SHE SAYS SHE’LL BE HOME LATE, but that maybe we can watch something on Netflix later. “Your choice,” she says, which is rare, because usually it’s the two of us arguing about what to watch for longer than it takes to watch an actual movie.
She’s at her desk before she leaves, looking at the map I drew her. I would have recognized it anywhere. The Split, tall and menacing.
“I can’t believe he’s taking you there,” I say. “It’s going to take hours. It’s super hilly, you know, and getting to the top is a real struggle. In this heat, it’ll be brutal.”
“That’s why I’m getting prepared,” she says. “I’m taking your map with me, like a good little Girl Scout. That way, if anything happens, I won’t get lost.”
“Okayyyyy.” I drag out the word, pulling it through my mouth like taffy.
“What are you so afraid of?” Tabby swivels around. “That the woods are going to swallow me whole? I’m the big sister. I’m supposed to be the overprotective one.”
I do the math in my head. Even if they manage to hike three miles an hour, they won’t reach the Split until after seven. It makes me feel better, somehow, knowing where she’ll be, when to expect her home.
“I’d text you to let you know I’m okay, but there isn’t cell reception that deep in the woods,” she says. “At least, I bet there isn’t. Just don’t worry about me, okay?”
Later, I watch her jump into Mark’s car, picnic basket swinging from her arm. She has my shoes on, pink Nikes. I can’t describe it, but I feel like I’m being haunted as soon as she’s gone. It’s like I’m sure I’ll never see her again.
She doesn’t come home in time for a movie, and she never messages to let me know where she is. Mom and Dad start getting worried around eleven, when they haven’t heard from her. They’re oblivious. They should have been worried before she even left.
She’s dead, my brain screams. I picture Mark’s big hands, Mark’s cocky grin. We’ll have to identify her body.
“Don’t go out again.” Dad wags his finger at me. “I want you where I can see you.”
I forgot I even went out. I went for a run, my phone in the palm of my hand, my fingers clutching it tightly, like it could be a weapon if I needed it to, something hard enough to crack a skull. But that was hours ago. I forgot to shower. It was like I blacked out.
At midnight, Mom and Dad are pacing, and I’m upstairs with my face pressed against the window, like a little kid waiting for Santa.
They call Elle, but she doesn’t answer. Maybe I’m imagining it, but things seem to have changed a bit between them lately. Tabby doesn’t spend as much time with Elle. I know this because she’s spending that time with me instead.
By twelve thirty, Mom and Dad convince themselves Tabby lost track of the time. They say that she’ll be eighteen soon enough, and they have to loosen the leash before next year anyway, before college.
(What leash? There is no leash. There isn’t even a collar. Tabby belongs to nobody.)
They go to bed. I stay up, my nerves frayed like wires, fidgety with electricity splitting my body. I know something happened. I know it and it must be my sister intuition. Or maybe I don’t even need sister intuition, because anyone could see that it was wrong, Mark wanting to take Tabby to the Split. I imagine her eyes, big and panicked. Her head, smashed against rock, cracking in two like the Split itself.
The door doesn’t open until after one. Me at the kitchen table, on my phone, scrolling through her Instagram, trying to find a clue: Tabby’s syrupy smile, all summer long. Mark’s arm, a permanent fixture around her. A caption underneath one of her photos, the two of them looking slightly away from the camera. A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages.
The door opens so quietly I barely hear it. Almost like she’s trying to sneak in, like she has done a thousand times before. Her face is a mess of the makeup I teased her for putting on before the hike, and her hands are shaking. Actually, her whole body is shaking, its own earthquake.
“What happened?” I say. “Where were you?”
Her hair isn’t straight like it was this morning but curly, bordering on frizzy, the way it gets after she showers and leaves it alone. Then I notice her legs. Dirt-stained, streaks of brown crosshatching every inch of bare space. My Nikes are soaked, more red than pink.
“Bridge,” she says. “Something happened. He—he—he fell.”
Then she collapses on the kitchen floor, and I know Mark is gone.