Sarah’s whereabouts and how to get in touch with her, it’d be Olivia.
Clicking on her profile, I sent a friend request. Since it was late, I wasn’t expecting a response, but it was accepted within seconds. A message popped up the next second.
Aarav! Nice of you to remember your old friends now you’re famous! /jk
World famous in my own head.
Ha! You’re being modest. I saw the movie. It was amazing.
Thanks. Hey, I was hoping to get in touch with Sarah. Have you heard from her lately?
The waving dots that indicated the person on the other end was typing went on longer than usual, so I began to go through her friends list on the off-chance Sarah was hidden in there. I’d gotten halfway through when her reply popped up.
Wow, that’s a blast from the past. Man, we got into such trouble together. Could you have imagined me as a suburban mum with three kids, a golden retriever, and a husband who thinks it’s the height of excitement when one of his zucchinis grows bigger than usual?
Definitely not, but from the pictures on your page you’re very happy with where you’ve landed.
I am. I hope Sarah’s happy, too.
You don’t know?
No, that’s the thing—she ghosted me years ago, back when she had that blow-up with Diana. She didn’t even tell me she was taking off. I finally called Diana to ask why Sarah wasn’t returning my messages or calls. She’s the one who told me that Sarah had bailed. Can you believe it? Nine years of friendship, of sisterhood, and she ghosted me?
No, I typed, because there could be no other answer.
I was pissed, but now that I’m a mum, I figure that whatever happened must’ve been extremely traumatic. If she does ever contact me, I’m ready to talk. I’ll be her friend again—I mean, it had to have been BAD. Especially since Diana all but raised her. Look, I go to church twice a week and read my Bible every morning, but Sarah and Diana’s parents were the wrong kind of religious—they took the “spare the rod and spoil the child” thing as a license to harm.
I hadn’t known that tidbit, but it just solidified my impression of the sisters being a tight unit.
You have any idea where she might’ve gone? I was planning to play peacemaker, try to help heal the break.
That’s so nice of you, Aarav. But no, I don’t have anything. Sarah dropped all her friends when she left, even that loser druggie boyfriend she fought with Diana over. I tried to stalk her online last year after I had my second child—feeling nostalgic while sleep-deprived—but I got nothing. My husband’s an online ninja and he says she’s a literal ghost. Sarah really doesn’t want to be found.
I leaned back in my chair.
Thanks anyway. What’s your ninja husband do in real life?
The ensuing conversation was the kind you have with people you haven’t seen for a while, and I managed to keep up the act for a few minutes. I was trying to think of a way out when Olivia said her month-old baby was ready for a feed and signed off.
I sat there in the semidarkness, staring out into the night.
She’s a literal ghost.
The words kept tumbling around in my head. What the hell was I thinking?
That Sarah hadn’t left at all?
56
Jesus, my paranoia was getting worse. It wasn’t like people couldn’t vanish if they felt like it. And I was looking online. If Sarah had chosen a strictly offline life, she might not have a digital footprint.
I’d check the electoral roll tomorrow at the library. Unless she’d never registered to vote. Why would a woman leave behind her whole life and vanish? The more I thought about it, the more it didn’t make sense. Unless . . . What had Olivia said?
Loser druggie boyfriend.
I vaguely remembered the guy. Mostly because I’d been jealous he got to be with Sarah; being a teen boy, crushing on Olivia hadn’t stopped me from admiring Sarah, too. The boyfriend had ended up in jail a year or so after Sarah disappeared and it had caused a minor scandal in the Cul-de-Sac, given that he used to come by to pick Sarah up in his patched-up death trap of a car. Margaret had said she’d caught him loitering outside her and Paul’s place.
“Probably casing it, thinking we’re doddery oldies.” She’d snorted. “I’d like to see that wasted prick try.”