I nodded, giving her a weak smile. What wasn’t said, the dark undercurrent of her compliment: You’re not like her. I was that age now, the age she was when the trouble really started. When she ran away the first time. But I was so different, a good girl. Straight-A student. Volunteer. Captain of the tennis team. Mom and Dad didn’t have to worry about me. I wasn’t like Sarah and I never would be.
In Mom’s headlights, I could see the three bikes lined up in the garage: mine, Mom’s, and Dad’s. The police had found Sarah’s bike at the park the day she went missing, and they never gave it back to us. I pictured it in some dark evidence-storage room, a paper tag with Sarah’s name on it dangling from the silver handlebars. Black powder covering the places they had dusted it for fingerprints, the tires now flat and cracked with age, the purple paint peeling and rusted. No one would ride that bike ever again.
SARAH
THE FIRST NIGHT WASN’T that bad. The room was dark, and I was used to sleeping with the lights on. But I didn’t want to make them mad, so I didn’t say anything, I didn’t complain, I didn’t cry.
I could hear them in the next room talking, the clink of ice in a glass. Much later, the voices got louder, and one said, “A girl! We got a real girl!”
More voices, so loud I couldn’t sleep. Then someone opened the door, unlocked it from outside, and a shaft of light came in, falling on my face. I closed my eyes fast and pretended to be asleep. I had to breathe so slowly, so carefully. They didn’t come into the room, just stood in the doorway and looked at me, whispering. “There she is, I told you!”
“I can’t believe it, and she’s beautiful,” another voice said.
“Like an angel.”
“Let’s hope she acts like one.” Someone laughed.
The door closed and I heard the lock slide into place. I was alone again, in the dark.
CHAPTER 2
RIGHT AFTER SARAH WENT missing, people everywhere thought they saw her. In the shampoo aisle of a Target in Missouri. Sitting in a parked car at a gas station just outside Las Vegas. At a fall pumpkin festival in Ohio. Walking with an older woman at a Best Buy in Florida.
They called the number printed on the Missing poster and gave all the information. She was the right height, had long blond hair (or, in one case, her hair had been cut short and dyed black, to disguise her—but the person was still sure it was Sarah). She was wearing jeans and a dusty pink tank top, just like in the photo. Sometimes she was wearing sunglasses or a hat. Or the tank was white, not pink. Or her shirt had changed. And her jeans. Maybe it was a dress or shorts. Maybe it was the outfit she was wearing that day: a white sleeveless dress that came to the knee, a thin gray cardigan, and brown suede boots. But everyone was sure they had found Sarah—the beautiful, blond fifteen-year-old girl who had disappeared. Who had gone to meet her boyfriend at the park and never come home.
The police and later the Center for Missing Children followed up on every lead. They had officers question people at stores, review surveillance tapes, interview local convicts—and, perhaps worst of all, interrogate convicted rapists and child molesters—in every town where someone thought they had seen Sarah.
The first time we got a call, just four days after Sarah disappeared, my parents were sure they had found her. As if it would be that easy. Mom jumped every time the phone rang. And on that afternoon, she could see on caller ID that it was the police station. She took a deep breath, swallowed, ran her palms down the front of her pants, then picked up the phone.
It was a sighting at a Target store in Missouri, where Sarah had been reportedly browsing in the shampoo aisle. My sister was vain about her blond hair and wouldn’t use anything but a salon shampoo. It just didn’t make sense. But there she was, shopping for shampoo and wearing, it seemed, an identical outfit to what she had on in the Missing poster.
The detectives told Mom and Dad they would call again in an hour with more information. The moment Mom put the phone down, she turned to me. “It’s her, they found her. Thank God.” She sat down beside me on the couch and we stayed like that for the whole hour, waiting for them to call again, while Dad paced in the kitchen. I had this weird feeling that if I moved, if I stood up and went to the bathroom or into the kitchen for a drink, somehow the spell would be broken and Sarah would vanish again. When the phone finally rang, Dad snatched it, his face growing ashen as he listened, nodding and saying “uh-huh” every few seconds.
“What is it? What is he saying? Is she okay?” Mom whispered. Dad only shook his head. Mom covered her mouth and quietly sobbed.