TITLE PAGE

Contents

1. PART ONE: Who is She if Not Everyone Else’s?
   1. CHAPTER 1
   2. CHAPTER 2
   3. CHAPTER 3
   4. CHAPTER 4
   5. CHAPTER 5
   6. CHAPTER 6
   7. CHAPTER 7
   8. CHAPTER 8
2. PART TWO: Take the Bullet Out
   1. CHAPTER 9
   2. CHAPTER 10
   3. CHAPTER 11
   4. CHAPTER 12
   5. CHAPTER 13
   6. CHAPTER 14
   7. CHAPTER 15
   8. CHAPTER 16
   9. CHAPTER 17
   10. CHAPTER 18
   11. CHAPTER 19
   12. CHAPTER 20
   13. CHAPTER 21
   14. CHAPTER 22
   15. CHAPTER 23
   16. CHAPTER 24
   17. CHAPTER 25
   18. CHAPTER 26
   19. CHAPTER 27
   20. CHAPTER 28
3. PART THREE: Orion Waves
   1. CHAPTER 29
   2. CHAPTER 30
   3. CHAPTER 31
   4. CHAPTER 32
   5. CHAPTER 33
   6. CHAPTER 34
   7. CHAPTER 35
   8. CHAPTER 36
   9. CHAPTER 37
4. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
5. AUTHOR INTERVIEW

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

About the Author

Savannah Brown grew up in a small town in Ohio and currently lives in London, England. She’s the author of a collection of poetry called Graffiti, which was a finalist in the Goodreads Choice Awards. When she isn’t writing, she can usually be found watching conspiracy theory documentaries, making faces at her cat or worrying. The Truth About Keeping Secrets, her first novel, was published in 2019. The Things We Don’t See is her second novel.

PART ONE: Who is She if Not Everyone Else’s?

Part One

WHO IS SHE IF NOT EVERYONE ELSE’S?

HOW TO DISAPPEAR

Episode 21

Narrator: The year is 1986, and if my demographics are anything to go by, you’re not there.

I’ll set the scene: Reagan is president. DNA was just used for the first time in a criminal investigation. Challenger exploded over Cape Canaveral in January. Chernobyl, just after that. But, hey – the previous March, ‘We Are The World’ became the fastest-selling single in pop history.

The year is 1986 and the sleepy island of Sandown Bay is waking up.

To its nearly two hundred year-round residents, Sandown is its own self-contained world – to the rest of us, and to its seasonal visitors, it’s a miniscule island situated two miles off the coast of the Delawarean mainland, just past the end of the estuary of Delaware Bay.

Sandown Bay began as a sailors’ port, then, towards the turn of the twentieth century, became a food and drink tourism destination, known for an unmatched abundance of the Delaware Blue Crab; nowadays, Sandown is home to fifteen bars and pubs and no hospital. There’s one school for twenty-one students aged six to eighteen. One grocery store. One bank. One funeral home. A ferry travels to and from the island year-round, trips running every two hours in the summer. In the past, you could drive a quad bike across the frozen Atlantic – granted the winter was cold enough, which it hasn’t been for the past two decades.

To an outsider, the small population and eccentricities of life are cited with incredulity. Claustrophobia. How could anyone live this way? But the residents would tell you they find it the most natural thing in the world. Or, they might, once you got them to talk.

Brought together by their unique circumstances and love of Sandown, the sense of community on the island was – and remains – impenetrable. Which is why, given the mystery it would later become shrouded in, no one seems to have anything to say.