A sharp noise breaks the silence. An alarm? I blink. I’m in my bedroom, on Stan’s side of the bed. My cell phone blares in the dark. It sounds angry.
I lean out and click on the bedside light. With clumsy fingers I pick up my phone.
It’s not the police or Jo, who was my second guess, but Angie Costin. Her profile pic’s a selfie of her grinning so hard it must’ve hurt. Some app has turned her skin to peach plastic.
I clear my throat: “Hello?” I sound scared.
She yelps my name: “Dana?”
“Angie?” I say, confused. We’re friendly enough, or pretend to be, but don’t call each other late at night. Something must be wrong.
Angie’s voice is loud. “Have you seen Gemma?”
“Gemma?” I parrot. I rub my eyes. “Uh, no.”
“Are you sure?” Her voice shakes. “I just checked her room. She’s not here!”
I pinch my forehead, still struggling to wake up. “Have you tried calling her?” Chad’s never far from his phone.
“I confiscated it,” says Angie tightly. “After that exam trouble.”
“Oh. Right,” I say, abashed. I should have done that too, or found some other way to punish Chad. Instead, I let it slide. You know you’re in trouble when Angie Costin outperforms you as a mom. “Um, sorry,” I say. “I haven’t seen Gemma.”
For a moment, the phone’s silent. The house is quiet too. I can only hear the ocean scraping the pebbles.
“Where could she be?” moans Angie.
Rubbing sleep from my eyes, I recall sneaking out as a teen—or telling my mother I was sleeping at Jo’s place. Her mom was too tired to keep track of us. When she wasn’t working two jobs, she was passed out on their saggy sofa.
Looking back, those teenage nights felt endless. Me and Jo, arms linked, stumbling through the dark town. Riding in cars with boys. Guzzling booze that smelled like cheap bodywash.
Despite our drunken stupidity, nothing really bad happened. I lost my new leather jacket. Someone’s drunk uncle groped Jo. We weren’t gang-raped or murdered.
Angie’s voice cuts through my reverie. “Can you ask Chad if he’s seen her?” She sounds accusatory, like my son’s led her princess astray.
I sit up straighter and bite back a snappy response. Maybe I’m oversensitive. My head’s fuzzy. It must be those sleeping pills.
I swing my legs out of bed and stand up. The hardwood’s cool and smooth.
Gemma’s barely sixteen. Angie’s right to be worried. “Um, yeah. I’ll go ask him.”
I walk to the closet and extract my robe. It’s soft, a gift from Stan last Christmas. I want to cry. Grief’s everywhere, ambushing me. It’s like the water table in my head has risen, tears on the brink of flooding.
“Where is she?” rasps Angie, as I pad down the hall. “This isn’t like her!”
Outside Chad’s door, I pause. Should I knock or just look? He’s almost certainly asleep. He looked tired today, like he’s getting run down. It’s a wonder the boys sleep at all, given the stress they’re under. I still haven’t booked counseling sessions.
I don’t want to wake Chad. I try the door handle.
To my surprise, it’s locked. When did that start? I press my ear to his door.
Angie’s panting down the line. “Dana? What’s happening?” Her voice is sandpaper against my ear. It triggers a memory of a junior high party. Then, like now, I was in a dark hallway.
In someone’s parents’ basement. An olive-green carpet. Fake wood-paneled walls.
I was walking past a half-shut door when I heard Angie’s nasty titter—and Jo’s voice, pleading and tearful. “Stop! Give me that!”
I pushed open the door.
Apelike Bryce Dyson was dangling a Polaroid just out of Jo’s reach. Kyle Alberts stood by, a leer on his stupid, handsome face. In her tight angora sweater, Angie watched too, an overgroomed house cat.
Jo lunged for the photo. Her face was flushed and distraught, her hair messy. Her top’s neck was stretched out. Again Angie tittered.
I stepped into the room. “What’s going on?”
Angie scowled at me. Behind their efforts to look cool, Bryce and Kyle looked embarrassed. “Hey, Dana,” said Bryce. “How’s it going, eh?” He sounded drunk or stoned.
Jo had started to shake. She clutched her jean jacket shut.
I strolled to the boys, kept my face and pace casual. “Let me see.” I nodded at the Polaroid. I held out my hand. I wasn’t asking.
Bryce shook his head. “Aw. We were just having fun.”
I plucked it from his grasp.
A quick glance at it: Kyle was pinning Jo’s arms. Her shorts were down. Bryce was pushing down her panties. Her mound was shockingly pale and bare. Almost bald. And her breasts—exposed, since her top was wrenched up—were all but flat.
I tucked the Polaroid into my pocket and spoke slowly: “You guys are assholes.”
“She was into it!” said Bryce.
I gave him a look that said save it. And Angie—I looked at her too, long and hard. Did she take the photo?
“Jo?” I said. Her cheeks blazed blotchy red. I didn’t feel sorry for her. Not at all. I was angry.
She followed me down the hall. I walked fast. Not a word until we were outside, in the backyard. Jo started crying. Gluey, gulping sobs. “I . . . I thought he liked me.”
“Stop,” I said. She’d had a crush on Kyle for ages. But guys like that don’t respect girls like Jo. They just use them for whatever fun they can get. Didn’t she know that? That photo would have been passed all over school. Probably all over town.
“You went into a room alone with him. Didn’t you?” I said. “And you’re drunk! A dumb, easy target!” I pried out the photo and handed it over. “Burn it.”
Her shoulders hunched. Her chin lowered. For a second, I thought she’d defend herself, say it wasn’t her fault. Instead, she pushed it deep into her jeans’ front pocket and nodded. “I . . . You’re right.” She hiccuped. “Thank you, Dana.”
“Dana? You still there?” Angie’s voice hisses out of my phone, bringing me back to adulthood. And to current problems.
“Just a second.” I gently knock on Chad’s door.
Maybe I imagine a muffled laugh and a soft scuffle. I knock again, louder. There’s definitely movement in there, the bed springs shifting. My son’s voice sounds sleepy. “What?” he says. “Who is it?”
“It’s me, Mom.”
“Mom? I’m sleeping.”
I recall the fear in Angie’s voice. It’s 1:00 a.m. Her sixteen-year-old daughter is missing. “Chad, can you please open the door?”
He sighs so loudly I can hear it out here in the hall. This is followed by bumps and shuffling. It’s a long time before the lock turns.
My son glares around the door. He’s wearing boxer shorts and nothing else. “What’s going on?” He yawns, or pretends to, then turns and totters back to bed.
I step into his room. It lies quiet and dark. There’s a manly mustiness and something else. Is it just my imagination or does it smell faintly floral?
“Angie called,” I say. “She can’t find Gemma.”
My son is sitting on his bed, his comforter pulled over his lap. For a flash he looks guilty instead of worried. His Adam’s apple works its way up and down. I’m reminded of those carnival games where you hit a target with a mallet to shoot a light up and down a scale. Better Luck Next Time! Or red lights flash and bells ding: Congratulations, Strongman!
Chad fingers his fair hair. “Gemma?” he asks, like he’s not sure he knows her.
“Gemma Costin. Your girlfriend?”
He nods. “I, um. No. I don’t know where she is.”
Even in the dark I can see him blushing. I’m surprised. Chad’s always been a good liar. As a toddler it was always Owen who gave the game up, freezing when asked who’d gouged a crater in a newly iced cake or broke Daddy’s new camera. Chad, meanwhile, would make doe eyes and look extra cherubic.
He’s scarlet. “I haven’t seen her,” he mumbles.
I open his closet door.
“Aw, come on, Mom,” he says. “What are you doing? You don’t—”
I open the long drapes on the window by his bed.
There, her back pressed to the glass, stands Angie’s missing daughter, wearing only panties, a crop top, and a look of utter disdain.
“Well,” I say to no one in particular, then into my phone: “Hey, Ange, I found her.”
“Jesus!” says Angie, voice tight with relief and fury. The relief’s stronger. “I’m going to kill her! I’ll be right over.” Angie’s house is only two blocks away.
“Okay.” I hang up and slide the phone into my robe’s pocket.
Gemma’s arms are crossed below her small, high breasts. Her nipples are hard beneath her thin crop top. She makes a noise, part sigh and part hiss, and steps away from the wall. She looks neither contrite nor embarrassed, just defiant.
My son hangs his head. “Mom? I’m sorry.”
I tighten the belt of my robe. Am I shocked that my fifteen-year-old son is sexually active? I wasn’t at that age, although I wasn’t far off it.
I hesitate, trying to work out how I feel. As long as they’re careful, it’s not the sex that alarms me. It’s the sneakiness. The lying. I don’t like Gemma much, don’t think she’s a good influence. She brings out the worst in Chad. If it were some other girl, some girl I liked, it’d be easier to accept. But he won’t be with her forever. It’s a phase. I take a deep calming breath.
“Look,” I say, addressing them both. “With everything going on with Dad . . .” I look at Chad when I say this. “I’m too stressed to deal with this properly. I’m worried you’re too young but . . . well, I guess not . . .” I rub one foot against the other. Without slippers, my feet are freezing. “Do we need to talk about safe sex?” I’m not ready to become a grannie.
“Aw, come on, Mom, we’re not stupid,” says Chad. He sounds mortified. Gemma’s glaring at me.
I nod. “That’s good,” I say. “But I can’t have you sneaking around in the middle of the night.” My voice sharpens. “And lying.” I look at Gemma. “How did you get here?”
“It’s a short walk,” she scoffs.
“It’s not safe. Not alone. In the dark.”
She rolls her eyes and looks like she wants to respond, but the bell sounds for my front gate. I buzz Angie in from my phone.
“It’s your mom,” I tell Gemma.
She flounces across the room and retrieves her clothes—jeans and a hoodie—from under Chad’s bed, where someone kicked them.
I look away as she slips into her jeans. So does my son.
“Bye, Gemma,” he says when she’s at the door. He still looks abashed. “See you.”
“Whatever.” She says this angrily but has a change of heart. She stops to blow a cartoonish kiss. It seems directed at me more than at Chad, a final act of defiance.
When her eyes meet mine, there’s a dare in them. She smirks.
I can’t move.
Instead of holding her gaze, my eyes skitter to the window where she stood. I stride across the room and peer down through the glass.
Far below, the ocean shines like charcoal silk. I can make out the black triangle of the boathouse and our skinny dock, the bump of the motorboat.
Turning, I feel dizzy. I recall the red block letters—i know—and hear Jo’s angry question: who else could have been here? Did Gemma sneak over that night too? A chill whips through me.
The front doorbell sounds. It’s Angie.
At Chad’s bedroom door, I pause. My son still won’t meet my eyes. “Go to sleep,” I tell him.
Gemma is already stalking down the hall. In the dark, I see her blond hair swaying. She seems too old for Chad. Or do all moms see their sons as perpetually innocent?
I follow shakily. What if she saw us? Any upstanding citizen would have told the police. But Gemma’s far from upstanding. First and foremost, she’s her mom’s daughter. Those Costins know the value of a secret.