Sisters of Misery

by Megan Kelley Hall

  “The LeClaire girl? Saw her wandering past our store as she usually does after school. I had just put out some of our clearance racks, and I recall her pulling out one of those multicolored gypsy skirts. She held it up and sort of swirled around with it for a bit. But no, she didn’t buy it. Just hung it right back on the rack.”

  “Rebecca LeClaire’s child? The flower shop girl? I did see her on that day, now that you mention it. She was waiting in line at the post office ahead of me. The girl was mailing a letter—every inch of the envelope was covered with butterflies and hearts. I remember thinking she was such an odd girl.”

  All of the ordinary actions of a young girl were now officially recorded. Time, place, date, everything taking on a higher significance than if she hadn’t gone missing. Questions now left dangling: Who was the letter to? Did she run off with the recipient of the letter? Were the hearts on the envelope the sign of clandestine love? Rumors and stories piled higher by the minute.

  But for all the speculation, no clues to Cordelia’s disappearance surfaced. It was as if she had simply twirled away, allowing the hem of her skirt to wipe away any tracks she might have left behind.

  Everyone—except for Rebecca, Tess, and Maddie—assumed she was a runaway. She had run away once before in California after her father died, and many assumed she’d done it again. She was sixteen, impetuous, rebellious, and free-spirited. She had a chance to take off on her own, and she took it. Case closed.

  “I still don’t understand what happened out there,” Maddie said to the girls after the candlelight vigil when they all met back at Kate’s house. It had now been about forty-eight hours since Cordelia’s disappearance, and the hope of her ever coming back faded with each minute.

  “Shh!” Kate hissed. The girls flipped back and forth between the stations on the wide-screen plasma television, hoping to catch a glimpse of themselves on the news.

  During a commercial, Maddie tried again to get answers from her elusive friends. “Why was that night so different from all the other nights? What was the deal with appeasing the gods or whatever? What was in that envelope, Kate?”

  All the girls giggled.

  “There wasn’t anything in that envelope,” Kate replied smugly. “It was a test, dummy. One that she obviously failed. God, Maddie, you really are a baby. What we did out there is no different from any other hazing rituals that sororities or sports teams do all the time.”

  Confused, Maddie shook her head. “But why would Cordelia go along with it? She didn’t care at all about joining our group.” She knew there was more to the story.

  “She must have been hiding something—something that she didn’t want to share with the rest of us. She probably screwed up so bad that she should have been locked up in The Witches’ Castle.” Bridget sniffed. “You can’t trust someone who has secrets like that, if you ask me.”

  “Plus, Kate wanted to make it extra brutal for her because she heard that Trevor and Cordelia did it.”

  “That’s not true,” Maddie insisted. “She didn’t even like Trevor. I would have known about it if she did.”

  Kate gave her a withering look. “I think there are a lot of things that you don’t know about your cousin—or your family, for that matter. Screwing my boyfriend is just one of them. She also screwed Mr. Campbell. Doing two brothers? How slutty is that?”

  “Yeah,” Bridget piped in. “Mr. Campbell’s going to be sweating it out for a while since Kate tipped off Sully about their extracurricular activities.”

  “You did what?” Maddie said in an accusatory tone. “Why would you ever do that? He’s our teacher. He’s your boyfriend’s brother, for God’s sake!” Maddie had always known that Kate resented Reed Campbell for rebuffing her advances, but she couldn’t believe that Kate would throw him to the wolves and report him to Officer Sullivan. “Anyway, Cordelia wasn’t after Trevor or Mr. Campbell or anyone, for that matter.”

  “Listen,” Kate insisted. “Your cousin needed to be taught a lesson not to be such a slut. That’s why I made her night on Misery extra special. For all I know, she was planning on working her way through all the guys in Hawthorne. I’ll bet she’s sorry she did it now. Besides, she got off lucky, if you ask me—”

  Hannah swatted Kate, cutting her off. Maddie looked back and forth between the two girls. “Got off lucky how?”

  Just then the ten o’clock news came on and all the girls shushed each other. “Got off lucky how?” Maddie asked again, impatiently. Maddie felt that Cordelia was slipping further away with every minute, every hour. She tried to imagine her face, but all that was left of Cordelia was a shimmer, a blur, an echo fading to a whisper.

  Kate waited until the entire news package had run and then turned back to Maddie. She looked warily at the other girls and then said, “It’s a good thing she took off that night because the way I felt after finding out about her and Trevor, I wanted to kill her myself. That witch is lucky that I didn’t burn her at the stake.”

  “What’s the matter, dear?”

  Maddie stopped on her way out of Kate’s house that evening and turned to see Mrs. Endicott sitting at the granite-topped island in her whitewashed kitchen. She was dressed impeccably; her fingers glistened, heavy with diamonds, under the halogen track lighting. She was sitting alone, drinking dark liquid from a Waterford crystal glass. Under the lights, it looked like blood.

  “I can’t…it’s just my cousin…I don’t…” Maddie stammered.

  “Oh, I know, you poor dear. To have your own cousin disappear like that.” Mrs. Endicott shook her head in what appeared to be sympathy. “Come sit and have a drink with me.”

  She patted the plush chair next to her. It appeared that she had been sitting there drinking for quite a while. Maddie could hear the girls still laughing and chattering away in the other room.

  Mrs. Endicott pulled another delicate wine glass from the overhead china cabinet and poured the thick red liquid into the glass. It was strange that she was offering Maddie wine, knowing Maddie was only a few months shy of sixteen. But in any case, Maddie accepted it, suddenly feeling grown up, and took a sip. It was port—sickeningly sweet with a thick, coppery aftertaste. It coated her lips, and Maddie imagined it staining her mouth like red berries.

  “I think that it’s just awful for her to run off the way she did. To make you and your family worry after her,” Kiki Endicott said softly, shaking her head. “Such a shame, such a shame.”

  Maddie took another longer swig of the drink, feeling the wine relax her, hoping it would do something to quell the churning anxiety and anger inside of her. Perhaps if Kate’s mother knew about Misery Island, she could help. The idea suddenly seemed plausible.

  Maddie drained her glass and said, “But she didn’t, Mrs. Endicott. I know she wouldn’t run off. I think it may have been my, I mean, our fault.”

  The older woman looked at her quizzically, cocking her head to the side.

  “Why would you say that?”

  Pushing her fear of the repercussions aside, Maddie decided that now was the time to come clean. It was now or never. And Cordelia’s life might depend on it.

  “Mrs. Endicott…”

  “Darling, call me Kiki,” she smiled widely as if she were the real life version of the Cheshire cat.

  “Umm…okay, Kiki, something awful happened out on Misery—”

  “Ah, ah, ah, Madeline darling,” Kiki Endicott said as she waved a perfectly manicured finger in front of Maddie’s face. It curled slightly at the top like a talon. “Be careful what you say. Kate already told me about what happened out there. Special rituals can only be shared with members of the Sisters of Misery. Do you know why she told me?”

  Maddie shook her head, confused.

  “I once was a part of the Sisterhood—actually, you never really leave the Sisters of Misery; it’s always a part of you—and I believe that there are some things that are never to be discussed, am I right?”

  Confused and taken aback, Maddie nodded dumbly.
Mrs. Endicott was once part of the Sisters of Misery? Of course, that made perfect sense because Kate and Carly had both taken their leadership roles so seriously. But it was just a silly girl’s group, wasn’t it? But Kiki made it seem as though Maddie was about to give up CIA-confidential secrets, as though all of it really mattered in the larger picture.

  “It’s just that I thought you would know what to do, how to help us,” Maddie offered.

  Kiki Endicott took another long sip of port, eyeing her over the top of the crystal glass. When she lowered the crystal, the port made her lips glisten blood red.

  “I’ll give you a little bit of advice from someone older and infinitely wiser,” she began. “Never cross the Sisterhood. While your cousin may be blood, your Sisters are your life, your future. Keeping the secrets of the Sisters of Misery is the most important thing you can do to ensure your own safety. Right now, there is nothing that you can do to protect your cousin, wherever she is. You need to be more concerned about yourself. It would be a shame if something were to ever happen to you, your mother, or…what is your grandmother’s name again? It’s Tess, right?”

  Maddie dropped the glass suddenly, crystal shards and red wine spread across the granite countertop, spilling onto the marble floor.

  Kiki’s voice was as sharp as the broken glass. “Dammit, girl! What’s the matter with you?” She quickly went to work mopping up the dark red liquid off the bright white floor.

  Maddie didn’t know what was wrong with her or anyone else in the town, for that matter. She started picking up the broken glass and throwing it into the stainless trash compactor. Kiki went off in a huff, calling for her maid.

  Alone in the giant kitchen, Maddie looked down at her hands, noticing blood pooling in her palm. “Your cousin may be blood, your Sisters are your life.” The words crowded her head dizzyingly as Maddie heard the whooping laughs of the girls in the next room.

  The Endicotts controlled all of Hawthorne. Kiki ruled the town with all of her friends, probably all former members of the Sisters of Misery. If Kate and the others had done something to make Cordelia disappear, there was an entire town of women who would do anything to keep it a secret, all in the name of Sisterhood.

  Chapter 10

  ALGIZ REVERSED

  PROTECTION

  A Time of Mental Exhaustion, Emotional Demands; Seek

  Solace and Self-Protection

  As Maddie walked home that night, she blamed herself for bringing Cordelia to Misery Island in the first place, for letting things go as far as they had. If the situation was reversed, Cordelia never would have allowed any of that to happen to her. But Maddie had been too scared to do anything to stop it.

  Despite blacking out that night and somehow ending up back at her mother’s house, Maddie knew that she wouldn’t have been able to brave the night out on the island alone. Once again, she had allowed the Sisters of Misery to dictate her actions. They had warned her not to interfere with their unusual plans that night, and Maddie had foolishly obeyed. Here she was, once again, following orders despite her better judgment. If any of them broke the pact and told what had happened out on Misery Island, they would go through the same exact ritual as Cordelia had right before she disappeared. Every time Maddie thought about telling someone, about going to the authorities, she envisioned the torturous events of that night and kept her mouth shut tight.

  The rumors were already swirling around about Cordelia and Mr. Campbell. Maddie refused to believe any of them. She knew that it was Kate behind that story.

  Police had started questioning Mr. Campbell in connection with Cordelia’s disappearance. While not officially a suspect, he had been named “a person of interest.”

  But Maddie didn’t believe any of it. If Cordelia had had a boyfriend, Maddie would have known about it earlier. Kate’s stories about Cordelia’s promiscuity were nothing but jealous lies. True, Cordelia made a habit of taking off in the middle of the night. But sometimes, she invited Maddie along. They would go down to watch the ocean swirl and churn, fantasizing about what existed on the far-off shores.

  One night, not long before her disappearance, Cordelia had awakened Maddie by throwing rocks at her window just before dawn. Maddie opened her window and before she could yell down that she would let her cousin in the back door, Cordelia had expertly scaled the oak tree and bounded into her room like a female Peter Pan. When Maddie asked where she’d been, Cordelia simply said that she’d been walking through the sleeping town, peeking in windows and traipsing through gardens. It wasn’t far-fetched, considering Cordelia’s free spirit.

  “You’re going to get in trouble if you keep sneaking out at night,” Maddie said, regarding her cousin with awe. Even though she’d spent her entire life in this town, she knew she’d never have enough courage to run around the streets of Hawthorne alone at night. But was Cordelia always alone? she wondered.

  “Awww, you’re like the sister I always wanted, Maddie. Worrying about me like that,” Cordelia said, giggling. “But this is our secret, okay? Mom would kill me if she knew that I was running around town at night. She used to get so mad at me when I did it back in Cali. But I just can’t be expected to stay inside, especially when the ocean is calling to me!”

  Cordelia spun around like a ballerina and then pounced onto Maddie’s bed, crawling across the plush quilts and eagerly sharing her nightly adventures: how she had danced on the darkened forest floor in fairy circles and swam through the moonlit waters with mermaids. Maddie knew she was making up the fantastical stories, but she also knew that she and Cordelia were friends, best friends.

  And now that Cordelia was gone, Maddie refused to believe that she’d spent her nights running all over town, sleeping with older men and drunken teenage boys.

  The days and nights were running together like a nightmare that Maddie couldn’t wake up from. She was a zombie at school, and Kate wasn’t making it any easier. Kate’s nonchalance about Cordelia’s disappearance was maddening and turned Maddie’s stomach. Deep down, Maddie knew that there was no chance that Kate would ever come clean about that night on Misery Island. And without that crucial piece of information, the odds of Cordelia being found became slimmer and slimmer. Yet Kate insisted they were doing the right thing.

  “If they find out that we tied her up out on the island, we’ll all be suspects in her disappearance. They could arrest us and charge us with being accomplices!” Kate said one day at their lunch table, directing the last point to Maddie. “We have to make a pact that no one is allowed to breathe a word of this to anyone. Understand?”

  “But it’s our fault!” Maddie insisted, fighting back tears. “If we hadn’t left her out there, she’d still be here. We have to tell someone!”

  “Shut up, Maddie!” Kate snapped. “So we left her there, so what? She was fine when we left, right, girls?”

  “Look,” Bridget added, “she probably did one of her magic tricks and got herself off the island—flew off the island on her broomstick. I think it’s all a part of her master plan to get us in trouble, wait until we confess, and then she’ll be back in a couple of days, laughing at us all.”

  The others agreed.

  It was easier for them to believe that Cordelia was simply playing a trick on everyone, that she had run away by choice and that it wasn’t some evil force at work. Easier, Maddie thought, than admitting they’d done something irrevocably evil to an innocent girl.

  No matter how much Maddie argued with the Sisters of Misery over coming forward with new information to help the authorities, it was clear the search for Cordelia was slowly coming to an end. With no concrete leads and airtight alibis all around, the authorities were treating it as a runaway situation, especially since Cordelia was not one of their own. It was painfully obvious to Maddie that the sense of urgency to find Cordelia wasn’t really there. And it seemed that Hawthorne and its inhabitants were happy to have the spotlight removed from their quaint town. People peeked through their windows, pleased to see the news
vans packing up and looking for the next big story. The K-9 units were dispatched back to Boston, and the searches dwindled in numbers. There were no leads, no witnesses, no motive, no suspects. Just a missing teenager who’d been gone for days. A young girl who had taken off once before and most likely, had done it again.

  But Maddie knew differently. Yes, Cordelia would take off like a spirit of the night, but she always came back. In the short time that Maddie had gotten to know her cousin, she knew that the last thing Cordelia would want was for her family to worry about her. But as time went on, it seemed like Maddie was in the minority. Most people believed that Cordelia was simply another runaway. Case closed.

  Walking alone one afternoon after field hockey practice—despite all of their teachers and parents’ insistence that they always travel in pairs at all times—Maddie watched as the sky turned an ashen gray, and the sun prepared for its descent. The darkness came earlier each day, especially since they had turned back the clocks. Nighttime seemed to swallow up the town, leaving Maddie and her family with only a short window of daylight to look for Cordelia. Each day, that window closed a little more, the darkness overcoming them all too quickly. That afternoon, a cool breeze tickled Maddie’s spine and sent chills from her fingertips to her toes. Maaa-aa-a-d-d-d-d-d-i-i-i-e-e-e-e, a low wail moaned through the trees of Potter’s Grove as the winds started to pick up.

  Cordelia had once told her about an old legend warning against ever speaking a name out loud in the woods. The trees, once in possession of the name, would say it over and over, and it would echo and bounce from tree to tree for eternity. And once they had your name, Cordelia informed her, they possessed your soul. You were fated to return to the woods forever.