Then You Were Gone (3 page)

“On his way.”

“You called him? You told him?”

“Babe, come’ere, yes.” She clutches my head to her chest. Something wet drips into my hair part.

“Are you
crying
?” I sit up. “Stop it.” She’s blubbering. Her boobs are heaving and she’s swiping her tears away faster than they’re falling. “We don’t know anything yet. Don’t act like that.”

“She was so small, when you guys were kids, remember? Just—really tiny.”

“Stop!” I have to sit on my hands to keep myself from slapping her. The sadder she gets, the more miserable I feel. I don’t want to picture small, sweet Dakota. Ten years old—stringy hair, at the back of the bus with her lunch pail. That girl faded once puberty hit, and in her place grew something dark and shiny and diamond-hard.

“She needed
parents
, better guidance, love—”

“Please,” I plead, and Lee yanks me to my feet, pulling
me away from my mother and into the kitchen.

“Look at me,” he says sharply, grabbing my chin and backing me against the fridge. “She loved her too, okay?”

Immediate remorse. Lee exhales and I wind my arms around his torso.

“We don’t know anything yet, okay?”

“Okay,” I say. I cling a little tighter.

Sam spends all Saturday afternoon buying me crap. Stuff I normally love that I just can’t choke down now—chocolate croissants from Casbah Café, hazelnut gelato from that place on Hyperion, a fish taco from my favorite stand on Sunset. I take two bites and he finishes the rest. Later on, we walk the Silver Lake Reservoir twice. It takes about an hour, and I make Sam tell me all over again each detail from the previous Sunday.

“She kicked the car, you’re sure?”

“Right, a couple of hard kicks,” Sam says.

“And you’re sure it was yellow?”

“Absolutely,” he says with a firm nod. “Yellow and dented and old.”

I watch the lake: stagnant, glossy, black. Nothing like seawater. Still, I make myself see it: Dakota floating faceup. Facedown. Drifting along the cement shoreline. The image won’t stick. Doesn’t feel real.

•    •    •

Sunday’s like this:

Lee picks me up at ten a.m. and takes me to Kate’s place. They’ve plotted my perfect day: packaged snacks from Little Tokyo (rice crackers, red-bean cakes, mochi balls), Zeppelin and Deep Purple on the stereo (seventies metal, my fave), G&Ts by the pool (a tradition Kate cooked up last year after reading
Play It As It Lays
by Didion: afternoon cocktails, sixties casual-wear, bleak tête-à-tête). Kate even gives me my very own copy of
The Secret Language of Eating Disorders
by Peggy Claude-Pierre, a book she’s been inexplicably obsessed with since tenth grade health ed.

“Thanks,” I say. I flip through the book, sip my G&T, watch Kate and Lee stuff their faces with powdery rolls of mochi.

“Have some.”

“No.”

They look at each other. They look at the pool, they look at the pig. “Darla,” Kate coos, and Darla waddles across the lawn, toward me. “She’s incredibly sensitive,” Kate insists, licking white dust off her fingertips. “She wants to kiss away your woes . . .”

I pat the pig’s rump, then scooch forward, slipping my feet into the cool pool.

“Should we swim?” Lee says.

“That’s okay.”

“Play something?” Kate offers. “Boggle? Apples to Apples?”

“No.”

“Want to go somewhere?”

“Not really.”

“Bake something?”

“Uh-uh.”

They’re stumped. Wound up. They want me fine again but can’t figure out a way to make me feel fine.

“What do you miss?” Lee asks, abruptly.

“What do you mean?” I say back.

“About Dakota.” He’s forcing a small mound of dirt between two clay patio tiles. “What, specifically, do you miss?”

“I don’t know,” I mumble, unable to come up with anything definitive on the spot. She wasn’t the nicest person, or the most loyal or loving or true, but we spent years knowing only each other. Why can’t that count?

“Can I use your computer?” I say to Kate.

“It’s in the den,” she says, reaching for my hand and squeezing my pinkie. “Knox, hey.”

“Hmm?”

“It’s gonna be okay,” she says.

I give a small smile and squeeze back. Then I pull my feet from the pool.

•    •    •

Later, around nine, Lee parks his mom’s Range Rover half a mile from my house. “You’re sure you feel like it?” he asks, killing the engine. We’re on the edge of Elysian, overlooking Dodger Stadium.

“Sure I’m sure.” I climb over the armrest and into the backseat. “Get my jeans?” I undo my fly and let Lee tug down my pants. I pull off my cardigan and frayed white tank. “Take off your shirt,” I tell him. He doesn’t. Instead, he kisses me.

Is this love? Shouldn’t I feel happy or high or both? Is Lee’s love worthy of song lyrics and sonnets? Is this what love was like for Jane and Rochester? Or Dakota and Julian? Did their love feel safe and smothering, like a blanket?

“Adrienne?”

“Hmm?”

He slides a hand between my legs.

Monday, and I’m back at school pondering cars. Everyone here looks pale and shell-shocked. The place even smells off—different disinfectant? Whatever it is, it smells sad.

“You’re here.” It’s Kate, at my locker.

“Yeah, well, it was either this, or stay home and stare at the ceiling.”

She sips her cafeteria coffee. “There’s an assembly last period. Suicide prevention.”

My stomach goes bananas. “Walk me to lit?”

We stroll. The halls are silent, like church. We stop just shy of Murphy’s classroom. “You’ve got a sub,” Kate says, peering past me.

I whip around. “That guy.” Bald, spacey suspender dude. “That guy subbed my human development class last spring. Super-hands-on.”

“Really?” Kate passes me her coffee cup, then uses both hands to tuck her T-shirt into her jeans.

“I’m kidding.”

“Oh.” She takes the cup back. “Maybe Gwen had her kid?”

“Maybe,” I say, picturing a squished newborn version of Nick Murphy. “When do you have trig?”

“After lunch. So we’ll see, I guess.”

Babies. Suicides. “Life cycles, right?”

Kate blinks, tilts her head, walks off. I take two steps toward class, then, rethinking, quickly pivot and head outside to the student lot.

Within minutes, I’m weaving between cars, searching for rusty and round and yellow. I touch the ones I like. A diesel Mercedes. A Carmengia. An old Land Rover. A khaki Jeep. I walk and I weave and I wade for a while, but no yellow Bug materializes.

•    •    •

Suicide-prevention brochures, warning-sign checklists, crisis-center locations,
We miss you, Dakota Webb.

I’m at the back of the auditorium with Kate, Lee, and Alice Reed. Lee’s holding my hand but I don’t like how it feels: clammy and warm and too tight. Dr. Strange is at the podium babbling mopey nonsense. Two kids two rows back are heatedly debating Dakota’s vanishing: suicide vs. murder vs. runaway madness. I get up.

“Where’re you going?” Kate whispers.

“Bathroom.”

“I’ll come.” She starts to stand—

“Don’t. Please?”

—then drops back down.

“I’ll be back. I’m okay. I just—I can pee on my own.”

I’m off. Out the tall double doors, into the blue, bright hallway, past the restrooms, out the exit. I’m not even sure where I’m headed, but at least now no one’s watching me or clutching my hot hand.

I end up across the quad, Dakotaland, where the weirdos hang out. And look, there’s Julian Boyd, crouched on the ground, five feet from a Hacky Sack circle, smoking and biting his cuticles and just looking generally low.

I bum a cigarette. I don’t smoke, but I bum one off some lanky skateboarder wearing a belt made of rope. He lights it for me. I inhale. My head fills with white space. “Hi, hello,” I hear myself saying, not to the skateboarder, but to Julian. He doesn’t respond. So I try again. “Julian,” I say, louder this time. He looks at me, grinds his cigarette into the grass, and walks off.

I wonder what kind of car he drives.

Mom is at the kitchen counter, chopping white onion for guacamole. “. . . the props guy is new. We met up with Locations earlier—we’re trying to get a concrete feel for the space.” She stops, nibbles a piece of parsley, turns to me. “Too much?”

“What?” I look up from my mound of mashed avocado.

“Work talk. You look bored.”

“I’m just”—I laugh a little—“out of my freakin’ mind, ya know?”

She cracks one knuckle. Passes some parsley. “Eat that. It’ll ground you.”

I eat it. “Tastes like weeds,” I say, swallowing, grabbing two tomatoes out of the sink. “What am I doing with these?”

“Cut ’em in half, scoop the seeds out.”

“Can I have that?” I wiggle my finger at the serrated knife.

She passes it. Wipes her teary onion eyes. “I called Emmett earlier.”

I stop slicing. Look up. “Why?”

“To check in. See if he needs anything.” I make a sour face.
“What?”
she says. “He has no one.”

“Whose fault is that?”

“Babe.”

“Just sayin’. No one’s nominating the guy for any Stepdad of the Year awards.”

“Shush, please.” More parsley. “Dakota wasn’t the easiest kid.”

“Wasn’t?”

“Isn’t.”

“So,” I say, nudging tomato sludge into the trash with my nails. “How’d he sound?”

“Weird. Which is right, right? How else would he sound?”

“Weird, like, how?”

“Weird, like,
fine
, I guess. Just thought he’d sound a bit more shaken up.”

“Well, what’d you talk about?” I ask.

“I just, ya know, offered my sympathies. Asked if we could bring anything by.”

“And?”

“He said ‘no thanks.’ That he appreciated the offer. You done?” She gestures at my avocado/tomato mash.

“Here.” I pass both. She dumps everything into one bowl.
Does some quick mixing. Squeezes two lemons. “Did he sound sorry?” I say.

“What do you mean?”

“Like, did he sound
sorry
? That she’s gone?”

“You can’t tell that sort of thing over the phone.” She digs a chip into the guac and waves it at me. “Here. Taste test.” Then, “Besides, people process their crap differently.”

“It’s good,” I manage, mouth full. And, “I thought everyone processed their crap exactly the same.”

“Funny,” she says, pulling me close, pushing my face against her chest.

“Can’t breathe,” I cry, writhing, whining.

“Shut up, please?” She kisses my forehead, hugs me harder. “I need to squeeze my kid.”

My back is flat against Lee’s locker. He’s nuzzling me.

“I called twice last night.”

I heard. Saw my cell screen blink. But the thought of talking—to Lee, to Kate—just seemed unnecessarily exhausting. “I was busy.”

“With what?”

I shrug. Lee pulls back. He has that glazed look guys get when they’re super-sexed-up. “Can I see you tonight?”

He’s high off Range Rover Sunday. “Don’t know,” I say. “Maybe?” I stupidly thought sex with Lee might obliterate that relentless tug in my gut, but—

“Maybe?”

Didn’t work.

“Do you know anyone who drives a yellow Bug?” I say, switching subjects.

“A Bug?”

“Yeah.”

“What, like, a Volkswagen?”

“Uh-huh.”

“No.” He thinks about it. “I mean, maybe. Not sure. Why?”

“Sam saw Dakota last Sunday in a Bug. Or, getting out of a Bug. She was fighting with someone.”

“Sam
saw
her?”

I nod, speedy now. High, almost. “He talked to an officer this weekend. They’re looking into it.”

“Huh.”

“They want to talk to me, too.”

“The police? But you don’t know anything.”

“Her phone records. They saw the call.” He doesn’t say anything back, so I talk on. “The Bug, though. That’s, like, a lead, right?”

“I guess.”

“You guess?” I step backward and let go a small, irritated huff. “You don’t think that’s a little strange? Dakota gets into some huge blowout with some mystery guy, then,
poof
, she just disappears?”

“I dunno, Knox. Sure, maybe.” He pauses, readjusts his backpack. “You know she brought mescaline to Teddy’s barbecue last year? His parents were there. Who brings psychedelics to a family barbecue?”

“She was at Teddy’s? Do they even know each other?”

“Knox.” His cross-eyes say I’m missing his point. “She screwed Anna Clark’s boyfriend. That guy who tours with Jason Sheer?”

“The guitar player? Isn’t that guy old?”

“Bass. And he’s twenty-four. She went home with him after a Dark Star show.”

“How do you know that? You don’t even know those people.”

“Chris Clark, Anna’s brother. He’s on my soccer team.” A beat. Lee makes a strained face. “I just . . .”

“What?” I say. “You
what
?”

“I don’t know.” He walks, mussing his hair with one hand. “I kinda think . . .” Laughs. “I kinda think it’s a big pile of horseshit. I think she’s fine, I think she’s fucking with everyone, I think you’re falling for it. I’m watching you—you’re getting all obsessive and invested and—”

“I’m not obsessive. Jesus, Lee. I’m flipping the fuck out because my friend might be—”

“Your
friend
?”

One of my cheeks—the left one?—is throbbing as if it’s been hit. “Fuck you.” My eyes pool. I turn on one heel and walk toward the restroom.

“Adrienne.”

I don’t stop.

“Hey,
Adrienne
.” Lee catches up with me, tugs on my
arm, flips me around. “Stop, okay?” Wipes my wet cheeks. “Stop crying, I’m sorry.” He kisses me. Our mouths are hot and soggy. “I just—” He pulls back, head shaking, chin wrinkling. “I don’t like her.”

I want to scratch, smack, set something on fire.

“I wish—I want you to forget her.”

“
Forget
her?” More irate tears. He curls an arm around me. I try wriggling free.

“Stop squirming.”

“You don’t get it.”

“I do, I get it, you’re worried.” His face goes lax. “Adrienne, I just—I want you to feel better.”