Blink

by Sasha Dawn

  Praise for

  “An absolute page-turner that uses well-paced suspense instead of graphic violence to craft an edgy tale.”

  —Booklist

  “Detailed and suspenseful.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “An engrossing thriller . . .”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A wonderfully written suspense novel that both young adult readers and adults will enjoy.”

  —VOYA

  “A gripping thriller whose plot kept me turning pages, written with such skill and nuance that I couldn’t help going back to re-read some passages simply for their beauty.”

  —Jessica Warman, author of

  The Last Good Day of the Year and Between

  Praise for

  “Readers will feel unmoored until the last few pages of this novel, and that’s all right—so does the story’s narrator, Callie.”

  —starred, Booklist

  “Thoroughly compelling.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “An exciting page-turner.”

  —School Library Journal

  “[A] gripping, psychologically intense mystery . . .”

  —VOYA

  “I could see the tension rippling through every scene. A fabulous book that readers are going to inhale.”

  —Jessica Warman, author of

  The Last Good Day of the Year and Between

  A New York Public Library Best Book for Teens 2014

  A 2016 Illinois Reads selection

  Text copyright © 2018 by Sasha Dawn

  Carolrhoda Lab™ is a trademark of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stor ed in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

  Carolrhoda Lab™

  An imprint of Carolrhoda Books

  A division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  241 First Avenue North

  Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

  For reading levels and more information, look up this title at www.lernerbooks.com.

  Cover and interior mages: iStock.com/stevanovicigor (screen); iStock.com/iwanara-MC (angles); iStock.com/wundervisuals (face); iStock.com/Juanmonino (tiles); iStock.com/Panptys (shamrock).

  Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std 10.5/15.

  Typeface provided by Linotype AG.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Dawn, Sasha, author.

  Title: Blink / by Sasha Dawn.

  Description: Minneapolis : Carolrhoda Lab, [2018] | Summary: Sixteen-year-old Josh falls in love with newcomer Chatham Claiborne, who has come to town to find her missing sister, but when Chatham suddenly disappears Josh unearths a web of lies and secrecy surrounding her life, and in doing so unwittingly discovers vital clues to the town’s longest unsolved mystery.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017010258 (print) | LCCN 2017043303 (ebook) | ISBN 9781512498547 (eb pdf) | ISBN 9781512439779 (th : alk. paper)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Missing children—Fiction. | Sisters—Fiction. | Mystery and detective stories.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.D32178 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.D32178 Bl 2018 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017010258

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1-42213-25775-8/31/2017

  9781541516649 ePub

  9781541516656 mobi

  9781541516663 ePub

  For my very own #14 and the girls who are the copious amounts of sprinkles on our ice cream sundaes

  “Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is ‘Who in the world am I?’ Ah, that’s the great puzzle!”

  —Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

  C a s t l e s i n t h e S a n d

  I wasn’t here the day it happened.

  My mother didn’t make much a habit of taking me to the beach, or anywhere, really, but it happened just down the shore from where I’ve laid out a blanket for my four-year-old sisters and me. Call me crazy—I mean, I didn’t even know the girl—but I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately. She was my sisters’ age when she was abducted, and she would be about sixteen, my age, now.

  Rachel Bachton.

  She was plucked away from this place, near the lighthouse on the north shore, where they hold the farmers’ market in the summertime. One minute, she was there and the next, she was gone. A witnessed stranger abduction, they called it.

  The kidnapper could’ve been anyone, based on the description of witnesses: thirty to forty-five years old, five-ten to six-two, nondescript dirty-brown hair on the longer side.

  He could’ve taken her anywhere.

  Did he kill her? Probably. That’s usually what happens to kidnapped children, isn’t it? When they don’t turn up in a few days, it’s usually because they’re dead.

  One thing’s for sure: if she’s still alive, she’s been hidden well. There’s been no sign of her since the supposed sightings in the days following her disappearance.

  This past week, her case has been in the news again. That’s probably why I’m thinking of her now. Some bones recently turned up, and while they’re a far cry from this beach, authorities estimate the remains belong to a three- to five-year-old female . . . and they’ve been buried in the red soil of coastal Georgia nearly as long as Rachel’s been gone.

  It adds up. I hate to think of her meeting an end so terrifyingly raw . . . and lonely.

  I didn’t know her—she lived in a neighborhood on the other side of the lighthouse, up Sheridan Road, where the rich kids live—but because what happened to her happened here, on this beach, she’s part of everyone who roots down in this town, no matter what neighborhood we’re from. She’s the reason kids in Sugar Creek grow up looking over their shoulders.

  Sugar Creek. Sounds sweet, doesn’t it? Trust me, it’s anything but. Just a dusty and withered old burg that’s on the lake but too many miles from Chicago to be a real resort destination. Vacationers realize there are trendier places to stretch out their tired legs and plant their umbrellas and fold-out chairs in the sand.

  “Excuse me.”

  The voice is like a tinkling of wind chimes cutting through my sisters’ nonstop chattering.

  I look up at an hourglass of a girl, who’s standing in the soft, drenched sand at the shoreline, about five feet away from where we’re planted. She’s wearing cutoff denim and a dark red tank top—that much I can tell—but the sun is reflecting off the water, and I have to shade my eyes. I can’t see her face. She’s no more than a golden outline of a girl, but staring up at her, I feel a sort of flutter in my gut.

  The water washes up over her feet. “Fourteen?”

  “Huh?”

  She nods toward my chest. “You have the number fourteen . . .” Her voice lilts with a slight southern accent.

  “Oh. Yeah.” I brush sand from the tattooed number on my left pec. “Long story.”

  “Need help.” One of my sisters tugs at the hem of my board shorts.

  I take the juice box from whichever sister’s sandy hand extends it toward me. I punch the straw through the top of the cardboard box and hand it back without taking my eyes off the girl.

  “Would you mind?” She sloughs a backpack off her right shoulder. “I was hoping to take a dip, but . . . Could you watch my bag?”

  Another juice box is pushed into my hand, and I take it without looking. I don’t want to take my eyes off this girl in case she dis
appears.

  “I’d really appreciate it,” she’s saying. “I mean, God, who knew it would be so hot? It’s almost fall. Everything I’ve ever heard about the Windy City . . .”

  It is warmer than usual today. It’s near eighty-five, and it’s a deep, thick heat. The kind that pools on your skin the second you walk outside. The humidity makes it feel like well over ninety, but the lake breezes always help, which is why we’re here.

  “Summer’s lingering this year. It happens sometimes.” I stand to get a better look at this girl. “Hotter than Hades some years, but winter’s colder than—” I shut up the second I look into her brown eyes.

  It’s like they go on for miles. Chocolate rivers veined with gold . . . like liquefied amber.

  I should say something. Or at least finish what I started to say in the first place.

  “Josh Michaels.” I consider offering a hand for a shake, but how corny is that?

  She raises her chin, semi-defiant, or maybe just confident. “Chatham Claiborne.”

  Of course, a girl like this would have a great name. I roll it around on the tip of my tongue, can’t wait to drink it down. “Where are you from, Chatham Claiborne?”

  “Moon River. Georgia.”

  “Georgia? And you think it’s hot here?”

  “Well, I expect it to be hot back home.”

  “Joshy.” Caroline tugs on my shorts. “Juice.”

  Oh yeah. I put the straw into the box I’m still holding and pat my sister on the head.

  “Looks like you have your hands full. I can just . . .” Chatham Claiborne moves to swing the bag back up on her shoulder, but I intercept it at the last second.

  “No, I got it. Go ahead. Swim.” The way I look at it, she has to come back to get the backpack if she leaves it with me, right?

  She thanks me—that’s what southern girls do—and before I know it, her back is to me, and she’s already shin-deep in the lake. Layers of dark brown hair, the longest falling an inch or two shy of her shoulders, bounce as she plunges into the waves. In her clothes.

  No dropping her shorts to the sand, or pulling off her top to reveal some cute bikini.

  Interesting.

  I wonder if she notices I’m pondering her sudden appearance here, if she knows I’m still looking at her, watching her ride the waves. I hope not. Don’t want to be that guy, obviously ogling her as if she were an underwear model on the pages of a magazine.

  I snap out of it and drop back to our beach blanket.

  The twins are fighting over an Oreo, which is ridiculous because we have at least twelve more in the box, but while my mother would prefer I put a stop to it, I let it carry on. I give the box a nudge in my sisters’ direction—let them figure things out and solve their own problems—and recline on the blanket. I prefer their bickering to silence. That way I know where they are and what they’re doing. They’re always into something when they’re quiet.

  Besides, arguing is healthy. Let them learn early: life isn’t about agreeing all the time.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I catch sight of Miss Claiborne again, over the silvery swells of Lake Michigan. Cutoff denim inches up her thigh, revealing the tiniest peek of cheek, and the cotton of her tank top sticks to her wet, ivory flesh like a second skin.

  I wonder why she’s here, at the beach, with a backpack and no swimsuit. And why this beach, in this town? If someone was vacationing for a long weekend, she wouldn’t land in Sugar Creek. Like I said, this place hasn’t been a destination since 1950. These days, anyone venturing to this stretch of Lake Michigan would be more apt to stick closer to other beaches than wash up on this rundown shore.

  My phone alerts with a Snapchat.

  Aiden: It’s on

  I reply: Absofuckinglutely

  There’s going to be a bonfire at Aiden’s dad’s place, near the bluffs tonight, and I’m getting out of big-brother jail in a few hours.

  My mother is, as we speak, finishing the last hours of a double shift at the hospital. I’ve been on sister duty for nearly fifteen hours already, and I can’t wait to get out of Dodge. Let loose. Blow off the steam built up courtesy of juice boxes and tangled ponytails and Beach Babies SPF 50.

  I close my eyes but still see the glow of the sun on the backs of my eyelids. At least it’s a nice day. And maybe I’m letting the girls eat too much sugar, and maybe they’ll be tough to handle by bedtime, but what do I care? They’ll be my mother’s problem by then.

  Minutes later, when cold drops of Great Lake sprinkle over me, I open my eyes to see Chatham Claiborne dropping onto the sand near us. “Thanks again.” She drags her bag off the corner of our blanket and, to both my surprise and relief, doesn’t bolt off but starts playing in the sand, digging down for the wettest grains and forming a mountain of the stuff.

  “Do you like sand castles?”

  I’m pretty sure she’s talking to my sisters, but I sit up and take heed anyway. Her curls are fat with droplets of water, and her lips are tinged a bluish pink, a side effect of the frigid water. She’s looking right at me.

  “Who doesn’t?” I fight the urge to grin.

  Now addressing my sisters, she holds out a hand: “Can I borrow that pail a sec?”

  Caroline hands it over.

  “Make a mermaid house,” Margaret says.

  “Princess house,” Caroline counters.

  “You know,” Chatham says, “I think I can make both.”

  She’s comfortable with young kids, judging by her easy, casual tone. I like this about her. Her hands work the sand, molding and shaping it into a new formation.

  She carves away pieces, and adds others, and in the time it would take me to make a nondescript pile, she’s constructed a sand sculpture that looks like a dollhouse.

  My sisters, enrapt with the process, shut up for the first time since they jumped on my bed to wake me this morning.

  She keeps working, making the castle even more complex than it was a moment ago.

  “Impressive,” I say.

  When she smiles, her eyes flash a brilliance I didn’t know was possible with such dark irises. “Well, it’s sort of what I do.”

  “You make sand castles. Like, for a living?”

  “Makes life worth living, don’t you think?”

  I like this girl.

  “Not just sand,” she says. “Any sculpture. Clay, paper . . .”

  “Metal?”

  “Not my medium of choice. But sure.”

  “So what brings you here, Chatham Claiborne?” Is it weird that I used her last name there? “Aside from our malleable sand.”

  “Just enjoying the beach.”

  Vague. If she hadn’t elected to squat here with us, if she hadn’t spoken to me first, I might think I’m bothering her in striking up a conversation.

  “Well, you came at a good time. Not many people come past Labor Day. Better when it’s not as crowded.”

  She doesn’t take my lead, doesn’t explain what put her here this time of year. Just keeps creating.

  I try again: “So you like beaches.” No shit, genius. I all but slap myself for that intelligent comment. “Do you like bonfires?”

  She shrugs but I catch a hint of a smile on her lips.

  “A bunch of us are meeting down the shore tonight. You should come.”

  “Down the shore?”

  “We can’t very well party here.” Party. Such an arbitrary word, and I wish I hadn’t used it. Don’t want her to get the wrong idea about me, about what I am . . . or what I’m not: some burnout without direction or a care in the world. I care. I do. But I’m not one of those guys who thinks a party is chips and a chessboard, either. “Beach closes at sunset,” I offer by way of explanation. “County property.”

  “Oh.” She’s looking at something behind me, a blatant sign of disinterest in me.

  Maybe I am an idiot.

  I should just shut up.

  I open my cooler and grab a bottle of water, but then I think it’s rude not to offer
her one. “Thirsty?” So much for clamming it.

  “Parched, actually.”

  I toss the bottle to the corner of the blanket—again, she thanks me—and grab a second for myself.

  When she reaches for the water, her shorts shift, and a mark on her hip reveals itself. After a quick glance upward—she’s not looking at me; she’s opening the water bottle and drinking—I look at it again. It’s a scar. A burn, maybe. Definitely the result of some sort of trauma.

  I know a little something about that. The scar on the inside of my left forearm practically sizzles when I think about it, and I’m suddenly tumbling back in time to the day it happened, to the dark room, to my mother’s terrifying shriek . . .

  “So.” Chatham’s voice chimes in my ears, pulls me back to the present. “How far down the shore is this bonfire?”

  I shake off the memory. “About a mile or so, past the boardwalk. On the bluffs.” But she’s still—again?—looking at something behind me.

  “On the bluffs?” She has a hand on a strap of her backpack.

  “At my friend Aiden’s dad’s place.” I glance over my shoulder. What’s she looking at?

  “I’ll try to come.” She’s getting to her feet. “Thanks for the water.”

  “No problem.”

  “And thanks for watching my bag. What time tonight?” She’s already taken a few steps down the shore, in the direction of the lighthouse.

  “About nine or so.”

  “Nice meeting you, Joshua.”

  Joshua. Not Josh. I like it.

  “Same.”

  “I’ll see you,” she calls over her shoulder. “At the bluffs.”

  I focus on her as she’s walking away. Commit every detail to memory. I’ll probably never see her again. I mean, maybe she’ll show up tonight . . . in a perfect world. But perfection doesn’t exactly exist in my hemisphere.

  “So pretty,” Margaret’s saying.

  I agree. “Yeah.”

  “She made a porch.”

  Oh. The sand castle. I glance at my sisters, who are admiring all the niches and details of the sand castle between them, but quickly return my attention to the girl walking away. I can hardly see her anymore, she’s so far down the beach, blending into the hundreds of beach-goers gathered here on the last weekend of summer.