The night is wide awake.
It is pulsing and electric, like a heartbeat, and for the first time ever, I understand why my best friend Asia refuses to stay home on any given Friday night. She is either flirting her way into nightclubs, party-hopping, or just driving through the city in her Audi. San Francisco is a sight to behold at night.
But it’s a sight that is foreign to me, even after living here for the past six years.
I wish I could capture it in pencil, the tiny pinpricks of light that dot a city half-asleep. It looks like an infection, chicken pox but beautiful.
“We’re taking a picture to document this sad but momentous occasion,” Asia declares after we’ve driven into Pacific Heights and are now walking up the steep driveway to Justin Galway’s massive house.
“Sad?” I ask.
“Yes, sad!” Asia says. “How are you not heartbroken that you’re leaving tomorrow for the entire summer? The summer before our senior year, no less!”
I pinch the gold bracelet on my left wrist.
I wish I didn’t have to go. The words are on the tip of my tongue, but they don’t come out.
Tomorrow morning I’m going back to Ohio and the town I grew up in. My sister’s been missing for almost three months, and I’m going to look for her.
No, not to look.
The police looked. My dad looked. I’m going home to find her.
I don’t have phone tracing or surveillance footage, but my plan is to draw her back to me through that magnetic pull we share, that inexplicable bond of sisters who are also best friends. As far as Asia knows, I’m going to visit my dad. The alternative — the truth — feels mystical and unspecific, even embarrassing, like I’m going ghost hunting or spending my summer performing an exorcism.
Without warning, Asia pulls me to herself, wrapping an arm around my shoulder. “Say Michelle Obama!”
Before I can get out the first syllable, Asia takes a selfie.
“I wasn’t ready!” I cry, but she waves me off.
“That’s when you look most natural,” she says, already halfway to posting the picture on Instagram. “You overthink it when you have time to prepare.”
I’m feeling rattled, still thinking about Ohio and ghosts and the Rose-shaped abyss in my heart since the first night my sister missed our daily phone calls, but I try to hide it.
“Are you saying I don’t know how to take a picture?” I ask, pretending to be offended.
“I’m saying too much thought is the enemy of a good selfie,” Asia says, typing away on her phone. She would know. Asia is gorgeous and Afro-Cuban with the most beautiful thick natural hair I’ve ever seen.
My own phone vibrates in my back pocket. When I pull it out, it’s a notification for the picture Asia just posted. She’s captioned it “Baby’s first party” and tagged me.
“That is absolutely untrue,” I protest. “Remember freshman year, I went to Laya’s pool party?”
Asia laughs. “Babes, we played ‘pass the parcel’ at that party.”
“What’s wrong with ‘pass the parcel’?” I say, and then realize this is the reason Asia calls me a prude. This, and the fact that I’ve only ever kissed one guy.
“I don’t think we even knew what third base meant back then,” she says, starting to walk up to the house again. She shouts over her shoulder to me, “Stop mentally calculating! It’s anything below the waist!”
“Nobody talks in bases anymore,” I mumble, though I don’t know if this is strictly true. Honestly, if it was up to me, we’d talk in anatomical terms. Penis, vagina, scrotum, whatever. Not to be shocking but because I think bodies are strong and complicated and beautiful, stitched together by magic. Or connective tissue. My dad taught me that song “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” when I was three, and I’ve never outgrown it.
“Oh, Emmy.” Asia sighs in a way that is both exasperated and loving. “I’m so glad you agreed to come out tonight. We’re going to have the best time!”
“I feel like you’ll have the best time, and I’ll just stand in a corner looking awkward by myself,” I admit.
Asia harrumphs. “As if I’d ever leave you.”
Those words feel like a jolt, an electric shock, because my sister said something like that to me years ago when she gave me the separation list. I won’t ever leave you.
And then she did.
Asia hooks her arm in mine as if to prove she’s not going anywhere.
But within the first ten minutes of wandering around Justin Galway’s palatial house, we run into Celestial Callie and my best friend is lost to me. Calliope Henderson is pretty much everything Asia aspires to be. She’s a year older than us and graduated from Knowlton High last week, officially cementing her legacy as the longest-running editor in chief of the Knowlton Review after she ascended to that position in her sophomore year. She is a tall brunette whose perfect winged liner always complements her hipster glasses.
Calliope is Celestial Callie to us because she is flawless — never a hair out of place, never frazzled, and never afraid of a pantsuit. The most disheveled I’ve ever seen her was a month ago, when I found her and Asia making out in the art room at school. An incident that my best friend has repeatedly insisted was a “onetime” thing.
“Callie, hey!” Asia says now, her voice far too high-pitched to be normal. “Fancy seeing you here.”
“You, too,” Callie says, beaming. She’s dressed like she’s just spent a day arguing over tax breaks on Capitol Hill, in black slacks, flats, and a white chiffon blouse. I shoot Asia a meaningful look: Who is brave enough to wear white to a start-of-summer house party?
Asia shoots one back at me: Celestial Callie, that’s who.
“Hey. Emmy, right?” Callie says, turning to me.
“Yes. Hi, Callie,” I say.
“Me and my friends are playing pool in the basement, if you want to join?” she says, but she’s looking only at Asia. Asia seems to notice this, her eyes wide, expression torn.
“Go,” I whisper, pinching her side.
“Yeah, okay,” Asia says quickly. As they start to walk off, she throws me an apologetic look over her shoulder, but I wave her off.
The second she’s gone, someone crashes into me, spilling beer on my wedge sandals.
The college-aged guy doesn’t even apologize, just keeps walking, and, right then, my whole world starts to feel scary small. Pounding music, bodies squished together like sardines, the smell of beer and BO.
I feel claustrophobic and slightly winded, so I make myself think about breathing.
Nose/mouth, pharynx, larynx, trachea . . .
I like the respiratory system because it’s one of the few organ systems that you can sense at work. I feel the air gliding through my nose, down my throat, and farther and farther.
It turns out that the part of my prediction about Asia leaving me was right, but strangely not the part about standing alone in a corner.
I’m feeling less anxious now — apparently breathing is a must — so I head into the crowded kitchen and grab a ginger ale from the cooler. According to Rose, ginger ale is for sick days, and while I’m not sick exactly, I also don’t feel right. I haven’t felt right since April 21, the last night I heard from Rose.
It’s July 8 today.
“No beer for you, Emmy?” Marcus Goode shouts, emerging from a small huddle of people standing near the fridge.
“No,” I say, surprised he’s walking toward me. “I don’t drink.”
Marcus is Knowlton High’s star lacrosse player. His ruffled blond hair unfailingly looks like he just rolled out of bed, which always makes me think of . . . well, sex. Marcus is the rare breed of athlete who is also nice. I discovered this when we were paired up for a bio assignment last fall and he exclaimed in wonder, “Holy shit, you’re smart, too?”
The “too” implied he thought I was something other than smart. I didn’t ask, but sometimes I let possibilities roll around in my brain. Beautiful. Sexy. Artistic. Cute. Funny.
Marcus grins. “Why am I not surprised?” He says it like it’s adorable and not lame that I’m a nerd who doesn’t drink.
I flush and thank all my lucky stars for my dark brown skin.
“Kind of loud in here,” he says now. “I was about to grab some fresh air. You coming?”
“Oh, I . . .” I look around for Asia, because the last thing I want is for her to think I’ve abandoned her.
“Text your friend,” Marcus says, mouth grazing the shell of my ear, and I’m both horrified that he read my mind and kind of thrilled that he did. Also, is he flirting with me?
I decide I’ll text Asia once we’re outside and follow Marcus through the kitchen and out the back door. Based on how confidently he moves through the house, I’m guessing he’s been here before. He’s greeted and high-fived and back-patted all the way out the door, while I follow after him like a shadow.
Outside is much less crowded, but there are still couples on the deck, groups on the grass below. Marcus plops down on the second step leading to the backyard.
“So what’s new, Emmy? Any plans for the summer?” he asks as I sit down beside him, nursing my can of ginger ale.
“I’m going to Ohio,” I say. “To see my dad.”
“Ohio,” Marcus repeats. “Never been.”
He’s wearing shorts and sitting with his legs spread o...
