Page 53 of Before She Disappeared

I dole out shots, top off drinks. I operate on muscle memory, a woman who’s spent the majority of her adult life in bars, while my mind whirrs and chugs and ponders.

None of it brings me peace.

Help us, Angelique had encoded into her school essay. A girl clearly in trouble and desperate enough to take a shot at reaching out. I agreed with what Detective Lotham had said—just because someone hadn’t walked into the cybercafé with a gun pointed at Angelique’s head didn’t mean she wasn’t under duress.

Then another possibility came to me, scarier and sadder than all the others. She could’ve been kidnapped to serve as recruitment bait. A quiet, pretty immigrant teen. Held against her will, then sent out to bus stops and train stations to meet other unsuspecting teens and lure them over to meet her “friends”: sex traffickers, pimps, dope dealers. How much would that erode a natural caretaker such as Angelique, a girl who’d rescued her own mother and brother?

If the threat against her family either here or in Haiti was significant enough, she wouldn’t have a choice but to obey.

This scenario wouldn’t account for why Angelique had rolls of bills stashed in a lamp, but it would explain her disappearance, as well as her sudden reappearance seeking help.

As for how she might have gotten involved in sex trafficking, all I can think of is the rec center. According to her friends, she’d become distant after attending the summer program there. Because she’d met someone? Seen something? I have no idea, but it seems as good a starting place as any. First thing tomorrow, I’ll find my new friend Charlie and head on over. Like Angelique, I do best with a plan.

Which makes me wonder where Angelique is right now. Terrified or determined? Longing for her brother, or resigned to her fate?

And the mysterious us? Another girl? Several girls? Dozens of girls? All waiting for someone to rescue them from the dark?

The implications of that, the responsibility for all those lives, when I’ve never even rescued one living soul...

I can’t think about it.

Angelique. Others. Out there alone.

Please, please, please, for their sakes, let me get this right.

—

By the time the night owls have been shown to the door, my mood is subdued. I scrub and polish, stack and sweep in silence. Viv is in the kitchen, scouring down, while Stoney closes out the register.

It’s been a long day. I should head to a meeting, then get some sleep. Or maybe I could go for a run. It’s late and dark and dangerous, but that’s never stopped me before. Sometimes my blood flows too close to my skin. I can feel my own nerve endings spark and snap, the pressure building in my chest.

Once upon a time, I would head to a bar, slamming back shots of tequila and dancing with abandon. Dance drink dance. Or maybe it had been drink dance drink. Oblivion. That’s what I sought, what I still seek.

One precious moment when I’m no longer trapped inside my own head. Knowing things I don’t want to know. Remembering things I don’t want to remember. Worrying about things I can’t change.

As I do too often, I think of Paul. The feel of his lips whispering down my neck. The tickle of his hair, the strength of his hands. The beginning, when he made me feel safe. The end, when I broke his heart and shattered the last of my self-respect.

I don’t want to go to a meeting. I don’t want to run. I want to grab a bottle of Hornitos, crawl upstairs, and dial his phone number. The pain will be swift and brutal. Like a razor to the soul. Then I can lie there and feel myself bleed, while guzzling tequila. Drink and wallow. Maybe Piper the homicidal cat likes pity parties, too. You never know.

Viv comes charging out, already thrusting her arms into her coat. Her husband is waiting just outside the door to walk her home. It’s sweet and charming and salt on my gaping wound. Addicts are particularly good at this game. Everyone else’s life is easier, better, happier. If we could be those people, then we wouldn’t need to drink again.

It’s everyone else’s fault. The universe’s. Never our own.

Go to a meeting. Just walk out the front door and go. I eye the rows of bottles that line the back wall. I feel the beast stir to life in my belly, opening its eyes, stretching out its claws.

It’s been a hard day. And I’m tired and alone. And white. Dear God, when did I become this impossibly glow-in-the-dark neon white, so that everyone stares at me and no one knows me? My skin color has made me the enemy, a walking advertisement for entitlement and privilege except I don’t feel like any of those things. I feel like I’ve always felt. Broken. As if the whole rest of the world knows something I don’t. Feels things I can’t. Connects in ways I’ve never learned how.

Of course, I’ve spent enough time by now in marginalized communities to understand there’s more to that story. That for all my internal angst, the truth is I grew up with limited fears and unlimited dreams. I had implicit faith in authority and never thought to question the system. I had an innate understanding of the world and my place in it. Let alone a roof over my head, food in the fridge, and a safe neighborhood to grow up in.

Which is a privilege indeed.

I should go to a meeting. Just walk out the front door, find my people, and set down my burden. Breathe.

The restless dragon, fully awake now, uncoils. It whispers memories of my very first drink, a sip of my father’s Jack and Coke fetched by my eight-year-old self for my already slurring parent. The feel of caffeine and bourbon sliding down my throat, both hot and cold, melting and jolting. The slow-spreading euphoria that brought a flush to my impossibly young face.

Not a bottle. Just a shot. Or two or three. Then I’ll sleep. Sleep is good. I’ll feel better after a good night’s rest.

“Sit.” Stoney stands in front of me. He grips the chair I just stacked on the table, flips it back down, points at the hard wooden seat. “Sit.”

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