The Night She Disappeared

Gabie drives a Mini Cooper. She also works part-time as a delivery girl at Pete’s Pizza. One night, Kayla—another delivery girl—goes missing. To her horror, Gabie learns that the supposed kidnapper had asked if the girl in the Mini Cooper was working. 

Gabie can’t move beyond the fact that Kayla’s fate was really meant for her. She becomes obsessed with finding Kayla and teams up with Drew, who also works at Pete’s. Together, they set out to prove that Kayla isn’t dead and hopefully to find her before she is. 

The Night She Disappeared is told from the alternating perspectives of Gabie, Drew, Kayla, and other minor characters. However, most of the story focuses on how Kayla’s kidnapping affects Gabie and Drew. The two characters are completely different, but the kidnapping draws the two together as they try to unravel the mystery of who kidnapped Kayla. Gabie is a lonely, good girl who does well in school but mostly goes unnoticed by her parents and peers. On the other hand, Drew is a poor boy with a drug addicted mother, who has little to look forward. While the two are unlikely companions, as they learn about each other’s lives, Gabie and Drew both change for the better.  

Some of the chapters are told from Kayla’s perspective, allowing the readers to see the horrors of being kidnapped. While the kidnapper is abusive, the abuse is not described in detail. However, readers will be able to understand Kayla’s fear and her desire to live. The kidnapper’s motives are murky, but one thing is clear—Kayla is not the first girl he’s kidnapped, and she won’t be the last.

At first, readers may have difficulty keeping track of the shifting perspectives, especially because there isn’t a clear pattern. In addition to different chapters with different characters’ perspectives, the book also includes a variety of snippets, such as newspaper articles, a police interview, and a website from a criminal defense attorney. The often chaotic changes in the book reflect the chaos that ensues after Kayla is kidnapped. In addition, the changing perspectives allows the reader to see how Kayla’s kidnapping affects everyone—her coworkers, her parents, the police, and others. The other snippets also help readers understand the wider ramifications of a kidnapping.  

Even though The Night She Disappeared focuses on the horrifying events of being kidnapped, the author’s descriptions avoid graphic details. Despite this, there are many examples of teens being murdered, and several of the characters die. Readers who want an in-depth exploration of being kidnapped will find The Night She Disappeared to be a fast-paced story that will send chills running through their bodies. If you enjoy thrillers, grab a copy of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson, Six Months Later by Natalie D. Richards, and Pretend She’s Here by Luanne Rice. 

Sexual Content  

• Gabie’s parents gave her “the condom lecture when [she] was thirteen.”  
• Drew goes home with Gabie so they can talk about Kayla’s kidnapping. When Gabie begins to shake, Drew “put [his] arms around her.” Then, Gabie kisses him. “I feel like I’m drowning, or drugged, or I’ve gone someplace where things are beyond my control. Like I could fall inside Drew and never come out.”  
• After Gabie kisses Drew, he is confused by the kiss, and he thinks about the other girls he kissed in a wooded area behind his house. “I’ve kissed a girl or two there. When it’s dark, you just need to hold on to someone because she’s warm and her mouth is soft.”  
• Drew goes home with Gabie, so she’s not in an empty house alone. They start kissing, and Drew thinks, “I could get a contact drunk kissing Gabie. The Kahlua makes her mouth sweet and loose. After a while, I don’t know where she begins and I end. . . I’m on top of her, and for a long time, we didn’t say anything. At least now with words.”  
• Even though Gabie is drunk and Drew is not, they continue kissing. “Her hands slide up under my shirt and urge it off. And then she takes off her own shirt. . . It’s pretty clear that I can do whatever I want and Gabie won’t do anything but say yes. But something stops me. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve never done it before. . .” Drew puts Gabie in bed and leaves.  
• When Gabie wakes up with a hangover, she’s embarrassed by “how I licked his ear, and then told him I wanted him.” Gabie wonders if Drew “thinks I’m some drunk slut.”  

Violence  

• A diver is looking for Kayla’s body at the bottom of a fast-moving river. He remembers “the feel of a human hand against his throat as he searched. . . he had finned directly into the outstretched arm of a dead six-year-old girl.” The diver briefly thinks about other dead bodies he found.  
• Kayla is kidnapped and hit over the head with a rock. When she wakes up, she has a head wound. “The pain makes me shriek. It’s like someone just tried to scalp me. . . A warm trickle of blood curves down my neck. How bad is it? I’m scared to know.” Kayla shouts for help, but nobody comes.  
• The man who kidnapped Kayla demands that she call him “master.” When she refuses, he slaps her. “He hits me so hard that I fall against the white wall. Stars bloom behind my eyes. My ears ring. On boneless legs, I slide down to the cheap-looking linoleum.” Afterwards, Kayla calls him master. 
• Gabie thinks about a girl from school. “Her older brother took their dad’s gun, went downtown, and shot into a crowd waiting for a movie to start. He hit seven people, killing two, and then shot himself in the head.” 
• Gabie reads an article titled “Body of Teen Found in Landfill Stuffed in Suitcase.” The 16-year-old girl’s murderer was arrested.  
• A tweaker who was accused of killing Kayla shoots himself. The teen’s 911 call is included, as well as a one-page newspaper article about Kayla’s and the boy’s death.  
• The man who kidnapped Kayla plans to kill her. “My plan is to strangle her, come in when she’s asleep, and be nearly done before she has a chance to struggle. I’ve fashioned a cord with two wooden handles on it. I won’t do it like the other one—too much blood. And she took forever to die.”  
• Drew is driving Gabie’s car when someone crashes into the back of it. “The car is filled with foul-smelling powder. My face hurts. A huge white balloon is already deflating on my lap.” Unbeknownst to Drew, the man in the other car thought Gabie was driving and he was hoping to kidnap her. The man sees Drew and flees. 
• In a multi-chapter conclusion, Drew, Gabie, and Kayla fight the kidnapper. Drew and Gabie discover the house where Kayla is being held captive. When they arrive, they hear Kayla screaming. Drew rounds a corner, and “light spills out of a doorway. . . But I only have eyes for the guy. He’s facing the light, with his back to us. . . His free hand comes away from his cheek, his fingertips dark with blood. Now he’s lifting his gun.”  
• Gabie holds a gun and fires it at the kidnapper. “With his free hand, the guy swipes at the back of his neck. The undamaged back of his neck. . .” The gun that Gabie found wasn’t a real one; it was a BB gun.  
• The kidnapper, Gabie, and Kayla “are a shouting, screaming, grunting blur on the floor. A girl cries out. . . The guy gets to his feet, pressing one hand against his bloody side where his shirt has been slicked open. . . He kicks Kayla. Hard. Then Gabie. They don’t seem to be moving.”  
• To save the girls, Drew pulls the trigger of a gun. The police arrive, but “Drew is frozen, one hand holding a flashlight loose at his side, his other hand still wrapped around the gun, blood dripping from his arm.” Drew’s eyes are fixed on “the remains of the man who held me prisoner.”  
• Kayla gave first aid to Gabie, who had been stabbed in the neck with a screwdriver. “There’s so much blood it looks fake, especially splashed around in this tidy room where the only things out of place is the blood-drenched people.” All three teens are taken to the hospital. The kidnapper is dead.  
• When the cops search the kidnapper’s property, they find a girl buried “who had been shot in the head.”  

Drugs and Alcohol  

• Drew and Kayla were caught “smoking weed in the cooler” at work.  
• When a woman enters Pete’s Pizza looking for Drew, Gabie thinks, “Everyone at school knew you could buy weed off Drew Lyle. But it was all pretty casual, a couple of joints . . .But now it looked like he was selling to adults as well as kids. . .” 
• The two teens who found Kayla’s car had “two six-packs of beer on the floorboards.”  
• Drew has a pack of cigarettes because he “took them from my mom when we were arguing about how much she smokes.”  
• A guy comes into the pizza place asking about Kayla. After he leaves, Drew says, “That guy’s a tweaker. . . Sometimes they get paranoid.” Drew says he can recognize a meth user because “of his teeth. . . My mom has some, um, friends that use it. They get skinny like that.” Later, Drew reveals that his mom also uses meth.
• Gabie finds a bottle of Kahlua hidden in a cabinet. She drinks until she is drunk.  

Language  

• Profanity is used rarely. Profanity includes ass, crap, hell, and pissed. 
• “Oh, my God” is used as an exclamation a few times. 

Supernatural 

• Kayla’s parents hire a psychic who claims that Kayla is dead. The psychic was on The Opal Show and discussed how she knew Kayla was dead. The shows three-page transcript is included. 

Spiritual Content  

• A woman comes into the pizza place to ask about Kayla. The woman tells Drew, “We’re all praying for Kayla.” 
• Gabie’s parents “don’t believe in ghosts or spirits or witches. Or God, for that matter. Only in what they can see and touch and measure.”  
• Kayla plans on attacking her kidnapper so she can escape. Beforehand, “I pray for my family and my friends, letting their faces come into my mind one at a time. . . And I pray that I’ll be ready. Ready to kill him. Or to kill myself, if it comes to that. Because I’d rather draw my homemade knife across my wrists than take three months to die.”  
• After Kayla is rescued, she thinks, “Thank God I didn’t draw that homemade knife across my wrist.”