The girls wave and say it was nice to meet me, and I hand Paisley back her melting cone. She takes a big lick. “Zoe used to babysit me when she was in high school,” she says. “Aster’s three years younger. She was my babysitter after Zoe went to college.”
“I thought you had Lindsay,” I say. “Wasn’t that your last au pair?”
“Lindsay was only in the summers,” Paisley says. “Like you. I’d have Zoe and Aster on the weekends, or if Mom and Dad went out on a date night. Zoe was super nice, but I think Aster was my favorite babysitter.”
“Why’s that?” Paisley works at her cone, and we start ambling slowly down Main Street.
“Because she’s brave. This one time, before school let out last June, I told her about this boy Markus who was teasing me. My teacher wasn’t doing anything to stop it, so Aster came up with this whole plan to get back at him. Markus was having a pool party, for his birthday, so the night before, we snuck around to the back of his house and dumped buckets of water mixed with yellow food coloring into his pool. It looked like it was full of pee.” Paisley giggles.
“That doesn’t sound very mature, but it definitely sounds fun.”
Paisley grins, but then her smile drops. “Aster’s had to be really brave this year, and her parents too. That’s what my mom says. Because Zoe’s probably not coming back.”
I toss the remains of my melted ice cream in a trash bin, the nostalgia factor fading into sugary soup. I reach out for Paisley’s hand, and she slips it into mine. “Why didn’t you tell me I look like the missing girl?”
Paisley shrugs and takes another lick. “Everybody loves Zoe. I don’t see why it’s a big deal.”
I guess it isn’t, but I resolve to order a few more sun hats along with my pocket dresses, as soon as I get paid. I’m not sure I’m up for an entire summer of weird looks and mistaken identities.
“Did you listen to her podcast?” I ask.
“Mom won’t let me. She says it’s ‘too adult.’ ” Her voice forms air quotes around the words.
“Oh. That sucks.”
Paisley chomps down on her waffle cone, channeling the unfairness of childhood into the bite.
“But she might be right.” I shrug. “Sounds like scary stuff.”
“Yeah.” For a minute, she stares down at our feet, sandals keeping pace on the sidewalk together. “Do you think she’ll come back, Anna?”
A thin blade of worry glides up my rib cage and settles between my lungs. Is there a right answer to that question? What would Emilia say?
“I don’t know.” My voice is quiet. “I hope so.”
* * *
In the pool house that night, I google Zoe Spanos. The results fill my phone screen, dozens of news articles from last winter and spring about the nineteen-year-old girl who disappeared from Herron Mills without a trace. I click on the first one, and the photos of Zoe make my breath catch. She does, as promised, look a hell of a lot like me. Same messy cascade of black hair, same high-set cheekbones and big, toothy smile. But her skin is creamy olive where mine is pasty white, her eyes yellow-flecked brown where mine are a sharp blue-green. She has what looks like a splotchy brown birthmark near the center of her collarbone, where my skin is bare. Resting against it, in most of the photos, is a delicate gold chain with the initials ZS.
Me, but not me. The similarities are striking; they prick at the corners of my eyelids, making me squint and then open wide until I see myself, then don’t again. I remember in ninth grade, this new kid Bryan told me I reminded him of his friend from home. He held out his phone across the cafeteria table, showed me a picture of a stranger that was like looking into a fun-house mirror. It’s that feeling all over again.
I quickly scan through the other search results, looking for a podcast. I try again with Martina Green podcast in the search bar, and I’m directed to four episodes of Missing Zoe on SoundCloud. There’s a thumbnail picture of Martina wearing a pair of black cat-eye glasses and burgundy lipstick, her hair styled in the same ponytail I saw today. The podcast description promises in-depth investigative reporting with a single goal: to uncover what really happened to Zoe last New Year’s Eve. A chilly finger