“Oh man, that fight was epic.” Elliot laughs. “Too bad there wasn’t mud and a wrestling ring, because then it would have been totally hot.” He arches his back and rubs down his chest slowly, then makes his voice high-pitched and breathy. “Oh, Lauren, you’ve been such a naughty girl, stealing my boyfriend like that. Come here and let me spank you.”
“Shut up,” Ari and I say at the same time. Ari smacks him hard on the shoulder for good measure. I wince a little because all those chunky rings she wears might as well be brass knuckles.
Elliot and Ari bicker as we head back for the last couple periods of the day, but all I can think about is what they’ve said. I listen to the whispers as I make my way through the halls instead of putting in my earbuds. Elliot was right. Everyone is talking about Lauren. Saying she had something to do with Kady’s disappearance. But they’re just a bunch of idiots at school. I try to shake it off.
For once I’ve been trying not to think about Kadence and Lauren. Like maybe this is a chapter I should finally put behind me. The things that I wanted when I came back have been accomplished, even if they happened in ways I didn’t always expect. The two girls who tormented me are now all fucked up themselves. That should be enough, shouldn’t it?
When I get home that evening, I flip on the TV while a frozen pizza cooks in the oven. I kick into Coco’s half-full dog bowl. Damn it, I told Dad to take care of this.
I reach down to move the bowl, but the local news comes on the TV, and right there on the screen is the girl I’ve just vowed to forget. Lauren’s standing beside an older couple. Kadence’s parents. I lean closer and turn up the volume.
A young female reporter, with teeth that seem too white to be natural, faces the camera. Her back is to a large crowd gathered around a podium. “The Washington County Sheriff has called a press conference this evening regarding the disappearance of local teen Kadence Mulligan.
“She was discovered missing a little over forty-eight hours ago. Friends and family found her car door open, but it appears as if she never made it inside the house. Her purse and backpack containing her laptop and schoolbooks have not been found. Police believe she went missing in the early morning hours of March 31 after a very well-received concert at Cuppa Cuppa, a local coffeehouse. Anyone with any information is asked to call the tip line below.” A phone number runs at the bottom of the screen.
The camera focuses on Kadence’s parents, who are stepping up to the podium. The Major stands with military bearing as he makes a similar plea to the one he did at the garage. “Please,” he says at the end, swallowing so hard his Adam’s apple is visible on-screen. “We want our baby back home. We—” He breaks off and looks down.
Kadence’s mother is crying as the camera focuses on her. She has white hair and looks to be in her sixties. She begs for anyone who has seen Kady to please call the sheriff’s department.
The camera zooms out. Lauren’s right there, standing beside them. Mason too.
A thin woman in a tight-fitting button-down shirt and dark pants puts her hand behind Lauren’s back and directs her to the podium. Lauren nods slightly. I wonder what she’s thinking. She looks nervous.
Lauren leans into the microphone and says a word that sounds like Abyssi-something. She flinches a little, as if she’s surprised by the sound of her voice in the speakers. Her eyes flash around the crowd, then she glances down at the podium. “Um…I mean…” Then she looks up and nods. “I’ll be seeing you, Kady.”
My eyebrows shoot up in surprise. Lauren seems to hear how weird that sounded too, because she winces before the camera cuts away from her. I shake my head. What the hell are you doing, Lauren?
The news switches stories after that, and I turn it off. The oven timer beeps. I go back in the kitchen to take out the pizza. Dad comes in the door just as I’m slicing it.
“Hey,” he says, grabbing a beer from the fridge. I put slices of pizza on a couple paper plates and slide one across the counter toward him. I give him a head nod, then take my own paper plate and head to my room. The TV turns on behind me, and Dad flips the channel to some game or another.
Yep, that’s about the usual extent of our nightly interaction. He goes to work, comes home, drinks a few beers and watches TV, goes to bed, same thing over and over except Friday and Saturday night, when he can put away a whole twelve-pack by himself. He’s a loner too.
See how I can blame everything on my genetics? None of this is actually my fault. The acne too. That was genetic. And the depression. The term “loner” might actually just be a nice way of saying “goddamned depressed.”
I stare out my window. The sun has almost set. I haven’t turned on the light in my room. I’m still just standing here in the semidarkness, holding my plate in one hand.
I put the pizza on my desk, but I still don’t sit down and eat because while I’m staring out the window, I’m thinking of Lauren. She must be feeling horrible after that train wreck of a press conference. She’s probably playing that stupid phrase over and over in her head. Um, I’ll be seeing you, Kady. Um, seeing you. Seeing you. Seeing you.
I used to be the king of the awkward conversation. If there was a way to put my foot in it, I found it. A memory flashes so clearly that I’m back in the room, smelling the engine grease and oil that’s soaked into the concrete. Eighth grade shop. Four guys taunting me and blocking my way while the teacher was out of the room. “What, pizza face? You want something?”
I stood, furious, staring at the floor and wishing it’d open up and drop these jerks into a pit to be eaten by a monster with giant gnashing teeth. No such luck. “I need to get my tools,” I mumbled.
The ringleader, some douche named Steve—because weren’t they always named Steve or Brad or some other douchey name like that?—started cracking up. “You hear that guys? Zitzenstein wants to grab my tool! Shoulda guessed you were a fag along with being a stalker freak.”
They all laughed and then one of the others shoved me back into the wall before Douche was like, “No man, don’t touch him. He’s probably contagious. You see that face? Don’t want to catch the plague.”
Around that time the panic attacks started. I could never say the right thing and just wanted to go back to being invisible. But no, Kadence Mulligan had insured invisibility was no longer an option for me. I stopped talking to people altogether.
It’s only been since my face cleared and I’ve put on this new persona that I have my voice back. I’ve got the armor, the jacket, the new face, the blue eyes—eyes that only last week a girl told me were like deep Caribbean pools she could get lost in forever, because chicks say dumb shit like that to me now. But I remember. I’m really still that other guy underneath this mask.
And then, without really thinking it through, I’m shrugging on my leather jacket and then the thicker coat on top of it. I’m out the door and kicking my bike to life. It growls and spits gravel as I speed out of the double-wide’s short driveway and onto the road.
The DeSanto house looks like I remember it. That seems unfair. Everything else has changed, but there her house sits, looking the same as it always did on those hot summer days when I was a kid half in love. Who am I kidding? Half in love? I was totally gone for that girl.
One of her parents’ cars is in the driveway. I drive past the house and park down the street. As I make my way back to Ren’s place, I kick at the hardened slush with my steel-toed boots. I don’t give myself a chance to question what exactly the hell I’m doing here. I just walk around to the back of her house until I get to what I hope is still her bedroom window. I don’t bother with pebbles or any dumb crap like that. It’s a one-story house. I knock on the window.
Nothing happens for a long moment, so I knock again, using our old knock. BUM. Dramatic pause. Ba-BUM. Wait three seconds and repeat.
After another moment, the curtains whip open and Ren stares at me through the window, eyes wide.
Her dark brown hair is pulled into a loose ponytail. She’s wearing thick-rimmed hipster glasses and what must be her pajamas—a spaghetti-strap tank top that’s so tight over her chest, it’s a struggle not to stare.
She seems to realize at the same moment how little she’s wearing because she races away from the window and comes back covered in a thick, fluffy turquoise robe. “What are you doing here?” she asks through the window. I can’t hear her voice, but it turns out I’m pretty good at reading lips. Her lips.
The window hasn’t been washed in a good long while, but with the half-moon for light, I can still clearly see her face. She’s been crying.
Christ. It hits me in the gut, seeing her hurting. What the hell? Wasn’t this the point? To get my revenge? To make them hurt as bad as they hurt me? But Lauren’s not Kadence. And enough’s been done already. Too much. And suddenly I don’t want to be this person anymore, with only anger and hate to wake up to each morning.
Without thinking, I put my hand, palm up, to the glass like I always used to. I could never stand it when Lauren cried. Just like she used to, Lauren lifts her palm and meets mine, only the window separating us. My heart is suddenly galloping two hundred times a minute.
“Let me in. I want to talk,” I say.
She drops her hand and looks down. Her ponytail falls forward over her shoulder, and for a long moment I think she’s going to shut the curtains and turn away from me.
But then she flicks the locks and heaves the window upward. She doesn’t get it very far. It sticks after only a few inches. She must not open it very often. I lift from my side, and together we get it all the way up. I make a move like I’m going to climb inside, but she stops me with her hand.
“What are you doing here?” she asks.
Right. Guess she’s not down with a guy from her past randomly showing up at her window in the middle of the night. Good on her. “I need to talk to you. It’s important, and”—I look around and blow into my hands—“it’s really cold out here. Can I come in? Just for a second?”
“You could talk to me at the coffee shop. Or at school.”
“This can’t wait.” I’m BS-ing right now, but first and foremost it seems important to breach the first barrier and get her to let me inside.
Again, she hesitates and glances toward her bedroom door. She’s probably worried her parents will hear.
“I won’t stay long,” I say. “Please.”
She exhales and says, “Fine. But just for a second.” It’s clearly against her better judgment.
“Thanks,” I say as I climb over the windowsill.
She stands silently a few feet away, watching me as I right myself. I drop my heavy coat to the floor and close the window behind me so the cold April air doesn’t cool down her room too much. When I turn to face her, her big brown eyes are fixed on me.
I glance up toward the ceiling. There’s a crazy, blue chandelier hanging over her bed. It never used to be there. I sense Kadence’s influence and grimace. Lauren turns her back on me and fusses with a framed picture on her dresser. It’s of her and her dad during deer-hunting season six years ago. I know the photo well. Father and daughter with an eight-point buck. Her first kill. She was so proud. I never really got the whole bonding-over-dead-animals thing, but whatever.
“So what is it?” she asks.
I put my hands in the pockets of my jacket. “I was watching the press conference, and I heard what everyone was saying at school and…” I trail off. Her guitar and a few scattered sheets of paper are lying across her bed. She must see what I’m looking at because she picks up the guitar and leans it against the wall. Then she sits down heavily on the bed and puts her hands over her face.
Crap, I’m not saying anything right. Doesn’t help that I don’t know what I even came here to say. But I move over to the bed and sit beside her, careful not to sit too close or crowd her.
“Look, I know you didn’t have anything to do with it. Those idiots can accuse you of hurting Kadence, but I—”
She looks up at me, stricken. “Is that what they’re all saying?”
I’m not one for sugarcoating the truth. “Yeah, that’s what they’re saying.”
“Then why are you so sure I’m innocent?”
I meet her eyes, suddenly conscious of the fact that even though I’m on one end and she’s at the other, we’re sitting on the same bed. It wouldn’t take too much for me to move so that our thighs were touching. It’s dark in her room with only her small bedside lamp on. Like she was getting ready for bed. It’s so intimate. And I’m probably going to hell for thinking about all this when she’s upset and has obviously been crying.
Then again, who am I kidding? There are plenty of other things I’ve done to send me to hell, so I might as well look. Her lips are so full and pink, but it’s a dark pink, like berry or plum or something. Something fruity. Something sweet.
“Nath—” She catches herself. “Sorry. Jude. How do you even know? Why should you believe me?” she asks again.
My attention snaps back to her eyes. “It’s high school. Idiots saying dumb crap because of the fight you two had in the cafeteria. You know people eat that shit up. I guess that’s maybe why I came over. I kept thinking about you, knowing you must be feeling bad.” As I say it, I realize that it’s true. That is the reason I’m here. Damn. Just because I’ve decided I might be done hating her doesn’t mean I can forget the past either. But then I’m talking again before I can think too deeply about any of it.
“It’s total crap that everyone’s going on and on at school about how wonderful Kadence was. The cheerleaders are planning a freaking candlelight vigil for her. They’re all trying to make out like she was this sweet girl who no one would ever want to hurt.” I can’t help scoffing. “The police need to be making a list of all the people she’s screwed over through the years.”
Lauren shifts beside me on the bed. She hasn’t said anything and I realize I’ve been monologuing. Which is probably weird. A dude she hasn’t talked to in years shows up at her bedroom window, then goes on and on about what a bitch her missing best friend is. Smooth.
“Yeah, but right now they’re focusing on me.” Her voice is quiet in the dim room. “They asked me all these questions today. I felt like I was in one of those cop shows. I get so stressed out in situations like that. Lord, not that I’ve ever been in a situation like that before. It was just awful.”
She shivers and I can feel the vibrations through the mattress. She’s edged closer in my direction, probably unconsciously, but I’m aware of every inch. I don’t know why she’s opening up to me. She probably doesn’t either, except that I’m someone outside the situation so maybe that’s the reason she can.
“Well, maybe we could look into it. Take some action instead of waiting around.” The words are tumbling out of my mouth as soon as they pop into my head. No filter. No thinking them through. “Like ask around on the down low. It’s not like anyone is going to volunteer to tell a bunch of cops, ‘Oh yeah, she was a total bitch to me and I hated her.’” The words ring a little too close to home, and I wonder if Lauren sees through me. I glance at her anxiously.
She swivels her body so she’s facing me, her eyebrows furrowed. I stiffen, waiting for her to call me on it. But instead she asks, “Just, what? Go up and start asking random people if they hurt Kady?”
I laugh with the relief of tension. “No. More like we make a list.” My eyebrows draw together as I work through it. “I can think of a couple people to start with. Like that guy, Jeremy what’s his name? The pep rally guy who made a fool of himself saying he loved her up onstage. Elliot told me all about it and how Kadence led him on. Then she cut him off cold and ignored him like she’d never met him before.”
While I’m talking, I see out of the corner of my eye that Lauren pulls her pillow to her chest. I’m not sure if it’s meant to be some kind of subconsc
ious shield against me or against the things I’m saying.
“Jeremy Atkinson, “ she says. “Jeremy was just a big fan. And Kady never led him on.”
I roll my eyes at her. At least now we’re back on firmer ground. “Oh, come on, Ren. You know her better than anyone. She cheated on Mason all the time. Mason might have been too blind to see it, but you weren’t.”
She looks away again and tightens her grip on the pillow. Then she suddenly looks back at me with narrowed eyes. “What makes you think you know Kadence so well?”
This time it’s me who looks away. Crap, she’s not supposed to know I’d been watching, that I know things about Kadence, about her, that I shouldn’t. It was mostly back when I first moved here, while I was still on the medication. The depression, the unhealthy fixating.
When I’d finished the full course and stopped taking the little yellow pills around Christmas time, the fog in my head cleared. I looked back at the notebooks full of my scribbled handwriting. The times and dates. Tracking movements. It wasn’t normal. Even I was freaked out by it, but there it was in my own handwriting. Everything was so messed up. Still is. What the hell am I, of all people, doing in Lauren DeSanto’s bedroom?
But then Lauren lets out a tired sigh, and all my attention is back on her. “Kady could be secretive sometimes,” she says. “You could never tell what she was thinking. She’d disappear for hours at a time, sometimes even overnight. Then when you’d ask why she wasn’t picking up your calls, she’d act like you were the crazy one. She’d pretend you hadn’t even called her when you had it in your call history.”
I frown. “Did you tell the cops all that?”
Now it’s her turn to roll her eyes. “Yeah, because that would go over so well. How is it going to sound if I try to describe the real Kadence Mulligan when everyone else they’re talking to is like, ‘Oh, Kady is the best. Everyone loves her!’ They’re already suspicious of me. Telling them the truth is only going to make that worse.”
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