“It’s my lifelong dream to learn the art of cosmetology at Pauline’s School of Beauty in Bangor.” Nell pauses. “And if I ever open my own shop, I promise it will be here in Sasanoa.” She bows so deeply her hair brushes granite, and I clap. Breathless, she gives a little skip and drops into a crouch beside me. “So we need to be over at the town hall tomorrow by two o’clock.”
“What for?”
“Darcy! Didn’t you call the festival lady back? We have to register for the pageant and get a packet about what we need to do and everything.”
I didn’t call the festival lady back, and I look to Mags for help. She’s brought a blanket from the backseat, and she gives me a heavy look as she dries off and hands it to me. She’s made up her mind that this is one of those Things We Do for Nell. I groan. “Look, I don’t . . .” My cousin’s eyes are so blue and serious that I can’t finish the sentence. “Okay. Fine. Why not.”
I wrap the blanket around myself as we climb back up to the grassy clearing. For a second I don’t see my clothes, but then I spot my tank top off to the far left. I’m half-dressed when Nell says, “Somebody moved our stuff.”
“Huh?”
“We didn’t leave our clothes back here. Mags and I were over there when we took them off. Now they’re almost in the bushes.”
I look down at my shorts and underwear and pull them on, fast.
An engine starts in the trees. Tires crunch over dirt, and we run to the trailhead, only to get there too late. Nothing left but some tire tracks in the mud.
Gaudreau’s is packed, the line reaching back to the picnic tables on the pavement. It isn’t full dusk yet, but the strings of twinkle lights are on and the fluorescent sign is buzzing. I expect everybody to point and laugh at us, but if the person who got an eyeful up at the quarry is here, they must’ve kept it to themselves so far.
Mags treats. She and Nell order sundaes, I order a Moxie and fries, and then we scoot off to a picnic table with a red-and-white-checked umbrella to wait for our number to crackle over the loudspeaker. “I don’t get why whoever it was didn’t come down and swim, too,” I say for the second time. “If they’re so scared of some half-naked girls that they have to lay a patch getting out of there, they got issues.”
“Well, in your case, it was the full monty. I was scared, too.” Mags dodges the straw wrapper I throw at her.
Nell cups her elbows. “He touched our clothes.”
Mags sighs. “You’re imagining things.”
When our order is called, Mags and I go to the pickup window, where one of those sleepy-eyed Gaudreau girls asks if we want ketchup and salt. Mr. Gaudreau is supervising, and he comes over, his potbelly straining against his powder-blue polo shirt. He leans on the sill and grins at me. “Well, hello there, Miss Thing.” The light catches one of his metal fillings. “You know, I was hoping you’d come back around. No hard feelings about us not having an opening for you this season?”
“Nope.” Behind him, I watch a Gaudreau girl making a cone like she’s got arthritis in both wrists.
“Sometimes it’s tough being the one who does the hirin’ and firin’ around this place.”
“Uh-huh.”
“My Fern’s going to be staying in Boston next summer. Maybe I can get you behind the counter then.” He winks and slides the tray over. “Sweets for the sweet.”
I dump vinegar on my fries. “Bye.”
As we walk away, Mags says, “Maybe it was him.”
“Who was watching us swim?”
She laughs. “Who nominated you as Princess.”
“Oh.” I glance back, but he’s already gone from the window. “I dunno. If it was, I don’t think he could keep his mouth shut about it for this long.”
Back at our table, we dig in. Lots of familiar faces from school at Gaudreau’s tonight, and one of them belongs to Mason Howe. He’s eating burgers with his mom. Mason’s knees press against the underside of the picnic table, and he has to hunch under the umbrella as he crams his food down. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him without Shea or Jesse outside of class. His fair hair shags into his eyes, and the back of his neck is halfway between deep sunburn and mahogany tan.
One of the Missing posters clings to the telephone pole nearest our table. The evening breeze flutters a loose corner, and slowly we stop chitchatting and look at it, listening to the classic country drifting from Gaudreau’s speakers.
“Were Shea and that guy fighting today because of Rhiannon?” Nell looks at us. She has a little dab of hot fudge in the corner of her mouth.
Mags wipes it quickly with her thumb, saying, “Shea’s a hothead and a bully. Rhiannon was just an excuse to mix it up.”
Nell’s quiet for a second. “She’s dead, isn’t she?” She looks at our careful expressions. “Well, it seems like she would’ve come home by now, if she wasn’t.”
My stomach does a slow roll. My fries already seem soggy, thick with grease. I push the cardboard dish away. “Nobody knows for sure.”
I remember looking out the window of Mom’s car last fall on our way to Ellsworth and seeing Mr. Wardwell driving his tractor across his west field with an oil burner dragging behind, blowing flames across the berry bushes, tossing up thick black smoke. The fields have to be burned or mowed flat every other year to grow a good crop, but it felt like more than that. Felt like Sasanoa burning a wound clean, scorching the place where Rhiannon Foss was last seen so we could forget about her and move on. And sometimes you can forget—for weeks—but then you see one of the posters and it all comes back, the wondering and the not-knowing, and you have to turn to somebody and dig it up again.
We may not have been friends anymore, but Rhiannon was my age, sixteen last summer, and one way or another, she never came home again.
FIVE
LIBBY GIVES US a ride to the town hall on the way to her Sunday shift at Rite Aid. She wears that blue smock with pride, let me tell you.
Unlike Mom, her hair has gone mousy over the years, and she doesn’t even touch it up with Clairol.
She smooths wisps back into her french braid as she lectures Nell. “Now, you listen real close to everything they tell you. And don’t forget your packet. We’re gonna need that.”
“I know, Mom.” I used to think it was cute when Nell got sick of Libby’s nagging, but then I realized how hard it’s going to be for her to cut her mom loose after we graduate. Libby’s always been right there, treating her like a baby and pushing her in this direction or that, and I know that Nell’s going to keep living at home while she’s in beauty school next fall.