Asher leaves, planning to stop at Margot’s to pick up whatever it was he promised to bring his parents from his sister’s room. Then he’s heading straight back to Brighton. Margot’s staying at her place on the off chance that Sunshine heads back this way.
Everyone knows I’m going, and Drew says he is, too. Asher gives us the address and the phone number to his parents’ house and tells us he’ll let them know we’re coming. We decide to take our own cars in case we need to separate when we get there.
A few minutes later, I climb into my truck alone and head to Brighton. I spend the entire drive bargaining with everything I will ever have. I don’t know how many times I say please. Please give her back to me. Please not again. Just please. My phone doesn’t ring. It’s the longest two hours of my life.
***
The room is full of controlled chaos. It reminds me of the day my mother and sister died. Phones ringing off the hook. Frantic calm. Poorly concealed fear. They’re like zombie people. Empty. Haunted and endlessly waiting for something. I know what it looks like. These people were probably normal once. I think about how easily this could be the Leightons if it had been Sarah. How every normal family is one tragedy away from complete implosion.
There are photographs all over the room of a girl I should know, but don’t. A girl in pastel dresses, with ribbons in her hair, smiling and playing the piano in more pictures than I can count. I feel like I’m mourning all over again, but this time it’s for a girl I’ve never met.
Her parents are both on cell phones. The land line keeps ringing, but nobody answers it because the reporters keep calling. Finally, her father rips the cord out of the wall and then it’s quiet. But not really.
Drew and I sit on the far side of the room. Separated physically and emotionally from the rest of the family. The rest of the family. Whether or not they acknowledge me, I am in that category, also. She made sure of it, no matter how much I’d like to say otherwise. She’s gone now, too. It fits.
Asher walks in not long after we arrive. He’s carrying a stack of black and white composition books; the kind Ms. McAllister makes us use for creative writing. He puts them on the coffee table in the middle of the room. It’s a hideous coffee table. I could make a better one. I think about offering.
I can only see the front of the book on the top of the pile. Chemistry is written in red marker on the cover. It’s Sunshine’s handwriting and seeing it breaks me a little.
Her mother steps toward the stack of books like it’s a bomb. “Is this them?”
Asher nods. He’s pale and looks older than he did the first time I met him. Everyone here looks older than they should. Like they’ve seen too many horrible things and now they’re just tired. I wonder if I look like that, too.
Nastya/Emilia/Sunshine. I don’t know what to call her. Her mother picks up the book on top and opens it, flipping through the first few pages. “It’s just chemistry notes,” she says, relieved, but confused.
“Keep going, Mom.” Asher sounds like he’s delivering a death blow.
A moment later her face contorts in the most wretched expression and her hand goes to her mouth and I look away because just seeing it feels like an invasion. She looks exactly like Sunshine. Drew doesn’t look away. He just stares at her. He looks older, too. I think it might have happened, just now, when he saw the look on this woman’s face.
“It took her all of these to write this?” she asks to no one in particular. Her husband, Sunshine’s father, the man who’s been standing behind her the whole time takes the book out of her hands and she shakes her head at him. Not like she doesn’t understand something, but like she’s telling him no. She doesn’t want him to look. It’s like someone telling you not to look at a dead body, because if you look at it, you won’t ever be able to not see it again. It will always be in your head and you won’t ever close your eyes without the image being there. That’s how she looks when she shakes her head at him. Like she’s seen the body and she doesn’t want him seeing it, too.
“No,” Asher says. “It’s all the same thing. In all of them. It just repeats like it’s on a loop. Over and over and over again.” His voice breaks on the third over and he starts to cry but no one consoles him. They don’t have any comfort to offer.
There’s a knock at the door and a girl walks in. She doesn’t say anything. She just walks straight over to Asher who doesn’t move until she reaches him. Then he wraps his arms around her and folds her up until she’s almost gone and I miss Sunshine.
The mood in this room is so familiar. No one feels anything but everyone keeps moving because there are so many things to do. But right now no one seems to know what they are.
The police said Aidan Richter is admitting to seeing her yesterday, but continues to deny having any contact with her today. No one knows whether or not it’s true. There’s nothing to go on. No place to even begin.
Finally they decide that Asher and Addison and Mr. Ward will take separate cars and go looking for her, even though they have no idea where to start. Asher was right. Nobody knows his sister, at least not the sister he has now.
Her mother is staying here to man the phone. They don’t know what to tell Drew and me to do. We don’t really know the area and we have no idea where she would go. We’re just useless and waiting.
“You can wait in Emilia’s room if you want,” her mother offers. Everyone in this house calls her Emilia and it sounds more right than Nastya ever did.
***
Her room is insane and I feel like I’ve walked into her mind. There are no walls. You can’t see them. Every inch of space is covered with newspaper clippings, computer printouts, and handwritten notes on scraps of paper. They almost seem to move, to shimmer; swimming in and out of my vision like an optical illusion. Like her. I want to close my eyes but I can’t. I just turn in a circle waiting for it to stop, but it goes on forever. I think I might run from the room but now this is in my head, too. Like whatever dead body is hiding downstairs in those books.
We step in and get closer because you can’t read any of it unless you’re almost on top of them. Names. They’re all names and origins and meanings. Some of them are from the newspaper, like the ones I’ve seen her cutting out at my house. Some were obviously printed off of the internet. Others she’s written herself.
I don’t know how long we stare at the walls before Drew speaks. “Where’s Nastya?”