Summer Skies

05. The Bell Jar

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HER APARTMENT BUILDING is dark. I stand in front of it with Talia for a long, long, long moment, looking closely. It's a two-floor building, a vacant unit beneath Leslie and Robert. There's a gauzy white sheet pinned above her bedroom window; Danielle's light is off, I know.

I say it: "Danielle's not here."

Talia shrugs. I watch her approach confidently, rapping a loud knock on her apartment door, as if Danielle will answer.

"Here." I shoulder by her, reaching for the doorknob. Nobody locks it. "It's open."

Inside is a wooden staircase, cluttered with the last tenants' shit all along a drafty hallway. Each step creaks as Talia and I ascend, reaching Danielle's door. There's a set of skis and a basketball sitting just outside of it—I almost trip, but I steady, reaching down, under a dry-muddied, leave-encrusted mat to pull up a key.

"Damn, you guys were close," Talia says, all hushed and ready. "Okay. Let's go in."

But I lock up. I freeze. Were?

"What?"

"Why are you here, Talia?" I ask, stony-faced. My limbs are fuzzy. Does Talia think she's dead? "Why do you care about Danielle?"

"I don't," she says, and I actually appreciate her honesty. Because why should I entertain her bullshit? "But Danielle going... missing the same night I experience a blackout and wake up in a baseball field a mile from my house," she hisses, "is odd, Birdie."

Time just... disappeared.

It's all about her.

"Dani isn't here, Talia."

Dani isn't fucking with me, Dani is lost, and I have to find her.

I... Lost... Time.

I find myself looking down at Danielle's key, at a patch of fading bruises I don't remember.

"Is that what happened to you?" I hear my voice quaver slightly. "You woke up and didn't remember what happened or- or— where you were?"

Talia catches my lowered gaze and yanks a sleeve of her jacket off. Her short sleeve bunched up to show a pattern of fingerprinted bruising on her bicep. "It happened to me, too, Dee."

Dee.

No.

Fumbling, I shove her aside and unlock Danielle's apartment door. I push it open into a dank, empty kitchen. It's musty, humid, blanketed in August heat. It's something you can feel. Nobody is here.

Danielle's apartment never felt like anybody lived in it.

It's lit in a dim grey glow. Dusk. There are dishes piled in a sink, food crusted on counters; fridge is ajar, a sliver of light cutting across dirty tiles to hit Talia's Converse.

I step inside—

"Birdie?"

"Yeah?"

"Nobody is here," she says.

Yeah. Because you really can feel emptiness in an apartment. Like the first night Ricky and I realized Ma was gone again. Home being an abandoned first-floor apartment on May. For Danielle: a dirty second-floor apartment on South.

"I told you."

"I told you," she says in a playful voice, mocking, pressing her arm against a wall to catch a light. It flicks on grainy. Flies scatter in a thick air. Danielle's apartment seems filled with a noisy sheen. Untouched. Uninhabitable.

Knowing Danielle is missing leaves a weird ache in my bones as I walk to her bedroom quietly. I won't find her in her half-unmade bed, ruffed up hair and wrinkled, oversized Metallica shirt. Knowing she won't sit up and grin when I open her door and throw something.

It's barely lit. Everything still and silent. Her sheets strewn. Clothes. It smells like Dani. Like summer sweat and a faint trace of Axe.

There's a book on her bedside table: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Danielle had been eating away at it all summer long.

"Damn..." Talia is behind, still exploring a living room doused in Budweiser. Robert leaves empty bottles everywhere, and Danielle collects them to return for change at the Redemption Center.

"Hmm?" I saunter into Danielle's bedroom, scooping up an Eagles shirt I left a few weeks ago.

Talia appears in her doorway, a long, stilted shadow stretching across carpet, holding a bottle opener and a bottle of Budweiser. "I'm stealing."

I shrug. Nobody will care. Robert would hardly notice.

But as Talia cracks it open, meandering into Danielle's room, I suddenly feel a sense of violation. This is Dani. Her family. Her issues. Her bedroom. Her Five Finger Death Punch poster. Details about Dani only I know.

And who is Talia Devine? Really?

"Danielle doesn't really stay here, huh?" Talia guesses, glancing around. Her tiny, nearly-empty closet, wooden door half-closed. Hangers. "Does anybody live here, Birdie?"

"Let's go," I say quickly. "I told you Dani wasn't here, okay?"

"You were right," she clucks, holding up a hand in mock surrender. "I just figured it was worth checking."

"Now you know."

"Now I have every reason to believe Danielle ran away."

I can't bring myself to say it to Talia: if Dani ran away, I would've been with her.

"I mean..." Talia picks up The Bell Jar. "Danielle was reading The Bell Jar? What are the chances she had a breakdown and skipped town, Birdie?"

"She didn't—" I stop and inhale deeply, checking myself. Dani didn't run away. I wish it would all stop. "What? She didn't bring anything with her?" I challenge. Dani's backpack is at the foot of her bed, half-unpacked; dirty socks scattered.

"Her phone," Talia says. "It's with her, right?"

"Dani didn't have a phone," I say. Robert refused. That's why we always confirmed plans before splitting up.

Meet at Gulls Rock.

"Okay," she says, nodding. Talia takes a swig and looks around again, as if something will explain Danielle's drastic getaway. There isn't anything. Because Danielle didn't run away.

I cock my head, slinging my Eagles shirt over my shoulder casually. "You of all people should believe me when I say Danielle disappeared. This isn't a teen runaway story. This is... something else."

"But what, Birdie?"

Flash.

I wake up sore and bruised in a lapping surf, gnawing on the inside of my cheek, blinking blearily. No Danielle.

"I... I don't know yet, Talia."

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