The Night She Disappeared by April Henry Page A

stairs, the older the photos look. They start out in color and then go to black-and-white. Toward the end, I think they might be daguerreotypes, or whatever they called photos 150 years ago. Each one is more stiff and formal than the last. The final portrait shows a family staring at the camera. The men all wear weird white high collars with a sort of bow tie. The women wear long gathered dresses. One of them holds a portrait of a little boy on her lap.
    “That’s my great-great-grandmother,” Gabie says when she sees me looking. “The painting’s of her son. He died two years before, but she wanted him to be remembered.”
    I follow her down the hall.
    Gabie’s room is the only room in the house that looks lived in. The twin bed isn’t made. On the floor next to it is a paperback, open to the page she was on when she put it down. On one wall is a huge canvas covered with headlines and images cut from magazines. At first glance I see “Fever,” “Underground Girl,” “It’s Pure Adrenaline,” and “Your Head Would Probably Explode.” There are girls in crazy clothes, pictures of Wonder Woman cut from a comic book, a photo from a newspaper of a man holding a knife, and dozens of eyes, just eyes with no faces. The whole effect is kind of disturbing.
    I like it.
    On another wall is a poster from the band Flea Market Parade, which surprises me. I love their music, but it’s dark. Songs about longing and suicide and memories that you can’t change. I tap on the lead singer’s face. He’s wearing suspenders, and the circles under his eyes are so dark they almost look like makeup. “I like their music, but not that many people have heard of them,” I say.
    “I’m pretty sure neither one of us is ‘many people,’” she says.
    I turn the chair at her desk around and sit down. Gabie closes the door. She pulls up the covers before she sits on the bed.
    “So now are we going to study?” I say, and raise one eyebrow. Somehow I feel more relaxed because we’re in Gabie’s room. The rest of the house is like a shell, or armor. This room feels softer. Maybe it’s the part the armor is protecting.
    “I just wanted to talk some more about Kayla. My parents don’t like me to talk about her. It’s been nearly a week. They’re sure she’s gone. That she’s”—Gabie hesitates—“dead.”
    “But you said you can feel her. That you know she’s alive.” I shouldn’t be doing this. Shouldn’t be talking Gabie into something that I know can’t be true.
    “Maybe her spirit is watching us now, and that’s what I feel.” Her mouth twists. “Like her ghost.”
    “Maybe. But you seemed so sure.”
    “But Kayla being dead is what makes the most sense.” Gabie’s voice gets very quiet. “What do you think it would feel like to drown? Or to be strangled to death? Do you think it would be agony until the very end? Or would you pass out and stop feeling it? Is it just blackness?” Her voice shakes. “Is it like sleeping? Or is it this torture that goes on and on?”
    Now the shaking has reached her shoulders. I get up, kneel in front of her, and put my arms around her. It’s different than the few other times I’ve touched her, which were mostly just in passing. Then I was aware of Gabie as a girl. Now I feel like her brother. Someone stronger. Even though I’m not. I mean, she’s the one who saved me in the river.
    But with her trembling in my arms, it really feels like I’m her brother.
    Until she kisses me.

The Sixth Day
     
    Gabie
     
    WHEN I KISS Drew, I feel like I’m drowning, or drugged, or I’ve gone someplace where things are beyond my control. Like I could fall inside Drew and never come out.
    Instead I jerk my head back, push my hands down on his shoulders, and stand up. I walk over to my window. Drew is still kneeling on the floor. He turns his head to look up at me. I don’t know what he’s thinking. His mouth is soft. He’s not grinning, not gloating, not even as lost as I