Then You Were Gone (5 page)

I tug the loose end of one braid. “She does this, though, you know. Takes off sometimes?”

“Yeah?”

“We were thirteen, maybe? She just—she went away one night. We had plans and she never showed.” I shrug. “She turned up, though. Totally fine. She’d, like, spent the night walking. She walked from Echo Park to Sunset Strip and
back. She just—she wanted to see if she could do it.” I pull a piece of berry gum from my purse, tear off the wrapping, and eat it.

“She did that more than once?”

“Yeah. You stop worrying after a while.” I instantly, inexplicably, want to weep.

“When’s the last time you two talked?”

“Two years?”

“And you just—grew apart?”

No. “Sort of.” No slow drift. We were inseparable and then we weren’t.

“Any idea why she reached out to you?” He waits, his face frozen and unreadable. I shake my head as he shifts his weight, uncrossing then recrossing his legs. “Well, what’s she like?”

Loves Bowie, Blondie, Red Vines, and brownie batter. Sleeps with a night-light. Loves old horror (
The Exorcist, Suspiria, The Omen
) and the
West Side Story
movie sound track. “Um, I don’t—it’s been a while, you know?”

“That’s okay.” He drops his clipboard. “Did she have anyone special? A boyfriend?”

“I—” I freeze up.

“Okay, you know what?” He waves a hand dismissively, as if to say,
none of this matters
, when we both know that’s not true. “What about her band?” He checks his notes. “David Gibbons, Julian Boyd, Gian Colangelo? Know any of them?”

No, yes, no
. “Julian.” I nod. “I don’t know him well. He’s in my lit class.”

“Do you know if he and Dakota were involved? Romantically? Sexually?”

Yes and yes
. “I don’t—I just—I don’t know that much about him. Or their relationship, really . . .”

“Okay.” His smile droops. Then, “It’s okay, Adrienne. You’re doing great.”

This freaks me out. “Oh yeah?” I look down.

“Yes.” And after a beat: “Anything else? Something you can think of that might help us find your friend faster?”

I keep my head down. “Sorry,” I say.

“Okay, well.” Walsh gets up. “You’ve been helpful.”

“Have I?”

Alice Reed is naked, her knees tucked to her concave chest.

“Get in! Fuck, it’s freezing, feels great!” Teddy says this, screaming and splashing and clinging to the pool’s edge. Lee cannonballs off a large rock. Kate wiggles out of her dinner dress and does an elegant side dive into the deep end. Everyone’s drunk. I’m dressed, halfway sober, sitting on a patio chair nursing a small glass of limoncello.

“Adrienne Knox.” Kate swims up. Puckers her painted lips. Spits water at my feet. “Get naked, get in.”

“No.”

“Yes.” And when I don’t disrobe: “Prude.”

She’s gone. Lee waves; I salute. Alice giggles, geisha-style, covering two breasts with one hand and whipping water at Lee with the other. I can see one of her nipples. Lee dunks her head underwater. Everyone laughs but me.

“Knox, pass me my drink, will you?”

There are five unmarked cups of Chianti on the patio. I get up, grab one, and pass it to Margaret Yates.

“Thanks.” She downs it, facing Teddy. “Okay, I’m ready.”

He kisses her, like couples kiss. They do this sometimes. Get drunk and screw around. Teddy likes boys but hasn’t been with any yet.

“Again.” Margaret whispers, her nose grazing Teddy’s. I’m back on my chair but can still read her lips. “Keep going, okay?” She puts his hands on her huge boobs. She loves him. She has zero interest in clothes but lets Teddy dress her like a doll for dinners.

“Stare much?” It’s Lee, one wet limb reaching out of the water. He’s playfully batting my bare feet.

“I like to watch,” I say. “Flirt much?”

“You’re not serious.” He pushes out of the pool and onto the patio.

“You look so cute together.”

“Knox, seriously?” He’s smiling, shaking water from his ear. “You’re jealous?”

Alice is doing water acrobatics in the shallow end. She does a back flip, flashing a skinny patch of peach pubic hair. “Not really,” I say, a little let down by my own apathy.

“Take off your clothes.” He grabs at me with icy fingers.

“Put yours back on.” I toss a towel over his crotch.

“Why aren’t you swimming?”

“Big dinner. Might drown.” Do I stay? Go? Being home
feels the same as being here. Crummy. “Have you tried Molly’s limoncello?” Molly: Kate’s mom.

“Gimme some.” He takes my glass and guzzles what’s left.

“It’s not Jäger,” I say, annoyed, grabbing it back. “You’re supposed to sip it.”

He winces, grinning. Then he gets up, lobs me with his towel, and does a running leap back into the night.

Lit. Murphy’s back. He doesn’t look any different—glowy or proud or more like a parent. He looks like he’s always looked: messy, exhausted, a little lopsided, preppy. Babies should change you, right? Make you seem more mature, more legit or, like, brighten your complexion?

“Essays . . .” He’s walking up my aisle now, dropping papers on desks. I look quickly at Julian, who’s looking back, impassively, while fondling the corners of his three-ring binder.

“Stick around after class, please?” Murphy says this. He’s talking low and knocking the back of my chair with his wedding ring.

“Will do,” I say, darting my eyes back to Julian. Has he talked to anyone yet? Officer Walsh? He looks a little green. Is that guilt? Gloominess? His head is down, so I look away at the wall, not sure what I was expecting to leach out of three seconds of lingering eye contact.

•    •    •

“I know,” I say to Murphy moments later, without prompting.

“So where is it?” he asks, kicking the seat of an empty institutional chair. My essay, he means. “Sit.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, just turn your work in on time.”

“No, I know. I’ve been a little—I’m not—” I stop, start again: “I’m preoccupied.”

His face darkens. He kicks the chair again. “Sit.”

I sit. I look down at Murphy’s loafers, which are splattered with something yellow and thin. Baby formula? Baby vomit? “You had a baby,” I whisper, mindlessly.

He laughs. “I did.”

I slap a hand over my mouth, mortified. “Sorry . . . Jesus.”

“No, no—no apologies. I had a baby, yeah. A girl, Adeline.”

“Sweet name.” I drop my hand, straightening up. “Congrats.”

“Thanks.” His expression settles into something earnest. “Adrienne.”

“Hmm?”

“This isn’t you.”

“What?”

“You’ve never not turned in work.”

I touch my chest as if to say,
Me?
So silly and insincere. Not sure why I do it.

“If you need to talk to someone . . .”

“I don’t need to talk to anyone.” Then, “That sounded shitty—I—
shit
.” Another hand over my mouth. “Sorry. Sorry about the swearing . . .”

He waves it off, leaning back.

“I’m okay, I just—I need an extension. On the essay.”

“Okay. So . . . what are we talking? Another week?”

I nod, shrug, push my luck: “Or, like, a week and a half?”

“Get up,” he says.

I get up.

“Okay.” We shake on it. “So . . . a week and a half from today is . . . what?”

“Monday? I mean, not this Monday, but the following Monday? . . . ish?”

“A week from Monday. The . . .” He’s doing the math in his head. “Seventeenth? Don’t quote me on that.”

I smile, thanking him breathlessly, heading for the exit.

“Adrienne.”

I stop. “Yeah?”

“Do me a favor? Just—check in with your counselor? Please?”

I wave one hand high, as if to say,
sure, absolutely
, but I give him no verbal commitment.

Me, Lee, and Kate are at some massive party off Mulholland, just above Runyon Canyon. I don’t know whose house this is, but it’s big and beige: blank walls, cream-colored carpet, vertical blinds.

“Happy!” Kate screams, shaking my shoulders, smiling psychotically. “Be a happy little bunny!”

I laugh. Kate’s crazy. Lee’s elsewhere fetching drinks. “Trying,” I say, and really, I am. I want to like my life. I want to like my friends,
myself
.

“Know what you need?”

I tilt my head sideways. Kate leans forward and plants a small, soft kiss on my cheek. Tickles. “Cute, right? Tiny kisses. My new move.”

“Totes. Super cute.”

Then: “What’re you wearing?”

I look down. Long, black jersey knit. “New dress.”

“So serious,” she says, wiggling one eyebrow. “Weren’t you having, like, a Francophile moment just last week? Baguettes, berets, Frenchy tunes?”

“I was.”

“And this?”

“Goth light.”

She wrinkles her nose.

“That was a joke.”

She settles against the white wall, taking a long sip off her gnarly Sprite bottle. “Wyatt’s here, you know.”

“You don’t say.”

“I do,” she says, her mouth splitting into a wide grin. “I say.”

I lean back too, browsing the crowd. Some Langley kids, a few from Hollywood High, but most of the faces are fresh to me. “Oh, look,” I say, extra dry, taunting Kate. I point left, at Wyatt’s head, skimming just above the crowd. “The devil.”

She stiffens and pats down her hair. “I look okay?”

“Yes, you’re perfect.”

“I was thinking I might tell him about when you and I got that nice bread from Gelson’s and ate it with those baby cornichons and that blue cheese you like with the thick crust?” I wait for the punch line. She talks on. “’Member? It was super delicious. Like, last month? We made a picnic and put on red lipstick and played Chet Baker on my laptop and ate on your lawn?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Yes, I remember, of course I remember. Why would you tell him that?”

She shrinks. “I like the way it sounds. You don’t like the way it sounds? Like we’re glamorous? Like we do glamorous things together?”

I laugh. “No, I do, I
do
like it. You’re right, sounds sensational.”

The smirk returns. She’s contented. “You okay if I go?”

“Fine,” I say. “I’ll find Lee.”

She pinches my waist. “I’m gonna go make him make out with me.”

“Good”—she’s gone before I can get the rest out—“luck.” I pull a warm piece of strawberry gum from my pocket, squish it between two fingers, then eat it. I wander away from the wall and end up by the bar, where I see Lee drinking drinks with Alice Reed. I go upstairs. More people, more vertical blinds. I slip sideways through a cracked bedroom door, past some sliding glass, and I’m outside, finally, breathing dry air that smells woody and clean, like night.

I love balconies. I want one. I feel like Juliet for an instant, super moony and romantic. I push forward, tipping myself carefully over the balcony lip. Who would do this? Toss themselves off a building or cliff or into the icy Pacific? What could possibly be that bad?

I pull back and rest my elbows against the cool, rough stucco. The city looks storybookish: dark valleys, squiggly freeways, glittery lights. I lower my gaze to the green, shiny treetops, then lower still, to the street below. A coyote. An angel’s trumpet tree. And there, parked four feet from the party: a yellow VW Bug.

I go cold. For a second I just stand there treading water, my heart spazzing out. Moments later, I’m on the street, my nose pressed to the VW’s curved back window. There’s nothing inside—no candy wrappers, gym sneakers, cigarettes. Nothing that might link the car to its owner. I look back at the house. Whoever’s car this is must be inside, right?

Back inside, too many faces. Who am I looking for? A guy? A girl? Someone who seems Dakotaesque? Pretty and pale and lit?

Kate: “Hi, hi, hi.” She’s tipsy and giddy and grabbing my sleeves. “Where’ve you been? I’ve been looking everywhere. Wyatt’s with a girl—”

“There’s a Bug out front.”

“A what?” She’s making a face—annoyed she’s been cut off. “Where’ve you been?”

“A yellow
Bug
, Katie. The car Sam saw. Should we go check the plates?” I turn, heading back toward the door.

She grabs at me. “Adrienne. You’re freaking me out.” Then, soberly: “Seriously. Do you know how many Bugs there are in Southern California?”

“I—” I start to say something sensible—
it’s a lead, a clue, it’s all we really have
—

She holds her hand up. “Please relax.
Please?
Forget her? For three seconds, just, like, forget she ever existed? Here.” She thrusts her cup forward. “Drink something.”

“I can’t.”

“Sure you can. It’s sweet, you’ll like it.”

“No, I can’t—” My eyes water. “I can’t forget her.”

Her shoulders droop. “Okay. Okay, this car. You know it might lead nowhere, right?”

“Why?”

“It’s not—
Adrienne
.” She frowns. “There are, like, four Bugs that are permanently parked on Sycamore. Four. One has a boot.”

Not getting it: “Are they yellow?”

“No, Knox, I just mean”—she grips my shoulders—“you’re obsessing over a car. A
car
. This isn’t about a car.”

“I know it’s not about a car.”

“It’s not really about Dakota, either.”

“What do you mean? It
is
. Of course it is.”

She shakes her head. “That girl is selfish, Adrienne. You know, you’re here, freaking the fuck out, and she’s either dead somewhere or alive and warm in the arms of some douchey drug dealer. Either way,
she
did this. She chose this. There’s nothing you need to sort out. Finding her, jamming all these jagged, arbitrary puzzle pieces into place,
won’t get you any closer to understanding why she shit all over you and your friendship.” She stops. Inhales. “You all right?” she asks. “You look bad.” A funny beat while she inspects my face. “You wanna go or no?”

Out of me comes a very small whimper. I wipe my eyes, feeling hopelessly frustrated. “I’m just—I’m sorry,” I say, confused and super spent. “I don’t know what I want.”

I’m on my bedroom floor with the computer in my lap, smoking my third consecutive cigarette. I’m rewatching the Dakota/Dark Star video. It’s those same loopy sounds again, only this time I notice the dancing: how she rocks gently to her own fluttery voice—pretty, unassuming, swishy movements. This kills me. Why? Because on her—the dancing and dim lights—it all looks so easy and right. Why wasn’t
I
born this way? Effortlessly cool?