No, that’s not right. It’s Sarah who wants to go to the Redner’s Quick Stop. She really wanted Cherry Coke and we only have regular. That’s how it starts.
I’m like, “Seriously? It’s midnight.”
And she’s like, “I’m having a craving, okay? And you’re on your third Coke Zero today, so don’t judge me.”
So I’m like, “Fine, go get a Cherry Coke if it’s so important to you.”
And that’s when she leaves the apartment.
FYI, the whole “having a craving” thing is a lie because even though her doctor said a little caffeine during pregnancy was okay, she’s been avoiding it for seven months—or I guess five months, since that’s how long she’s known she’s pregnant—because one of those online mommy-to-be groups was saying how any caffeine at all during pregnancy would give the baby ADHD or Down syndrome or something. I remember the conversation because I had told her that’s not how Down syndrome works and if those women thought you could give a baby Down syndrome by drinking Cherry Coke then she probably shouldn’t listen to anything they have to say.
So last night when she heads out, she doesn’t really have a craving for Cherry Coke. She just wants an excuse to visit the Quick Stop because she has a crush on the guy who works the night shift. I mean, I guess he’s sort of okay-looking? Like, he has acne scars but good teeth, and I know he doesn’t smoke because Sarah says he complains that the employees who smoke get extra cigarette breaks and she tells him that she totally agrees with how unfair that is, even though, like me, she smoked almost a pack a day until she peed on that stick.
Anyway, she leaves, and of course I’m nervous about her being out that late. The Quick Stop guy isn’t a creep or anything, so it’s not that, but the walk to and from our apartment? I mean, you know what that’s like, right? So even though I’m seriously tired, I wait up and watch TV because I want to make sure she gets home okay. I mean, if your pregnant little sister goes missing or gets hit by a car or something, it’s up to you to report it, isn’t it? Or if, like, the police need to notify someone, they’ll come to you first, won’t they, since your parents don’t even live in the state anymore?
So she’s been gone about fifteen minutes and I’m sitting there, wrapped up in a blanket with my feet on the coffee table watching replays of Castellanos and Turner’s home runs from the Phillies game last night—suck it, Braves, they can win the division all they want, but they’ll never beat us in the postseason—and anyway I’m humming “Dancing on My Own” and thinking about maybe cleaning up some of the empty Coke bottles lying around because the apartment’s starting to smell, when Sarah runs through the door all out of breath, super pale—no Cherry Coke in sight. And before I can ask her what happened, she says, “I saw her.”
No, hang on, before I talk about that, what you need to know about Sarah is that she’s a scaredy-cat. Thunderstorms, the dark, clowns, porcelain dolls with those eyes that follow you around the room—all of it. She’s scared of so many things, I’ve even come up with this alert-level system to rank how scared she is. A one is your low-level standard barking dog, strange noise, home alone at night-type fears. Five is the highest
These are the code-red situations. A man following her home from work, potential death in the family, ghosts. I’m serious. Ghosts are, like, a huge phobia of hers. Phasmophobia, that’s what it’s called. I looked it up. I like looking things up, and one of the things I like looking up the most is stuff about the supernatural. Sarah and I are total opposites that way. Ouija boards, haunted houses, horror movies, true-life ghost stories—I love all of it. I even wrote a paper in college about the witch trials in Scotland and all the women who were burned to death. I can’t remember what the paper was supposed to be about, but that’s what I wrote. Anyway, I’m not saying I believe in any of it. I just find it cool. Interesting. I mean, getting burned alive isn’t interesting or cool. Poor choice of words. Fascinating, maybe?
But Sarah’s not into that stuff, especially ghosts. I mean, she once locked herself in her bedroom for an hour blaring Taylor Swift on repeat after trying to watch The Woman in Black because she thought her crush on Daniel Radcliffe would trump her fear of ghosts. It didn’t.
Anyway, she’s been like this ever since this one summer we spent at our grandma and grandpa’s house—our mom’s parents. They live in this old farmhouse in New York state near Binghamton. It’s seriously old and seriously run-down. Plus it’s in the middle of nowhere, so there’s, like, nothing out there except fields and trees and a bunch of rusting pickup trucks that we weren’t allowed to go near. No Wi-Fi, the TV reception was awful, and Grandma and Grandpa didn’t even have a DVD player. So when we stayed with them, all there was to do was run around with their border collie or play some dusty board games that had been our mom’s when she was little. If you couldn’t guess, it was really fucking boring. So once, as a joke, I locked Sarah in the cellar.
I wasn’t trying to be mean. We’d been playing hide-and-seek a lot, and she’d hid down there tons of times before. So it wasn’t like I was trying to terrify her or anything. I just thought it would make her angry. So we started playing and I counted to ten, waited a bit, then crept over and locked the cellar door. I made this big fuss of checking the rest of the house and making a lot of noise so she’d think I couldn’t find her. Then I went back to the kitchen and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
It had never taken me that long to find her before, so I figured she would get bored and give up. I waited for her to rattle the door, shout for help, call me names.
Nothing.
I can’t remember how much time passed. An hour? Maybe two? I was super bored by then, but I didn’t want to give in because I thought, Okay, she’s figured out my plan, and she didn’t want to give me the satisfaction of getting upset.
So more time passed, and Grandma and Grandpa got back from the store or came in from gardening or whatever it was they were doing and told me to get Sarah.
I sighed—very dramatically—then unbolted the door and called down to her. Told her I gave up, she won, it was time for dinner.
Nothing.
I called her some names, told her I wasn’t playing anymore. The game was over, yada yada.
Still nothing.
So I stomped down the stairs and switched on the light.
At first I didn’t see her.
I thought maybe I’d got it wrong. Maybe she’d been hiding somewhere else in the house after all. And I was about to go back upstairs when I saw something in the far corner. This little splash of pink in all the brown and rust. It was Sarah, huddled in this tiny, tiny ball, knees tucked to her chest, back pressed so hard against the wall, it was like she was trying to sink into it. She was super pale and her body was trembling and her eyes were glued to this empty spot across the cellar.
I swear I said her name fifty times before I could get her to look at me and another fifty before I could get her to move. Once I did finally get her upstairs, Grandma and Grandpa could tell something was wrong and yelled at me for tormenting her, said it was an unkind thing to do, especially
after what just happened to our Uncle Mitchell, and sent me to bed without anything to eat. But I wasn’t angry about it. I was actually really worried ’cause I’d never ever seen Sarah like that and I didn’t know what was wrong. I had no idea what had happened. I just knew it felt like it was my fault.
Sarah and I were sharing a room, and when she came to bed, I apologized like crazy. I told her I never meant to hurt her, I would never hurt her, and whatever happened, I would fix it. I would always fix it. I was her big sister. It was my job to always take care of her.
But she wouldn’t talk to me. Not for, like, another week. It wasn’t until the night after we came home that she came into my room and told me she’d seen a ghost. But that was all she’d say. I couldn’t get her to tell me what it looked like, what it did, how long it was there, anything. And I didn’t even realize how big a problem it was until that Halloween when she wet herself after she saw a little girl dressed up as a ghost.
I wanted to check it out for myself. Research, you know. But Grandma and Grandpa never had us over for a summer again, and when we do visit, they’ve never let us back in the cellar.
To this day, whatever happened down there is, like, only one of two secrets Sarah’s ever kept from me.
No, I know this isn’t a game. I know she’s not playing hide-and-seek or something. I’m not stupid. That’s not what I think she’s doing. I mean, I don’t know what she’s doing. All I know is what I already told you: the last time I saw Sarah was at the river. I haven’t seen her or heard from her since. That’s why I’m here.
No, it wasn’t her idea to go there. It was mine, sort of. Well, actually it was our Aunt Joanie’s. But it wasn’t my idea to leave the apartment. I only agreed to go because I didn’t think we’d be gone that long. I thought we’d do a quick circle around the city, not find anything, come home, go to bed.
Yes, the river was
supposed to be our last stop.
No, I didn’t run away. That’s wrong. No, what happened was that when we got there, Sarah and Jeremy ran off ahead of me like they were possessed or something. They left me behind. Not the other way around.
Yes, I did try looking for them. It was only after I couldn’t find them that I left.
Yes, I took Jeremy’s car. But I didn’t steal it. I took it so I could go get help. I’d lost my phone and I couldn’t find either of them, and the car was all I had. What else should I have done?
No, I didn’t go home first. I told you I drove straight from the river to Zadie’s. And then the two of us went together to look for them and, when we still couldn’t find them, that’s when we decided we should come here.
No, I have no idea where Sarah could be. I know she’s not home ’cause Zadie and I checked. And that was the first time I returned home since Sarah, Jeremy, and I left together late Friday night. Or, I guess it was early this morning by then. Zadie’s tried texting and calling Sarah, but Sarah hasn’t answered and her phone goes straight to voicemail. If Sarah’s tried to text me, I wouldn’t know ’cause I don’t have my phone, like I said. But if Sarah still has her phone, I don’t know why she wouldn’t respond to Zadie.
So no, I don’t know where Sarah is and I don’t know what’s happened to her. All I know is that the last time I saw her, it was at the river. And she was with Jeremy. So why don’t you find Jeremy and ask him? And once you do, why don’t you ask him about the last six months, or the last year? See if he can keep his story straight? Because I bet you he can’t. He is such a liar. You can’t believe anything he says. So when you do get the chance to ask him about last night, he’ll make something up, I know it. He’ll say something like, it all started when he came over because he always thinks the story begins and ends with him. But last night? He can’t know how it all started because he wasn’t even there. He didn’t show up until after Sarah got back from the Quick Stop and told me what she saw.
So, yeah, like I was saying, Sarah bursts through the door and goes, “I saw her.”
Now, it’s just after midnight and I haven’t slept much lately, so my brain is all over the place. Which is why, when Sarah says that, I’m like, “Who?”
It’s a stupid question because there’s only one person Sarah could be talking about, and Sarah knows it’s a stupid question so she doesn’t answer. Just stands with her back pressed to the door like some monster is going to bust its way in.
So I say, “What do you mean you saw her?”
It takes her time to answer, and it’s the quiet that bothers me most. Sarah’s such a chatterbox, it doesn’t mean anything good when she goes quiet. Like with the cellar, you know? I’m afraid, when she does answer, she’s going to say something, like downstairs or outside the gate. So I get up and go to the window. I look down at the gate to our building, bracing myself, but there’s no one.
Finally, Sarah says, “Near the Quick Stop.”
And I say, “What was she doing?”
And Sarah says, “Standing there.”
And I’m like, “Standing there?”
And Sarah’s like, “Yeah. Facing away from me. Facing the brick wall of the parking garage.”
And I say, “Did you see her face?”
And Sarah says, “No.”
And I’m like, “So how’d you know it was her?”
And Sarah shouts, “Because she was wearing the same fucking clothes!”
So I close my laptop. Now Sarah can see I’m taking this seriously ’cause I only
stop watching Phillies videos if it’s something important, but she still won’t move away from the door or say more about what she saw. She just keeps looking down the hall toward our bedrooms, like she’s suddenly going to see something else. I go back and look out the window again, but nothing’s there. Nothing I can see.
So I say, “She’s come back. That’s all. She’s finally back.”
Sarah doesn’t respond, so I say, “I guess Jeremy wasn’t lying. I guess he really did drop her off at the bus station.”
Then Sarah starts sobbing.
She’s never been much of a crier, but she’s cried a lot these past seven months. It’s the pregnancy, I guess. It’s changed her a lot.
So I go to her and tuck her hair behind her ear and rub her back and I’m about to tell her let’s both just go to bed and figure this out in the morning.
But before I can get the words out, she starts saying, “She can’t be back. It’s impossible. She can’t be back. She can’t.” And she sinks to the floor and tries to tuck her knees to her chest like she did in Grandma and Grandpa’s cellar, but she can’t because of her belly. So she lets her legs drop and hides her face in her hands instead. All the while, she keeps talking but not making much sense.
“All I did was cross the road,” she says. “I crossed the road and I glimpsed this woman, but her back was to me. I looked away and when I looked back she was still there. Just farther away. But I never saw her move. It was like … it was like she was a piece on a board game that had been picked up and put somewhere else. So I got closer, and that’s when I saw what she was wearing. Jeans and a T-shirt. A T-shirt with tour dates on the back. And I was thinking how I have that same shirt. How I used to have that same shirt. And then I realized … And then I saw …”
Sarah lowers her hands and says, “It was the same shirt. My shirt. With the bleach stain at the bottom and everything. And when I noticed the bleach stain, I noticed her hand. It was down at her side, and there was blood on it. And on her wrist. And it was dripping onto the sidewalk. Then she raised her hand to the wall and started scratching at the bricks with her fingers. The rest of her body was completely still. But she kept scratching and scratching, like she was trying to dig one of the bricks out of the wall, and she tore off one of her fingernails and it stuck to the brick in blood, but she kept scratching and that was all I could hear. Her scratching. And I ran. But I can still hear it. This scritch-scritch-scritch. And it won’t stop until she gets a brick out, and once she gets one out, once she has a brick in her hand,
she’ll … she’ll …”
At this point, Sarah breaks down again, and I cradle her head in my lap while she cries.
I want to tell her she was imagining things. That she didn’t see what she thought she saw. That everything is fine. But I don’t say any of that because all I can think is, Fuck, it’s not over, is it?
While Sarah’s crying, I look up at the fridge, and stuck on the door is the business card you left us back in May. I’m surprised it’s still there. That it hasn’t slipped down in the crack between the fridge and the counter, with all the Chinese takeout menus.
But I don’t call you then because that’s the moment Jeremy decides to show up. And I should’ve told him to fuck off home and leave us alone but I didn’t, and now I’m sitting here in this tiny room picking pieces off a Styrofoam cup, trying to explain the last six hours of my life.
Have I seen who? This girl? No, I don’t know her. Who is she? Does she have something to do with Sarah?
No, I honestly don’t know who she is.
No, I don’t know if Sarah knows her, but I don’t know all Sarah’s friends.
Gemma?
This isn’t Gemma.
Because Gemma didn’t have red hair. And this girl looks shorter and her face is a lot rounder. No, this girl looks nothing like Gemma. At least not the Gemma I knew.
Yes, when Sarah said she saw her last night, she was talking about Gemma, but she didn’t mean whoever this is. She meant our Gemma.
“Gemma” is what she told us to call her, but no, I never actually saw anything official with her name on it—no ID, no credit cards. When she showed up that day, she just said, “You can call me Gemma.” I guess that’s not how people usually introduce themselves, is it? You say, “I’m so-and-so.” Then maybe if you have a nickname or something you might add, “But you can call me …” Like, I had this friend in college, and she always said, “Hi, I’m Francesca, but you can
call me Frankie.” But that didn’t happen with Gemma. It was more like she wanted to try the name on for size.
Or maybe I’m reading too much into it.
Anyway, she was the last person to stop by the apartment that day, so it was already five, maybe six? I just remember it was the last day of the MLB Winter Meetings in San Diego and the Phillies hadn’t signed Trea Turner yet, but I wanted to hear all the updates on MLB Network. They would end up signing him the next day, but I didn’t know that then, so I wanted to listen to Harold Reynolds talk about everything that was going on instead of listening to any more idiots talk about why they would be the perfect roommate. Sarah actually likes people, so for her the interviews weren’t a big deal. But for an introvert like me? God, it was hell. It didn’t help that every single person we’d interviewed was so fucking weird.
Like, there was this one hippie girl who didn’t use deodorant and looked like she hadn’t brushed her hair this millennium. I actually sprayed some air freshener around after she left. And then there was this other girl who only knew, like, two words in English. And I’m not a racist or anything but how are you supposed to live with someone when you can’t even talk to them, you know? At least she didn’t smell. Then this guy showed up even though our ad clearly stated “Women only.” His name was Taylor so I thought it was a girl, which was why I invited him. It took him, like, twenty minutes to accept that we weren’t making any exceptions no matter “what a great guy” he was. Then there was this other girl who wouldn’t shut up about cats. I mean, literally every other word out of her mouth was cat. Cat this and cat that and how she used to rescue and foster cats and weren’t cats great and didn’t we love cats and wouldn’t our apartment be perfect for cats and we could install a cat tree there by the window.
And, okay, so I admit this wasn’t the most mature thing to do, but I looked her dead in the eye and I barked. I did. No words. Just barking. In her face.
So anyway, by the end of the afternoon my patience was super thin. I was like, “I hate our parents.”
And Sarah said, “Maybe we should ask Jeremy if he wants to move into the spare room? You know how hard it is for him at the house.”
And I said, “God no!
He hangs out enough as it is.”
Catwoman was the last person we were expecting, so once she left, I changed out of my nice jeans and put on my comfy sweatpants and went to the kitchen to grab my snacks, and I was just pulling a bag of Doritos out of the pantry when there was this knock at the door. I looked at Sarah, but she just shrugged.
So I went to the door to see who it was, and as soon as I opened it, this voice said, “I’m here about the ad.”
It was a girl around my or Sarah’s age. Hard to pinpoint exactly ’cause she looked young but had dark circles under her eyes and she wasn’t wearing any makeup. Her face was longer than this girl’s here, though, and more pointed. Pointed chin. Pointed cheekbones. And she had darkish brown hair. Looked like her natural color, or at least I couldn’t see any roots, and it was a bit greasy, like she’d gone a few days without washing it. She didn’t smell, though, and her clothes were clean—a pair of jeans and this plain dark blue T-shirt. She wasn’t wearing a coat, which I thought was weird considering it was December, but temperatures were pretty mild that week, like in the fifties, and some people are always warm anyway. She did have an old Adidas gym bag with her, a massive black-and-white one, the kind big enough to hold a body.
Anyway, she stood there waiting, and I didn’t say anything ’cause my first thought was, “You don’t have an appointment.” But I knew that would’ve sounded rude and because of the barking incident, I was trying really hard not to be rude to anyone else that day, so instead I stood there like an idiot until Sarah finally said, “Oh! We weren’t expecting anyone else.”
Which was exactly what I was thinking, but the way Sarah said it, it came out all nice and sweet.
And this girl said, “Sorry I didn’t email,” and “I can go if you want,” and she might’ve
said, “Is the room taken?”
Honestly, I wasn’t paying much attention at this point because my stomach was growling and my Doritos were right there on the counter, but if I opened them I would’ve had to offer some since that would’ve been the polite thing to do, and I didn’t feel like being polite.
But Sarah said, “No, it’s all right. Come on in.” And she went to shake the girl’s hand but the girl didn’t offer hers, so Sarah pulled hers back sort of awkwardly, then offered the girl a seat. Sarah and I sat on the sofa and this girl took the armchair, and Sarah introduced the two of us and that was when the girl said, “You can call me Gemma.”
I let Sarah take the lead on the questions ’cause I was still afraid I might say something rude. So Sarah asked the usual: “Where are you from? What brings you to Reading? How long are you looking to stay?”
I can’t remember exactly what Gemma said. I mean, it’s been almost a year—ten months, I guess—since then and I never thought … but anyway, I do remember how she answered the questions. I mean, like, her body language. If you would’ve been there, you’d probably have a better understanding of what it all meant. You probably would’ve decided not to have her as a roommate. That’s a big part of your job, isn’t it? Interviewing people. Understanding them. But me and Sarah, we’d never had to do anything like that before, right? So I just chalked it up to Gemma being nervous around a bunch of strangers.
Anyway, there were, like, two ways she’d answer a question. She’d either look down at her hands like she was holding something that wasn’t there, or she’d glance over her shoulder, like she thought someone was standing behind her. There wasn’t. That armchair’s against the wall. And she never once looked us in the eye. It was the way she spoke, too. Like, sometimes she’d speak really fast, like she couldn’t get the words out quick enough, and other times she’d speak so slowly I couldn’t tell if she was finished with her answer or not.
We eventually got the basics out of her—she was originally from New Jersey, had spent a few years in New York and Philly, wanted a change of scenery. Said something about working in hospitality and tourism, ...
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