I didn’t want to waste my time flirting with high school boys who’d laugh if they knew we were only twelve. I totally looked twelve, but Sarah didn’t.
She looked older.
“Don’t be such a downer.” Sarah had been smart. No sweatshirt for her, only a T-shirt that she was currently taking off, revealing a bright pink bikini top underneath. She had boobs and I was still pretty flat, but I wasn’t jealous. Not really.
“I’m not. I just . . . I don’t care about boys today. I wanna have fun.” I smiled at her and she smiled in return.
“We’re definitely going to have fun. And boys are fun. You just haven’t figured that out yet.” She rolled up her T-shirt and shoved it in the purse she’d brought with her. “Now let’s go on the Ferris wheel.”
I frowned. How lame. “Seriously?”
“We’ll start out small.” Her devilish smile grew. “And save the big one for later.” She pointed at the giant white roller coaster looming ahead of us. At that particular moment a train of cars went flying by, the passengers all screaming, most of them with their arms in the air, their hair trailing behind them.
My heart picked up speed just watching them. I couldn’t wait.
“And then what happened?”
The reporter’s voice knocks me from my thoughts. I’d become lost in them, after not having visited those particular memories in so long. Everyone always focuses on the bad stuff, including myself. What he did to me. How long he kept me. Where he kept me. How he chained me like a dog and blindfolded me and I couldn’t see anything and I was so incredibly scared that I peed my pants when he peeled the blindfold away from my eyes that first time. I knew by the determined look on his face what he was going to do to me.
But I didn’t really know because my sexual education wasn’t much beyond a few YA books I’d read with very tame sex scenes and those awful movies they show at school about getting your period and hormones and stuff.
“I had fun that morning,” I say, my tongue thick in my mouth because I did have fun that morning and there’s a hint of bittersweet in those memories. Sarah and I were laughing and being silly, which should make me smile. But it’s so painful to remember the good moments of that day. They’re completely overshadowed by the bad. “We met my parents for lunch at the food court, just like we promised. I had a corn dog.”
The details are still there, a little hazy, but the more I talk, the clearer they become. I remember the seagulls that divebombed the tables as we ate. How I dropped the last bite of my corn dog on the ground and the white-and-gray bird swooped in, stealing it before I could even snatch it back.
Not like I would’ve eaten it, but still.
The reporter smiles, trying to put me at ease I’m sure. “It was a nice day with your family and your best friend.”
“Yes.” I nod, thinking of Sarah. How we grew apart after everything that happened. How she didn’t like to be around me because I made her uncomfortable. She told me that once, both of us crying and not understanding why we couldn’t get back to that place we’d been before, when we were best friends. She’d blurted it out, clamping her lips shut the moment the words were said. She looked like she wanted to take them back.
But she couldn’t. It was too late. She felt guilty, she said. She hadn’t protected me, and I thought that sounded like a crock of crap but I didn’t argue with her.
By high school we were strangers. She wouldn’t even look at me when we passed by each other in the hallway between classes, and I heard rumors that she said bad things about me. I don’t know if any of it was true.
After I left, I never saw her again.
“Do you still talk to Sarah?” the reporter asks, as if she can reach into my brain and know exactly what I’m thinking. I’d heard that she’s incredibly intuitive and I should be on guard. She knows just how to get information out of people before they even know they’re offering it.
“No.” I shake my head, hating how the word comes out like a rasp of breath. The loss of her friendship was the second hardest thing to take, behind my losing my father’s affection. Mom and I grew closer. Unbelievably, Brenna became my best friend and closest confidante. She still is.
But that’s because I have no friends. I let no one new in. And my old friends abandoned me. Or I abandoned them.
I’m not sure which happened first.
“Maybe she felt too much guilt, after what happened. Do you think she felt responsible for your disappearance?”
“No. I don’t know.” The words rush out of me and I sound defensive. Young. I swore I would remain cool and composed and the reporter—her name is Lisa—promised she wouldn’t ask me uncomfortable questions. She would wait for me to volunteer information.
But I bet she thought the uncomfortable stuff would deal with Aaron William Monroe. Not my long-lost best friend.
Lisa’s staring at me right now, trying to pick apart my brain, and I shutter it closed, pressing my lips together so no unwanted words escape. I’ve created all sorts of defense mechanisms over the years and this is one of them.
“Tell me what happened after lunch,” Lisa says.
I take a deep breath and hold it, wondering what I should say first.
This is where it gets harder.
I hear someone else say her name for the first time in years and it stops me cold.
Turning, I glance at the TV where it hangs on the wall of my narrow living room, squinting at the screen. I don’t have my glasses on and I scramble for them in my haste, finding them on the counter mere inches from where I stand in the kitchen, and I shove them on my face.