LITMIR.BIZ

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those girls…

      The three of them couldn’t have been any more different from each other, Jessica with her bone-straight blonde hair, Rhonda with swirly red curls and freckles, and Madi in the middle, with her blondish brown hair cut in a jagged bob. But, in this particular picture, Madeline’s hair was dyed platinum blonde. I remembered her begging Mom to buy the dye, to let her change her hair. Rhonda and Jessica stayed over that night, helping her apply the malodorous color to her hair.

      At that point, Madeline had moved upstairs to the bonus rooms, to get away from the rest of us. I could remember creeping up those steps, slithering on my belly, as I tried to catch a glimpse of what she and the older girls were up to…

      I held the album up, studying the contours of my sister’s face. She was pretty then, and still so pretty now. A little triangle of film poked out from behind the picture of the girls. Gripping it between my nails, I slid another photo out from behind theirs.

      I gasped, staring down at the small school photo in my hand. It was a picture of a girl named Sarah Goins. She was probably in fourth grade in this picture. She and I were in the same class, but we may as well have been from different planets.

      While most kids spent their free time playing on the swings or chasing each other in a game of tag, Sarah spent her time in the dirt. She liked to make up stories and talk to herself, sometimes even pouring bits of loose gravel and dirt over her own head. Her hair was greasy and limp, her lips and eyes the color of dust balls and slate. I stared at the picture, mesmerized by the girl looking back at me. She was less of a girl, and more like a ghost.

      Sarah Goins looked haunted, but wasn’t that what they always said about pictures of dead girls?

      Sarah had disappeared in sixth grade. Everyone suspected that she either drowned in Moon Lake by accident or went crazy and ran off. She wasn’t a happy child. Maybe she did run away, but, deep down, I knew she had to be dead. Why else wouldn’t she have come back home?

      But, then, I thought about myself … I hadn’t been back home either. Until now.

      I didn’t really know Sarah well, none of us did. But a memory was rising – didn’t she give me this picture? I remembered now … Sarah, in her dirt-stained overalls, racing around the playground, a toothy smile on her face. She was handing out these photos of herself; she wanted to trade pictures with the other kids. She came from a poor family; her father dead and her mom left to run the farm on her own. ‘Mom bought my school pictures this year. Here, I want you to have one!’ She looked so happy as she thrust one of the photos into my hand. I told her thank you, and feeling self-conscious, tucked it quickly away in my jeans pocket. Next Sarah approached a group of girls by the jungle gym. ‘Here, please take one,’ she told a girl I didn’t recognize. Sneering, the girl accepted the photo and then promptly, ripped it to pieces. In a flash, she had yanked the rest of the stack from Sarah’s hands. One by one, she shredded the pictures to pieces and then, in a final dramatic gesture, she threw them up in the air. Tiny white flakes of photo paper caught in the air and floated around the playground like a miniature snowstorm.

      ‘How could you?!’ Sarah screamed, clawing at her own cheeks. Her face was so red, so angry in that moment … and who could really blame her?

      ‘She can’t even spell her own last name!’ someone shouted. ‘G-o-i-n! Do you know what that spells, Sarah! Go in! Go in! We don’t want you on this playground!’ And just like that, the other kids were chanting, their fists pumping the air, their giggles high and cruel. ‘Go in!’ they sang in chorus.

      I squeezed my eyes shut at the memory, trying to keep the tears at bay. Finally, I opened my eyes and slammed the album closed, but not before stuffing Sarah’s picture back inside.

      I climbed back into my sister’s bed and pulled the covers up over my head. I tried to force myself to sleep, but those chants wouldn’t go away. Like a broken record, or a song stuck in my head, the voices called out, ‘Go in! Go in!’

      And one of those voices was mine.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      Golden sunlight burned my cheeks, the cool bed sheets like salve on an open wound. I curled up into a protective ball, slipping further down beneath the blankets. It was way too early on a Sunday to get out of bed yet.

      ‘Where is my mommy?’ Ben’s voice was so close to my ear that it made my cheek vibrate. I pushed the covers up with my knees like a tent and watched him crawl inside it.

      ‘I don’t know, buddy.’

      ‘I don’t know, buddy. Wait, how can you not know?’ His eyes were red and raw, as though he’d been crying, and his mouth was twisted up with worry. I shouldn’t have told the truth. Sometimes it’s better to lie.

      ‘I think she had some stuff to take care of, but please don’t worry, Ben. I’m here now. I’ll take care of you until she gets back.’

      ‘Promise?’ He nuzzled his head into the crook of my arm and curled his legs around my own. My sister used to do the same thing, sometimes digging her feet into the back of my calves until they ached. The realization that he was a mini-version of her was like a bowling ball in my chest. Where is my sister? Why isn’t she back yet?

      ‘Promise. Now go wake up Shelley and get dressed, please. We’re going to Bed and More.’

      ‘What about breakfast?’

      ‘We’ll get something on the way.’ I threw the covers aside and slithered out of bed. Ben took off across the hall, shouting for Shelley to ‘rise and shine’.

      My sister had worked at Bed and More since the summer she turned seventeen. While I went off to college and the ‘big city’, as she called it – for the record, Charleston, South Carolina was nothing like the ‘big city’, in my eyes – she stayed behind, graduating from stocker to cashier, and then finally to part-time manager. I used to tease her a little bit about it. Then one time, she said, ‘Well, someone had to stay behind with Mom and Dad. I guess that someone is me.’ She always seemed to like working there; Madeline loved talking to people and was good at selling things, apparently.

      I padded down the hallway, poking my head into Ben’s room. Shelley was in there, helping him pull on a pair of sweatpants. She was a good little sister, staying patient as she fought the material over his toes.

      I went into the guest room. The bed was still unmade from where I’d slept in it yesterday, my duffel bag sprawled open on the floor. At some point, I knew I should probably hang up my clothes. I remembered my promise to stay for a while. Was Madi in some sort of trouble? Was that why she hadn’t come home?

      Digging out a pair of jeans and a tank top, I quickly got dressed and went out to the living room, peeking back out through the curtains, hopeful that Madi had returned. The Jeep was still gone.

      I checked my phone for missed calls; there were none. I tried to call Madi again, but this time, her phone went straight to voicemail. Did she turn her phone off, or did her battery die?

      I tried to keep my fear at bay, but it was fruitless – something was seriously wrong here, and today, I had to do something about it.

      It took another half hour to get the kids’ teeth brushed and they screamed and complained when I accidentally put Crest instead of the kid-flavored paste on their brushes.

      It seemed like a lot of work just to drive a few miles outside of town and check to see if Madi was at work, but I had to do something. I had to know if she was okay.

      By the time we were loaded in, it felt like the end of the trip instead of the beginning, and when I looked at my reflection in the rearview mirror, I was shocked by how hollow my cheeks and eyes looked. Without make-up, I looked sad and pale, like some sort of mental health patient. My mossy brown hair was greasy, despite last night’s shower.

      It

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