57 pages • 1-hour read
The Night She Disappeared
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “The Day It Happened: Drew”
The narrative opens in the perspective of Drew Lyle, who is working a Wednesday-night shift at Pete’s Pizza. He and his coworker Kayla Cutler are the only employees on shift. Drew picks up a call from a man who identifies himself as “John Robertson” and orders three large meat-lover’s pizzas. He asks if the girl in the Mini Cooper is making deliveries that night. He’s referring to Gabie Klug, another Pete’s Pizza employee; all three attend Wilson High School together. Gabie usually works Wednesdays but has switched shifts with Kayla so that Kayla can take Friday off. Drew deflects the man’s question. As he and Kayla prepare Robertson’s pizzas, their hands accidentally brush. Drew laments that he may have been “the last friendly, normal person to touch her” (9).
The chapter concludes with a transcript of Drew calling 911, reporting that Kayla left hours ago to deliver the pizzas and hasn’t returned. The police dispatch an officer to Pete’s Pizza.
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Second Day: Gabie”
The narrative shifts to Gabie’s perspective. Before the school day starts on Thursday, Drew approaches her to tell her that Kayla has gone missing. The police gave him some details: The abductor called from a pay phone and gave an address that doesn’t exist. Gabie wonders if Kayla might have run away but thinks she has too much going for her; she is beautiful and popular. Kayla’s abduction makes Gabie grateful for her own plain features until Drew tells her that Robertson originally asked for her.
This chapter ends with a photocopy of an article entitled “When Your Child Is Missing: A Family Survival Guide” (15). The guide instructs parents of missing children on how to secure their child’s room to protect evidence.
Chapter 3 Summary: “The Second Day: Todd and Jeremy”
Two high schoolers named Todd and Jeremy drive to the Willamette River to shoot off fireworks. As they draw closer to the water, they are distracted by the headlights of a red Ford Taurus with a Pete’s Pizza sign on it. The car is abandoned with the driver’s-side door open, the keys in the ignition, and a black purse on the passenger seat. Several pizza boxes and Kayla’s white baseball cap lie on the ground nearby.
This chapter concludes with a copy of a fortune-cookie message found lying on Kayla’s dresser. It reads, “You are about to embark on a most delightful journey” (18).
Chapter 4 Summary: “The Third Day: Gabie”
On Friday, Gabie is summoned out of her advanced English class and called to the principal’s office, where she’s met by Sergeant Thayer. Thayer tells Gabie about the discovery of Kayla’s car. Because her keys and purse were left in the car, the police’s working theory is that she voluntarily got out of the vehicle, lured out by someone she knew, and was then abducted.
Gabie tells Sergeant Thayer that she switched schedules with Kayla because Kayla wanted Friday off. Kayla looked like she “had a happy secret” (22), so Gabie assumed she was going on a date after her recent breakup with ex-boyfriend Brock Chambers. She offers up her theory that she was the intended target, but Thayer brushes her off.
Gabie recalls a conversation she had with Kayla about college. Kayla asked about her admittance to Stanford’s premedical program, and Gabie admitted that she wasn’t sure about it because her parents’ whole lives are consumed by their jobs as surgeons. She wonders if Kayla is already dead, but a voice inside her denies it.
As she reenters her classroom, Gabie thinks that she should have been in Kayla’s place because Robertson asked for her first. She wonders if he still wants her.
This chapter concludes with two inserts. The first is a note found on Kayla’s dresser, a to-do list with items including “call Sami” and “practice French” as well as “DON’T WORRY IF PEOPLE THINK YOU’RE A NUT” (25). The second is an evidence report from the Portland police dated May 9. The report lists the discovery of a bloody rock by the Willamette River 200 yards away from Kayla’s car. Later that same day, an officer collected Kayla’s toothbrush for DNA testing.
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Third Day: Gavin”
A police diver named Gavin searches the Willamette River for Kayla’s body while her parents wait anxiously on the shore. In the pitch-black depths of the river, Gavin recalls the countless bodies he’s recovered over the past decade. He knows the police’s working theory is that Kayla was bludgeoned to death, possibly assaulted, and thrown into the river, “none of those things necessarily in that order” (30).
Chapter 6 Summary: “The Third Day: Gabie”
Gabie returns to work against the wishes of her parents, who were anxious and risk-averse even before the abduction. Sergeant Thayer is sitting outside of Pete’s Pizza, observing the unusually large crowd of customers who have come to ask about Kayla. Gabie is annoyed that they treat her like an “abstraction” instead of a real person. While she works the register, an older man makes a sexual innuendo toward her. Shaken, she shouts at him to leave the shop.
This chapter concludes with the transcript of a 911 call made by a woman named Alice Russo. She reports seeing a white Toyota pickup truck driving slowly near Kayla’s last known whereabouts on the Wednesday that she disappeared. She thinks there might have been more than one person in the truck.
Chapter 7 Summary: “The Third Day: Kayla”
Kayla awakes to find herself lying on a futon in the dark. Sitting up reopens a gash on her head. Locating a light switch, Kayla illuminates a small, windowless room that contains only the bed, a bookcase, a toilet, and a TV. The only door to the room is locked. Kayla pounds on the door and screams for help, but there is no answer. She begins kicking and throwing herself at the door as she grows increasingly desperate, until she is so tired that she has to lie down again.
Chapter 8 Summary: The Fourth Day: “John Robertson”
Robertson hears Kayla’s screams coming from the basement room, which he built specifically to keep a hostage. He is angry at himself for ruining his own plan. On Wednesday night, he intended to kidnap Gabie Klug. He observed the girls working at Pete’s Pizza for months before settling on Gabie. Robertson believes that Gabie’s shy but friendly personality makes her perfect for something he calls “The Project, Part Two” (42). He phoned in a delivery to a fake address near the river. When he saw the Ford Taurus pull up instead of Gabie’s Mini Cooper, he knew he’d made a mistake, but he proceeded anyway. He waved Kayla out of the car, and she smiled at the sight of his “familiar face.”
Robertson recalls the mistake he made during “part one” of the project, with a girl whose name he can no longer remember. Soon after he kidnapped the girl, he realized that she was unsuitable for his objectives. Kayla is also proving unsuitable—he thinks she is “ungrateful, damaged, dirty, disgusting” (43). He wants to start his project over again with Gabie, but first he’ll have to kill Kayla and dispose of her body in the Willamette River.
Chapters 1-8 Analysis
The first eight chapters of The Night She Disappeared introduce the novel’s central mystery and cast of main characters. The novel begins with the kidnapping of Kayla Cutler, instantly setting the stakes high. Chapter titles count the days since Kayla’s abduction, intensifying the suspense of her captivity. Henry uses first-person narration, with each chapter alternating between the perspectives of the main characters. Some chapters include inserts stylized to look like real newspaper articles, notes, and audio transcripts.
The inserts included in certain chapters add a sense of reality to the novel. They deepen and contextualize parts of the narrative; for example, Kayla’s to-do list shows the relatable mundanity of her daily plans and offers a glimpse of a common teenage anxiety with the note, “DON’T WORRY IF PEOPLE THINK YOU’RE A NUT” (25). Including these small personal details helps readers connect with Kayla’s character and become invested in her survival.
Henry writes concisely, with short and clear sentences. The settings of Pete’s Pizza, the local high school, and Kayla’s room are rendered without unnecessary details, allowing the characters to take center stage. Although the mystery of Kayla’s disappearance anchors the novel’s plot, The Night She Disappeared is also a coming-of-age story, revolving around its protagonists and their relationships. In addition to the crime that shakes their community, Gabie and Drew both struggle with typical teenage problems. They worry about how they are perceived by their peers and awkwardly flirt with each other in the cooler at work, lending some levity to the novel.
Continually switching between linked perspectives allows Henry to establish nuanced relationships between her characters and build up each person through the perception of others. Before Kayla narrates her first chapter, readers learn that she is popular, outgoing, and kindhearted. By framing Kayla through the eyes of her peers, Henry establishes the theme of Girlhood, Vulnerability, and Power. Kayla is the picture of an all-American girl: beautiful, blond, and beloved. Her disappearance invites high interest and quickly mobilizes law enforcement because she is the “right” kind of victim, but it also breeds a degree of morbid speculation.
The story of a young, attractive girl being kidnapped by an older man is a familiar one, recurring often in both thrillers and true-crime media. It’s a narrative that can evoke morbid fascination, and the community’s response to Kayla’s disappearance shows that they are primed to see her as a tragic victim whose fate has already been written. People theorize wildly on the nature of Kayla’s ordeal, going as far as to suggest that she has been sexually assaulted and murdered. This kind of speculation after a crime is common, but when juxtaposed with Kayla’s firsthand account of her desperate fight to survive, it stands out as insensitive. Gabie notices that people are deriving entertainment from Kayla’s disappearance, treating her like a “human TV program” (86).
Henry details several incidents that remind both Gabie and readers of the way teenage girls are perceived by adults. At work, Gabie is sexually harassed by an older man. When she speaks to Sergeant Thayer about Kayla, she assumes that Kayla is probably dead because that is “what happens when a girl gets taken” (23). She is drawing on familiar narratives about missing and murdered girls to fill in the blanks of Kayla’s mystery. Yet readers know that Kayla is still very much alive, which emphasizes that following familiar narratives is not always the most accurate or helpful option.
Everyone in Kayla’s community is on edge due to the knowledge that Kayla’s kidnapper is likely walking among them. This establishes a wide suspect pool, planting suspicion in the reader’s mind about even seemingly trustworthy characters. One of the perspectives Henry writes from is that of Kayla’s abductor, allowing readers insight into his psyche without revealing his true identity. Chapter 8, the first told from Robertson’s perspective, deepens the theme of girlhood, vulnerability, and power. While Kayla may seem like the perfect victim to the public, Robertson despises her for not fitting his image of a submissive, pliable teenage girl. He calls her “[u]ngrateful, damaged, dirty, disgusting” (43) because she refuses to submit to his will. Robertson mistakenly believes that Gabie would be a “better” victim, setting up an idea that Gabie will struggle with for the rest of the novel: Kayla’s fate was originally meant for her. Robertson’s dismissive tone, when he hints that he has killed another girl in the past for not fitting in with his obscure project, implies to the reader that no victim will fit his vision, raising the stakes for Gabie’s potential abduction.
In the wake of Kayla’s abduction, her distraught community naturally turns to law enforcement for a sense of safety and control. In this early section, Henry hints at a theme further developed in subsequent chapters: The Fallibility of Authority Figures. When Gabie tries to tell Sergeant Thayer that she was the intended victim of the kidnapping plot, he quickly brushes her off. His dismissive attitude is characteristic of how he will treat her and Drew throughout the novel. Gabie is too shy to stand up for herself and insist on her theory, a quality she will have to overcome as the narrative progresses.
Unlock all 57 pages of this Study Guide
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs