Pretty Reckless

On Friday afternoon, I find myself loitering outside her ballet class, hoping she’ll appear. Maybe she’s crashing at her teacher’s house. They seem close, but it’s hard to tell since Via puts on a mask every time the bus we board slides into the city limits of Todos Santos. The fact she hasn’t touched base yet makes me heave when I think about it. I’m telling myself she has her reasons.

At six, pink-wearing girls start pouring out of the building. I dawdle by the shiny black Range Rover with my hands in my pockets, waiting for the teacher. She comes out last, waving and laughing with a bunch of students. Another girl walks beside her. The girl I kissed, to be exact. The girl I’ve been obsessing over for a year, to be super-exact. She is beautiful like the shit hanging in the museums. In a really sad, distant, look-but-don’t-touch way. I trek toward them, and they meet me halfway. The girl’s eyes widen, and she looks sideways to see if anyone else is here to witness us talking. She thinks I’m here for her.

“Hi.” She tucks hair behind her ears, her gaze traveling to Mrs. Followhill in a silent I-swear-I-don’t-know-this-guy plea.

“Hey.” I kill the butterflies in my stomach because now’s not the place and definitely not the time, then turn to the teacher. “Ma’am, my sister, Via, is in your class. I haven’t seen her in three days.”

The teacher’s eyebrows pinch together as though I just announced I’ll be taking a shit on the hood of her vehicle. She tells the blonde to wait inside the giant Range Rover, then tugs at my arm, heading toward an alleyway. Sandwiched between two buildings, she sort of forces me to sit down on a tall step (dafuq?) and starts talking.

“I’ve been calling her five times a day and leaving messages,” she whispers hotly in my face. “I wanted to let her know she’d been accepted to the Royal Academy. When the letter never arrived, I called them to check. Everything is in motion now. As I said before, you needn’t worry about the tuition. I’ll be paying the fee.”

My nostrils flare. All this in her future, and she could be lying in a ditch right now. Goddamn Via. Goddamn all pretty, volatile fourteen-year-old girls.

“Well, ma’am, thank you for the gift she’ll never be able to cash in on since we can’t find her,” I respectfully mock her. But we is just me. Mom is out of it—she never really bothered bouncing out of her first drug binge some years ago—and Rhett is probably happy he has one less mouth to feed. When the truancy officer called from school earlier, I told him Via went to my aunt’s, something my mother later confirmed when he showed up on our doorstep. Mom, wild-haired and sucking on a cigarette as if it were an oxygen mask, never once asked if it was true. If I call the police, they’ll dump both our asses in foster care. Maybe together, but probably not. I can’t let that happen. I can’t be separated from Via.

Mrs. Followhill stares at me with an expression as if she just realized she caught a stomach bug. She is probably wondering how I dare speak to her like that. Usually, I’m a bit more user-friendly. Then again, I don’t usually have to deal with a missing sister. I clean my mother’s puke from the walls and close the bathroom door on Rhett when he falls asleep on the toilet seat. I don’t look at grown-ups with the same air of reverence her daughter does.

“Whoa.” That’s all Mrs. Followhill says.

“Thanks for the insight. Have a nice life.” I stand and swagger toward the street. She catches my arm and yanks me back. I twist around to face her.

“My daughter…” She licks her lips, then looks down, looks guilty. The girl is leaning against the Rover, staring at us, chewing on her thumbnail. “My daughter and Via haven’t been getting along. I tried to encourage them to communicate, but the more I pushed them together, the more they seemed to dislike one another. I think I had a letter go missing last week. A letter that could have been…important. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this.” She lets out a breath, shaking her head. “I guess I just…I don’t want to know, you know? I hate the fact that my mind is even going there.”

But maybe it should.

The flashback crashes into my memory.

The paper that hissed in her little fist.

Me taking it from her.

Tearing it apart.

Throwing it into the trash can, watching her face blossom into bliss.

Pouring the lemonade on the remains for good measure when her blue eyes twinkled the request.

Setting my sister’s dreams on fire.

Kicking this entire nightmare into motion.

My jaw flexes, and I take a step back. I throw one last glance at the chick, filing her into memory.

Archive under: Shit List.

Revisit document: When I’m able to ruin her.

“So Via’s not with you?” My voice hardens around the words. Like tin. I’m desperate. I have no lead. I want to rip the world apart to find her, but the world is not mine to destroy. The world just continues turning at the same pace, because kids like Via and me? We disappear all the time, and no one notices.

Mrs. Followhill shakes her head. She hesitates, touching my arm. “Hey, why don’t you come with me? I’ll drop Daria off at home, and we can look for her.”

Daria.

I turn around and stalk toward the bus stop, feeling stupid and hateful and alive. More alive than I’ve ever felt. Because I want to kill Daria. Daria made everything fade into the background the first time I saw her, and while I was busy admiring, everything around us burned.