The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray

Author:Anissa Gray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2019-02-19T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

• • •

Baby Vi sits in the center of her bed, with Lillian and me standing on either side. I don’t hesitate to ask ask:

“Are you sure you didn’t hear anything?”

“Yes.”

“But her room’s right across the hall from you—how do you hear nothing?”

She inclines her head toward the pair of earbuds beside her in bed. “Headphones.”

I glance at Lillian. She isn’t buying it either.

“Are you sure she didn’t say anything?” I press Baby Vi. “Anything at all?”

“About what?”

“Please don’t do that. You know what I’m asking. Do you know where she is?”

She shakes her head. Eye contact had already been minimal, but now she’s not looking at me at all. She hugs her knees to her chest, rolling in on herself protectively like an armadillo, as Lillian lobs more questions at her.

Baby Vi’s responses are, as before, unhelpful.

Lillian and I go to Kim’s room. I need to see for myself.

We flip on the light and pick our way around rolling mounds and drifts of clothes, with empty potato chip and candy bar packages and earbuds peeking out of the piles. I make it over to Proctor’s stereo system, which sits along the wall opposite the bed. It’s a fabulous Frankenstein of a machine that Proctor built from premium parts: turntable, CD player, cassette players, even, and waist-high speakers. Next to one of the speakers, there are milk crates that hold Proctor’s albums.

“We took the stereo and everything we could carry,” Lillian says, watching me. “You know, before the government could take it. The stereo and the records, it’s all they had of home, you know?”

“You don’t have to apologize, Lillian.” On the turntable, the album Songs in the Key of Life, one of Proctor’s favorites, sits ready to play. I take in the unmade bed. Shirts and socks, crawling out of the partially open drawers of the antique dresser. It all looks normal, like Kim could come in any second now and command us to leave.

“She can’t be gone,” Lillian says. “I mean, she’s never done anything like this before, you know? She might come home late or whatever, but to just disappear in the middle of the night like this?”

“And wouldn’t she at least take her phone?” I say, noticing it there in its turquoise case, plugged in and resting on her bedside table. “Who wouldn’t take their phone?”

“Right,” Lillian says. “This has to be some crazy game or something.”

But I recall that deadly serious look in Kim’s eyes at the bowling alley tonight: something dark, something distant, something desperate.

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