by Cylin Busby
Tessa and I had been up late, in my room, trying to take some good photos on my phone. They were supposed to look casual—oh, hey, just hanging out at my friend’s house—but also cute and somewhat sexy. The plan was to post one or two on Tessa’s Instagram. We knew her crush, Liam, had been checking and making comments, so the pics were really for him. But we would never admit it, especially because he already had a girlfriend in our class, Kelly.
I’d done Tessa’s makeup and styled her hair, but still the pics weren’t anything fabulous. She threw open the doors to my closet and let out a sigh. “You’ve got like five hundred uniform tops in here and nothing else. Don’t you ever wear anything but a uniform?”
I shrugged, not willing to admit that I actually liked the navy skirts and white tops that we wore for school. It made getting dressed really easy; I didn’t have to think. I had a few pairs of jeans and T-shirts for the weekend and some summer dresses, but not a lot else. I never could figure out how to put cool outfits together, so I just stuck with simple. Nico, you look like you got your clothes out of the lost and found bin at school. Mom, please don’t let her go out like that.
Tessa pushed the hangers to one side and looked at what was left—a couple of sundresses and jackets. “What about your mom or your sister—do you think they might have anything? I mean, just to wear for the pictures,” Tessa added quickly.
I didn’t know how to respond. Next door was a room full of beautiful things—shoes, sunglasses, jewelry, clothing. All carefully selected by Sarah, who wouldn’t settle for anything but the best. She created outfits based on images torn from magazines. She was the one in the family who appreciated fashion—in fact, Mom often said that she was going to grow up to be a designer. Before she disappeared, she had taken a sewing class at school and made a few things—a dress and a sleeveless top—and had easily gotten an A+, the teacher noting that she had a real talent for “line,” whatever that meant.
“I’m sorry, that was . . . I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” Tessa sat next to me on my bed. “Nico?”
I stared off into space, suddenly coming around. “No, it’s okay. You’re right. Sarah has all kinds of stuff that’s just sitting in there, we might as well use it.”
“You sure?” Tessa looked reluctant now, scared even.
I nodded and opened the door to the dark hallway—my parents had been asleep for hours. We walked to the room next door and I turned the knob, opening it, probably for the first time in months. But when I flipped on the light switch it was clear that nothing inside had changed. Everything was just as Sarah had left it that morning, or at least how the detectives left it after they had gone through everything. The room even smelled like Sarah still, of the perfume she wore when she started dating Max. The cleaning lady came in to dust sometimes, but otherwise the room was untouched.
Tessa moved to the bulletin board covered with awards and ribbons. “Wow, impressive.” She fingered one of the cheer awards. “Cheerleader extraordinaire, huh?”
“She did gymnastics and dance too,” I pointed out. I didn’t want her to think that Sarah was just a cheerleader. She was so much more. She was good at everything she did. Not just good—the best.
Tessa moved to the double doors of the closet and swung them open, looking over the dresses and tops that hung there, carefully arranged by color. “Wow—even more impressive!” She pulled out a pale pink top and held it up to her chin, moving over to the mirror to see herself. “This is beautiful—what do you think?”
I could only nod, seeing my best friend with her curly dark hair holding Sarah’s pink shirt. It was a beautiful color for Tessa. She should have it. I knew she should, but part of me, deep inside, screamed: No. Don’t. Put it back.
“What was she like, your sister? I mean, I get that she was really good at school and cheer and everything.” Tessa walked back over to the board, looking now at the photos of Sarah and her friends that were pinned there. She leaned in to look at one closely, of Sarah and Paula. “But what was she really like?”
I stood in Sarah’s room and looked at all her perfect things that went with her perfect life. She was perfect, I wanted to say. She was beautiful and smart. She always won. She always got what she wanted.
“She was awful,” I said. “She was really awful.”
CHAPTER 10
WHEN WE CAME BACK into the house, Mom reminded me that later in the day, a counselor from the Center for Missing Children would be over to meet with us. “Just to help us all get used to this. It’s a lot to handle.” She delivered the news with a sense of glee and lightness in her voice as she cleaned up the kitchen from breakfast. She lifted Sarah’s coffee mug from the table and cradled it in her hands for a moment, gazing at it as if she didn’t know if she should put it in a museum or into the dishwasher.
The last time we’d had a counselor over, it was to help us deal with Sarah’s disappearance. He had come over every day at first, then once a week, and then the sessions stopped. Those were dark days for me, for all three of us. I didn’t remember a lot of it. How we got through it. I remember being told I had to eat, and Mom’s doctor giving her some pills that she shared with me so that I could sleep. The nightmares were terrible. But, like everything else, those stopped too. Now we would be meeting a counselor under very different circumstances, and I could tell that Mom was thrilled to be a success story—to need help welcoming her daughter back into the family instead of dealing with a devastating loss.
“Tessa is going to bring by your homework assignments this afternoon, but I think Monday is soon enough to go back to school, don’t you?” Mom asked.
I nodded and picked up a bite of bagel that was left on my plate, eating it before Mom could clear it from the table.
Mom touched my arm and looked into my eyes. “I know it’s a lot, Nico, all of it. Sarah being gone, Sarah being back. I don’t want you to ever think that Daddy and I have lost sight of what’s important in all of this. Of how important you are to us. You and Sarah.”
“Mom, I know.” I shrugged. We didn’t have a lot of heart-to-heart emotional talks in our family—it made me uncomfortable.
“I mean it, Nico, I really mean it. The past few years have been hard on you—on all of us.” She hesitated. “Sometimes I think we didn’t handle Sarah’s disappearance right.”
When she said that, I shook my head. What was the “right” way to deal? What did she think she had done wrong?
Mom went on. “I know you suffered, we all did. I just . . .” She stopped for a moment before finishing her thought. “I want to handle her return right—does that make sense?”
I nodded, noticing tears brimming in her eyes. Suddenly, she smiled.
“It is going to take some time. It’s all just so strange, every little thing, I mean, look—I’m doing breakfast dishes for two girls, my girls—” She broke down, her face crumpling in before she turned her back to me and busied herself at the sink. “I’m so happy to be doing just the ordinary things, the simplest things.” She let out a light laugh. “I know I’m a silly woman.”
“No, I get it,” I agreed, thinking of how good it felt to make Sarah a cup of coffee, to grab her a pair of shoes. “I do.”
I went upstairs to my room, where I noticed my closet was still open. I pushed the door shut, thinking about how Sarah was, right now, at the police station, wearing my shoes. It gave me such an odd feeling, like I was connected to her somehow.
I went into the hallway and stood outside her door for a moment, the room that had been empty for four years. I turned the knob and went in, noticing first that she had carefully made the bed. Neat, as always, everything in its place.
On the bedside table was a book from Sarah’s shelf: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, one of Sarah’s favorites. She had made us all watch the old black-and-white movie years ago when she was working on a book report. The story was dull and forgettable—something about a guy who had killed his wife because she was cheating on him. That was the big reve
al. Sarah had read the book several times, and now it looked like she was reading it again.
I moved to the desk and opened a few drawers, finding everything the same as it had been for years. The closet too was untouched. I looked at Sarah’s shoe rack, trying to decide if Mom had given her the flats from here or from her own closet, but it was hard to tell. I hadn’t memorized every pair of shoes in the closet and where they went, but now I found myself wishing I had.
Why?
I ran my hands over the desk, finding nothing, not even dust there. What was I looking for in this room? I turned and caught my reflection in the mirror over the dressing table: the very image of Sarah when she went missing.
I knew what I was looking for, even if I didn’t want to admit it to myself. I was looking for something that would prove to me that this girl really was Sarah, that this stranger was my sister.
SARAH
SOME NIGHTS I WOULD lie on that bed in the dark and stare at the ceiling, thinking about food. I wasn’t missing anyone or anything, or wanting to go home again—I just wanted something to eat. I thought about fried chicken and mashed potatoes. And fast food, like French fries. My stomach hurt so bad, I felt like it was turning inside out. Sometimes I would drift off to sleep and wake up grinding my teeth, thinking about eating.
One of my teeth, a big one, got loose and wiggled around and I was scared it was because of my dreams and thinking about eating too much. Every day I put my fingers on it and moved it around more and more until one awful day the tooth just totally fell out. Right out into my hand, covered in blood and spit. I sat there and cried for what must have been hours and then I fell asleep with the bloody tooth in my hand and blood on my pillowcase.
When she came into the room with a tray like she did some days, I sat up and she saw the blood. “What have you done now?” she said, and I had to show her even though I didn’t want to. I opened my hand and she saw the tooth and she just laughed.
“You’re such a crybaby, everybody loses a tooth now and then. That’s nothing to cry about.” Then she left me there with the dried brown blood on my hand and a small plate of food to eat: some pretzels and yellow cheese in plastic wrappers and a soda that was warm and a weird flavor. But I ate it all; I just chewed on the other side.
CHAPTER 11
BY THE TIME DAD and Sarah were done with the police interview, the news media had also somehow gotten the word. Mom called Dad’s cell and left a message to pull straight into the garage when they came home, that the cameras and vans were waiting outside. I knew what she was trying to avoid—and what they all wanted: a photo of how Sarah looked now, and Mom was not about to let them have it.
At Mom’s request, the detectives had sent over a couple of uniformed cops, who kept the reporters off the lawn, but they hovered on the sidewalk, where their shouts could be heard as Detective Donally’s car turned into the driveway. I watched from my bedroom window as Mom pushed the button to open the garage and he pulled in, the door quickly sliding down behind him as the reporters called out, “Who took you, Sarah? Did you run away?” and “Where have you been?” “Were you kidnapped?” “Did they hurt you?”
I went downstairs as soon as I heard them come in, but Detective Donally never even got out of the car. When he pulled out of the garage a few moments later, the yelling started again. The reporters couldn’t see into the car’s tinted windows and followed the car out of the driveway, microphones in hand, cameras at the ready, trying to catch a glimpse of whoever was inside.
I rounded the corner into the kitchen to see Sarah standing there next to Dad. She looked up at me and met my eyes, and for a moment, it was as if she didn’t know me. I got that same sick feeling I’d had at the shelter in Florida, tingling and numb, a whooshing sound in my ears as my heart beat hard. What did she tell them?
Then she smiled, like she was actually happy to be home, to see me. Relieved. I searched Dad’s face, looking for an answer to the questions I didn’t dare ask. We all stood there, unsure of what to do next.
“So?” Mom finally said.
“Well, she tried, but she couldn’t give them a lot,” Dad said. “I don’t really know why they insisted on questioning someone with amnesia, seems like a waste of time to me.”
Even though it was early afternoon, Dad moved into the den, leaving the three of us in the kitchen, and I heard the sound of his glass clinking against the bottle as he poured himself a drink. By the time the counselor from the Center for Missing Children arrived at the front door, under another intense attack from reporters, Dad was already on his third.
More answers about Sarah’s visit to the police came out during our first home counseling session. Sarah hadn’t been able to tell the detectives anything. She didn’t know where she had been or what had happened to her—nothing. It was all a blank.
The police had asked about her bike, the one she rode on that last day. It had been found, carefully locked at a bike rack at the entrance to the park, about half a mile from where she was supposed to meet Max. When they dusted it for prints, all they found were Paula’s and mine (aside from Sarah’s, which were expected). But those were easily explained; I might have moved Sarah’s bike in the garage, and Paula said she had borrowed it once or twice. Sarah couldn’t remember leaving her bike there, or even where in the park she was meeting her boyfriend.
They asked about Max and showed her photos of her other friends. But most were a blank too—she remembered names, but nothing about them. Who she got along with, who she didn’t. If she had been fighting with anyone. Dad said she just shook her head, saying almost nothing.
“Did you run away, or did someone force you?” they asked her. “Were you kept in Florida? How long had you been there?” Her first memory was of waking up on the beach, in the jeans and tank top, with no shoes on. A police officer found her there and took her to the children’s shelter. From that point, her memory began again, but everything before that was lost or foggy.
The counselor from the center, an older woman named Dr. Levine, told us not to push Sarah. “The memories will return on their own, or they might not. Sometimes this kind of forgetting is a gift from the brain. It allows us to remember what we can handle and forget the rest.”
What the counselor said rang true for me—those first days and weeks after Sarah disappeared, they were all a blur now. What did I eat, what did I wear, what did I say to the detectives? It was like a dream, a terrible dream. My brain, trying not to deal, forgetting what I couldn’t face.
The counselor looked from my parents over to Sarah and spoke to her directly. “You might remember some things next week, next year, or maybe even ten years from now,” she said. She seemed like a young grandmother and spoke slowly and soothingly. “I had a client who suffered terrible abuse and was only able to recall her childhood when she had a child of her own. And by then, quite honestly, she was older and more stable and able to handle the memories.”
There was a moment of silence in the living room until Mom spoke. “What about seeing friends and relatives? Of course everyone wants to come and visit Sarah—Uncle Phil, the cousins, her grandmother—but we don’t want to overwhelm her. Would that be pushing things?”
Dr. Levine nodded and wrote something in the notebook on her lap. “That’s a good instinct you had there, exactly. It can be very overwhelming to see all these people you are expected to know but can’t quite recall.”
I looked over to Sarah to see if she had any thoughts to add, but she was just staring at Dr. Levine with a blank expression, slightly bored. Or maybe she was just tired.
“Sarah, do you feel ready to see people—maybe a relative or two? Some old friends?”
She blinked, then quickly answered. “I’m not sure. Maybe, just to see how it goes.”
Dr. Levine looked over at Mom. “A welcome-home party is certainly out of the question, as I’m sure you understand.” She smiled.
“Max emailed me—he wanted to drive down this weekend. If that’s okay,” I
offered, looking from Sarah to Dr. Levine, trying to gauge their reactions.
“Well, your Gram also wants to come, and I think it’s family first,” Mom said.
“The answers to all of these questions are right here—with Sarah,” Dr. Levine pointed out. “Give her some time to think about what, and who, she’s ready to handle, and you’ll know when the time is right.”
That night, after Dr. Levine left, Sarah went to her room but left the door ajar, so a sliver of light shone into the hallway. I knocked gently and heard her say, “Come on in.”
She sat on the bed with the copy of Rebecca in her hands. It looked like she was reading it really slowly, for some reason—the bookmark had hardly moved. “That’s one of your favorite books, you know. You’ve read it a bunch of times.”
“Really? I’m loving it so much. But I don’t remember ever reading it before,” she admitted. She let out a little laugh. “The story does seem familiar, now that you mention it.”
“I guess that’s one good thing about amnesia, you can redo all kinds of stuff—books and movies, roller coasters . . .” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I felt weird for joking about it. I looked at her face to be sure I hadn’t offended her. She pulled in her legs and patted the end of the bed, inviting me to sit down. I hesitated. I had never sat on her bed in my life.
“Sit,” she finally insisted, tilting her head to one side.
“Naw, I’m sure you’re tired, I really just wanted to say good night.” I moved to the door.
“Nico?”
