Amber

Chapter 7

Mark

November 5, 2015

We start at the neighbor's house. She's old. Not as old as my Nana, but easily late sixties. She keeps her yard in great shape—flowers and bushes and lawn all trimmed and tidy. (Must be an old lady thing. Maybe when your body becomes too frail to look after, you move on to looking after nature.) All of the lawns surrounding hers are littered with leaves, but hers is bare except for the week-old Halloween tombstones and coffins, which add to the day's overwhelming dread.

Daniel and I walk up from the street, pausing to look over at the spot of road where we know Hailey had been taken only two nights ago. A lonely and eerie sight made considerably less so with the news van propped against the curb and swarms of people surrounding the Austin's house for continued live coverage waiting for—I don't know—maybe the expected footage of Hailey bouncing through the front door with a grin to tell her parents she had a sudden itch to play hide and seek and they suck for not playing along.

Seeing the media frenzy up close brings back the flood of recent memories that I would have been grateful to never relive. The cameras and endless questions. The way they camped out and followed us around hoping to catch us crying. The way they did catch Nana crying and used it to enhance their ratings, and me coming after them with a hockey stick swearing I'd break every one of their Goddamned bones if they didn't leave our property.

The way they all treated Lauren like a best-selling story that they could write their own ending to. How pleased they all looked to be in the front row for the town's biggest horror show.

Fuckers.

The neighborhood is familiar. I've taken Lauren to a friend's house somewhere nearby here a couple of times before. Since becoming a teenager a little over a year ago, she has been in the stage of describing the places she goes in the vaguest way possible, where it's always a friend or just some friend or this girl I know in place of an actual name. Trying to get information from her was impossible.

"Mark, can you drive me to this place tonight?"

"What place? Where?"

"Just this one place."

"Whose place?"

"Just a friend's house."

"What are you doing there?"

"I don't know. Stuff."

"What kind of stuff?"

"There's just some people getting together."

"Doing what?"

"Hanging out."

"Sounds boring."

"Are you driving me or not?"

A lot of good being the over-protective, nosy brother got me.

It's a cold enough afternoon that we're offered hot cider upon arrival at the neighbor's house. The old lady, Mrs. Garter, recognizes me immediately as the brother of Lauren Paisley—the girl affectionately known locally as "the missing girl" before two nights ago. Now she's known as "the first missing girl." I never minded the news reporters using that term because it was infinitely better than the alternative title of "the dead girl."

Daniel introduces himself as Lauren and my friend. We're welcomed inside and ushered into the living room in the back of the house away from the news reporters and chaos of the front. The room is very old-ladyish: brown and white cloth furniture, creaky wood floors, newspaper clippings, and butter cookies. The staples of every lonely old woman. I almost want to call up Nana and arrange a play date.