The Good Girls

by Claire Eliza Bartlett

  And though she knows the sound of the Run will mask the footsteps of anyone coming up behind her, she activates the flashlight on her telephone and starts to search. She moves toward the little bridge.

  She should have thought this through. She’s going to be valedictorian now, but she can’t manage simple logistics? Even if she’d remembered this morning, before the snow began—

  The snow. She stops. The area’s been disturbed by footprints, going back and forth. The FBI hasn’t been here for hours, and the footprints all have the same pattern and size. Gwen takes a deep breath, willing herself calm. But in addition to pine and juniper, the faint scent of woodsmoke tickles her nose.

  Fire. Footprints. What if it’s—

  The water roars. A branch snaps wetly behind her. And though Gwen has always thought of herself as the girl in control, she can’t control the scream that slips out.

  Diary Entry

  Emma Baines—October 29, 2017

  Things I haven’t found out from Lizzy’s diary:

  Who her secret boyfriend was, or who she might have been afraid of.

  Things I have found out:

  That she has a crush on Jack Black’s character from the Kung Fu Panda series. wtf???

  That she thinks her mum’s roast chicken dinner is dry but she’d never tell her.

  That she has this weird hair-braid-y tradition with Gwen. I guess it’s something sisters do. When they talk to each other about all the things that frustrate them.

  That Gwen cheated on her advanced-track exam at the beginning of high school.

  And Gwen is in the closet and I’m not supposed to know.

  Wtf do I do with this information?? Gwen’s only in the running for the scholarship because she took the advanced-track exam and got permission to take AP courses without doing the prerequisites. If I told Principal Mendoza she cheated, she’d be pushed back into the regular track, or worse.

  I’d win. I’d get out of Lorne, away from Dad.

  But it feels wrong. If I expose her, I’ll have to show Principal Mendoza how I found out. Not only does that make me the weirdo who snuck into a grieving house and stole a dead girl’s diary—not only does it alert Lizzy’s secret boyfriend to the diary’s existence—it also outs Gwen to the world.

  Lizzy wrote about how stressed Gwen was. About how she was afraid of failing the exam, of not being good enough. Of missing out on her college education before she had the chance to try for it. Her entire future rested on one test. And I know cheating is bad, and I do feel a tiny bit superior for passing it without cheating. But. Maybe I understand why Gwen did it. We all deserve a chance to excel, don’t we? And if she was really so unfit for the fast track, why are we neck and neck?

  Lizzy wrote about the parents, too. Gwen thought they’d freak if they realized she was gay. Lizzy worried about Gwen’s mental health, her happiness, the high stress of trying to be the best and being in the closet at the same time. Her parents are nice, but you never know where people land on the gay-okay track, and her mum is an ex-fundamentalist.

  Can I really out Gwen to win? I mean, cheating is totally unethical, and if she won the scholarship it would be so unfair. But this feels underhanded, too.

  17

  The Delinquent

  Snow flurries, frenetic, as though it finally discovered that it’s falling in Lorne and now it can never escape. The little police station hasn’t bothered to clear its parking lot, and only three cars sit out front. Inside it’s no warmer than outside, and Ms. Vanderly still wears her coat, fine black wool that seems out of place against the cheap plastic and chipboard. Her gloved fingers tap on the desk of the unfortunate night officer.

  She leaps up as Claude and Mr. Grant emerge from the bowels of the station. Mr. Grant leans over the desk to shake her hand. Then she envelops Claude in an embrace Claude doesn’t return. Her face is pale, her makeup faded. She’s not wearing her fuck you expression anymore. But she hasn’t cried yet, either.

  “Are you all right?” Claude’s mom cups her cheek with one hand.

  “I’m fine.” She says it without any of her usual confidence or bravado and her words ring hollow.

  Mom turns on the officer who followed Claude and Mr. Grant out. “I expect an apology. Written. In full.”

  The officer folds his arms. “We’re just doing our jobs, ma’am.”

  “Your job is to find the truth, not terrorize kids.”

  The cop is unfazed by her righteous fury. He hands her a slip of paper. “I’ll get your things from the evidence locker. You’ll be able to pick up the car in a couple of days.”

  “I want it now,” Mom says.

  “It’s still being examined.”

  Mom glances at Mr. Grant. He clears his throat and says, “If my client is no longer a suspect, then the seizure of her property is illegal. We want it now.”

  The cop’s mouth curls, but he doesn’t have a choice. He turns his sneer on Claude one last time. Then he goes to get the keys.

  Claude holds it together until they’re out in the snow. Then she lets the air kiss her burning face, lets the tears fall hot. She barely hears Mom say goodbye to Mr. Grant. She can’t hear anything except the clink of her handcuffs. She can’t see anything except the cold tabletop. She’s never feared the police before now. But fifteen minutes in a cold room, and she nearly confessed.

  Mom’s arms come around her again. “It’s going to be okay,” she says. Claude nods like she believes her.

  It stopped being okay a long time ago. And it’s been a hell of a day—why try to lie to herself?

  She feels her mom draw back. She forces her eyes open. Mom’s offering up a tissue. Claude wipes her nose.

  “Claude . . .” Mom takes a deep breath.

  But Claude’s eye is caught by the figure behind her, moving slowly, shifting from foot to foot. “Jamie?”

  Mom turns. Jamie Schill coughs. He looks like a marshmallow in his puff coat. His cheeks are red with cold, but his brown eyes make her forget, for a moment, that she stands in a police parking lot surrounded by trouble. “What are you doing here?” Claude asks. Her stupid heart squeezes painfully. Probably the stress. “How did you . . . ?”

  Jamie holds up his phone. “You’re on a blog,” he starts.

  “What? Give me that.” Mom snatches the phone from his hand. She reads through the post two, three times. “Well, at least this West guy is on your side. Maybe.” She hands the phone back. “But it changes things.” She starts toward her car.

  As Claude moves to follow her, Jamie coughs. “Um, can I talk to you?” Her heart squeezes again.

  Mom stops by the car. “I’ll wait. Claude, you have one minute. We need to talk.”

  As Jamie tries to scrub the red out of his cheeks, Claude thinks. She’s never heard Mom trot out we need to talk.

  That bodes well.

  “So,” she says, and swallows until the roughness in her voice goes away. “How’d you sneak out? Did you stage an alien abduction in your room?” Jamie’s supposed to be at his house by nine on a school night. No exceptions. But he even managed to commandeer his mom’s van.

  Jamie’s mouth twists in an almost smile. “Maybe I pretended to be on a mission from the CIA.”

  “Maybe you got a clone to sleep in your bed.”

  His expression flashes back to serious. “I said there was an emergency with Michael, actually. I promised I’d be home twenty minutes ago.” Jamie ruffles his hair. With his red cheeks and brown eyes he looks innocent. Disarming. The squeeze in her chest is followed by a stab. Fuck.

  He hesitates, then pushes everything out, as though it will take him less effort that way. “Look, I know you didn’t . . . you know. Because I know where you were that night.”

  He doesn’t. He really doesn’t.

  “I know you were at Steve’s party, because Steve told me you hooked up with Kyle Landry on top of the mini fridge in the garage.”

  “Ew,” she says before she can stop herself.

&nbs
p; “You didn’t hook up with him?”

  She can hear him trying so, so hard not to be hopeful. “I don’t know what to tell you, Jamie.” She doesn’t. She wants to punch Steve in the dick until he cries, but his lie is convenient. If everyone at JLH spreads the rumor, the police won’t look too deeply into whether she was there at all.

  “It’s okay. Really.” He swallows, and she can see him thinking, It’s okay, I’ll make it okay, and that just makes it worse. Because it’s only okay if he truly thinks so. “I respect you, and you don’t have to be exclusive if you don’t want. But . . . be honest with me. Please?”

  She can’t be honest. She can’t say that she’s never hooked up with two guys in one night. She can’t say that right now, all she wants to do is lie on the couch and make up superhero identities for their teachers and fall asleep on Jamie’s lap and not have sex. She can’t say that it’s actually sweet how he pushes his nose into her back when he’s waking up after a night together. That he tries to get her to drink his protein shake. She can’t say that she likes doing homework with him because he cares so much that he starts to make boring subjects actually interesting.

  She likes his honest, earnest expression. She likes the length of his eyelashes and the tiny ring of green in his brown eyes. She likes his puff coat. He looks huggable and soft.

  She can’t afford to think like that.

  Claude rearranges her expression. The secret to omitting the truth is to not look like you’re choosing your words carefully to hide something. “I’m not trying to play you.” Not like he means, anyway. “I can’t have a boyfriend, Jamie.”

  “Can’t, or don’t want to?” he asks, and that goddamn hope is back in his eyes.

  She doesn’t want a boyfriend. She doesn’t. And Jamie—she needs for him not to be her boyfriend. Things are only going to get worse from here, and when the shit hits the fan, Jamie shouldn’t be in the blast zone. She can do that much for him. So she puts her hand on his arm, and squeezes lightly, and says, “What’s the difference?”

  She slides into the Volvo and stops trying not to cry. Her skin prickles in the sudden warm air, and she sticks her bare fingers up against the grate, letting heat blast them.

  “Everything all right?” Mom watches Jamie turn, slowly, and go back to his van.

  “It’s fine. He just wants to be my knight in shining armor.”

  Mom forces a soft laugh. “No Vanderly ever needed that.”

  The van pulls away with a crunch of tires on snow. Lights flicker in the neon signs across the street proclaiming Lorne’s lone gym, lone liquor store, lone Realtor, and hundredth ski shop. The magic that snow brings to Lorne obscures them momentarily, a coat of paint over the worst of the grime. For a long minute, the Vanderly women don’t say anything. But silence has never been a big hit with them. “Claude, how did you get that phone?” Mom asks.

  “I found it,” Claude whispers.

  “Claude, you know what kind of answer that is.” A bullshit answer. All the same, Claude can’t bring herself to look up. She picks at her nail polish.

  Mom sighs. “What about the pills. Are they yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “What the fuck, Claude?” Her mother’s gaze is hard and angry. Claude can feel it, even though she still can’t muster the courage to look up. “Did they do a drug test?”

  “Yeah.”

  Mom takes a steeling breath. “Well, you must have passed, or they wouldn’t have let you go. But honestly, pills? What are you doing with them? Where did you get them?”

  “They’re not for me. They’re for another girl at school, Avery Cross. She—she left them in Emma’s locker, and I said I’d get them out for her. The phone was in there with them.”

  Mom’s eyes narrow. “Avery Cross, the cheer captain? You’re not even friends with her. Why are you risking jail time?”

  Claude can’t answer. She doesn’t have a convincing enough lie.

  “Do you think she might have set you up?”

  “Doubt it,” Claude says thickly. She’s cried enough for one day, she’s cried enough for one day, but damn it all if she didn’t want one fucking person on this earth to think well of her. And that person just lost faith.

  “Claude, you shouldn’t have gone anywhere near that locker. That complicates things.”

  “I know,” mutters Claude.

  “No going out for a while,” Mom says. “No Jamie, no hitting a party. You need to lie low until I get you out of this mess. And now that your name’s all over a blog, people are going to show up for photos. They’ll ask for interviews. They’ll twist your words and call you names. You’re not going to add fuel to the fire.”

  “So I’m grounded,” Claude says hollowly.

  “If that’s how you want to put it.” Mom’s cold fingers wrap around Claude’s. “Claude, don’t fight me on this. It’s my job to deal with this stuff.”

  “I know,” Claude says, and gets out of the car. She hops into Janine and starts the engine. There’s one other thing she knows.

  This is going to be bigger than anything Lorne’s seen in the last fifty years. How is her mom supposed to be prepared for that?

  They drive slowly, down streets Lorne’s snowplow hasn’t hit yet. The world outside is silent, and Claude keeps the radio off. Something hollow starts to grow in the pit of her stomach. She should be exhausted from three interrogations and an arrest. Instead, her ears prick at every sound and she flinches when the windshield wipers squeak. They pass houses with flickering Christmas lights and she keeps her head rigid, facing forward. She won’t give anyone in the windows the vindication of seeing Claude Vanderly ashamed. All the same, what does it matter? They already know. They already know all they need to know about you. And soon enough the police will be back, and it won’t matter how many favors Mom can call in, because they’ll know exactly what Claude did.

  At home Mom cleans up the chaos that dinner became. When Claude moves to help, Mom puts a hand on her shoulder. “Just get some rest, all right, hon? You still have to go to school tomorrow.”

  “Seriously?” After the day she’s had, she needs a full week off.

  “Seriously. Trust me, the rumors will only be worse if you don’t. I’m just trying to help.”

  “Thanks,” she says, and leans in to her mother’s hug. Then she goes into her room.

  In here there’s nothing to distract her from her stupid, pounding heart, or to keep her from seeing Jamie’s face when she closes her eyes. She hates that she wishes he were here. She hates that she misses him. She hates that she’s afraid. All the same, she peers through the windows above her bed. No lurking shadows, no filling-in footprints. The snow would have revealed if anyone was watching her. Still, she can’t shake the feeling. She shoves up against the corner of her bed. Her fingers move over the phone and she’s halfway to calling Jamie before she realizes.

  If she called, he’d pick up.

  If she called, he’d be so hopeful.

  She dials someone else instead. No pickup. She waits, tapping the phone with a forefinger before redialing less than two minutes later. Again, then again. No one answers. “Seriously?” she mutters. Finally she risks a text.

  We’ve got a problem with the phone. Her hands start to shake. I think I’m in deep shit. Call me.

  She puts the phone down and checks out the window again. Still no one. Still nothing. Just snow, flurrying in the light of the lamp, and the dim shapes of trees and houses beyond. The mountains are obscured by the storm, but she knows they’re there. And they’re more like a cage than ever.

  THE LORNE EXAMINER ONLINE

  December 6, 2018, 11:00 P.M.

  Police Release Lone Suspect in Missing Teen Case

  Police have confirmed that their primary suspect in the disappearance and possible murder of Emma Baines has been released from custody. The suspect was mistakenly thought to have been in possession of evidence belonging to the victim. She has several previous citations from the police.


  “We’re being very thorough,” said Deputy Chief Bryson. “It’s always regrettable to make a misstep, but we want to make sure we cover every single possibility. This case is very close to the Jefferson-Lorne Police Department.”

  The missing person, Emma Baines, is the daughter of Police Chief Mason Baines.

  “We can apologize after we’ve found the culprit,” Deputy Chief Bryson asserted. “Until then, stay out of the woods and stay out of our way.”

  Police are also combing the woods for any hikers. Smoke has been seen from several locations. Jefferson National Park is a common campground, and police suspect that hikers or vagrants in the woods may be witnesses to the crime. They also suspect that the blogger Adams West, whose posts have targeted Jefferson-Lorne High School and the Lorne police force, may be operating near or in the woods.

  “He’s not our top priority,” Deputy Bryson said. “He’s probably a high school student who sees this as a joke. Well, listen to me, young man: this isn’t funny. If you think you know something, don’t post on the internet. Come down to the station and talk to the police. It may be a matter of life and death, literally.” Deputy Bryson also urged cooperation from the high school population: “If anyone knows the identity of Adams West, please come forward. You can call anonymously or come down to the station. If Adams West knows as much about this case as he claims, he could provide incalculable help. Withholding that information is immoral and criminal, especially if it might help us find Emma alive.”

  Emma Baines was declared missing early this morning. Police have been mobilized from all over the state to help search for her.

  AVERY: I hate this. I feel like hes breathing down my neck.

  AVERY: I wish you were here

  AVERY: or I was with you

  AVERY: or I could see you at school

  AVERY: I just don’t feel safe alone