“I bet you can’t,” Javi says.
“Th-thought I’d try, though,” I say, brightly as I can muster. I give Kendall a small smile. “Hence, c-crashing your party.”
“Well. I’m sorry about why you’re here, but … I’m glad you’re here,” Javi says and it still doesn’t sound right. “Because Montgomery’s fucking boring. It needs someone new.”
“It’s not that bad,” Carrie says.
“No, it is that bad,” Javi replies. “It’s the same old shit, every day…”
Noah wads up a napkin and tosses it at Javi’s head. “If the same old shit is you not doing shit, then I’ll bite, you goddamn benchwarmer.” Noah looks at me and points to Javi. “He needs someone new. You into guys, Lera?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Javi says.
I shrug. “S-sometimes.”
“You, buy this girl a drink,” Noah tells Javi, and then to me, “You, get this boy laid.”
Javi’s face is a shade of red I didn’t think could exist in the natural world.
“You’re such an asshole,” he mutters.
Noah gives Javi the biggest, assholiest grin. “Hey, if you’re not gonna buy her a drink, you can at least buy me one.”
“We just went up there!”
Noah turns his bottle upside down. “And I’m out.”
“I’ll g-go with you,” I tell Javi, and that’s all it takes.
“I’m sorry,” Javi says after we climb out of the booth. He half-turns to give me the full force of his sincerity and ends up tripping over his own feet. “He’s really—”
“It’s f-fine.”
When we reach the bar, the bartender sets us up with a line of shots but instead of walking them back, Javi knocks one down and texts Noah, flashing the screen at me before he hits send: You want em come and get em. Javi picks up another shot and nudges one my way.
“To your sister,” he tells me.
I find myself blinking back tears at the unexpectedness of it, his kindness stealing some part of me away. I grab the shot with a shaking hand. I say, “T-to her,” and I barely manage to swallow the fiery alcohol down. I cough into my palm. “W-what was that?”
“Jäger,” he says and I know I’ll never be able to drink Jäger again. It will remind me of this moment, of her, of choking on my own grief in front of a boy whose name I knew before he knew mine.
“You’re, uh.” He pauses. “When I saw you dancing, I was like, wow.”
The liquor has loosened his tongue.
“Y-you act like a g-girl’s a brand new thing.”
“I’m just telling you you’re interesting,” he mumbles.
I notice Noah crossing the room toward us and I want … space. I want to take this moment alone with Javi and I want it to last longer. Something about that makes me ashamed. This isn’t what I’m here for. And maybe I’m a little wasted, thinking that it could be.
“You w-wanna get s-some air?”
“Yeah.” Javi nods eagerly. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
Leaving the bar is a truly wonderful feeling; I didn’t realize how stale the air was in Cooper’s until I take a deep, clean breath.
“N-Noah gives you a lot of sh-shit, doesn’t he?”
“That obvious, huh?” He shoves his hands in his pockets.
“W-what’d he call you? B-benchwarmer?”
Javi blushes. “Yeah … I’ve just never been that guy, you know? I mean, it’s not easy for me to…” He fumbles for the words but can’t seem to find them. “It’s kind of why I fell in with Noah and Kendall. They at least try to make things happen. But that’s the big joke—because I just sit on the sidelines and pretend to be part of it.”
“D-didn’t see them d-dancing with me.”
He smiles such a small, earnest smile. I can’t think of the last time I made someone so pleased with themselves. It makes me want to cry.
“I guess not,” he agrees quietly, like it means something.
“I’m g-glad you did.”
“I’ll be hanging at Noah and Kendall’s place tomorrow,” he says. “You should come.”
“Th-think she’d like that?”
“Kendall needs a shake-up.” He shrugs. “I see the way she looks at you. She knows she needs one. I told you, Montgomery’s a … it’s one of those cities that feels like a town. That’s why we end up here every week, just to get away from it.”
“W-will their parents b-be home?”
“Yeah, they might be around.”
“W-where do th-they live?”
“Two-twelve Young Street.”
A soft click inside me. A piece locked into place. This will lead me to Silas, who will lead me to Keith and in the meantime …
Maybe I could let myself have whatever this turns out to be.
“S-sounds like it could be fun.”
“Great,” he says.
We walk the edges of the parking lot. I stare at the stars dotting the ink-black sky. The farther we get from the bar, the more stars there are to see and it’s beautiful and its beauty makes me ache. I didn’t tell Mattie enough about this kind of thing, I don’t think. About small miracles, like the stars at night and how much brighter they seem in wintertime. The sun rising and setting and rising again. I decide to share the thought with Javi, just to release myself from it and he gives a small smile and says, “Small miracles. I like that.”
I think he’d like anything I said.
That’s new to me.
I point. We’re in front of my car.
“Th-that’s where I l-live.”
“What?”
“K-kidding. But it’s m-mine.”
I unlock the door and open it before I really know what I’m doing.
He climbs into the back and says, “Cozy,” and I follow in after him and stare at his profile and he shifts uncomfortably under my gaze. I imagine pressing my palm against his chest, pressing my body against his. I imagine feeling his heartbeat under my palm. I imagine kissing him and his mouth is as soft and tender as the rest of him. I would let his gentleness take me somewhere else, let myself pretend what it might be like to belong to someone. I would let myself push his hair out of his eyes so I could see them seeing me and this is not a love story … but in this small space, the sound of our breathing between us, I wonder what it would take to make it one.
I swallow hard, lick my lips, the ghost taste of the shot still on them.
To your sister.
I lean forward and reach across the front seat, open the glove box and grab a marker. I hand it to him and he stares at me, confused.
“I l-left my cell at h-home,” I tell him. I roll up my sleeve and stretch my arm out. “R-write your number and I’ll c-call you f-first th-thing.”
Javi opens the marker and worries the cap between his teeth. He scrawls his number up my wrist and the light, careful graze of his touch makes me believe being with him would have been exactly how I imagined it. He asks me if he can have my number and because he can’t, and because I don’t know what else to do, and because maybe I want to do it, I kiss him on the cheek. I don’t think I’m very good at it, the clumsy meeting of my mouth against his lightly stubbled chin, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
“Y-you c-can have that,” I say. “I h-have to go n-now.”
“Already?”
“Yeah, b-but I’ll c-call you t-tomorrow.”
“Okay,” he says. He gives me a shy smile, and gets out of my car. Then, after a second, he turns back to lean in and say, “It was really, really good meeting you,” and I promise I’ll call him again because I don’t know how else to respond. I watch him walk back to the bar and then I stare at his number on my arm and repeat it softly to myself, until it’s stuck in my head, like how any other girl might do.
Then I climb into the front seat, put the key in the ignition and head to the city.
THE GIRLS
S1E2
WEST McCRAY:
May Beth lets me look through the personal possessions left be
hind in Sadie’s car. I’m hoping to glean a greater understanding of where she’s been, where she was headed and if she ever got there. And—if we’re lucky—where she still might be.
There were clothes, nothing trendy. Everything seems geared toward comfort, functionality and compactness. T-shirts and Jeggings, leggings, sweaters, underwear, a couple of bras. There’s a green canvas backpack, something Sadie was rarely seen without in Cold Creek, and inside it, her wallet—empty, a half-eaten protein bar, a crushed, empty bottle of water and a takeout menu for a place called Ray’s Diner, located at a truck stop just outside a town called Wagner. This is the only thing I have to go on. I ask Detective Gutierrez if the Farfield PD looked into it.
DETECTIVE SHEILA GUTIERREZ [PHONE]:
A cursory investigation into Ray’s yielded no new information. It was a long shot; it’s a truck-stop diner, people are constantly coming and going. Add to the fact Ray’s distributes its menus to surrounding areas, it was only ever going to be a long shot. Our time and resources were more effectively spent concentrated on the area the car was found.
[SOUND OF ENGINE BRAKING]
WEST McCRAY:
The truck stop is called Whittler’s and I arrive there on a Tuesday evening, after taking a plane out from New York. I’m staying in a motel in the nearest town, Wagner, about a thousand miles from Cold Creek.
If I accept Detective Sheila Gutierrez’s words at face value, this can only prove to be a waste of my time. On the other hand, May Beth’s general distrust of the Farfield Police Department’s efficacy is never far from my mind. Basically: I have to find out for myself.
How Sadie ended up at this particular spot—if she ended up here at all—is as much a mystery as everything else surrounding her disappearance. Was there something in particular she was looking for or was this just some random stop along the way?
[SOUNDS OF A DINER, MURMURED CONVERSATION, FOOD COOKING, THE CLATTER OF PLATES]
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
What can I get ya?
WEST McCRAY:
Ruby Lockwood is a formidable woman with pitch-black curls piled high on top of her head. The lines on her face suggest she’s a little older than she actually is—she’s in her mid-sixties. She’s worked at Ray’s Diner for thirty years and spent twenty of them married to its owner, Ray.
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
Ray was fifteen years my senior. When I started here, it was a dive, but I was just a waitress, so I kept my mouth shut. Then he falls in love with me, I get around to falling in love with him, we tied the knot and I worked on turning this place into something special. Just ask anyone—here, ask Lenny! Lenny Henderson. Lenny, this guy’s with the radio.
LENNY HENDERSON:
Is that right? People still listen to that?
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
Tell him how special it is here.
LENNY HENDERSON:
I always like coming to Ray’s, it’s real homey. Ruby treats her regulars like the family she never wanted. [RUBY LAUGHS] And the meatloaf’s better than my mama makes, but don’t go telling her I said that.
WEST McCRAY:
Well, I’ve got it on the record here but no one listens to the radio.
[THEY LAUGH]
WEST McCRAY:
I don’t know what Ray’s was like before Ruby fixed the place up, but I can tell you what she turned it into. There’s something immehtely nostalgic about it when you step through its doors, or rather—it’s the idea of nostalgia. Ray’s Diner plays to that fifties Americana feel, with its Formica countertops, red vinyl seats and turquoise accents. It smells like how a Thanksgiving meal looks in the movies. I’m hungry, so I order the meatloaf and Lenny’s right; it’s better than my mama makes.
Ray died a few years ago of throat cancer.
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
We were gonna rename this place Ruby & Ray’s. We were gonna have a grand reopening for it and everything. Then he got sick and after he died, it didn’t feel right calling it anything else. I miss him every day of my life. He was my soul mate and now this diner is the closest I’ll ever be to him, ’til it’s my turn to come home.
I got no plans to retire.
WEST McCRAY:
Ruby says she never talked to the Farfield PD about Sadie.
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
You had me convinced my memory was shot—I wouldn’t forget talking to the police, if they came around here. And then I thought: Saul.
WEST McCRAY:
Saul is Ruby’s brother-in-law, the late Ray Lockwood’s youngest brother. He’s a bald man, who just entered his forties, with two colorful tattoo sleeves on both arms. He’s in charge when Ruby’s not around. And Ruby wasn’t around the day the Farfield PD came to visit to ask about our missing girl.
SAUL LOCKWOOD:
It was a young guy, I think, the cop who came. He asked me if I saw her and he showed me a picture. Didn’t look familiar—
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
But you’re horrible with faces.
SAUL LOCKWOOD:
Then he questioned some of the waitstaff, and showed them the picture, and they didn’t remember seeing her. He left the picture with me, if I remember right, and told me to follow up with anyone that was on shift at the time …
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
You didn’t follow up with me. I don’t remember ever seeing a picture of this girl. I bet you threw it out, didn’t you, Saul?
SAUL LOCKWOOD:
Maybe? I wasn’t keeping track of it, at least. I mean, come on. A missing girl? Around here? Take a look at the girls working the parking lot! They’re all missing. We got a business to run. Lots of people come through here. I can’t keep track of every single one.
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
He’s not wrong. It’s true we got less regulars than passersby, but unlike some people, I never forget a face.
WEST McCRAY:
Well, I have a picture right here, so let’s find out if you saw this one.
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
All right, give it here and—oh.
WEST McCRAY:
Ruby was telling the truth. She never forgets a face.
sadie
Even in the dark, Montgomery is beautiful.
I have no choice but to hate it. It’s the set of a movie brought to life. The houses here are gorgeous, lined neatly along each street, all of them tastefully decorated and immaculately landscaped. American flags hung with quiet pride. Cars in driveways that probably cost as much as much less impressive houses. On the main street, it’s shop after shop boasting an earthy, artisanal aesthetic that screams we’re local! Local or organic or both. Craft beer. A yoga studio. A weed dispensary. A little café hawking wheatgrass shots. There’s a poster for an outdoor concert in the park come weekend; some band I’ve never heard of. One of the streets is closed off, filled with stalls for a farmer’s market in the morning. I pass the empty high school awaiting fall term and imagine a bunch of white-teethed teenagers—Kendall, Noah, Carrie and Javi among them—pouring out of its doors and they’re all in school colors because what else would they be wearing? At one side of town, there’s a playground with a climbing wall and a splash pad and the slides and swings look so … new.
I know better than to let myself want, but whenever I got weak and gave in to the urge, the trailer I grew up in turned into a house, the lot turned into a backyard with more than enough room to lay in the sun without witness of creepy neighbors. An empty fridge turned itself full. In the summer, every sweltering room was suddenly cool and in the winter you didn’t need to bury yourself under a hundred blankets for warmth. Cold Creek’s main street would transform into a street lined with store after store after store where everything was in the miraculous price range of You Can Afford All This and More. Montgomery is almost more than I can understand because it’s so much more than it ever occurred to me to want. I hate it. I hate the people who live here. May Beth always told me I can’t do that; I can’t hate people for having more than me, but she’s wrong. I can.
I do. It’s the perfect wall between myself and the kind of longing that poisons your guts and turns your insides right out.
Silas Baker lives in a house on a hill, of course. I wouldn’t believe he was Marlee’s brother if she hadn’t told me herself. I guess there’s no straight line from one person to another, no matter what you think you can or can’t tell just by looking at them and least of all by whatever comes out of their mouth. It’s strange to think of Silas choosing Keith over his sister. I can’t imagine choosing anyone over Mattie. Ever. I wonder how much Marlee told Silas about Keith. Either way, there’s no suggestion of her kind of poverty here. Sometimes, no matter how successful you get, it leaves a stain on you that you can’t get out but Silas Baker scrubbed it good, covered it in his wealth. His house is a large-two story, all modern angles, with huge windows allowing for a view inside if you can get close enough to look. The roof slopes down and is covered in solar panels. There’s a smart-looking blue Mercedes in the driveway.
I drive slowly past, parking far enough away to be invisible but close enough for a view of the driveway and front door in my rearview. I rest my head against the window. About an hour later, a behemoth of a red truck—the kind you’d need a step ladder just to get a foot on the running board—drives past on the wrong side of the road. It pulls into the Bakers’ driveway, narrowly missing the Mercedes. After a long minute, Noah stumbles out. He rounds the truck and drags his sister from the passenger’s side. They’re a lot drunker than they were when I left them. I wonder if Javi’s as bad, if he stupidly drove himself home. They make an ugly lurching walk to the front door and it’s painful, watching the ten-minute attempt to get their key in the lock. And the whole time they’re doing this, my sister is dead.
Sadie Page 8