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18
Then
IDUG A CRUMPLED TISSUE FROM THE POCKET OF MY JEANS AND,still bent at the waist, wiped the rest of the vomit from my mouth. I pressed my other hard against the hood of my car to steady myself. It felt as if a sinkhole had opened beneath me, threatening to suck me into it.
I finally righted myself, and after wrenching open the door, I collapsed into the driver’s seat. For a brief and crazy moment, I was overwhelmed with the urge to take off down the city street at eighty miles an hour, imagining that if I drove fast enough, I could leave the entire nightmare behind me.
Instead, I forced myself to breathe and tried to corral my frantic thoughts. As urgently as I needed to call my mother and stepfather and inform them of this new, terrifying development, I felt I should track down Jamie first. So much of what I’d believed to be true about Friday night was clearly wrong, and I needed to know exactly how wrong.
But Jamie didn’t answer when I called her. Of course, it wasn’t even eight o’clock and she was probably still asleep. I hungup and tried her number again, and again, and again, knowing that the more I called, the more likely she was to be roused by the ringtone. My heart was beating out of my chest, and I could feel rage building inside of me. I was livid at Jamie, I realized—for throwing that fucking party and letting it get so out of control that you couldn’t find the person you came with or tell what was going on in that mammoth house. And I was livid, too, with her idiot friend Ryan, who swore he’d seen Chloe leave and cost me valuable time.
Finally on the fifth try, Jamie answered, muttering a groggy, muffled hello.
“Where are you?” I demanded, my voice shaking.
“What?”
“Jamie, it’s Skyler. Are you back in Boston now?”
“Uh uh, I’m still at my parents’ place. Why?”
“That guy Ryan was wrong. The girl he saw leaving wasn’t my sister, and now I can’t find her. Anywhere.”
There were rustling noises on the other end, as if Jamie was throwing off her covers and sitting up. “Wait—you haven’t seen her since the party?” she said, suddenly sounding more alert.
“No.The last time I set eyes on her was at your house, and no one I know has seen or spoken to her since.”
“Oh god. What are you going to do?”
“I need to come back there. Is there anyone around I can talk to, anyone who was at the party and might have noticed what she was up to?”
“My brother’s still here, too, helping with cleanup, so you could ask him, I guess. And you should talk to our friends from BU who came. They might have seen her.”
“Why don’t I start with your brother. Can you make sure he’ll be up when I get there?”
“You’re comingnow?”
I was throwing any pretense at politeness out the window. “Yes, I’m coming now. I’ll see you in half an hour.”
I couldn’t put off the call to my mother any longer, though the thought of breaking the news to her left me trying not to retch again. My hand shook as I tapped her name. I knew I probably wouldn’t be waking her at this hour, but she’d go on high alert when she saw my name on the screen before noon on a Sunday.
“Hi, Sky,” she said, quickly. Her voice sounded the tiniest bit froggy, as if she hadn’t spoken yet today. “Is everything okay?”
“I’m not sure, Mom. Have you heard from Chloe this weekend?”
“No, we were going to talk later today. Why, what’s the matter?”
Trying to keep my voice even, I blurted out a recap of events, ending with my discovery at the Carton Street house. There was a moment of silence and I suddenly wondered if my mother, the cool, collected optometrist, was going tell me that I was overreacting, that this was just “Chloe being Chloe,” because no one knew my sister better than my mom did.
But that’s not what happened.
“Good god,” she exclaimed and then began firing questions at me: How many times had I called Chloe, had I texted her, too, had I spoken to her roommate, had anyone tried her friends, did I think she could be with her ex-boyfriend? Needless to say, none of my answers—a zillion, yes, yes, yes, not likely—were the least bit reassuring.
“But, Mom, I wouldn’t worry too much yet,” I said, trying to project a confidence I didn’t feel. “Chloe isn’t always good about checking in, and maybe she did get a ride back to the city with someone, just not that particular couple. And you know how bad she can be about her phone.”
I sounded ridiculous, of course, like I was trying to make a case for the existence of leprechauns or the Easter bunny.
“If she had a problem with her phone,” my mother snapped,“she would have borrowed someone’s and sent me a text, knowing I might be trying to reach her.”
