Missing Clarissa


 Contents
 
 Title Page
 Copyright Notice
 Dedication
 Epigraph
 Episode I. The Beginning
 Episode II. The Mothers
 Episode III. The Friends
 Episode IV. The Lovers
 Episode V. The Regrets
 Episode VI. The Betrayers
 Episode VII. The Apologies
 Episode VIII. The Final Girls
 Acknowledgments
 About the Author
 Newsletter Sign-up
 Copyright
 
 
 
 Guide
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Dedication
 EPISODE I. THE BEGINNING
 Acknowledgments
 Contents
 Copyright
 
 
 
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 Table of Contents
 About the Author
 Copyright Page
 
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 for Sara G., with love
 
 
 
 The death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.
 —Edgar Allan Poe
 
 
 
 
 IMAGINE this: A fairy-tale summer, blue and wild. Skinny-dipping in the Salish Sea with a trail of phosphorescence in your wake, sunburnt shoulders, salt-sticky hair drying in the twilight as the stars come out. The kind of summer you hold in your heart for the rest of your life: the last best summer, a summer summoned in vivid Technicolor decades later with a flash of a song that soundtracked your late-night drives, the briny smell of the ocean wafting through hot concrete streets on your way to a job you never imagined yourself having, your own daughters slinking home after curfew with their weed-reddened eyes and wine-cooler breath.
 That summer for us in Oreville was the summer of 1999. Thorny branches so heavy with blackberries they brushed the ground. The air so warm the Sound was balmy enough to swim. Old-timers worried the heat wave heralded the end of the world. The rest of us greased our bodies with Coppertone and lay out on our lawns to bronze.
 Our summer was the most epic party summer of anyone who ever lived. We knew no other summer would ever match. We felt sorry for everyone who came after us, who would never know our glory. The football players driving their pickup trucks shirtless to the woods out behind town at sunset, their cabs stuffed with cases of Rainier and their truck beds with cheerleaders. The grunge kids in their dads’ flannel shirts, the theater kids belting lines from Oklahoma!, the valedictorian looking over her shoulder as if her college acceptance letters would catch her with a jury-rigged bong built out of empty five-gallon milk containers. The stoners showing up late as always, their pockets bulging with plastic baggies.
 That summer, our summer. The last free summer before adulthood closed in.
 And then Clarissa Campbell disappeared.
 
 Oreville’s a small town. Everybody knew Clarissa. We all knew Brad Bennett too.
 The head cheerleader and the captain of the football team: a story you already know. Clarissa was gorgeous, a limber executor of flawless pikes. Brad had a strong arm and a chiseled face. They moved through the world together in a cloud of their own beauty. We expected great things of them. Reality television, maybe. A career in Hollywood. Brad would go on to play for a team. Which team? We didn’t think about it too hard.
 We didn’t think about much of anything that summer, except how to find the next party.
 Until the night Clarissa vanished from the forest. After that, all we thought about was Clarissa. The whole country thought about Clarissa. You remember the headlines.
 A COMMUNITY MOURNS IN MYSTERY.
 UNEXPLAINED DISAPPEARANCE OF SMALL-TOWN GIRL CAPTURES THE HEART OF A NATION.
 CHEERLEADER’S BOYFRIEND QUESTIONED IN WASHINGTON STATE DISAPPEARANCE.
 STILL NO ANSWERS FOR BEAUTY QUEEN’S FAMILY.
 WHERE IS CLARISSA CAMPBELL?
 Clarissa’s perfect face plastered across newspapers from Washington to West Virginia. Clarissa on the evening news. Clarissa’s white teeth and blue eyes. Clarissa’s long blond hair. Endless speculations on Clarissa’s lost future, what she might have become. (All of them futures none of us could remember