I Know You Remember Page 7

  Part of me, of course, just wanted to find her. But part of me wanted to find her here. Because that would mean it still matters. That the world we created together is still meaningful to her.

  * * *

  —

  EVERY WINDOW IS BLAZING with light at Tabitha’s house. I walk up the steps to the door and ring. I can hear the bell’s distant singsong through the door, but the seconds pass and no one comes. And then I make out the low rumble of voices from inside. I try the door, and it swings easily inward.

  The sound is instantly louder, the mumble of conversation over the thump of rap music playing somewhere in the house. I feel out of place the moment my eyes take in the foyer. There’s a large oil painting on one wall, of the northern lights shimmering pale green over the mountains. There’s a small table that holds a huge bouquet of fresh flowers. Even the light itself looks expensive, coming from cleverly arranged indirect fixtures, or twinkling through the crystals of the chandelier overhead.

  For a second I almost turn around. I’m an imposter here. I don’t know these kids. I don’t know this house.

  But Zahra’s been in this house, with these kids. And if I want to find out who she’s become, I have to follow her. So I take a deep breath, and I follow the sound of voices.

  There are ten or fifteen kids in a wide, luxurious living room. Most of them are white, wearing hoodies emblazoned with the words MERRILL HIGH CROSS-COUNTRY. They all stand around holding glass tumblers filled to the brim with liquid. Several bottles stand uncapped on a glass-topped bar, top-shelf vodka and tequila, a few uncorked bottles of red wine, a liter of Coke slowly losing its fizz.

  It feels almost like a party. Which seems weird, since we’re supposedly here to talk about a missing person.

  “Ruthie!” I look up to see Jeremy waving.

  “Hey,” I say. I head toward him, tugging at the ends of my hair. “I thought we were working on flyers or something.”

  “Oh, yeah, we are.” He’s holding a beer in one hand, but his eyes are clear and focused. It’s still early, I guess. “I mean, we’re gonna.” He must see something almost disapproving on my face, because he gives a sheepish smile. “Right now we’re all kind of . . . uh . . . commiserating. Can I get you something to drink?”

  I hesitate. I’m not usually a drinker. But it sucks to be the only sober person at a party. And honestly, I could do with some commiseration myself.

  “Yeah, okay. Thanks,” I say.

  “Sure.” He steps over to the bar and starts to pour. I look around at some of the other kids milling around. There’s a trio of almost indistinguishable Nordic-looking guys trying to get a fire going, arguing over where to put the kindling. Another few kids are on the sofa, all looking at a tablet. Near me, a girl with enormous hoops is talking to one with green eyeliner, gesturing emphatically with her hands as she does.

  Zahra was here just a few days ago. Probably in this room. On the sofa, by the bar. Maybe leafing through one of the nature-landscape coffee table books. No, wait—she was upset, she was crying. She’d just fought with Ben. Maybe she’d have gone to Tabitha’s room to talk quietly with one or two close friends. Maybe she sat on a back porch, staring at the moon.

  Was it the same bunch of people here that night? Did she feel out of place here, surrounded by affluent white kids with name-brand outdoor gear? Or had these people become her people, her friends? I’m white as hell and I feel awkward. But Zahra was always better at talking to people than I was, and maybe she’d found ways to fit in.

  Jeremy comes back with a cup he’s filled almost to the top. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks.” I take a sip. It’s actually not bad. Fizzy and citrusy, with a little bite.

  “Vodka tonic,” he says, watching me closely. “Hope it’s okay.”

  I cough a little, suddenly remembering: vodka was always my dad’s poison, too. But I throw back another healthy gulp and try to drown that voice. I’m not my dad. I’m not going to live in fear of becoming him.

  “Where’s Tabitha, anyway?”

  An odd look flashes across his face and is gone. “I think she’s in the hot tub.” He nods toward a clear glass door leading out to a big wooden deck.

  I take my drink and head over to the door. It’s fogged up but I can see the bubbling hot tub, a deep blue light coming up from its depths. I open the door and go outside.

  I recognize Tabitha and Marcus right away. There are two other guys in the tub with them, both white, one with a heavy arm draped over Tabitha’s shoulders.

  Marcus turns to look, his face lit blue from the tub lights. “You made it!”

  “Uh . . . yeah.” I give a little wave. “Hey, Tabitha, how’re you doing?”

  Her head wobbles as she turns to look at me. Her lips are parted, and her eyes don’t seem focused. It’s obvious she’s way, way drunker than anyone else.

  “I’m Ruth,” I remind her. “Remember? I gave you a ride.”

  She squints through the steam, then gives a dull giggle. “The trailer park girl.”

  “Sure,” I say. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Get in with us,” Marcus says, gesturing to the water.

  “Oh, I . . . I didn’t bring a suit,” I say. I’m grateful to have the excuse. Something about the whole thing makes me nervous.

  “I’ve got extra,” Tabitha says. She hauls herself up out of the water, climbing over the edge. Her body glints in the hazy light. She staggers a little, then grabs the back of a patio chair to catch her balance. “We’re mostly the same size. Except you’ve got actual boobs.”

  I feel my cheeks go warm, and carefully avoid looking at the guys in the tub. When Tabitha pads toward the door, I follow.

  Conversation goes quiet as we pass through the living room again. I see Jeremy’s eyes on us, his expression hard to read. I trail Tabitha back out to the front hall. Water pools on the hardwood below her but she doesn’t seem to notice it. We start up the stairs.

  “Your sister’s cute,” I say, looking at the family photos. A little girl with red hair and gaps in her smile beams out from next to Tabitha’s senior picture.

  “Bethany Beautiful.” Tabitha squints at the frame. “Mom and Dad are in the lower forty-eight with her this week.”

  I can’t tell how she feels from her tone—bitter or proud? Or both?

  Her room’s on the third floor, under the slanting ceiling. It’s not really what I expected. There’s a patchwork quilt on the bed. An old gray cat is curled on the pillow, sleeping next to an open sketch pad. Across the room is a mirror-topped dresser, perfume samples and high-end makeup scattered across the surface. A glitter-encrusted GOOD LUCK sign someone made for one of her races hangs on the wall, next to a screen-printed poster for the Alaska State Fair.

  I sit down on the bed and reach out to stroke the cat. It opens its eyes and trills softly.

  “That’s Mr. Pants,” Tabitha says. I raise an eyebrow and she shrugs. “I’ve had him since I was little. No one should ever let six-year-olds name things.”

  She steps toward the bed and scratches Mr. Pants on the neck. He stands up and rubs his whole face against her palm.

  “She’s not coming home,” she says suddenly.

  I give a little jump of surprise. Tabitha’s face is still soft and unfocused, but there’s something sharp working at the corners of her mouth, an acid-etched sneer. I hold my breath, waiting for her to continue.

  “She could. My dad’s there to take care of Bethany. But she said it’s just too ex-pen-sive.” She enunciates the word slowly, syllable by syllable. Her eyes well up, but she wipes the tears away angrily.

  That’s when I realize she’s not talking about Zahra.

  “I don’t even need her here, but you’d think she’d want to come make sure I’m okay. Or whatever.” She brings her face low to press it against Mr. Pants’s side. He just lies there, purring e
venly. “But it’s more important to plan for Bethany’s future.”

  “Her future?” I ask.

  She snorts through her nose. “Yeah, they’re touring a bunch of big-time gyms. For gymnastics. Next year when I go to college they’re going to move so she can, quote, ‘really’ start training.”

  “Oh, wow.” I’m not sure what else to say. But she doesn’t seem to need me to say much of anything.

  “Right?” she says. “You’d think they’d hop on a plane when they heard about Zahra, but they’re somewhere in Seattle, checking out the equipment and running background checks on all the coaches and whatever.”

  “So you’ve been alone all week?” I ask. I suddenly understand how “making flyers” turned into a party. It’s easy to imagine Tabitha wandering this too-big house in her bare feet, waiting for some update about Zahra. Thoughts spinning out with nothing to interrupt them. She doesn’t want to be alone.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “That really sucks.”

  For a moment she presses her face into her cat’s fur. Then she sits up. Her expression seems a little clearer.

  “You were friends with Zahra in middle school, right?” she asks.

  “The summer after. Yeah,” I say.

  She cocks her head to one side. “So what happened to her, anyway?”

  I frown. Her train of thought is drunkenly hopping every track, and it’s hard to follow. “You mean the night she left your party?”

  “No!” She rolls her eyes, exasperated. “No, back . . . back when she was a kid. I don’t know the details but she talks like something really fucked up happened to her. Every time she has a panic attack or some kind of emotional meltdown, it comes up.” She shrugs. “I just thought this was more of that, you know? She has these big dramas all the time. Talks like . . . like she’s a big fuckup, like she ruins everything, like she deserves to suffer or whatever. I didn’t think Friday was any different. She came in from the fight and was going on about how she deserved to lose him, she deserved whatever happened, blah blah blah. But she’s gone now. So. Maybe this time it was different. Maybe this time she . . .”

  Tabitha’s eyes go distant. Her fingers curl through the cat’s long, thick fur as she trails off.

  “She what?” I ask. “What do you think happened, Tabitha?”

  “What?” Her eyes snap back. She blinks a few times, then gets up and goes to the dresser. She leans over and rummages in a drawer for a moment, then comes up with a wadded handful of purple Lycra.

  “Here,” she says, shoving it at me. “This should work. Just come down when you’re ready.”

  “But what were you saying about . . .” I ask. But she’s already at the door.

  I can’t tell if she’s leaving because she’s drunk and scatterbrained . . . or if she just doesn’t want to answer me.

  I stand there for a moment, the suit dangling lifelessly from my hand, as she leaves. I listen as her footsteps fade down the steps.

  So Zahra’s been depressed. Anxious. Ever since freshman year . . . right after I left town. For a second I wonder if she just missed me. If the loss hit her harder than I thought. But that’s just ego talking. No, what Tabitha described sounds more like mental illness. More like a clinical thing.

  If she just wandered off in the middle of some kind of episode she might still be alive. She might still be okay.

  But if that’s what happened, it means we need to find her fast, before she has a chance to really hurt herself.

  And really—do I believe it’s a coincidence that she had an enormous, raging fight with her boyfriend right before going missing?

  I don’t know what to think. So much has changed here. So much has happened, and I have to piece it all together from scraps.

  I sigh as I put on the swimsuit. She’s right—we’re similar in size, though the shapes of our bodies are different. I can imagine her, otter-sleek in the racing suit, a triathlon number written across her muscular back. I look at myself in her full-length mirror, a different story entirely—skinny and shapeless, except across my chest. As she surmised, I’m all but popping out the top of the thing. Awkward. But there’s nothing I can do about it now. I pull my clothes back on over it. I don’t want to walk through the living room like this.

  I linger for a few moments, looking around the room. I don’t really know what I expected. Trophies, maybe. Sports equipment piled in the corners. Pictures of mountains, as sharp and craggy as her personality. But this room, cozy and almost cute, makes her look . . .

  . . . makes her look like the kind of person Zahra would actually hang out with.

  I can’t decide how I feel about that . . . if it’s reassuring to see that there might be more to Tabitha than I thought, or if it’s somehow unnerving. I turn to go.

  But then my eye falls on the drawing pad on the bed. It’s lying open, as if she’d been working on something earlier. Normally, I wouldn’t go through someone else’s things—someone else’s notebooks in particular. But I can’t help but see this one.

  It’s Ben.

  It’s a drawing of Ben, I should say. Done in charcoal, the lines loose but precise. It’s a three-quarter angle, his jaw and cheekbone sculptural, his eyes flashing bright. He looks . . . not angry, but fierce.

  Carefully, I flip through the other pages of the book. It’s almost all portraiture—a few of Zahra, a few of Marcus and Jeremy. Several of people I don’t know. There’s one, only half finished, that looks like it was meant to be Tabitha before she abandoned it.

  And there are dozens of Ben.

  Ben’s face at different angles. Ben with different expressions—pensive, tired. One of a playful little smirk. Ben’s body, running, sitting.

  I put the book back down, suddenly quite sure she wouldn’t want me looking at this. There’s something about the pictures that feels strangely intimate. Maybe Ben’s just a good model—athletic and handsome. But it feels like something more. I wonder if she’s drawn them from memory, or from photos—or if she’s drawn them from life. Does he pose for her? Does he watch as she fills in those shadows?

  And is she really scared that Zahra’s gone? Or happy to finally have Ben to herself?

  CHAPTER TEN

  BACK DOWNSTAIRS, MORE PEOPLE have arrived. Something has shifted—some threshold of drunkenness crossed—and the noise is now a throbbing chaos. I pass through the kitchen, where a couple of boys in lettermen jackets are pulling things out of the fridge, and make my way back to the living room. The fire’s roaring away now. Someone’s booted up the PlayStation and there are a bunch of kids on the couch playing a first-person shooter, shouting and groaning every time someone makes a kill. Back by the bar people mill around, refilling their glasses and talking.

  It looks like a normal party, kind of. Except there’s a weird edge of hysteria to everything. Like you could run your hand over the top of reality and wipe its sheen away to reveal the mottled, damaged surface beneath. Outside on the deck there are a couple of boys wrestling, one in a headlock. Back in the kitchen, I hear something break. There are a bunch of empty bottles perched precariously on the edge of the bar, and the sharp smell of spilled alcohol hovers over the room. It’s early, but everything has that exhausted sense that comes at the end of a party.

  I go back to the bar and top off my own glass. The tonic’s gone. I just pour vodka straight in. All around me I hear Zahra’s name—in both what’s being said and what’s not being said. The kids playing video games, the ones drinking hard, the ones wrestling on the deck. The fear is so heavy it’s like a blanket, something stiff and itchy.

  “And I still haven’t heard from Ben.” The girl who says it is the one with the large silver hoops in her ears. I vaguely recognize her from some of the cross-country pictures: Annika, I think. She’s standing with the same girl, the one with the green eyeliner, but now they’re both a little more flushed, their voices a little mor
e shrill. “As his co-captain, you’d think he’d keep me posted.”

  “Maybe he’s in jail,” says the other girl, chewing nervously at the end of her hoodie’s drawstring. Her mascara is smearing but her green eyeliner is still perfect. “Maybe they just arrested him.”

  “They can’t just arrest him without a good reason,” says Annika, but she doesn’t look so certain. She takes a big sip of her drink and grimaces. “Do you even know what they were fighting about?”

  “ANNIHILATION!” Both girls jump as a voice booms from the screen. A loud chorus of groans and cheers comes from the sofa as a character in cybernetic body armor explodes into a mist of blood. For a moment red fills the screen.

  “Would you turn that shit down!” Annika strides over to the sofa and grabs a remote control, aiming it at the screen. “God, have some respect, will you?”

  I don’t think I’ll hear anything else about Zahra’s fight with Ben, or who she might have been texting. Quietly, I head toward the door.

  There are two more guys in the hot tub. It seems weird—why aren’t there any girls? It takes me a minute to realize Tabitha’s sitting next to a different guy than before, nuzzling against his shoulder. The first one looks on with an irritated expression.

  “There you are!” Tabitha’s voice is excited. Either we’ve become good friends in the last ten minutes or she’s one of those girls that gets super effusive when she’s drunk. “You get lost on the way back?”

  “Sorry.” I hang back a little. It feels a little like I’m being served up to these guys, somehow. There’s something about the way they watch me, the way they touch Tabitha, that makes it feel almost like they think they’re entitled to something. And without meaning to, I picture Zahra in my place. Standing in front of these greedy boys, their eyes raking her skin. Of course they wanted her; she was beautiful.

  Did one of them want her enough to take her?

  I shudder a little.

  “You cold?” Marcus asks. “Come on, you gotta get in.”