up,” Martina observes.
“Do you think I should cut it?”
“Because of Zoe?” Aster asks. “Definitely not. That’s like … letting the weirdness win.”
“I think it looks good long,” Martina agrees.
“Me too,” I sigh. “I’m just ready for all the weirdness to go away.”
While Martina calls her mom to request a pickup at a few minutes before the appointed time, I slip back into my still-damp shorts and top and Aster points me toward the hall bathroom so I can pee before we go. Halfway there, I sense a pair of eyes on me.
“Anna.”
I spin around. Out of the shadows of what must be their living room, Mr. Spanos steps into the brightness of the hall. He’s taller than I realized, and his beard needs a trim. Something feral and hungry dances in his eyes, which fix on me like steel clamps for a moment that stretches on for days. I’m an animal, snared.
“I just wanted to say what a pleasure it was to meet you,” he says finally, but his friendly words hold a challenge, something quivering beneath the surface. I’m frozen in my tracks, but my whole body is shaking. He doesn’t seem to notice. His gaze is still trained squarely on my face. “What did you say your last name was?”
“I didn’t,” I say quickly, my voice a thin rasp. “It’s Cicconi.”
His shoulders drop then, like those of a marionette whose strings have been clipped, and he leans heavily to the side, full weight pressed against a closed closet door. “You should leave.” His voice is soft, but there’s no kindness in the words. His grief is right there, shimmering.
“I’m sorry.” I’m not even sure what I’m apologizing for. A father’s suffering? Or my resemblance to his missing daughter? “We’re waiting for Martina’s mom. I was just …” I gesture weakly toward the bathroom, arm trembling.
“Of course,” he says, recovering himself.
I feel his eyes on me the whole way down the hall.
Inside the bathroom, I slump on the edge of the tub and try to stop shaking. His daughter is gone, and here I am, standing in his house, breathing Zoe’s air. So thoughtless. I wrap my arms tight around my waist. There was something more than grief in the way he looked at me. Blame or pure, unfiltered rage. I have the itchy feeling that if I had just looked closer, I might have seen what’s bottled up inside his chest.
I press my fists into my eyes, trying to force my brain into submission. It refuses. Then I lean over and hang my head between my knees, hair spilling out of its topknot and dusting the floor in a thick black curtain. I can’t stop seeing the hard outline of his face.
Deep breath in, deep breath out. Maybe I’m reading him wrong. Maybe it was only grief, after all, bubbling to the surface in all its ugly trappings—grief like a gaping wound for a daughter who is gone and likely not coming home again. I feel immediately guilty for making something sinister out of this man’s pain.
I let myself wonder what it would be like to have parents who were so present. Helicopter parents, Aster called them. My mind wanders briefly to the second episode of Martina’s podcast, to her conversation with Aster’s friend from swim team. How she’d been disgusted with people on Reddit for criticizing the Spanoses’ parenting skills, accusing them of a lack of vigilance. Now that I’ve met them, it’s clear they’re the opposite of inattentive. I can’t even get a geographical region for my dad, let alone an email or phone number. And much as Mom complained about me going away this summer, it’s not like we’d actually see much of each other if I was home. Not with her two jobs and irregular schedule. I can’t even imagine having parents hanging out at home, supervising on a Friday night.
It’s kind of nice how much they care. That’s the important thing.
I make myself get up and actually pee and get ready to leave. By the time Martina’s mom texts that she’s out front, I’m calm again, convinced Mr. Spanos wasn’t actually as scary as he seemed. The creeped-out feeling has been replaced by a new kind of nostalgia, something distinct from the flashes of memory I’ve been experiencing all summer. This is more like a longing for a childhood different from my own. Zoe’s childhood, maybe, or Martina’s. A childhood with money and two parents who won’t let you borrow the car because