The Lost Girls Read online

  Praise for Jessica Chiarella and And Again

  “And Again is a moving and beautifully crafted novel about the frailty of identity, the illusion of control, and the enduring power of love. A fantastic debut.”

  —Laila Lalami, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Other Americans and The Moor’s Account

  “Chiarella’s characters are well drawn, and their anguishes ring true. Do the people who love us in sickness and health really love us, or do they act out of a sense of duty? The SUBs have gotten a reprieve; what will they do with their second chance? Chiarella expresses their deep desires and yearnings with poetic compassion.”

  —USA Today

  “Chiarella is also a pioneer as a writer, spinning a plot that’s as groundbreaking as the medical procedure Linda, David, Connie, and Hannah undergo.”

  —Chicago Review of Books

  “And Again delivers a stunning journey challenging the nature of identity, weaving four stories into a cohesive narrative. . . . As Chiarella gradually reveals the characters’ pasts in tandem with their present courses, she illuminates the reality that their bodies—and our own—determine identity far more than expected.”

  —Paste

  “And Again is a fascinating and disturbing glimpse of a medical technology that some believe the future may hold for our society.”

  —San Diego Book Review

  “[Jessica Chiarella] does an amazing job moving from character to character and delving into their inner thoughts. The idea of creating human clones is already a controversial subject, but this book offers an eye-opening view to the mental and psychological strain that it can cause. The vulnerability and self-consciousness of the characters makes them easy to relate to and endearing.”

  —RT Reviews

  “Chiarella provides a finely nuanced look at four people whose return to the living feels miraculous but provides no magical answers or happy endings in the long run. The body transfer serves easily as allegory for any major life change; we are called upon in life to remake ourselves at some point. Strength and resilience abound in this deeply felt debut.”

  —Shelf Awareness

  “Contemplative . . . Chiarella’s entrancing prose and fully fleshed characters should garner widespread, enthusiastic praise.”

  —Booklist

  “Chiarella’s engaging writing creates so many haunting moments that readers will find themselves moving quickly through the story, as well as awaiting her next work. This is a novel about what it means to be human, with all the flaws and vulnerabilities that implies, and whether we can ever truly begin again.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “What a stunning first novel! And Again was continually haunting me, and just when I thought I knew these characters, who are so vivid and singular in their desires and frailties, and yet so universal in their humanity, they surprised me once more until the pages were finished and I was left pondering our lives, our future, and how love still works. Jessica Chiarella has so much talent.”

  —Susan Straight, author of Between Heaven and Here

  “It was the unique premise of And Again that pulled me in, but it was Jessica Chiarella’s luminous writing that kept me reading page after page. The characters were gorgeously observed, the world fully believable and utterly absorbing. I never wanted it to end.”

  —Rebecca Johns, author of The Countess

  ALSO BY JESSICA CHIARELLA

  And Again

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons

  Publishers Since 1838

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2021 by Jessica Chiarella

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Chiarella, Jessica, author.

  Title: The lost girls : a novel / Jessica Chiarella.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021017432 (print) | LCCN 2021017433 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593191095 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780593191101 (ebook)

  Classification: LCC PS3603.H536 L67 2021 (print) | LCC PS3603.H536 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021017432

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021017433

  Book design by Tiffany Estreicher, adapted for ebook by Maggie Hunt

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  pid_prh_5.7.1_c0_r0

  For Matt and for Susan

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Praise for Jessica Chiarella and And Again

  Also by Jessica Chiarella

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Discussion Guide

  About the Author

  When it most closely allies itself to Beauty: the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world . . .

  —Edgar Allan Poe

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  The world is full of lost girls. Scores of them. Girls who disappear into the night, who inject heroin and fall off the map, who love other girls and come home to find their parents have changed the locks. Girls who run away, girls who are taken. Girls full of sin, ones who like boys more than they love Jesus. Girls who are locked in basements and held until they give birth to more girls. The weight of them could drag a fleet of ships to the ocean floor. I know all about them. I’ve made it my business to know.

  The recording plays over the sound system of the crowded theater in midtown Manhattan. The house lights are momentarily down, and onstage a logo of a retro radio mic, lit up in purple neon light, hangs above the proceedings. The crucifix in this particular church.

  People look for some of them. Sometimes there are police investigations, sometimes candlelight vigils, volunteer phone banks, pleading parents on local news. No one bothers to look for others. If they were rotten, or ruined, or from the wrong place, or from the wrong sort of family, they are allowed to slip away. For others still, no one even knows they are gone. Because no one cared for them to begin with. My sister was lucky in that way, at least—she was loved. We looked for her. I don’t think I will ever stop looking.

  I’m standing at the bar to the left of the audience when a man sidles up to me. I can feel it without having to look,
like a little static pulse at the hairs on my arm. The kind of sixth sense you develop when you’ve had a life like mine. It’s my talent, the one my friends would tease me about in college, saying I was a little bit psychic beneath it all. I’m not, of course. I just pay attention.

  By my count, my sister was the sixteenth girl lost in the hundred-year history of Sutcliffe Heights, Illinois. One of two kidnappings, though the other was a six-year-old, taken across the Wisconsin border by her father during a custody dispute in 1973. That girl was returned—unharmed—two days later, as soon as the police put out an APB. Most of the others were runaways. Factory girls who worked in Chicago’s nearby industrial yards in the early forties. Bright teenagers sucked westward by the promise of California in the sixties. Nothing like Maggie.

  He orders a drink, a SoCo and Coke, and it clings to the ice in his glass with the stickiness of syrup. I know who he’ll be without looking at him. If he’d ordered an IPA, he’d be one of the young producers, with a tweed blazer and an encyclopedic knowledge of audio equipment. Whiskey, and he’d be talent, an investigative journalist with a voice for radio, a bit better at talking than he is at writing. But Southern Comfort and Coke? He’s an investor, the sort of guy who puts up the funds for a production company because he read that podcasts are becoming increasingly lucrative and he doesn’t have the head to navigate the tech industry.

  Maggie was lost on October 16, 1998. She got into a car with a man. Perhaps she knew him. Perhaps he had simply spotted her walking home that day. These are the things we don’t know. Even the car was a mystery, a sedan that might have been blue, or gray, or silver. It was twilight and difficult to tell, especially for an eight-year-old. Especially a scared one. I took off as soon as Maggie let go of my hand. She stayed where she was, and I ran for home. I ran because she told me to. It was the last thing my sister ever told me to do.

  Applause begins as the audio fades, and onstage, the words “JANE DOE, Nominee, Best Debut Series” appear on the screen. Above it, gold lettering reads “APA Annual Awards Gala” in a thin, looping script. It would all be elegant if the floors by the bar weren’t still tacky from the rock concert held here at the venue last night.

  “That one’s going to win,” the man beside me says, sipping from the little cocktail straw floating in his drink. He’s wearing a blazer with a V-neck T-shirt underneath it. His hair, cut in a high fade, slick with expensive pomade, shines a bit too much in the light from the stage. The soft pudge at his waist rests on the buckle of his belt. I guess the gym can’t quite keep up with all those sugary drinks.

  “What makes you so sure?” I ask as he slides his forearm along the bar so it’s almost brushing my elbow. It seems he has no intention of getting back to his seat any time soon.

  It’s the fucking dress that’s the problem. Andrea’s dress, the one she convinced me to wear, insisting that someone should still enjoy her pre-pregnancy clothes. The dress I took without even considering that I’m already three inches taller than my co-creator in flats, and I’m not wearing flats tonight. It’s short in a way that implies intention, like I’m in a nineties legal drama, trying to make a point about fashion and empowerment. I’ve resolved to try to stand as much as possible through this interminable event, which leaves me hovering by the bar, ordering refills at a pace that’s ambitious, even for me. And apparently looking as if I’ve been waiting all night for the attentions of a man whose chest hair is poking through his organic cotton T-shirt.

  “Everyone loves a dead girl,” the man says. “People eat that shit up.”

  “Missing. Missing girl,” I reply, and the man gives a surprisingly high-pitched giggle, licking some errant SoCo from the webbing between his thumb and forefinger.

  “She’s totally dead. There’s no way she’s not dead.” He takes a long pull on his drink. “And it sucks, because the show my company produces is so much better.”

  “Oh yeah? Which show is that?” I ask, my voice flat, as I sip my dirty martini. Here I am, a girl in a short dress with cropped hair, playing her part as much as everyone else. Wearer of smudged eye makeup. Drinker of astringent drinks. Cool and sly as a Warhol superstar.

  “The Chuck Hoffman Show,” he replies. I’ve heard of it. Chuck Hoffman tries to be Ben Shapiro but falls more into the Alex Jones tier.

  “This is the award for Best Debut,” I reply. “I’m pretty sure your show is in a different category.”

  “Whatever,” the guy says. “It’s still better. No dead girls.”

  “Maybe you guys just aren’t trying hard enough,” I reply, and the guy bursts into another round of tipsy giggles.

  “That’s cute,” he says, as if it’s a delightful surprise, my wit. He takes his forefinger and traces it, almost experimentally, down my arm. “You’re funny.”

  I indulge momentarily in the fantasy of smashing my glass into the bridge of his nose. I wonder what would break more easily, the stem of the martini glass or the soft tissue of his face. It would be bad timing, though. Onstage, a woman in a sequined dress approaches the podium. Words materialize on the dark screen above her as she reads off the names into the microphone:

  BEST DEBUT SERIES

  THEATER OF THE ABSURD

  CHAMPIONS UNSCRIPTED

  TELL ME LIES

  JANE DOE

  “What’s your name?” the guy asks.

  “Marti,” I reply, because I can’t use my go-to alias here and there’s nothing else to do but go with the truth. A ripple of applause breaks out in the theater.

  “See, what did I tell you?” the guy says.

  “What?” I ask. He motions to the stage. On its screen, “JANE DOE, Winner, Best Debut Series” is written in that same gold script.

  “So what do I get for being right?” He seems awfully proud of himself. I fish the olives out of my martini glass and down the rest of it, fast and hot in the back of my throat. Just for fun, I drop my skewer of olives, still dripping with brine, into his drink and give it a little stir.

  “The fuck?” he says, his lips curling.

  “Congratulations,” I reply as I head for the stage to collect my award.

  * * *

  * * *

  THE TRUTH IS, despite what I told Mr. SoCo and Coke, all of this actually did start with a dead girl. Jane Doe #4568, who arrived at the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office on April 17, 2018. Jane had been left on the street outside of Illinois Masonic Medical Center during an early-season thunderstorm, her veins full of heroin and mono-ethylene glycol—more commonly known as antifreeze—according to the medical examiner’s report. She was between the ages of thirty and thirty-five years old. She’d had her tonsils removed, and she was slightly anemic, a condition that was likely the result of the fact that she’d recently given birth. She had a large tattoo of a lizard on her right thigh. And her hair was blond.

  My friend Andrea and I were out to lunch when I got the call. If Detective Richards had still been with the CPD, he probably would have reached out himself. But he was already in his forties when my sister went missing and had retired from the force in 2017. The detective who’d replaced him—some kid who’d just been promoted from an undercover gig in Vice—apparently didn’t see fit to pick up the phone when the body turned up, even out of courtesy. Luckily, I’d bought the receptionist at the medical examiner’s office breakfast every six months for the past decade, so when the file came across her desk, she remembered Maggie well enough to reach out.

  It was plenty, after all. The age, the hair, the tonsils. The receptionist didn’t even know that Maggie’s favorite stuffed animal was a blue iguana our father bought her at the Lincoln Park Zoo when she was seven. The other details were enough already to raise the possibility that Jane Doe could have been Maggie.

  It was Andrea’s idea to record what happened. She and I had worked together before, when she’d interviewed me for an episode of a true-
crime podcast she’d produced for a few years. And we’d been friends since college, where she’d studied journalism and I’d dabbled first in criminology, then sociology, then finally landed on English literature. We were sitting at a French bistro in Lakeview when my phone chimed, because Andrea claimed that all she could keep down in her first trimester were croissants with lots of unsalted butter. She must have sensed it was about Maggie when I got up from the table to answer the call, must have seen it in my posture as I hovered near the bistro’s sunny entrance, leaning against the whitewashed brick. Maybe I looked stricken. Maybe I pressed my hand to the door, unsteady; maybe it left a crescent of white fingerprints on the glass. I can’t remember anything from that moment. Still, Andrea must have known, because she already had her recorder running, set on the table between us, when I returned.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, and then held up a silver-ringed hand to stop me from answering right away, ever the journalist. “I’m taping this. Just so you know.”

  “Yeah,” I replied, feeling the blood begin to drop from my head, the prick of nerve pain in my fingers. As if I’d slept wrong and just awoken. “So, I guess there’s a Jane Doe at the morgue.”

  I picked up my fork and speared a couple overdressed leaves of lettuce before I realized that there was no way I could bring them to my mouth, chew, or swallow. Andrea’s dark lipstick disappeared as her mouth tightened.

  “They think it’s Maggie?” she finally asked. Straight to the heart of it, in a way that reminded me of the affinity between us. She knew that I would bristle at being coddled. That I was never more vicious than when I felt pitiable.

  I listed off Jane’s vitals. Andrea was familiar enough with Maggie’s case to understand, to draw her own conclusions.

  “So this is the first new development her case has had in . . . what?” Andrea asked.