He turns red. “I was going to do that after I—”
“Don’t give me excuses. Just get them now.”
She watches Joe shuffle off and doesn’t face me until she’s sure he’s gone and I swear she rolls her eyes before she does it. “What did you want to ask me about Penny?”
“You called that weekend, said you didn’t need me to come in.”
“That’s right. I talked to your mom.”
“So what did you find that ruled out a connection between me and her?”
She grimaces. “Romy, I’m sorry but I’m not at liberty to—”
“I need to know,” I say and I can tell she’s readying to refuse me again. “Because a lot of people were looking for me.”
“We were looking for you both.”
“But maybe if they hadn’t been looking for me, they would’ve found her and maybe that’s the difference.” I swallow. “Or maybe it’s not … but I need to know.”
“Oh … Romy, honey—” No. I hate that. Honey. I didn’t ask her for that. I step away from her kindness, clutching my phone. “If I could tell you, I would. I’m sorry, but I—”
“Forget it, I get it,” I mutter because if she won’t give me what I need, she doesn’t get to look at me like she’s sorry for me. “Thanks—for my phone.”
Leanne seems like she wants to say something more, but Joe comes trundling in with a folder full of papers. He eyes us suspiciously. Leanne looks away.
“You have a good day, Romy,” she tells me.
“todd said leanne called,” Mom says, when I come home. “You get your phone?”
“Yeah.”
“I told you it’d turn up.”
I go to my room, find my phone’s charger, and plug it in. I lay on my bed and fade out for the time it takes to get enough power to run and then I inspect it. The screen is okay, but its back and sides are a little worse for wear, scratched up. It’s strange looking at it, knowing they found it while they were searching for Penny, anything about her.
I turn it on and the notifications chime, one after the other.
Voice mails first.
Five frantic messages from my mom.
Romy, where are you?
We’re getting worried …
By the last, she’s in pieces and she’s pleading, come home, please, and promising, I’m not mad at you.
Todd calls too. We’d really like to hear from you, kid.
It doesn’t go down easy, this proof of being loved.
The last message is from Leon.
Hey, Romy. I hope you get this. Pause and static. There’s a hum in the background, like he’s driving and he probably was. Please get this and call when you do. Please. Um. Pause. I don’t want to hang up. He laughs, awkwardly. So call when you get this. Or maybe I’ll see you first … that’d be okay too. I really hope you’re all right.
This is what it would’ve been like for Penny’s family.
This is what it’s still like for them, for her mom and her dad, for Alek. Their love, desperate messages sent out to the universe, waiting to be returned and her silence— Her silence.
I stare at my phone until it starts to blur. The first tears fall, bring focus, and that’s when I notice the last notification. 1 UNSENT E-MAIL.
An e-mail, waiting for me to send it.
But I haven’t sent an e-mail from my phone in a very long time.
Did I leave a note for myself, and I was so drunk I put it there? It seems stupid, reaching, but who else would—I fall through the thought before it’s complete, hit the ground hard.
Who else would, if not me?
I find the e-mail and open it.
In the TO field, the address of GHS’s student announcement listserv. Any time a student has an announcement—club meetings or volunteer work opportunities or tutoring offers and now, searches for missing girls—they’re invited to put it on the listserv and it goes out to the entire school: the faculty, the student body. After students started sneaking trash talk about teachers and each other in their messages, a code of conduct was written up and Principal Diaz got tough. Every time someone fucks around on the listserv, the entire school loses some kind of privilege. To further prevent any misuse, signing up has also been open to parents. It’s our choice whether we want to show them the kind of monsters they’re raising.
There is no message in the body of the e-mail. What’s the point in sending a blank e-mail to everyone in school? But then I see the attachments at the bottom— Photos. From my phone.
Only the file names are visible. All the possibilities of what they could reveal become a vise around my heart, makes the question of whether I did this … or someone else that much worse. I check the sent folder to make sure nothing got out—that this wasn’t the last e-mail in a long line of e-mails, but it’s empty. Nothing was sent.
I go to my photos and as soon as I’m there, I glimpse thumbnails, tiny bursts of colors, shapes that make people, a night. I let it sink in. My phone screen dims, conserving its battery, while I try to find the will to tap the screen and pick a photo.
It brightens when I finally do.
I’ve hated having my photograph taken since I was eleven. There are albums full of me before that age, this smiling, happy kid, playing it up for the camera. After that, it’s all hands in front of face and Mom, don’t. She thought it was natural; a girl gets to be a certain age and she doesn’t want to see herself anymore. But it wasn’t that. I didn’t understand who I was looking at. I could see the beginnings of a takeover, a body turning, growing, changing into something that didn’t feel like it belonged to me and every moment since then I’ve spent trying to hold on to the pieces of myself I still understand.
The girl in the photo is a waste of a girl.