“Casey sent me down here,” I blurt. “I mean, I was looking for the bathroom.”

“What?” Andre squints at me. He takes up most of the doorway. He’s big—at least six-four—with hands like meat cleavers.

My heart is still going, hard. He knows what happened to Madeline Snow. It’s not a suspicion. It’s a certainty. He knows what happened to Madeline Snow and he knows where Dara is and he takes care of problems. It suddenly occurs to me that no one would hear me if I screamed. The music upstairs is too loud.

“You looking for a job?” Andre says, when I don’t respond, and I realize that I’m still holding the stupid application.

“Yes. No. I mean, I was.” I shove the paper into my bag. “But Casey said you guys aren’t doing parties right now.”

Andre’s watching me sideways, like a snake watching a mouse move closer and closer. “We’re not,” he says. His eyes go over my whole body, slowly, like a long, careful touch. He smiles then: a megawatt, movie-star smile, a smile to make people say yes. “But how about you come in and sit down? Never know when we’re going to start up again.”

“That’s okay,” I say quickly. “I don’t—I mean, I was kind of looking for a position right now.”

Andre’s still smiling, but something shifts behind his eyes. It’s like the friendly switch has just cut off. Now his smile is cold, scrutinizing, suspicious. “Hey,” he says, pointing a finger at me, and the certainty yawns open in my stomach: He recognizes me, he knows I’m Dara’s sister, he knows I came to find her. All this time, he’s been screwing with me. “Hey. You look familiar. Don’t I know you?”

I don’t answer. I can’t. He knows. Without meaning to move, I take off down the hall, walking as quickly as I can without breaking into a run, taking the stairs two at a time. I burst onto the dance floor, pinballing off a guy dressed in a dark purple suit who reeks of cologne.

“Why the hurry?” he calls after me, laughing.

I dodge a small knot of girls swaying drunkenly in heels, squealing along with the song lyrics. Luckily, the bouncer has temporarily abandoned his post—maybe it’s too late for new arrivals. I push out into the thick night air, heavy with moisture and salt, taking deep and grateful breaths, like someone emerging from underwater.

The lot is still packed with cars, a tight Tetris formation, bumper-to-bumper—too many cars for the number of people inside. For one disorienting second I can’t remember where I parked. I fish my keys from my bag, clicking the car open, feeling reassured when I hear the familiar beep and see headlights blink expectantly at me. I jog toward the car, weaving between cars.

Suddenly I’m blinded by the sweep of headlights. A small, dark VW cuts by me, spitting gravel, and as it passes underneath the light I see Sarah Snow’s friend hunched behind the wheel. Her name, heard or read a dozen times in the past ten days, returns to me suddenly. Kennedy.

I thud a hand down on her trunk before she can fully bypass me. “Wait!”

She slams on the brakes. I circle around to the driver’s side, keeping one hand on her car the whole time, as if it will prevent her from driving away. “Wait.” I haven’t even planned what I’m going to say. But she has answers; I know she does. “Please.” I place my hand flat on the window. She jerks backward an inch, like she’s expecting me to reach through the glass and hit her. But after a second, she buzzes down the window.

“What?” She’s holding on to the wheel with both hands, as if she’s afraid it might jump out of her hands. “What do you want?”

“I know you lied about the night Madeline disappeared.” The words are out of my mouth before I know I’ve even been thinking them. Kennedy inhales sharply. “You and Sarah came here.”

It’s a statement, not a question, but Kennedy nods, a movement so small I almost miss it.

“How did you know?” she says in a whisper. Her expression turns fearful. “Who are you?”

“My sister.” My voice cracks. I swallow down the taste of sawdust. I have a thousand questions, but can’t make a single one come into focus. “My sister works here. Or at least, she used to work here. I think—I think she’s in trouble. I think something bad may have happened to her.” I’m watching Kennedy’s face for signs of recognition or guilt. But she’s still staring up at me with huge, hollowed eyes, as if I’m the one to be afraid of. “Something like what happened to Madeline.”

Immediately I know it was the wrong thing to say. Now she doesn’t look afraid. She looks angry.

“I don’t know anything,” she says firmly, as if it’s a line she’s been practicing repeatedly. She starts to buzz up the window. “Just leave me alone.”

“Wait.” Out of desperation, I stick my hand in the narrowing gap between the car door and the window. Kennedy lets out a hiss of irritation, but at least she rolls the window down again. “I need your help.”

“I told you. I don’t know anything.” She’s losing it again, like she did downstairs in Andre’s office. Her voice hitches higher, wobbling over the words. “I left early that night. I thought Sarah had gone home. She was drunk. That’s what I thought, when I came into the parking lot and saw the car door hanging open—that Sarah had been too wasted to remember to close it. That she’d taken Maddie home in a cab.”

I imagine the car, the open door, the empty backseat. Light spilling from Beamer’s just like it is tonight, the muffled thud of music, the distant crash of waves. Up the street, the peaked roof of an Applebee’s, a few low-rent condominiums clinging to the shore, a diner and a surf shop. Across the street: a greasy clam shack, a former T-shirt shop, now in foreclosure. Everything is so normal, so relentlessly the same—it’s almost impossible to believe in all the bad things, the tragedies, the dark fairy-tale twists.