirty miles out from Godwit. She said you were…”

“Drunk?”

That quiets him a second. “No. Just wrung out.”

I stare at the fence, try to fill the blank space with the right kind of lie; the right kind of lie for Leon. Jack Phelps. It comes to me, in Turner’s voice.

“This guy, Jack Phelps—he’s kind of a legend around here. Be my mom’s age now. When it was his turn at the lake, he got drunk and ended up in Godwit. Seemed like a neat idea to see if I could get that far.” God, it sounds just stupid enough to my ears, it could be true. “I bet you’re sorry you looked for me now.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Because a real girl is missing.”

“What?”

“Because a girl is really missing and I was okay.”

“You’re telling me you were so wasted you thought heading to Godwit on your own was a good idea? Doesn’t really sound to me like you were all that okay.”

“I’m okay now.”

“Well, good.” He looks at me and I make myself look back. I need the girl he was looking for to be the one he’s seeing now. He says, “I’m not sorry I looked for you.”

You. You. Me.

Her.

He leans over and gives me a small kiss. Seals it in.





i get up quietly. I get myself ready.

I brush my teeth and then my hair, pulling it into a ponytail that makes the bruise on my cheek more pronounced because they’ll tear me apart if they think I’m trying to hide anything. Downstairs, Todd’s making coffee. He glances at me. Grabs two mugs and holds one out. I shake my head and he puts it back.

“Thought I’d let your mom sleep in. She didn’t get much shut-eye this weekend.”

“Sorry,” I mumble and I sense an apology coming because Todd isn’t the kind of guy who makes digs and he thinks I took it that way. He was just saying how it is. Mom didn’t get much sleep this weekend and it was because of me. “Any word about Penny?”

“Only if word is she’s still missing.” He crosses his arms and leans against the counter. “Be front of the Grebe News, I bet. Definitely talk of the school.”

“Yeah.”

“Bet plenty of people’ll be relieved about that, after the lake.”

Sometimes I want to ask Todd how he’s so good at that. Knowing more than he lets on. But I have a feeling it’s from all those years he spent on the outside after his accident. When all you can do is watch, you see.

“Maybe. Anyway. I better go.”

“Straight to school.” He says it so firmly, it startles me, seems to startle him a little too. “You go straight to school.”