738 Days: A Novel (3 page)

A loud crack echoes through the foyer. Liza’s hand across Mia’s face, I’m sure. I can see it as clearly as if I’m standing right there.

The sound and the ensuing yelp of pain send a jolt through me. That never would have happened before. My family is imploding, and it’s my fault. Two years have gone by, and I’m still stuck, still struggling.

I hurry into the hall outside my room and then start down the stairs. “I’m here. It’s fine. I’m ready—let’s go.” I pat my pocket to make sure my plastic name badge is in there.

The three of them look up at me and freeze in place, as if they forgot I was here and able to hear them. My mom is in the middle, but her arms are tight at her sides, as if she doesn’t know who to reach for, to comfort or reprimand. Liza and Mia are facing off, Liza with her arms folded across her chest and her chin tipped up defiantly and Mia holding her cheek, her mouth still an open circle of surprise and pain.

It strikes me again how incomplete they look—my mom without my dad, my sisters without me. And yet, there’s this sense of weary soldiers in the same battle; they’re in this misery together. They are a unit, somehow, formed in my absence, formed
by
my absence. And I’m on the other side of the divide, and I can’t reach them, no matter what I do. I guess that makes sense. I was the one taken, but my abduction happened to them.

The argument dies, as if my presence has sucked all the oxygen out of the room. But it still smolders beneath the surface, ready to spring to life again with the faintest breath of encouragement.

“Whatever. I’ll be outside.” Mia, blinking back tears, spins around and pushes out through the screen door.

Liza’s gaze sweeps over me from head to toe, taking in the long-sleeved flannel shirt that hides the scar around my left wrist and the loose-fit yoga pants that hide the rest of me. (So far no one at Logan’s has said anything about my very lax adherence to the dress code. Again, I’m sure Mr. Logan has something to do with that.)

Liza’s mouth pinches in, but she doesn’t say anything. Of course not. She can barely look at me. “Are you okay?” she asks me politely. As if we didn’t once share a bathtub and, according to disgusting family lore, apparently poop in unison.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I respond automatically. What else am I supposed to say?

Having established this fact, for whatever it’s worth, Liza turns on her heel and returns to the den and her stacks of law school textbooks.

“Are you sure, baby?” my mom asks, wringing her hands. “You don’t have to go. We can work on the next section of trigonometry. Help you catch up a little more.”

“No, it’s okay.” My class graduated a little over a year ago, but I still have another six months of home-school high school ahead of me. I tried to go back, tried to reconnect, but my friends had all moved on, finding new friendships, becoming different people, really. Two years is a long time to be gone in high school. It’s a long time no matter what, I guess.

One more Sunday of extra catch-up work isn’t going to make a difference.

“She’s going to work, Ma, not war. She’ll be back in eight hours,” Mia shouts from the porch. “So will I, if you care.”

“I can drive you,” my mom offers to me hopefully.

Mia gives a disgusted sigh and stomps down the steps and the path to the sidewalk without looking back. Her bright red hair, about ten shades brighter than my auburn and Liza’s hint of highlights, flaps behind her like a warning flag.

“It’s okay, Mom. Mia’s right,” I say. “We’ll be back soon.”

Any fear I might have had about venturing outside slides to the background as I rush out the door to catch up with Mia before she disappears around the hedge. Whatever might be happening just out of sight is always worse than whatever is in front of me.

The sky is a perfect seamless blue, a sharp contrast to the red and yellow leaves on the trees, and the late October sun is warm on my shoulders. Too warm for long sleeves, but I don’t wear anything else these days. It’s the kind of day where it feels impossible that anything bad could happen.

Which means I’m on extra-high alert. That’s why, as soon as I clear the hedge, I notice the battered black car idling, motor loud and thrumming, on the other side of the street a few houses down, facing us.

Is that weird, out of place? I’m not sure. It’s not a car I recognize.

“I don’t need a babysitter, Amma,” my sister says to me as soon as I reach her.

Apparently she sees no irony in addressing that statement to me using the nickname she gave me because she couldn’t pronounce my name when she was, in fact, a baby.

“I know. It’s not about that, Mia. It’s me, not you.” Which, by the way, is still the suckiest excuse in the book, even when it has nothing to do with rejection.

I steal another glance at the car. It’s a Mustang, I think. The light off the windshield changes abruptly—the movement of someone inside or a passing reflection? I can’t quite tell with the tinted windows.

My stomach grows tight, and the air feels too hot and thick to breathe. My brain produces a vision of the car roaring across the street and a man with a blurry and unidentifiable face pulling Mia inside, while I stand motionless on the sidewalk, unable to do anything.

I swallow hard, try to clear my mind and slow my breathing. Sometimes I can stave off the panic attacks if I catch them fast enough. It’s like stopping a roller coaster right at the peak of the hill: a second or two too late and there’s nothing to be done but ride it out.

The dumb part is, I’ve had enough therapy to know this isn’t really about a strange car. It’s about everything else, my fear about what might happen at the store, what might happen by just being out in the world. I’m fixating on the car simply because it’s here, a symbol of all the unknowns that I can’t control.

“I snuck out last night,” Mia announces, kicking at the dead leaves littering the sidewalk. “Did you know that?”

The shock of her announcement jerks me out of my impending panic attack, dumping me firmly into the present. “No,” I manage.

“Just a party at Sammy’s, no big deal.” She shrugs.

“Sammy who?” It clicks an instant after I ask. “Sammy Lareau?”

She gives me an odd look. “Yeah, Jude’s brother.”

“But Sammy’s my age,” I say. What I don’t say:
Why is he holding parties that high school girls attend?
“What’s he still doing here?”

“Throwing good parties?” She makes an impatient noise. “Who cares? The point is, Dad caught me coming back in. He’s sleeping on the family room couch most nights, I guess, if you didn’t know.” She shoots an accusing glance at me.

Stung, I pause for a step. No, I didn’t know that, but that’s because someone would have to actually talk to me for that to happen. And my dad, much like Liza, doesn’t seem to know what to say to me or even how to be in the same room with me for more than a few minutes.

“He woke Mom up. And when they both finished yelling at me for being ‘irresponsible and foolish,’ do you know the first thing Mom said to me?” Mia doesn’t wait for me to try to guess. “‘What if Amanda had woken up and found you gone?’” She gives a bitter laugh. “It’s like, ‘Do whatever you want, Mia, as long as it doesn’t affect Amanda.’ But everything affects you.”

The pure venom in her words burns like acid. This from my sister. The one who once followed me around everywhere, begging to be included in whatever I was doing because Liza was ignoring her, or pleading with me to play Don’t Break the Ice because Liza had declared it to be babyish.

Like I want it to be this way?
I want to shout.
Like I would ever choose to be afraid forever?
I set my teeth against the urge to grab Mia by the shoulders and shake her.

“It’s not fair, you know?” she continues. “And I can’t even get angry about it without looking like a shitty person. I mean, who gets mad at the girl who was … gone for two years?”

Gone.
That’s the polite euphemism everyone seems to prefer. Like I was on vacation or at sleep-away camp or something.

A fresh burst of frustration blooms in my chest, at Mia, my malfunctioning brain, and Jonathon Jakes for continuing to mess up my life even two years after his death.

But I keep my mouth shut. Because Mia’s right. It’s not fair. And if her yelling at me makes her look like a shitty person, then my being angry at the quality (or lack thereof) of my life “after” makes me look like an ungrateful one. I mean, I’m the “Miracle Girl,” according to the newspapers; I survived. The two girls they dug up from Jakes’s backyard were not so lucky.

So I understand a little better than Mia gives me credit for. Not that I can say that. Not that I can say anything to make it better. We are all just … stuck.

Right as we pass the car, it revs up and pulls away from the curb.

I stop, every muscle in my body screaming with tension, my hands and feet tingling, and spots flashing in my vision.

But the vehicle moves past us without hesitation.

After a moment, Mia turns around, realizing that I’m no longer with her. When she sees me, her expression softens with pity, which I hate almost as much as, well, her hatred.

“Just because something bad happened once before doesn’t mean it’s going to happen again, Amma,” she says, taking my arm and tugging me forward gently. She sounds weary and world-wise, older than sixteen. “Past performance is no guarantee of future events, right?” She waves her free hand in a breezy gesture.

I wonder if she knows she’s quoting a stock fund commercial instead of some sage philosopher. That is very Mia. She’s the ultimate mimic with little care for her source material.

But I just nod and take a breath, trying to force my lungs to accept oxygen by sheer force of will. That’s easier than trying to explain, easier than pointing out the flaw in her logic and her false sense of security.

Because what has not yet occurred to Mia—or most people, in fact—is that if that concept is true, the reverse must also be.

In other words, just because yesterday went smoothly doesn’t mean today isn’t going to fly off the fucking rails when you least expect it.

But nobody wants to hear that from the Miracle Girl.

2

Chase Henry

Why do bad ideas always seem better the night before?

Just one more—come on, man. I’m still good enough to drive.

I know this great backroom poker game. Ten K minimum. We’ll kill it.

She is giving you serious come-fuck-me eyes. You should totally get that.

Race you to the next intersection. Pussy brakes first.

I don’t know, but I’ve had enough “night befores” to realize this is a trend, not a one-off kind of a thing. And somehow, I’m still agreeing to crap. Maybe
that’s
the better thing to question.

The thick manila folder Elise thrust at me when I climbed in the car is heavy in my hands, and looking at it only makes me feel more uneasy. The labels across the front and the tab section are in all caps, screaming at me:
AMANDA GRACE.

I shift uncomfortably in the seat, the leather upholstery creaking beneath me as I stretch my legs out, bracing myself as the driver takes another turn a little too fast. “You sure about this?” I ask Elise.

Her forehead pinched in annoyance, she looks up from her phone, where she’s texting with one hand and holding on to the door’s armrest with the other. The car service she hired to drive us from our hotel in Wescott, where we’re filming, to nearby Springfield has taken her promise of a massive bonus for on-time arrival very seriously. Tires-screeching-around-corners seriously.

“That’s so cute,” Elise says, her expression smoothing out with a smile. “Your Texas comes through when you’re anxious. I never noticed before.”

I roll my eyes. “I’m not—”

“We should capitalize on that the next time you have an on-camera. Our target market will eat that up. Cowboys and shit.” Before she’s even finished her sentence, her gaze is glued to her phone again. “Just make sure it doesn’t bleed through on set. Smitty is supposed to be from here. Wherever-the-fuck-this-is, Pennsylvania,” she says dismissively.

Smitty is the reason we’re here. My first role in over two years. It’s a small part, the addict best friend of the lead, in a ridiculously small-budget independent film,
Coal City Nights
. Barely a week’s worth of work, and I’m damn lucky it’s mine. I only have it because Max Verlucci, the writer/director, was part of the writing staff on the first season of
Starlight
, and he wrote some awesome Brody-centric episodes that gave me a lot to work with
.
And it probably didn’t hurt that Max left the show before things really went to crap. Still, I had to swear to him that I’d take it seriously and I wouldn’t fuck around.

When you’re on the verge of being homeless and another too-famous, too-soon statistic, it’s pretty easy to make that promise and mean it.

Now that
Coal City
is getting industry buzz, thanks to the exploding popularity of the two leads, Jenna Davies and Adam DiLaurentis, I’m even luckier to
still
be cast. I’m not exactly Hollywood’s favorite son at the moment. Or anyone’s favorite son, to be honest. You can screw up, yeah, but you’ve got to have the fame and talent to back it up. I cashed in credit that I didn’t have yet, which only pissed people off. So now I’m trying to make a comeback. At twenty-four.

Jesus. Why doesn’t anyone ever tell you that sometimes where you start is the best it’s ever going to be?

But they don’t. And then you spend the rest of your life doing anything and everything you can to get back. Including some shit that maybe you shouldn’t.

“Elise…” I begin.

She lowers her phone with a sigh. “Chase,” she says, mimicking me with more than a hint of impatience. “It’s going to be great. There’s a fine line between innovative media use and exploitation, and sometimes you’ve got to cut it closer than everybody else to rise above the noise.”

I am not so sure about that. And my doubt must have shown through.