The Lives of Desperate Girls

by MacKenzie Common

  “I always thought Liam was such a nice kid…,” Linda murmured. “I told the police that there was no way he’d have anything to do with her disappearance, that he wouldn’t hurt a fly…” Her voice trailed off.

  “I know. If I’d known how that date would turn out, I would have begged her not to go. But I never suspected,” I said softly.

  “So am I right in thinking you were the one who spray-painted RAPIST on those boys’ garage doors?” Greg asked. I grimaced.

  “Yeah. I know it’s dumb, but I just wanted to do something.”

  “I understand the feeling,” Linda said grimly. “Honestly, I could kill those boys for what they did.” She looked so angry that I didn’t doubt her.

  “Is there anything that could be done about them?” I asked. “Like, with the police?”

  “I doubt it. But I’ll tell them. They might have a chat with the boys, off the record, make it clear they can’t treat girls like that,” Linda said. She looked as if her heart was breaking at the thought of someone treating her precious child so cruelly. I’d seen the same expression on Pat’s face when we talked about Helen.

  “Anyways, I came here because I wanted to tell you how sorry I am. I should have told everyone what I knew earlier. I am so sorry. Maybe it would have made a difference to the investigation. Maybe they would have found her,” I said, my voice breaking. I was embarrassed to realize that tears were filling my eyes. I didn’t have the right to cry in front of Linda and Greg; I was the reason they’d lost their daughter.

  “Oh, Jenny, all you could have told them was what you believed happened. You didn’t know where she was. It wouldn’t have saved her life, and the police might not have even agreed with you,” Linda said soothingly.

  “There was nothing you could have done,” Greg said.

  “But I still should have told you,” I said, rubbing my face furiously, wishing the tears would stop. “I could have told you what was going on before that night, when you could have done something,” I sobbed.

  Linda sighed. “And I could have asked. In all honesty, I did wonder if Chloe was okay in that last month. The whole winter, she just seemed so moody. I thought she was still upset over the breakup with Liam, or that maybe she was stressed out about school. I thought all she needed was time, and that I should give her some space. But I was so, so wrong,” Linda said, her face crumpling.

  “This is what happens,” Greg said, wrapping his arm around Linda. “When you lose someone so young, everyone wishes they’d done more.”

  “But I left her that night. I should have stayed with her,” I said quietly. I wasn’t sure why Chloe’s parents weren’t yelling at me, why they couldn’t comprehend the million ways I’d failed their daughter.

  “She asked you to take her home, and you thought she was safe with us. And you’ll always wish you’d done something differently, but Jenny, you weren’t her keeper. Chloe made a choice that night. We will always wish she chose differently, but you couldn’t stop her,” Linda said through her tears. We were all crying; even Greg was covering his face.

  “I know, but it’s hard to accept that,” I said.

  “It’ll take time,” Linda said softly, wiping her eyes with a tissue. “But we want you to know that we don’t blame you for anything. You were always a good friend to Chloe.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered. “She was the best friend I could ever hope for.”

  The room fell silent except for the ticking of the wall clock and our muffled sniffles as we all tried to stop crying. But I felt a strange relief, a lightening that I had been chasing for months. I thought getting revenge would make me feel better, but it had been like eating candy for dinner: it seems like a good idea for a moment, until you end up feeling sick and unsatisfied. Telling the truth, bringing everything out into the open, was different. It had been difficult, but the pressure that had been building inside of me for five months was suddenly gone. I could finally breathe.

  Chapter Thirty–Eight

  August 30, 2007

  It was a year later, and I was leaving Thunder Creek. I had been floating toward this moment all summer, unperturbed because I couldn’t quite believe that it was real. I, Jenny Parker, was moving to Toronto.

  It had been a beautiful summer, and I had spent every moment that I wasn’t waitressing at the beach. Sometimes I went with Bobby or Joanna, a girl who had moved here from Kapuskasing at the beginning of the year. Other days I went alone, bringing a library book and my ancient Discman. Thunder Creek was wonderful in the summer, a sun-drenched town that straddled two lakes. People spent every possible moment outside, savoring the gentle breezes that smelled of warm pine. It made it harder to leave, and I found myself wishing that university started in January. It really wasn’t hard to leave Thunder Creek in the winter.

  But I was excited about starting school. My mom had been so proud when I got a scholarship to Ryerson University. I was going to study journalism, and Ryerson had one of the best programs in Canada. Helen’s death had taught me the value of asking questions, of examining the things that other people ignored.

  I knew I would meet a lot of new people in Toronto, but as I’d driven down the familiar streets of Thunder Creek that summer, a familiar person was on my mind. I thought of Tom occasionally, less than I would have expected a year ago. Tom had had a tremendous impact on my life, but when he left, the feelings I had for him began to fade like a healing bruise. I understood now that the intensity of our relationship had a lot to do with timing: I’d met Tom during the most difficult year of my life. That didn’t stop me from feeling sad when I remembered how good it felt to be in his arms and the secret things I had told him. I occasionally wondered whether, if I hadn’t been so obsessed with Chloe and Helen, Tom and I might have stood a chance. But I couldn’t answer that, and neither could he. No guy had shown any interest in taking Tom’s place, so I’d spent the year trying to convince myself that I didn’t want to date anyone, that I didn’t miss the feeling of being wanted, even just momentarily.

  He sent me the odd e-mail from Internet cafés in Asia, but I didn’t know how to maintain anything meaningful through such intermittent conversation. It was as if, once a month, a man stormed into my room, shouted, “Thailand is awesome! I just came back from a crazy Full Moon Party!” and then left before I could respond. It was a far cry from the way he used to appear next to me in crowded hallways, sending a jolt of electricity down my spine before he even opened his mouth.

  We hadn’t known each other that long, and while I felt we had shared something important, I had no idea if we would work in any other setting. But I was going to get the chance to find out. Tom’s last message said that he was coming back to Canada in November. He was running out of money and needed to work for a while before he could plan any more trips. The message also said that he was planning on living in Toronto, and could he crash in my residence room while he looked for a place to rent? I said yes. I tried to tell myself that we had changed so much in the last year, and that having him stay with me would only bring closure. But I couldn’t deny the fact that a mental calendar in my head noted the number of days until I saw him again. I was still young, and had never experienced love independent of loss, but I hoped that someday soon I might.

  I still saw Officers Trudeau and Bragg around town every now and then. They usually ignored me, except for once, not long after I’d told Chloe’s parents everything. Trudeau had been by herself, out of uniform and in the local mall. Our eyes had met and she’d given me a single nod. She may not have approved of my decisions, but I’d like to think that she understood why I’d been hiding things from her.

  I was glad, though, that I’d told Chloe’s parents. It had given us all a sense of closure and made me feel strangely connected to them. They no longer lived in Thunder Creek; they’d moved down to Niagara-on-the-Lake not long after Chloe’s funeral. Thunder Creek had too many unhappy memories for them, the town still populated with the families of the boys who had raped Chl
oe. I hoped their new life down south was working out okay. I had a standing invitation to visit them, and intended to do so once I had settled in at school.

  The day before, I’d gone to the chairlift. It was the first time I had ever visited it by myself. I went there to think of Chloe, to feel close to her. It was such a peaceful way to spend my last night in Thunder Creek. I had stayed under the stars for hours, thinking about everything that had happened and what might happen next.

  All summer, a stack of university things had sat in the corner of my room, growing and colonizing the space around it. These “supplies” were the first thing I saw when I woke up every morning, and the knowledge that tonight I would unpack them in a dorm room in Toronto made my stomach bubble with nervous excitement. I had said goodbye to my mother the night before, but she had still come into my room early in the morning before work and given me one last hug and kiss. I had been half asleep, but the memory of that soft and familiar embrace lingered in my arms.

  Now, I was packing my car, grabbing suitcases full of clothes and Walmart shopping bags bursting with twin bedsheets and shower caddies. My car was almost full when I swung my backpack across to the passenger seat, knocking my water bottle out of the cup holder in the process. The bottle rolled under the seat, clattering against the empty pop cans that lurked inside my car. I jogged around the car, cursing its undersized cup holders, which left only the smallest drinks intact on hard turns.

  My mom had been suggesting all summer that I clean and vacuum my car before moving to Toronto. “You don’t want to go off to university with a dirty car, do you?” she had asked, as if somehow crumpled chip bags would distract me from studying. But I had never gotten around to it, preferring to spend every moment I wasn’t working reading at the beach. Now, as I stuck my hand under the car seat, I could feel the grit of a summer’s worth of sand and a flock of empty Coke cans.

  I frowned as something soft brushed against my fingers. I pulled the mystery item out past the detritus. I was expecting a sandy sock, chucked on the floor one of the many times I had decided to drive home from the beach barefoot. What I found instead made my jaw drop.

  It was the missing mitten. I had been searching for it for over a year and here it was, in my own car. I sat down heavily on the passenger seat, tracing the pink and blue stripes that I had knitted years before. This whole time, I had believed that the mitten would tell me where Chloe was, or at least give me a clue about what had happened. Instead, she had likely just dropped it in my car when I drove her home that night. I felt so disappointed that bitter tears began to pool in my eyes. The mitten had been nothing but a mitten, and I might never know exactly what Chloe’s last moments were like. Real life wasn’t like a mystery novel. Everything didn’t get neatly tied up at the end.

  Tears were rolling down my face as I clutched the mitten, feeling waves of grief begin to overtake my body. But then, something occurred to me. I had always believed that the missing mitten would show me where Chloe was—and maybe I hadn’t been wrong. I found myself laughing even as I continued to cry.

  I had thought I was alone during that year, the worst of my life, one half of a pair. But I was wrong. Chloe had always been here, with me. She was with me now.

  AUTHOR NOTE

  I grew up in Northern Ontario, where this book is set. I loved to read but I always wished that I could see places and people that I could identify with in stories. I wanted to see stories about girls who grew up in working-class towns far from the glamour of New York and California.

  After high school, I left my town and had adventures that would have seemed inconceivable as a teenager. I moved to three different countries, I went to law school in London, England, and I traveled the world. At twenty-three, I moved back home from the Netherlands to study for my Canadian law qualifications. I saw my hometown with new eyes and a new conviction that the stories that happened there mattered just as much as the stories that happened elsewhere.

  But I also began to notice things about my hometown that troubled me. I learned that there were two former residential schools in my town, schools where First Nations children were forced to go in order to assimilate them and “kill the Indian within the child.” These were terribly sad places full of homesick children, abuse and trauma. But no one talked about the schools in my town. There were no plaques or commemorative exhibits. This legacy haunted me.

  My parents have spent decades helping First Nations groups set up their own band-operated school systems. Schools that would respect the culture, language and history of each group, institutions of learning that would be the opposite of the residential schools. There are many causes for this vocation but one of the triggers was Helen Betty Osborne. Helen was a nineteen-year-old Cree girl who had left Norway House reserve in Manitoba because there was no high school there and she dreamed of being a teacher. She moved 437 kilometers away to attend high school in The Pas, Manitoba. Tragically, on November 13, 1971, Helen was stabbed fifty-six times with a screwdriver, raped and murdered. It took sixteen years for the four teenage boys responsible to be convicted of her murder even though they were vocal about having done it. A commission later found that the case had been prolonged because of sexism, racism and indifference.

  My father was Helen’s English teacher. He was twenty-four years old and one of the murderers was also in his class. My parents met a few years later when they both began working at the school at Norway House, which was later renamed in Helen’s honor. They have been passionate about First Nations issues, racism and education ever since. I hope that this book, in some small way, contributes to the conversation.

  —MacKenzie Common

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank my agent Gaia Banks, from Sheil Land Associates, for all of her help with this book. She has been a champion of this novel from the very beginning and her insight and suggestions have resulted in an infinitely better story. I feel so lucky to work with her.

  I am also grateful to Lynne Missen, my diligent editor at Penguin Random House. She has gone over this book with a fine-tooth comb, making it the best story it could possibly be and astonishing me with her attention to detail and thoughtful suggestions. I know that the book that has been published owes a big debt to her.

  To all of my early readers: Chelsea Smith, Kelsy Ervin, Ellie Telfer, Barbara Peddie, Dani Pietro, Caroline Steverson, Abby Cook, Mary Guest, Stevie Shikia, Ella Kucharova, Sara Grainger, Marcelo Serra Martins and Gerald Laronde. If I’ve forgotten anyone I apologize!

  To my sister Lauren, my boyfriend Martin and my dog Frankie, I thank them for their emotional support. I would also like to thank my father, Ron Common. Not only did he give me advice about various points of the story, but I also stole some of his anecdotes for this work. I would never have been aware of the issues in this book if I had been raised by a different father.

  Finally, I would like to thank my mom, Lorraine Frost. She was an early reader of this book and combed through it for grammatical mistakes, errors and pacing issues at least eight times. More than that, she has believed in this story from the very beginning just as she has believed in most things I do. I am where I am today because of her.