escaped her updo and now curls down her forehead.
“Jules,” she says, not quite hiding her surprise to see me here. “How’s your arm?”
I absently touch the bandage hidden under my jacket and blouse. The cut’s so inconsequential that I barely notice it.
“It’s fine,” I say, glancing over her shoulder into the apartment itself. “Is Ingrid here?”
“She’s not,” Leslie says with a noticeable sigh.
“Do you know where she is?”
“I don’t, sweetie. I’m sorry.”
“But doesn’t she live here?”
“She did.”
I notice her use of the past tense, and my brow furrows.
“She doesn’t anymore?” I say.
“That’s correct,” Leslie says with certainty. “Ingrid is gone.”
13
Jane is gone.
That was how my father put it a week after my sister failed to come home. It was almost midnight, and the two of us were alone in the kitchen, my mother having taken to her bed hours earlier. By this point the black Beetle was common knowledge, the police had talked to Jane’s friends, and her picture had appeared on every telephone pole and storefront in the county. My father took a sip of the black coffee he’d been mainlining for days and said, simply and sadly, “Jane is gone.”
I remember feeling more confused than sad. I still held out hope that Jane would return. At that moment, what I couldn’t understand was why she ever left in the first place. I feel that same confusion now as I watch Leslie swipe the rogue curl of hair back into place.
“Gone? She’s no longer living here?”
“She is not,” Leslie says with a disdainful sniff.
I think of the rules. Ingrid must have broken one. A big one. It’s the only reason I can think of for her sudden, shocking departure.
“Did she do something wrong?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” Leslie says. “She wasn’t kicked out, if that’s what you mean.”
“But Ingrid told me she’d be here for another ten weeks.”
“She was supposed to be.”
I’m hit with another kick of confusion. None of this makes sense. “She just left?”
“That’s right,” Leslie tells me. “Swiftly and without notice, I might add.”
“Ingrid didn’t even tell you she was leaving?”
“She did not. And I really would have appreciated some advance notice. Instead, she just slipped out in the middle of the night.”
“Did anyone see her leave? Who was the doorman on duty?”
“That would be Charlie,” Leslie says. “But he didn’t see her go.”
“Why not?”
“He was in the basement at the time. The security camera down there wasn’t working properly, so he left his station to try to fix it. When he returned, he found the keys for 11A right in the middle of the lobby. That’s where Ingrid dropped them on her way out.”
“What time was this?”
“I’m not sure. You’d have to ask Charlie.”
“Are you certain she’s gone?” I say, thinking out loud. “There’s a chance she accidentally dropped the keys in the lobby and didn’t notice. Maybe there was an emergency with one of her friends and she had to leave in a hurry. She could be on her way back here right now.”
Although my theory is possible, it’s also improbable. And none of it explains why Ingrid hasn’t texted me back.
It’s clear Leslie thinks the same thing. She leans against the doorframe and gives me a look brimming with pity. I don’t mind. My parents gave me similar looks after Jane vanished and I’d wake them up with far-fetched theories about where she was and why I was certain she’d return. At seventeen, I was the queen of magical thinking.
“That seems unlikely, don’t you think?”
“It does,” I say. “But so does Ingrid leaving in the middle of the night without telling anyone.”
Leslie tilts her head, the unruly curl on the verge of breaking free again. “Why are you so interested in Ingrid?”
I could give her several reasons, all of them true. That Ingrid was friendly and fun and I liked being around her. That she reminded me of Jane. That it was a refreshing change of pace to know someone other than Chloe who actually wanted to be around me.
Instead, I tell Leslie the biggest cause of my concern.
“I thought I heard a scream last night.”
Leslie gives an exaggerated blink of surprise. “In 11A?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Around one a.m. I came down to check on Ingrid, but she told me I was just hearing things.”
“None of the other residents reported hearing anything like that,” Leslie says. “Are you sure it was a scream you heard?”
“I-I don’t know?”
It shouldn’t be a question. I either heard a scream or I didn’t. Yet that curl of uncertainty at the