My family wasn’t around, so I sat down and grabbed the paper without them making annoying comments about how they thought I wasn’t interested in Lizzie.
I didn’t read the article at first, because it was impossible to pay attention to anything other than Lizzie’s photo, which was obnoxiously big. In it, Lizzie was staring straight at the camera with a half smile on her face. The sun was behind her, making her hair into a halo. It was Lizzie all right, pretty Lizzie Lovett. But she wasn’t how I remembered her.
Where was the cheerleader who always looked like she was on her way to a photo shoot? This Lizzie wasn’t wearing any makeup. Her long hair was messy, as if she hadn’t bothered to comb it. She was wearing a loose-fitting men’s dress shirt, which was nothing like the clothes she wore in high school, meaning you couldn’t see her perfect body at all.
This new Lizzie was almost more annoying than the old one. You could imagine old Lizzie waking up three hours early every day to make sure her eyeliner was expertly smudged and the ends of her hair had just the right amount of curl. You could tell yourself that old Lizzie spent her free time exercising and tanning and moisturizing, and that was why she looked as perfect as she did. That if you were willing to dedicate the same attention to your appearance, you could look “effortlessly” gorgeous too.
The Lizzie who stared out from the front page of the paper actually hadn’t put in any effort, and she was about a thousand times prettier than she’d ever been before.
I directed my attention to the article and skimmed it, even though I was pretty sure it wouldn’t say anything new, which turned out to be correct. Elizabeth Lovett, twenty-one years old and formerly of Griffin Mills, Ohio, had gone camping in the woods off Wolf Creek Road. She’d been with her boyfriend, Lorenzo Calvetti, twenty-five, of Layton, which was two towns over. They hiked, set up camp, made s’mores, and all that jazz. According to Calvetti, everything seemed normal; his girlfriend seemed happy. They went to bed around ten. The next morning, Lizzie was gone.
I flipped to page three where the article continued. There was another photo, smaller and in black and white. It was also way more fascinating than the one on the front page, because it showed the new, disheveled Lizzie with her arm around Lorenzo Calvetti.
I brought the paper closer to my face. It was a pretty terrible picture, taken from far away and too grainy to show many details. But you could see the huge grins on Lizzie’s and Lorenzo’s faces. They looked like the sort of couple who never had a single bad thing happen to them, certainly not the sort of couple in which one member disappears in the woods.
“Is that article about Lizzie?”
I jumped.
Rush hovered in the kitchen doorway, still looking a little undead.
“Don’t sneak up on me.”
My brother shrugged and sat in the chair across from me. He nodded at the paper. “What do you think?”
“He’s not as handsome as I expected him to be.” I glanced down at the picture again. “Actually, he’s not really handsome at all.”
“Not about him. I don’t care about him,” Rush said, which was certainly a lie.
“I bet they’ll find her today,” I said.
“Or find her body,” Rush said darkly.
I rolled my eyes. “She’s not dead. And even if she was, what’s it to you?”
He didn’t answer, so I went back to the article. There wasn’t much more to read. A search party had gone through the woods near the camp. Today, they’d be expanding their area of focus. There was a list of Lizzie’s stats at the end, twenty-one years old, five feet six inches tall, one hundred and twenty pounds. Blond hair, blue eyes. Last seen wearing jeans, a red sweatshirt, hiking boots, and a pendant in the shape of a wolf’s tooth. Then the obligatory plea to call the police with any information that might assist them, blah, blah, blah.
I tossed the paper on the table and wondered about the wolf pendant.
“You already read it?” I asked Rush.
“Online.”
“Then you saw the picture.”
“She looks different, huh?”
“What happened to her after high school?” I asked.
“Don’t know. I haven’t seen her since the graduation parties. I don’t think anyone’s seen her.”
“She moved to Layton, not Africa. Certainly, someone has hung out with her.”
“If they have, they didn’t tell me.”
Maybe that’s how it was after high school. Maybe you just left and became someone new. That gave me hope for the future.
I stood up. “Wanna get a breakfast burrito with me before mom tries to feed us soy sausage?”
Rush hesitated, and I had time to imagine that he’d say yes, and we’d leave the house to get drive-through and sit eating greasy burritos in the parking lot, talking and laughing like we used to when he was just Rushford Creely, my big brother, before all the distance in the social hierarchy came between us.
But that didn’t happen, because it was real life, not some feel-good movie. What actually happened was Rush said he wasn’t really hungry, maybe some other time. It wasn’t a big deal. A burrito tastes good even if you’re eating it alone.
• • •
The second day of the disappearance, I was prepared for the drama at school, so I wasn’t surprised when I heard Lizzie Lovett’s name roughly ten times before the first bell rang. Everyone seemed to have their own opinion of what had happened to her.