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“So all that’s l-left is finding the road,” Vanessa says. “The one just off Cartwright?”
“That’s where people play the game, but the spot where Lucy’s brother claimed he saw her was actually, like, five miles west of there,” I say.
“Is there a road there?”
“Well, no,” I say, shrugging. “But there wouldn’t be, if it was a ghostly apparition, would there? Except when Lucy’s out haunting.” I keep my voice casual, like there isn’t a hand tightening around my throat with every word. Because if I was normal, ifI hadmoved onandlet go of this fanciful coping strategy, as my mother once suggested, none of this would bother me.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Vanessa reminds me. “Do you?”
I pick at the crust of my sandwich. I want to say no, but it isn’t exactly true anymore. I have reasons to believe. Because of Becca, and because—
It’s just not a simple answer anymore.
She tucks her hands under her thighs on either side. “I want to t-try. The g-game and the road and everything.”
“Why?” I ask. “If you don’t believe in any of it?”
“I want to know for sure.”
“Are you asking me if I’ll be your partner?” I ask, half hoping she is.
“N-no. I already have one. Sorry,” she says, cheeks beet red now. “Thanks for your help.”
“Yeah,” I say as she hurriedly stands up. “No problem.”
She’s already disappearing back inside.
I take my phone out of my backpack and unlock it. The text message is already on the screen, waiting for me. A road, a partner, a key. And two days to find them, if you want to play.
Do I?
I remember that door slamming shut, Becca’s unreadable expression. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t say anything. Not for days. Not until it was obvious that she wasn’t coming home.
The casual answer I gave Vanessa was true—there isn’t a road at that spot in the forest. What I didn’t say was that I went there a dozen times in the months after Becca disappeared. I’ve wanderedthrough the woods and called her name. Lucy’s, too. No one has ever answered.
But what if I just had the wrong day? Becca went missing in April. It’s April again now.
I don’t believe in ghosts, not exactly. But I don’t believe Becca is dead, either. Which means she’s out there, and no one is looking for her but me.
3
SOME PARENTS, WHENtheir child is missing, keep their room as a shrine, exactly the same as when they left it. As if by some sympathetic magic it will summon them back from wherever they’ve wandered to.
My parents aren’t like that. Three days after Becca went missing, my mother went into her room and tidied it up. She did all of Becca’s laundry, wiped down her desk, changed the linens on her bed, decluttered everything. Closed the door. Didn’t go back in for eight months.
When she did, it was to box everything up. Thirteen boxes. Ten went to thrift shops or the dump. Three went to the attic, tucked next to the boxes of elementary-school projects and macaroni art: artifacts of things long gone. The bed and the desk went out to the thrift shop, too. It would have somehow been less painful if she’d gotten rid of all the furniture, purged the house of Becca’s presence, but she kept the bookshelf and the chair, moving them into the living room. It was as if Becca was so thoroughly forgotten they didn’t even provoke painful memories.
I didn’t argue. My parents didn’t blame me for Becca’s disappearance, but they resented me for my part in what followed. Thestrange rumors, the ridicule. My refusal to admit that my sister abandoned us for a boy she’d only known for three months.
I didn’t argue, but I sneaked in while my mother was in the bathroom and took the box from under my sister’s bed where she kept her most treasured possessions. A few early photos, too embarrassingly amateurish to show anyone else, but full of the promise of talent to come; her journal—not diary—in which she jotted scattered thoughts and philosophical musings; a handful of trinkets from our infrequent travels; and our grandmother’s wedding ring, saved for when Becca got married.
It was inside the cover of the journal that I found the inscription.
FIND THE ROAD.FIND THE GATES.FIND THE GIRL.
I’m sitting on my bed now with the journal open in my lap, turning the pages. Most of it is notes on photos she’s taken, critiquing her own work or recording ideas for shots. In between are scraps of poetry, meandering bits of song lyrics. She wrote a few songs with Zachary, and his handwriting is scrawled next to hers, crowding it in. I resent every letter, every word.
But the last bit of poetry, or song lyrics, or whatever—they stop me dead every time.
