She heads into the diner. She’s not speaking to me and that makes me think Penny must’ve faded from her mind, turned into some faceless blonde just passing through, like so many before.
Holly’s cold shoulder is contagious. Some of the other girls keep their eyes pointedly off me. Even the ones that don’t really talk to me—there’s an edge in how they’re not doing it now. I glance at Leon, who’s missing exactly none of it.
“Break later?” I ask, because I want Leon to take the feel of this off me but I don’t mean it in a way that wants his hands everywhere—even though I think I want that too.
“Better not,” he says. He tells Annette to watch the grill for a second and then he comes over. He lowers his voice. “Work through your break.”
“What?”
“Work through your break, Romy,” he tells me. “Now you’re back, everyone’s got time to be mad about it. Let them cool off and show them you’re not going to mess around.”
“But I wasn’t—I didn’t.”
He gives me a look that stings, but—in his version of Friday night, I guess I did.
“I know it sucks, but look at it this way—they’re mad because they care.”
“Okay,” I say.
“I mean it. Holly was a mess. She’d go out, do her tables, and come back in and lose it. You got to let them be mad and you’ve got to try to make good.”
“Then I’ll work through my break.”
“That’ll help, especially with Tracey. Holly might be tougher to crack, but she’ll come around and once she does, everyone else will calm down,” he says. “And then you just never have to do anything that stupid again.”
There’s a roughness to his voice when he says it, and I guess maybe he’s still a little pissed about all of it too. “Thanks for the advice.”
“I’m not going to be here tomorrow,” he says. “I’ve got to take Caro to see her doula.”
“What’s a doula?”
“They support the mother, like throughout the pregnancy and the labor. Emotionally, more than medically. Caro says it helps a lot.”
“How close is she?”
Annette gestures for him to come back to the grill. He nods in acknowledgment. “She’s about overdue. That kid doesn’t seem in any rush to get out.”
“Can you blame it?”
He laughs a little, like I just told a joke.
i trudge through the heat, my skin and eyes dry with it. It’s unending. We’re going to turn to dust wishing we’d worried about the weather sooner and maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing. Grebe High looms ugly ahead and it’s not until I’m halfway across the parking lot I notice Jane and John have been dismantled. An unsettling blank space where school spirit used to be. Penny’s gone and she took it with her. Inside, there’s a notice board by the stairs; now the party is over, a new call to action.
FIND PENNY
VISIT THE LIBRARY
BEFORE 1st PERIOD OR LUNCH
TO FIND OUT HOW YOU CAN HELP
Wake up.
There’s a photograph of Penny underneath. It makes her seem less real somehow. Her eyes and smile flat, her hair so pixelated from being so blown out, it’s lost its sheen. I close my eyes and try to picture it another way. Instead of her face, I see a sign that says FIND ROMY. I wonder what it’s like to be missed. Wherever Penny is now, she has to know what she’s inspired, that she’s being searched for because people want her back. What would happen if it was me? Maybe they’d forget. Maybe they’d like me better. Would that even be possible? I think I’d trade places with her to find out. Either way, I’d get to disappear.
The door swings open behind me and then a shoulder meets my back, shoving me forward. I’m too far out of the way for that to have been an accident, and when I turn—Tina.
“There’s going to be a volunteer search party,” she says. “Next week.”
“So?”
“You going?”
“Why would I?”
“It’s the least you could do.”
“Is that right?”
“I don’t care who’s out there looking for Penny, just so long as they’re looking.”
“Maybe you should see if Alek feels the same way,” I say. She goes shamefaced, didn’t think that one totally through. “He back?”
She doesn’t answer, so he’s back. I’m surprised he hasn’t dressed the school in his grief, painted it black. Tina stares at the notice.
“Should’ve been you,” she says.
I bite my tongue but I want to hurt her so bad. A few other people come in and start crowding the board. It’s as good a time as any to rid myself of the moment, so I walk away.
“Did you see her last tweet?” I hear a girl ask.
“Whose?” Tina asks.
“Penny’s. It was creepy.”
I’m at my locker when “Time-wasting bitch,” gets hissed at my back. I turn and there’s Trey Marcus, his eyes fixed steadily ahead, like he didn’t say it. It’s another cut and if I know anything, I have to cut back where I can, even if that puts me in places I don’t want to be. I head for the library. I’ll make myself part of their effort, see who calls me a time-wasting bitch to my face then.
They can’t have it both ways.
The Required Reading display is gone and three tables have been pushed together in its place. A small crowd has gathered in front of it, and standing behind the tables are Alek and Brock. Brock is so close to Alek, he could be his puppeteer. He mutters something in Alek’s ear. Alek nods grimly. He’s trying to hold himself tall, trying to look like a man commanding a crisis, but he’s so see-through. He’s The Stricken Boyfriend. His usual pressed-to-perfection self is rumpled and there’s a staleness about him, like he spent the night in his clothes, awake. There are dark circles under his bloodshot eyes and the red makes the green of them more vivid. His lips are as pale as his face. He’ll fester soon. If he’s already this bad, and it’s just the start—if she doesn’t come back, he’ll let it eat at him until he’s nothing. He straightens a little, tries to put on a braver face and I wonder who it would be, if it was me? Who would stand at this table, looking even a little broken about it?