Free Last Seen Leaving by Caleb Roehrig

absurdity of it all, and she’d again demurred with another impersonal text: rehearsal then work tonight sorry but have some popcorn for me.
    If Kaz was telling the truth, and January hadn’t been working those nights, then where the hell had she been? And why had she lied to me? To all of us?
    â€œShe couldn’t have quit,” I contradicted Kaz, examining his perfectly structured face for proof that he was mistaken. “I mean, she told me she was still working here.”
    â€œShe wasn’t,” he answered simply.
    â€œWell, if she quit, then she must have given some kind of reason,” I insisted. “You don’t just quit your job and not say why.”
    â€œThe lady who talked to her when she called said she wouldn’t explain.” Kaz ran a hand through his glossy dark hair. “I mean, obviously I asked her, too, when I saw her again, but she just said it was a long story, quote-unquote. She wouldn’t give me any more than that.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, when you saw her again? I thought you said she quit and never came back.”
    â€œI said she never came back to work ,” he corrected me, “but she still had to come to the store to pick up her final paycheck. I was here the day she and that friend of hers dropped by to get it.”
    â€œWhat friend?” I was flipping through my mental Rolodex of January’s known associates, wondering why no one at school had bothered to mention this particular errand.
    â€œJanuary didn’t introduce us,” Kaz said with a shrug, “and her friend barely said a word the entire time they were here. She was Asian, with bright pink hair. Sound familiar?”
    â€œNot really,” I murmured, which was mostly true. It sure didn’t sound like anyone from our circle at Riverside, but the description rang a bell nevertheless.
    I remember Sparkles for sure, and there was also Pube-stache, Pink, and FBA.
    Pink. As nicknames went, it wasn’t especially telling. Considering that a girl could be branded “Sparkles” forever after having worn a spangled top on a single occasion, “Pink” could refer to a girl who’d worn pink shoes or a pink dress, drove a pink car, or was a great big stan for Pink. Kaz seemed to believe that January had actual friends at Dumas, however, and I knew of no one at Riverside who answered to the description of an Asian girl with bright pink hair.
    I pressed Kaz for more information—any information—but he wasn’t able to tell me anything illuminating. After I’d asked all the questions I could think to ask and gotten all the information I thought I would get, I started for the door again. Behind me, Kaz said, “Do you really think she just ran away? That she might come back?”
    Without turning around, I answered, “I don’t know.”
    The bell jingled above my head again as Kaz called out, “If you find her, let me know, okay? I’m … I’m starting to get kinda worried, too.”
    â€œYeah, sure. You’re first on my list,” I returned sarcastically, and the door banged shut behind me.
    All that night and for the rest of the next day, Kaz’s words ate at me. The way he’d talked about me, the way he’d said January talked about me, had left me stunned, angry, and a little shaken. The real problem was that there was a grain of uncomfortable truth at the root of each ugly accusation. I had made fun of the Dumas kids—of course I had—but January had done so first; ironically enough, I’d played along because I thought it would cheer her up. Hearing Kaz describe it as if I’d been psychologically abusing my girlfriend was like looking into a fun-house mirror reflection of reality, the image so distorted that it might as well have been of something else entirely.
    The same went for the claim that I’d made January feel bad for going to Dumas in the first place, when