Page 3 of The Missing Half

It feels as if I’ve been plunged into water. The air is viscous around me, the sounds muffled. Everything is blotted out by the woman’s words echoing in my mind.

“My sister disappeared too. Just like Kasey.”

I so rarely say my sister’s name aloud anymore—my life is a little less painful that way—the syllables thrum through me like rushing blood. Ka-sey, Ka-sey, Ka-sey. It tugs me backwards into the past, and though I try to resist, it’s like trying to hold on to a wet, writhing fish. Then suddenly, for the first time in years, I’m back in 2012. It’s the summer after my junior year of high school and Kasey is still alive.

—

I woke around nine-thirty with a dull sort of hangover. My mouth tasted like beer, and when I looked in the mirror, my eyes were black. Like I had so many times before, I’d forgotten to wash my face when I got home. My day stretched before me like all the rest that summer—a mind-numbing shift at Funland during the day, then whatever diversion Kasey and I could come up with at night.

I padded barefoot down the hall to her room, knocked softly on the door. “Kase? You up?”

I wanted to sprawl at the foot of her bed like I’d done so often these past few months, chat about the night before. It was an irregular tradition of ours, something we did whenever we had time. We’d lie together, Kasey under the blankets, me on top, our voices still thick with sleep, and we’d talk until we were both laughing so hard we couldn’t stop. It was our most beloved competition: who could make the other laugh harder. My favorite Kasey stories were the ones where she did impressions of the clumsy, fumbling guys who’d hit on her that summer. “They’re such boys,” she always said in her placid voice. “I need a man, Nic. A real fucking man.”

But it was quiet in her room today. “Kase?” I said again. When she didn’t respond, I cracked her door. Her room was empty.

At the end of the hall, our parents’ bedroom door was open a few inches, which meant they weren’t in it. The door to the bathroom I shared with Kasey was flung wide, the light off. I walked into the kitchen. Empty.

Mom and Dad had always had a hands-off parenting style. As kids, Kasey and I were downright feral, spending summers perpetually barefoot and skinned-kneed, sleeping in the same bathing suit for days on end so we didn’t have to change to go to the pool. That summer, our parents’ already long leash had been effectively cut. I guessed, because Kasey was in college now and living most of the year hundreds of miles away, they figured what was the point and then just lumped me in too. Even with both of us working nearly full-time, Kasey and I lived a little like nomads, sleeping at friends’ houses and staying out all night.

And unlike a lot of kids in town, our mom and dad both worked, Dad at the fish hatchery, Mom selling vitamin supplements from a phone bank in South Bend. They both left in the morning before we got up.

Which was all to say that waking up to a house with no one in it was not unusual.

I got ready for my shift at Funland, washing my face and pulling my hair into a ponytail. I changed into my uniform, which smelled like pizza grease, and chugged a glass of orange juice. I kept expecting Kasey to walk through the door. We both worked on Grape Road, a commercial strip home to over a hundred different businesses rife with summer jobs, places like Olive Garden, Best Buy, Payless. Kasey worked at an old record shop called Rosie’s Records about a quarter mile south of Funland. And because we shared a car, we usually drove to work together. But by the time we needed to leave, she still hadn’t come home. I checked my phone. No messages.

“Thanks, Kase,” I muttered. I was guessing she spent the night at her friend Lauren’s and was planning to get a ride from her. Lauren worked at the record shop too, and they did this often, but a heads-up would’ve been nice.

I walked into the kitchen to grab the car keys from the counter, where we were supposed to leave them, but they weren’t there, and I couldn’t remember who’d had the car last. A group of us had taken a case of beer to one of the cornfields outside town last night, but I’d gotten a ride from a friend, and Kasey had stayed in.

I searched the house. My room, her room, the living room, the bathroom. Finally, I went outside, thinking maybe one of us left the keys in the car, but when I got out there, the car was gone.

“Are you fucking kidding me.” I tugged my cell from my pocket and called Kasey. It rang through to voicemail, so I called again. Voicemail, voicemail. I shot off a text: You planning on picking me up or what?? And another: I have a job too you know. Then: Kase, wtf? I’m gonna have to run to the bus. Are you gonna pick me up tonight or are you planning on ditching me again?

I ran to the bus stop, making it to work twenty minutes late and sweating. I told Brad what happened and he gave me a grudging smile. “I understand,” he said. “Just try not to let it happen again.” Then, my attention was swallowed by balancing trays of food, exchanging arcade tickets for animal-shaped erasers, and singing Funland’s noncopyrighted birthday song. I didn’t think about Kasey again until I got off nine hours later. But when I called her, it still just rang through to voicemail. I disconnected before she could tell me to leave a message at the beep.

I felt a tick of worry, like a gear cranking one notch tighter in my chest. There was an explanation for it all, I was sure. Something had come up and she had her phone on silent. And yet, Kasey was the responsible one. Forgetfulness, spontaneity—those were my territory, not hers. I slung on my backpack and started the quarter-mile walk to the record store.

The shop air smelled like old books, and when I walked in, it was pulsing with the sound of some obscure band I’d heard Kasey play before but couldn’t remember the name of. The rows of records were overflowing, and when I walked by, I ran my hand over their edges, reminded why Kasey loved being here so much—it was like disappearing into music.

But when I looked to the front of the store, she wasn’t there. Lauren seemed to be working alone.

“Hey, Lauren. Where’s Kasey?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. She’s not here.”

“She already left?” I said. “She’s supposed to give me a ride.”

“No.” Lauren shook her head. “She didn’t leave. I haven’t seen Kasey all day.”