Page 9
Story: Rules for Vanishing
“You talked to her about it?”
He shrugs. “She’s worried about you.”
“So you mean you talked to each other aboutme,” I say.
Anthony makes a frustrated sound. He turns to face me, but I stay stubbornly put, looking straight out at the water. “Come on, Sara. We’d have talked to you if you’d say more than three words to any of us.”
“What, it’s all my fault?” I ask, turning my head to glare at him.
“We all loved Becca,” he says.Some of us more than others, I don’t tell him, because I’m not supposed to know.
“It doesn’t matter,” I whisper. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“No. It doesn’t,” Anthony says. “Because whatever happened then, I’m here for you now. I don’t know if this is a prank or a trap or if there’s really something hiding out in the woods, but I’m not letting you go alone.”
I stare at him. I feel off balance, like I’ve lurched forward and haven’t gotten my feet under me. For a moment, my body pulses with gratitude and relief—he’s doing this for me, he’s still my friend, he still cares. And then I draw back, feral anger scrabbling up my spine.
“You’re notlettingme?” I repeat.
“I mean I’m going with you,” he says. “I’ll be your partner, like the thing said.”
“I didn’t ask you to go with me,” I say.
“But you are going.”
“Of course.”
He nods, like this settles things. “Then I’m going with you.”
“You’re just assuming that I don’t have anyone else? That I want you to come with me?”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“Really? Let’s look.” I pull my phone out of my pocket, open up the messages. Scroll back and back and back, until I find the thread with Anthony’s name on it.
The most recent message is months old. It’s a birthday cake emoji. The one before that is nearly a year old.You ok?it reads.
I hold it out to him. “Two messages in a year. My sister vanishes and you don’t even bother to text.”
He grabs my phone from my hand. I squawk, but he turns hisshoulder to keep me from grabbing it back and taps the screen a few times. Pulls up Trina’s messages.
All of Trina’s messages. Once a month or so now, links to interesting news stories, funny pictures. Before that, a sparse series of texts telling me that she was around, when I was ready. And around the time that Becca disappeared? Dozens of messages. Maybe hundreds. Telling me she was worried about me. Sending me stupid memes to distract me. Asking me to come hang out. Complaining about her jackass stepfather, our homework, the weather. I answered maybe a half dozen times. Never more than a few words.
He switches to Mel’s messages. Mel didn’t say as much. She gave up earlier. But they’re there. I’d never answered Trina because her kindness hurt too much. I’d never answered Mel because she wanted to be there as my friend, and I’d stopped being able to pretend that was all I wanted, too. And so I’d let both of them—all of them—slip into absence and disconnection.
Anthony hands my phone back to me. I cradle it, thumbing the screen off, and look away from him. “You never answered their texts. So I figured there wasn’t any point trying. Which is why I came over. Your mom always told me you were sick.”
I was sick. Sick with dread and with sorrow, curled on my bed with a fist against my stomach and nausea making me shudder. I survived the next few weeks and months in a haze. If my mom hadn’t been reminding me to eat and shower and go to school, I would have just stayed in bed. Waiting for Becca to come home.
“I didn’t want to respond to ‘you ok’ when you hadn’t evenbothered to sit by me at lunch for a year,” I snap. “Look, I get it. We were friends when we were kids. High school’s different. You’ve got new friends, and you don’t need a weird loser hanging around.”
“You’re not weird.”
“You’re in the minority with that opinion.”
“Oh, come on, Sara. You can’t blame people for thinking it. You barely talk to anyone anymore. You don’t wear anything but black. Everyone knows that you go out in the woods by yourself all the time, and you’re obsessed with the whole Lucy Gallows thing.”
“I don’t care what anyone thinks about how I dress. And I only care about Lucy Gallows because Becca did. She was looking for her.”
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9 (Reading here)
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125