Blink

by Sasha Dawn

  “No good. If Damien gets a hold of it . . . hell, if Rosie gets a hold of it . . .” I shake my head. “Maybe get a safe deposit box.”

  “Here.” Chatham hands me her phone at a red light, and I flip through the pictures on her sister’s Instagram account, which hasn’t been updated since Chatham last saw her. These pictures, in particular, focus on Savannah’s tattoo. They’re old images; she must have posted them shortly after she got the tattoo.

  I make a mental note of the username on the page: Farmgirl1004.

  “I don’t know.” I only got a glimpse of the ink, and Chatham knows this. And I’ve seen a few pictures of Savannah’s face, but I don’t remember much about the girl who answered the door beyond her cloud of blonde hair and the fact that she wasn’t wearing much clothing. “But it could be.”

  We drive past the green-and-purple Victorian, in case the girl in that house hasn’t yet left for the rave—how the hell do I know what time those things start?—but the place is dark and still, so we assume she’s out.

  I’ve been driving up and down Foster for at least twenty minutes now, but it’s dark, and we haven’t been able to locate a brick building with a beer sign painted on it. Rosie’s texted me about a thousand times, begging me to come home, and I’m getting tired. I’ve been awake for almost seventeen hours, and I have to be on the weight deck at six in the morning. But this trek could answer Chatham’s questions, so there’s no way that I’m backing out now.

  “There.” Chatham points to an alleyway.

  I turn into the alley and look up at the shadowed buildings lining the narrow lane. “Where?” The tires crunch over the gravel, and the car dips into well-worn potholes.

  “It’s too dark to see if there’s a beer sign,” she says, “but it’s all brick, and there’s a stairwell back there with a few people in line.”

  “So you want to walk down an alley, go into a stairwell, and—”

  “I don’t think we have a choice.”

  “No.” I’m at the end of the alley now. “I guess we don’t.” This might not be the smartest idea I’ve ever had, but she’s right. We don’t have a choice. I kill the engine, step out of the car, and meet her on the sidewalk.

  She’s tight to me as we walk around the building to the alley. If I’ve ever had a tighter grip on someone’s hand, I don’t remember when. I can handle myself. I’m not worried about me. But if anything happens to Chatham tonight, I’ll never forgive myself.

  We edge closer to the stairwell, where five people are lined up against the railing, smoking cigarettes. They pay no attention to us, and we don’t acknowledge them because it’s at this moment Chatham whispers, “Kiss me.”

  Her chin is tilted up toward me, and her lips are in perfect position. So I kiss her.

  While my lips are still on hers, she skirts around the smokers, leading the way, and begins the descent down the rickety stairs.

  There’s a bulk of muscle standing at the door, and for a second, I think this guy’s about to ask us for IDs and the password. But instead, he says, “Arms up,” and pats me down, then Chatham.

  “Twenty-five,” he says. “Fifteen for you, ten for your lady.”

  I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding, and reach for my wallet.

  But Chatham’s already pulling cash out of the pocket of her jean shorts; she pays our cover, and we enter into the entrails of the brick building that must have a beer sign painted somewhere on it. A few seconds after we set foot on the concrete slab, someone gives us clear plastic cups, despite my attempts to refuse them.

  I’m not going to drink anything in this place—because who knows what mysterious ingredients you might be drinking in even water here—and I drop the cups in the closest garbage can.

  I feel the music in my bones, in my chest, and even though I’m stone sober now, I can’t help feeling light-headed among the colored lights and their strobe effect.

  The room isn’t all that large, maybe twenty-by-forty, but it has really high ceilings, and it’s packed with people.

  Chatham hooks her arm through mine.

  “Stay close,” I scream.

  She shakes her head. She can’t hear me.

  There’s a platform that runs the perimeter of the place, barred off with thick, metal railings, and there’s an iron gate—something you might see in an institutional building to block access to certain hallways—in the far left of the room.

  We walk further into the sea of sweaty bodies, all bumping into one another. It’s like an orgy on the dance floor—and the whole place is a dance floor, a beehive of slaves to the bass that comes up through the soles of your shoes and consumes you.

  I feel her moving next to me. And we’re not here to dance, but it’s almost an involuntary side effect of being in this place.

  After two passes through the place, I’m ready to leave. The trip’s a bust; the girl with the tattoo isn’t here. But when I try to tell her, Chatham starts pulling my arm toward the rear of the room. As we get closer to the back wall, farthest from the door through which we came, I see the girl she’s heading for.

  The blonde hair. White blonde. Platinum. Too blonde to be the same girl I saw earlier, I think. She’s dancing on a platform, wearing a scrap of something that looks like aluminum foil. Really, it’s a strapless silver dress that barely covers her ass and her boobs. She’s wearing purple vinyl boots with straps that criss-cross over her calves and go all the way up to her knees, so we can’t see if she has a tattoo on her ankle.

  Chatham’s talking to me, but I can’t hear what she’s saying.

  It’s okay. She can tell me later.

  We move toward the platform.

  Out of nowhere, I feel a tug on the back of my sweatshirt, and next I know, I’m separated from Chatham and find myself in the center of a ring of dancers, torso-to-torso with a girl with long, ink-blue hair. Her lips are red and puckered, like she tied them into a bow, and her lashes are so thick and so black and rimmed with silver glitter, that I can barely see her eyes beneath them.

  I try to extricate myself from the circle. I have to get back to Chatham, but there are so many people, and everyone’s moving, and I’m turned around and . . .

  Chatham?

  I don’t know where she is! I lost her!

  This girl’s hand is in my back pocket, and her body is pressed tight up against mine, and . . .

  “Chatham!”

  I know she can’t hear me.

  I have to find her.

  This girl’s lips are at my ear. “I loved that book!” Her scream at close range practically deafens me.

  I lean back and look at the girl whose body is rubbing against mine. It’s her, the girl from the purple-and-green house. Isn’t it? She’s wearing a wig—obviously, no one’s hair is really that color—and I can’t see her ankles, but . . .

  I grab her by the wrist, and look for the girl in the purple boots to orient myself. If I find her, I’ll find Chatham.

  It takes a minute, but . . .

  There.

  Chatham’s between two guys who don’t seem to care that she isn’t dancing, don’t seem to notice she’s not interested in being the peanut butter to their bread. Her eyes are wide, and she’s sort of scanning the crowd with a deer-in-headlights glance.

  Thug number one has his hands on her body. She shakes her head, but then thug number two, behind her, is at the nape of her neck with his mouth, and . . .

  “Chatham!” I inch my way closer, shoving a path through a crowd and yanking tattoo girl behind me, and finally I reach her.

  Number one gives me a push with his shoulder, disguised as the normal bumping on the dance floor, but I have her hand in mine now, and I give her a pull toward me; she slams into me. She’s shaking her head, and pointing toward the girl in foil and purple boots. I watch her lips when she speaks: it’s not her.

  It’s then she sees I’ve got a grip on someone else.

  The two girls stand there, each holding one of my hands, and s
tare at each other.

  I glance down at the stranger’s feet.

  She’s wearing high-heeled strappy sandals—red patent leather—but I see it now. The tattoo.

  Tattoo girl raises a brow at Chatham.

  Chatham gives it right back.

  Do they know each other?

  Next I know, tattoo girl has Chatham in her arms, and her lips on Chatham’s lips.

  B l u f f s

  Cheek on cheek, then lips on lips.

  Chatham backs off, a look of utter confusion on her face.

  Tattoo girl winks at me, and in a heartbeat, she’s enveloped back into the swarm of dancers.

  Chatham pulls on my hand, and soon, we’re dodging bodies on our way toward the door. When we finally get there, and burst back into the night, the rush of lake-effect air wakes me up.

  “What was that about?” I still hear the bass in my eardrums.

  “It’s not Savannah.”

  “She kissed you. I mean, why would she kiss you if she didn’t know you?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not her.”

  Chatham hasn’t said anything since she uttered those words. She’s staring out the window of my Explorer, and I’m sure a million thoughts are going through her head. I guess I can’t blame her.

  And I might know what she’s thinking because I’m thinking it, too: First, why did that girl kiss her? Second, if Savannah isn’t here, where is she? Furthermore, if Wayne happened to catch up with Savannah, will he eventually come looking for Chatham, too?

  And what happens then?

  Is Sugar Creek—is anywhere—far enough away from the man who deliberately burned Chatham with a cattle brand?

  Adrenaline is pumping through my system, and I can’t imagine going to sleep, even though it’s way past late, and I have an early start tomorrow.

  When I left home, hours ago, I hadn’t intended to go back tonight, but given everything that’s happened, I’m not sure Chatham should go back home, either. So where do we go from here?

  And my mind is racing, replaying the moment the two girls laid eyes on each other: the look, the leaning in, the kiss.

  Why did the girl with the tattoo kiss Chatham, if they don’t know each other?

  I park at Northgate Beach so we can decide what to do next.

  “What did she say to you?” I ask.

  “What?” Chatham snaps out of her daze. “When?”

  “She said something in your ear. Right before the two of you kissed.”

  “I don’t kiss girls,” Chatham says. “Or strangers.”

  Technically, considering tattoo girl isn’t Chatham’s sister, she did both tonight. But I don’t think she’s in the mood for me to point this out. “Okay, fine. She kissed you. But what did she say?”

  “I think she said she liked you. I don’t know. It was loud.”

  “Why would she say that?”

  “Maybe because she likes you?”

  “Right.”

  “Have you seen yourself lately? Not too tough to imagine some girls liking you.”

  “So she said she liked me, and then kissed you.”

  “Yes.”

  Molly can do crazy things to people, I guess. But even still . . . why would that girl zero in on me? And why kiss Chatham? I don’t want to accuse Chatham of lying about what the girl said, and I don’t want to accuse her of not telling me the whole story, but something’s not adding up.

  And it’s not like she’s always been honest with me.

  “She didn’t say anything else?”

  “If she did, I didn’t hear her.”

  It wasn’t like there was enough time for a conversation, but still.

  “And you’ve never seen that girl before? She just . . . laid one on you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why would she—”

  “How should I know?” There’s an edge to her voice this time. She opens the car door and gets out, heads toward the boardwalk gate.

  “Chatham, wait.” I hurry to catch up with her; by the time I reach her, she’s hopped the gate and is heading toward the bluffs.

  “Sorry,” I say when I reach her. Her hair is whipping in the breeze, and it’s so dark on the beach that she’s only an outline of a girl right now. I can’t see her expression. “I’m just trying to understand. I mean, maybe we should take this girl out of the equation for a second, and—”

  “You’re the one who put her in the equation.”

  “I know, I know.” And for good reason. The tattoo. I got a better look at it at the warehouse on Foster Street, and I took a good, long look at Chatham’s sister’s ink on Instagram. The girl at the rave’s tat is a dead ringer for Savannah’s.

  Even if it’s clip art or a typical design—and it doesn’t look like either; it’s too complex—I can’t dismiss the coincidence of it. Especially not when I factor in the kiss.

  I don’t want to admit it, even to myself, but I don’t think Chatham’s being honest with me. If that girl wasn’t Savannah . . .

  Then again, why would she lie?

  “Let’s assume Savannah did make it to Sugar Creek,” I say. “Where would she hang out?”

  Chatham sighs. “Joshua, I’ve been everywhere I think she might be. I’ve hung around at all the shops she might like at the mall. I’ve dropped into restaurants where she might have taken a job, but no one’s seen her. I’ve been back and forth to this beach a dozen times. Do you know I leave a sand castle here every time? Just so she knows I’m still here? So she knows I’m still looking?”

  “Good idea.” I keep replaying the kiss—brief as it was—in my mind. Would the girl with the tattoo kiss Chatham if she was really high on X? But in that case, wouldn’t she have kissed me, too, the moment she pulled me in close to dance?

  “I’ve been to the train station,” Chatham continues. “I’ve ridden the train up and down the north line, just to see if anything clicks, just to see if I remember being at any of the stations.”

  I wait for the verdict, although I suspect I already know it.

  “I was pretty convinced before I saw this girl at the rave, but now I can’t deny it: I’ve never been here, and I don’t know why Savannah would’ve been here, either. She wasn’t here then, and she’s not here now.”

  “But the things in the journal.”

  “Almost everything in that journal could’ve been read about online. And the rest? She made it all up. The girl under the floorboards, being here that day Rachel was taken . . . it’s all lies.”

  “So where do you think she went? What are you going to do?”

  “Well, I can’t go home.”

  I don’t know if she’s talking about home to the Churchill, or home to Moon River, but I decide right then and there: I’ll sneak Chatham in every single night if I have to. “You can stay with me.”

  She comes to me then, and presses her body to my chest. She trails a finger over the part of my shirt that covers my tattooed fourteen. It takes a moment for me to realize she’s drawing the same curls and loops of the shamrock she drew in the sand the first night I hung out with her.

  “Rachel Bachton’s family hasn’t given up hope,” I say. “And it’s been twelve years.”

  I’m leaning against one of the enormous rocks at the shoreline now, and Chatham nestles in tight to my chest. Her body feels small in my arms.

  “Maybe there’s a good reason she didn’t come that day.” I kiss the top of her head. “Don’t give up.”

  We stand there for a while, with the cold, damp breeze whipping in off the lake. She shivers. I inhale the scent of her hair and remember the first time I saw her, just down the shore from where we’re standing.

  She pulls out of my arms and walks inland. I follow at a safe distance until she plops down in the sand and starts to dig.

  She’s building a castle.

  I can’t help wondering: Is she doing it because I encouraged her to keep the faith? To send a signal to Savannah in case her sister really is in Sugar Creek so
mewhere? Or is she doing it to pretend, to amplify the lies she might have told me tonight?

  My window is locked.

  Touché, Rosie. Nothing like forcing a confrontation by making me come in through the front door. I guess I can’t blame her. And an unlocked window could invite Damien in.

  “Maybe we should just go back to the Churchill,” Chatham whispers.

  “No, I have a key. Wait here.” I don’t want to leave her, but on the off-chance Rosie’s waiting up for me, I don’t want to waltz Chatham through the front door, either.

  I walk around to the front of the house and quietly open the door.

  The place is still and quiet.

  I leave my sandy shoes in the foyer, then go to my room to let Chatham in.

  She climbs in and presses a kiss to my lips. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure. I’d do anything for you.”

  And I mean it.

  B r e a k f a s t C l u b

  At first I think it’s the alarm on my phone going off, which means it’s 5:30. God, it feels like I just lay down a few seconds ago.

  But when I start to come to, I realize it’s just my text alert buzzing. It takes a moment for me to remember where I am and how I got here. Although I swore I wouldn’t come back, I’m at home on Carpenter Street, in my basement, on my couch.

  I stare at the door at the end of the hallway, the door that leads to my room. Chatham’s in there. God, what I wouldn’t give to have slept with her body up against mine all night long, but I’m not sure she’s as ready as I am for that to happen. This seemed the safer option. Besides, there’s no telling what Rosie would’ve done, had she come down and found me in bed with a girl.

  All the events of last night flood back to me in an instant.

  The rave.

  The girls, staring at each other.

  I could’ve sworn there was a spark of recognition between them.

  And then the kiss.

  It didn’t last long—a second or two—before Chatham turned and walked out, pulling me by the hand to follow her.

  And she insists she doesn’t know the girl.

  After a bit of sleep, I have to be honest with myself: I think she’s lying to me. It doesn’t add up. One minute, she’s telling me she doesn’t think Savannah is here, and the next, she’s building a sand castle so Savannah, if she’s out there, will know she’s still looking.