Of all the times for Teddy to listen to me, to try having a good time, he had to pick the night that I was planning to hook up with Vaughn again?
COME ON, UNIVERSE.
Ahead of me, Rosie and FDR were asking randoms if they’d seen a girl in a long white dress and next to me Jenna was swaying on her feet. People were responding with dumb jokes about runaway brides.
And this was literally the best plan we had.
Total. Disaster.
Meanwhile, I had to figure out a time and a place to hook up with Vaughn again. The longer we didn’t find Elin, the more obvious it was to me that I needed to do my part to eliminate the one problem I could control.
But even though I’d been into the idea of hooking up with Vaughn again just a few hours ago, I couldn’t shake the feeling that trying to negotiate with Vaughn on this point was a Very Bad Idea.
Forget the taping for a minute, I heard Jenna’s voice say in my head—which was ludicrous, because if Jenna knew about Vaughn threatening me, she would be googling “DIY Castration Techniques.”
But imaginary Jenna was full of practical ideas. Take this problem one step at a time, suggested Bizarro Jenna. Couldn’t you have sex with Vaughn again to save Elin’s reputation? Just one itty-bitty time?
Bizarro Jen was right—it’s not like I hadn’t had sex with Vaughn more times than I could count. I closed my eyes and tried to visualize it—but the second Vaughn’s imaginary lips wandered past my imaginary collarbone, I felt my skin start to crawl.
The Bizarro Jenna in my imagination shook her head, disappointed in my Lack of Commitment to Excellence.
A snort escaped my mouth. I clapped my hand over my lips to stop myself from breaking down into hysterical laughter. Rosie turned to stare at me, eyebrows knit together. What is going on? she mouthed, looking a combination of pissed and worried.
The Rosie Winchester Special.
I just shook my head, tears stinging my eyes from the effort of holding back. Get it together, Ket. Rosie stared at me for a moment longer and then turned away.
Good old Rosie. You could always count on her to avoid a conflict.
I scrolled over to my texts with Vaughn, re-reading them over and over, hoping I could think my way out of this mess.
VAUGHN: Why aren’t you in the bandroom?
I hope you’re not playing me.
KET: Something came up, you gotta give me some time.
Go back to the dance, I’ll see you at the afterparty?
VAUGHN: Losing patience, Ket.
KET: Are you shitting me? You’re sex-blackmailing me over a suicidal girl and you’re talking about patience?
VAUGHN: I’m not blackmailing you.
KET: What do you think this is? The only reason I am even CONSIDERING this is because you are threatening me.
VAUGHN: Protest all you want, but we both know you want to
KET: Yes, because saying “no” totally means “let’s ruin our future employment prospects.”
VAUGHN: I’m not going to spread it around! I just want to keep it in my personal spank bank. For when we go our separate ways.
KET: Gross, dude
VAUGHN: You know, if you just want to let everyone know about Elin, that’s fine with me.
KET: Fuck you, dude. Seriously.
VAUGHN: Soon enough, babycakes.
My stomach churned. Babycakes. He got that phrase from me and my friends—that’s what Jenna called her dog whenever she was being silly, and now we all said it all the time. And now Vaughn Hollis was saying babycakes.
For some reason, that disgusted me most of all.
I stared at the draft I was thinking of sending to him. Does it not bug you at all that I really do not want to have sex with you tonight, much less tape it?
The fact is, I wasn’t sure what I had planned to do if I had found Vaughn down in the bandroom. Try to talk him out of this, probably. Delay, definitely.
But with each text he sent me, it became clearer that there was no getting out of this.
Jenna was leaning against a lamppost—I couldn’t believe she’d gotten so wasted, so fast. Rosie and FDR were flailing, stopping any stranger who would stop to listen to them, which wasn’t many.
It was a lost cause. Elin wasn’t going to be found unless she wanted to be found. And yeah, taking FDR’s car was pretty bananas, but considering Elin and Fisher were apparently such good friends all of a sudden, maybe she thought she could get away with it. At least she’d left the poor guy’s coat and scarf on the driver’s seat for him to find, the keys in the ignition.
Elin was going to reappear exactly when she felt like it. I wasn’t worried about that.
I was worried about what was going to happen after she reappeared.
The Elin Aftermath: Part II.
I bit my lip, wondering if I had any chance of excusing myself from the Save Elin Brigade long enough to go hit it and quit it.
“Have you guys seen a blond girl? White dress, braided hair?” FDR was asking a group of fratbros crossing the street. Most of them ignored him. One stopped and raised his eyebrow. Tall, shaved head. Romance-novel-cover good looks.
“Yeah, I saw a girl,” the guy said. “Short, pretty? Silver thingies on her dress?”
“Yes!” Rosie cried. “Where did she go?”
The guy laughed, nudging his friends. “She and her friend were hot,” he said.
“What friend?” Rosie asked, wrapping her arms around herself.
“Another blond girl,” the guy said, shrugging. “Taller. She wasn’t into me.”
“Why would she be?” snickered one of the other guys, and the guy hit him half-heartedly on the shoulder. I opened my phone, scrolling through my pictures. I held one up of Elin and me that we’d taken back at Rosie’s house. “This girl? You saw this girl?”
The guy squinted blearily at the pic. “Yeah, definitely. That girl with another girl. What’s her name?”
“Elin,” I muttered, shoving my phone back in my purse. Who the hell was this other girl he was talking about?
FDR stepped forward, a bland smile on his face. “Do you know where she is? We really have to find her.”
“No, man,” the guy said, running his hand over his buzzed head. “I wanted to take off, head to this other party, but her friend split and then she said she had to go and caught a cab. That was, I don’t know, maybe twenty minutes ago? Thirty? Was she eighteen, man? How did she get into that club?”
“I don’t know,” FDR said mildly. “She’s definitely in high school. Did you buy her drinks?”
“No,” the guy said, and for the first time he seemed to focus on me, Rosie, and Jen. His eyes skimmed over my legs shamelessly before fixing his gaze on Rosie. “You girls all with this guy? Do you wanna come party?”
FDR slung his arm around Rosie’s shoulders, and to my surprise she didn’t squirm away from him. “Did you see which way the cab went?”
“Come on, dude!” one of the other guys called.
“Stop dicking around,” added another.
The guy nodded and turned to follow them. “Sorry, can’t help you, man. Hope you find your friends!”
30
Jenna Sinclair
April 18, 10:40 PM
My parents always wanted my siblings and me to give back to our community, to have an awareness of the world around us. They took us to documentaries about land mine victims and bought tickets to Hunger Banquets. When I was ten, they took us to El Salvador and we helped build an orphanage.
The problem with telling kids that they can save the world is that, if you go by my family’s experience, one out of three of them will believe you. I’d sit in those darkened movie theaters between my mom and sister, watching films about suffragettes and female scientists and think, I could do that. I’d go running, my feet pounding along to the rhythm of the Hamilton soundtrack—or even more embarrassingly, Newsies—and fantasize about operating immunization clinics in Ghana or making civil rights arguments at the Supreme
Court or thwarting terrorist plots.
Of course I never said anything to anyone—who tells people that you fantasize about being the main character in the biopic of your own amazing life? Which was good, since it had become spectacularly obvious that I was not as awesome as I’d previously thought.
It wasn’t just that I never doubted whether I’d do something heroic or wonderful with my life. It was that, until recently, it didn’t even occur to me to doubt it. Erratum: error in printing. Solecism: grammatical mistake in speech or writing.
What was the word that meant, making a grave error in world view? I bet the Germans had one.
I pressed my palms into my eyes until I saw stars. “Look. We aren’t going to find Elin if she doesn’t want to be found. What we need to do is give her a reason to come back.”
“What are you talking about?” Rosie said, her voice rising shrilly.
“Ben,” I said, my eyes still closed. I rubbed my temples, trying to clear my head. “She wanted to talk to Ben, she didn’t get to talk to Ben. What we need to do is get Ben in a position where Elin can talk to him. We need to wingman Hannah back away from him.”
I opened my eyes, expecting Rosie and Ket to be staring at me in relief.
Thanks, Jenna.
Way to solve our problems again, Jenna.
Instead Rosie’s lips were pressed together, white with anger, and all of Ket’s attention was focused on her, not me. “That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard,” Rosie said.
Abjure: to reject or renounce.
Acrimony: bitterness or discord.
My temper flared, but I held on to it. “Look, Rosie, I know you’re not a Ben fan, but Elin is. She wanted to talk to him all night. All we need to do is get him to call her, and she’ll answer.”
Adumbrate: to sketch out in a vague way.
“We don’t know that!” Rosie exploded. “And why would we want to expose our friend to that … that …”
Anathema?
“Asshole?” Ket supplied.
I glared at her and she glanced away. “Just trying to help,” she muttered, staring at her cell phone screen.
Rosie put her hands on her hips. “Yes, asshole,” she said. “What we need to do is just find her and forget about him!”
“Where do you suggest we start looking, Rosie? She’s not here,” I said, gesturing around. “She left and now we really have no idea where. We need to just do what we can, and that means getting Ben to find her.”
Ket blew out a long breath. “I agree with Jenna,” she said finally.
“Fine!” Rosie shouted. “I will go find Elin myself. You guys go back to the dance.”
Ket turned to her, eyes shining, but Rosie was already striding down the sidewalk. “Rosie, we’re not just going back to the dance,” she called, raising up on her toes like that would help her words carry further.
I slumped to the sidewalk. “Let her go,” I mumbled. “She’s not going to be happy unless she can be unhappy about something.”
31
Rosie Winchester
April 18, 10:45 PM
I stalked down the sidewalk, furious with Jenna. Furious with Ket.
I heard footsteps behind me. “Hey, where are you going?” FDR called.
I whirled around. “We’ve found your car, you can go back to the dance.”
“And leave you wandering around here by yourself? No way.”
“I don’t need your help.”
(Yes, I do.)
“Maybe not, but I’m not leaving,” FDR replied, matching me step for step.
I wrapped my arms around myself and turned away so he wouldn’t see the tears springing into my eyes. Even still, I could feel him standing just behind me, in my blind spot. People streamed around us, like we were stones in a river, and they couldn’t care less that I’d let my friends get us into the biggest mess of our lives. “I just don’t know where she could have gone,” I whispered.
I didn’t hear a reply. For a second I thought that FDR had left, leaving me standing alone on a sidewalk in the middle of the night. Then the weight of a warm suit jacket appeared on my shoulders. I ducked my head, ashamed.
Was it really possible that the only person who was ready and able to help me find Elin was some stranger who I had been horribly rude to all night?
I turned around, expecting FDR to be wearing his confident, crooked grin. But his brows were knitted together, his eyes solemn. “We can find her,” he promised, his eyes searching mine. “We just have to think like she thinks.”
I tugged his jacket tighter around myself, gripping the lapels in my fists. “What do you mean?”
“Well, we have to figure out why she drove to Main Street in the first place, and then figure out why she would have left,” FDR said. “It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out where she would have gone after she left, if we know why.”
I nodded slowly. That made sense—even if it did leave out the most obvious part. How would we figure out why she came here if she wasn’t around to be asked? I bit my lip. “If I were Elin … and I wasn’t having fun at the dance anymore … I’d just go home. But if she went home, why did she come here first? And why wouldn’t she just call us? And who was she hanging out with, who is this other girl?” My mind spun as I remembered one other thing. “And she can’t go home, not until morning, or her parents will know that she lied about where she was going tonight.”
“So she didn’t go home,” FDR prompted. “But why would you think she would?”
I bit my lip, staring at my feet. “Because … whoever this other girl was, that guy said she left first. And if Elin was done partying, and she was alone, she would want to be somewhere familiar and comfortable.”
“So other than her house, where would be familiar and comfortable?”
I racked my brain. “She loves … the outdoors. She loves skiing and running.”
(Except she quit doing both …)
“But it’s too cold to hang outside,” FDR pointed out. “And she left my coat in the car. Is there anywhere else she might go?”
And just like that, the answer was right in front of me. I glanced up and met FDR’s gaze. “I think so,” I said.
32
BEFORE
Elin Angstrom
The Week of March 6
Elin Angstrom planned every detail of her death. And she channeled her three best friends when she did it.
Like Jenna, she considered every potential outcome. She picked two different methods—drugs and slitting her wrists. She knew when her mom got her Valium refilled and she took them all with her dad’s leftover Vicodin from his knee surgery, then washed it down with a glass of red wine. She didn’t even like wine, but the warning labels on the pill bottles said not to drink with them.
Like Ket, she didn’t bother with excuses. She wrote a simple note and left it on her bed, right where it would be found.
Like Rosie, she made sure to take care of the people she loved. She picked a night that she knew her parents wouldn’t interrupt—her dad had put a weekend stay at Stein Erickson Lodge on his calendar weeks before. She would be found by the maid service that came on Saturdays, but better them than her parents. The maids would call the police, who would clean up before her parents had to see anything.
And then she took care of everyone else she loved.
She broke up with Ben so he wouldn’t think it was anything he’d done.
She made sure she wasn’t fighting with her friends, but she didn’t do anything that would tip her hand, either. She’d seen that video on signs of the suicidal teen and she wasn’t interested in that sort of predictability. But she did make sure that she did little things so they would realize later that she’d been saying goodbye.
On Monday, she dropped off cupcakes to Ket and her moms to thank Mom Kim for showing her how to make buttercream frosting. Ket, Elin, and Mom Kim had shared three, watching an old episode of The Simpsons until Mama Leanne had come home from work. Ket’s mothers had
insisted Elin stay for dinner, and for two hours no one asked her about homework or college. The four of them laughed the whole evening. She hadn’t felt so light in weeks.
Rosie was tough—she resisted when people tried to do nice things for her, like a cat that struggled to get away from a snuggle. The Tuesday before, they had done their homework after school as Will rolled out dough for pizzas in the kitchen. When Rosie took a bathroom break, Elin had said, “Hey, Will?” without looking up from her homework.
“Yeah?” Will asked, throwing dough on the pizza stone.
“You watch out for Rosie, right?” Elin said, pretending to look at her homework but really keeping an eye on the hallway Rosie had just walked down. “Because her real dad is such a douche. And no offense, but her mom couldn’t give a shit.”
Elin glanced up. Will was staring at her with his red-rimmed, slightly stoned eyes, hands unmoving in the dough. For a second, Elin thought he would scold her for criticizing his wife—Rosie’s mom was a bitch, but she was still an adult—but instead he said softly, “I know.”
“I know you love her,” Elin said, her eyebrows knit together as she studied his face. “But you have to do better.”
Will leaned against the counter, his forehead wrinkling in concern. “Is she okay?”
“Oh yeah,” Elin said hastily. “It’s, you know, the writing thing. And Teddy. And the tuition thing.”
The tension in Will’s shoulders relaxed. “Gotcha,” he said.
“So you’ll do better?” Elin insisted. Will could be too mellow for his own good—for Rosie’s own good.
He nodded, his face serious and steady. “I’ll do better.”
On Wednesday, she stayed in with her parents, offering to cook dinner. She picked vegetable stir-fry, which she knew neither one of them were terribly fond of—no sense in ruining favorites like chicken piccata or grilled salmon for them in the future. Her parents seemed to think that she was about to ask for something. She caught the surprised glance they exchanged when she told them goodnight.
When the Truth Unravels Page 14