Later that night, I think about telling Jude to forget this whole thing. Anyone else we talk to is going to be more of the same. I mean, seriously. What were we thinking? But before I can pick up my phone, I hear a sound. It’s small. And muffled. And I’ve heard it before, though not often and not in a while. It’s a sound that makes my heart twist and my hands soften.
I creep down the hall to JJ’s room. I know if he hears me coming, he’ll cover up the evidence, so I push his door open slowly and wait for him to look up.
Not surprisingly, I find him sitting on the floor with his back against the side of his bed. His room is a disaster, littered with clothes, game controllers, and old Pokemon cards he bought at a garage sale. I am prepared for all of that. What I am not prepared for is the angry red welt under his left eye.
I drop to my knees in front of him and push the dark hair off his face. “What happened?”
He twists away from me, turning his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “Go away.”
“Don’t tell me it doesn’t matter. Did somebody hit you?”
That’s when JJ looks at me. Like really looks at me. There’s a sheet of tears over his eyes. He doesn’t blink. God love him, he doesn’t blink. “I went to the park after dinner. People were saying things about you. I handled it.”
“You handled it?” I rasp, then, “You handled it? How is getting hit handling it?” Righteous anger is building up in my gut. There is no way this sweet kid is going to suffer for me. I might be many things but being above taking down a middle schooler is not one of them. “Who was it?” I demand.
“I said it doesn’t matter,” he whispers back.
“I said, ‘Who was it?’”
JJ hits the power button on his game console. The familiar Minecraft music comes on, and that’s the end of our conversation. Stubborn kid.
“Fine,” I say. “Put some ice on it.”
“I will. After Mom and Dad go to bed.”
Before I leave, I turn and say, “I hope the other guy looks worse.”
A small smile creeps over JJ’s tear-stained cheeks, but he doesn’t take his eyes off his game. “He does.”
So I guess JJ did handle it, though there’s nothing there to celebrate. It’s not like I feel all warm and fuzzy about my little brother using his fists to defend my reputation.
I go back to my room and throw myself across my bed. Maybe I don’t have to take out my frustration on a punk playground kid, but I know one thing for sure. I won’t be bailing out on Jude. Next chance we get, we’re going to hunt down Mary Blake.
Jude wants to deflect the attention off me for my sake. I don’t care so much about that, but this will be the last time my family pays the price.
Fifteen
Kadence
Found Video Footage
Kadence Mulligan’s Laptop
Date Unknown
Image opens.
Kadence sits like a queen on her throne in a high wing-backed antique chair in her bedroom. Her magenta hair is elaborately curled and clipped back in the front like a fifties pinup girl. She’s wearing a vintage halter dress and has on heavy cat-eye makeup with cherry-red lipstick.
“Hello, my Kady-Dids! A lot of you have been groovin’ on my Instagram and Tumblr pics, asking about my new style. Yeah, so admittedly, I’d been going through a bit of a rhinestone phase for a while there.” She puts up a hand, wincing a little. “I know, I know, every girl’s gotta try to find herself through a little fashion experimentation. Don’t sic the Go Fug Yourself girls on me!”
She gestures down at her halter-top dress that’s fitted in the bodice with a full flared skirt in a strawberry print. “Now, we’re going rockabilly, baby! See, fashion’s got philosophy behind it. That’s what people don’t get. This vibe fits a lot better with the new world of indie musicians.” She scrunches her forehead. “I think I’m categorized as indie folk or indie pop or maybe both on the download sites. They can’t make up their minds where to put me.” She laughs, then sobers, tilting her head to the side.
“But, you know, that’s fine with me. I think I like being indefinable. Music should be in a world without labels.”
She grins. “Okay, now to the question session. Question from @blueangel21: how did you start your YouTube channel and get viewers? Me and my band only have like fourteen views. Frowny face.”
Kadence bobs her head with a sympathetic expression. “Well, blueangel21, believe me, I know your pain. It was not easy at the beginning. We were in tenth grade when I got the idea to put our music online. Lauren and I were coming up with this great material. It was time to start sharing it with the world. But we were in school and it wasn’t like we could go on the road or book gigs in bars, which is how most musicians do it. So I got to thinking, let’s go to the Internet! Maybe no one will click on our videos. That’s fine. We would have put it out there at least. We would have done something.
“But just like I had to drag Lauren onto that stage in eighth grade, trying to get Lauren to do something new and adventurous like this was like pulling teeth.” Kadence lets out a breath of frustration. Then she laughs, as if shaking it off.
“Anyway, eventually Lauren agreed, and she was onboard once I convinced her all she had to do was just show up and play the music. I would take care of all the rest of it. But of course we were on a budget.” She grins slyly. “Well, I can be a smart cookie when I need to be. And if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s encouraging people to catch my vision.
“I talked the brother of a friend of mine into helping. He was in college getting an arts degree and had access to quality AV equipment. He got us sessions on the college’s soundstage and recording equipment and then used the footage as class projects. Total kismet!
“But just because we’d jumped one hurdle didn’t mean we were done yet. Not by a loooooong shot. We had some videos made for a few of our songs—“Twisted” and “Calliope” and “Sweet Regret”—then put them on YouTube. And…nothing. They just sat there. And sat there. We had around ten views the first week.
“I was so bummed! I’d told myself that I had only wanted to put it out there, and it was fine if no one watched it. But I guess, deep inside, I’d really hoped people would see it. I didn’t care about them clicking ‘like’ or leaving comments or anything. I just wanted them to hear, to partake of the magic, you know?
“Still, I believed in our music, and I wasn’t going to give up. All my favorite musicians talked about having such a tough time in the beginning. So I learned how to do the whole social media thing and how to reach out to other artists and support them. I really went after it, hours online after school every day, treating it like a part-time job. The Major is always talking about diligence and discipline.” She lowers her voice to imitate her father on the two words. “So I worked my tush off. Lauren was certainly no help.” Kadence rolls her eyes.
“Sorry, I don’t mean to be unkind. It killed me because she didn’t get it. She didn’t see what I was doing for us. How our numbers were growing and what that visibility could mean for us.” Kadence lets out a huff of breath as if trying to get herself under control and then smiles again. “But whatever, it was fine.
“And then, one week, all because of you guys, it happened. We went viral.” Kadence shakes her head and leans back in the chair. “Viral. It’s a word that people say all the time, but the experience of it is something entirely different. It’s this wild, insane thing. Over a couple weeks we went from having one thousand and two thousand views overall to getting, like, five thousand views a day. I still try to figure out what happened,” she says with a laugh, throwing her hands up.
“It was so amazing. You’re always hoping for something like that, but it seems like the kind of thing that happens to someone else, not to you. But there it was, happening to us. It was insane. So wonderfully, awesomely, exhilaratingly insane.” Kadence l
aughs and puts a hand to her forehead as if caught up in the memory of those days.
“Anyway, from there, we got all kinds of new attention. The local news somehow heard about us, maybe because of the Major. Sorry”—she laughs even as she puts an embarrassed hand over her eyes”—that’s my dad. I keep talking about him like you guys know him. Anyway, he’s this rough-and-tough army guy, but…it was the first time in my life where I felt like he finally, really noticed me and understood what I was doing. He was so proud. It felt really good.
“He’d go and have coffee with all the other military guys every Saturday morning and brag about his daughter, even though I begged him not to!” She tilts her head to the side, a crease appearing between her eyebrows. “That just—” She breaks off, looking down. For a moment, an expression other than that of the polished performer appears on her face—what seems like an unintended flash of vulnerability. “Well, it meant a lot to me.”
When she glances back up, her bright grin is back in place. “Love you, Daddy.” She presses a hand to her heart.
“So anyway, the local news picked up on the story. Even Lauren was into it all by this point, although she’d been a total Debbie Downer throughout the whole process and thought I was wasting all my time online. But I think when the news crew got involved, even she started to get that this whole thing was a big deal.” Kadence raises an arched eyebrow. “And yes I may have told her ‘I told you so’ a feeeew times.”
Kadence laughs. “But it was all good. More and more, we kept making music. Any artistic differences, we were able to work through. And then”—Kadence gives a dramatic pause—“we got the call from America’s Talented Kids.”
She clasps her hands together and bounces in her chair like a little kid who can barely contain herself. “In spite of everything else, nothing could’ve prepared us for getting the call from a national talent show saying they wanted us to come on and perform live for them.” She presses a hand to her chest again. “I thought I was about to have a heart attack while I was on the phone with the producer. I mean seriously!
“We filmed last summer and it aired in November as part of sweeps week.” Kadence’s face falls a little. “Of course, it was bittersweet to see ourselves on TV because Lauren had started having trouble with her voice by then. But we both hoped her illness would be a short-term thing, so when it aired”—Kadence brightens—“I went over to her house for the big viewing, since my dad, tough army guy, doesn’t exactly like popcorn kernels getting stuck in his couch cushions.
“So I was at her house with her parents, and they made giant bowls of popcorn for everyone and ice cream sundaes too—you know, the kind with bananas, whipped cream, the whole nine yards. And then there we were on-screen. It was different than being on the local news, because you knew the entire nation, all of America, could be watching you at this moment.” She takes a deep breath, filling her lungs. Then she shakes her head, as if trying to find the right words to explain it.
“It was weird, watching ourselves on TV and remembering what it was like to be there in Hollywood, taping it in that huge auditorium filled with people. Lauren wasn’t the only one nervous that time. I was shaking too. But both of our voices came across so pure that I couldn’t have been happier with it. And then our three-minute song was over.” She laughs, as if at herself.
“It’s funny how so much angst and excitement goes into a three-minute clip! But of course it wasn’t just about those three minutes. There was a giant resurgence of interest in all of our videos online and a ton of new subscribers to our YouTube channel.
“That made Lauren and me want to keep making music, but she couldn’t. Because of her voice. I had to make the hardest, most difficult decision of my life to continue on as a solo act. I kept trying to discuss it with Lauren, but she didn’t want to talk about it much. She finally sat me down and told me to do it. She said we hadn’t worked this hard and come all this way to stop now. And that one day, she truly believed her voice would be better, and we’d be singing together again.”
Kadence takes another deep breath. “Phew, guys, I don’t know if I’ve ever really talked about all this. I swear, these videos are like therapy sessions for me.” She smiles at the camera, her eyebrows knit together and revealing the earnestness in her expression. Then, what she’d said jovially in her past videos comes out quietly this time, like a whispered prayer. “Life is short, my darlings. Reach for the stars before they burn out.”
The image goes dark.
Sixteen
Jude
Pine Grove High School
Thursday, April 5
12:40 p.m.
I walk down the hall after lunch and glance at my phone.
Lauren: Did you talk to Justine yet?
Without breaking stride, I text back.
Me: Yeah. Non-starter. Said she barely remembers it.
What I don’t say is that Justine seemed far more interested in flirting with me than talking about any of it. She kept leaning in and running her hand up my arm. Since I was aiming to get information out of her, I went with it. I tilted my head and gave the half smirk that girls seem to eat up. Add the half-eyebrow lift and they’re goners. If it weren’t so sad, it’d be funny how easy it is to manipulate people. Justine was all but a puddle at my feet.
My phone pings again.
Lauren: Are you sure? She could be hiding it. Did you ask her about Kadence being missing?
Me: Yeah, she was just concerned like everyone else. It seemed genuine.
Lauren: Okay. So Justine’s off the list. Who’s next?
I imagine her typing on her phone, and I wish I could skip school too so I could be with her. I’d do it in a heartbeat. But that would be weird. We’ve only been back in contact for a few days. Even if all I want to do is spend every waking minute with her. Damn it. I’m not back to the fixating. I’m not.
I close my eyes, lean back against a bank of lockers, and think about riding on the bike with her yesterday. She was scared and she clung to me with every bit of her body. Her arms, those freaking thighs. She’s not one of those pencil-thin bony chicks either. Girl’s got curves. I let out a long, shuddering breath and bang my head back against the lockers. Christ, I don’t know if what I’m feeling is normal or obsessive. How the hell am I supposed to know the difference?
My phone pings and I force my concentration back to where it needs to be.
Lauren: Jude, you still there? Or did you have to go to class?
I glance at the clock on the top of my phone. Crap. I’ve got like one minute to get to class. I type as I jog in the direction of gym.
Me: Jeremy’s next. Got gym with him now. Txt when class is over.
Seventeen
Mason
Sheriff’s Office—The Interview Continues
Monday, April 2
11:37 a.m.
Kopitzke: I understand Kadence and Lauren DeSanto got in a pretty big fight not that long ago.
I hesitate because I’m not sure how much he already knows, or how much I should say.
Mason: Where did you hear that?
Kopitzke: We’ve been talking to people at your school. They say the fight was over you.
Well, that’s just awesome. Denial is on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t help thinking that I shouldn’t hold anything back. The fight was stupid, but if it helps them find Kady…and still…I don’t like the way he’s looking at me. Like he’s judging me. The detective must sense my indecision.
Kopitzke: Do yourself a favor, Mason, and tell me what happened.
Mason: Well…you see…it was last hour on the Thursday before spring break. We were all…beat, you know? I had three midterms plus this really big project that was due the next day. I know Lauren had been killing herself all week over some big English poetry project.
So anyway I got to my locker and there was this lime green P
ost-it note near the handle. It said: Please. Need to talk. Meet me by the flagpole? L
I knew “L” meant Lauren, so I waited by the flagpole and sure enough she showed up. She asked if I wanted to take a walk, so that’s what we did.
We didn’t say much right away, which was strange because I thought she needed to talk so bad. It was as if she was waiting for me to start things, which made it kind of awkward, like, was I supposed to know what we needed to talk about?
Kopitzke: Sometimes girls assume guys can read their minds.
I stare at him for a second, and he stares back. The corners of his mouth turn up. I can tell he’s trying to be buddy-buddy so I keep talking. Whatever. I’ve already started. There’s not much point in stopping now.
Mason: So anyway, we kept walking—first out toward the athletic fields, then down one straightaway on the track, then onto the cross-country course. From there we took the path that runs through the woods and so we ended up at the F.U. Fort.
Kopitzke: The what?
Mason: Oh, it’s this old junker place in the woods. It’s been there forever. It’s not huge, only enough room inside for four people, maybe six if you really crammed them in. There was this old couch in there to sit on. Pretty gnarly but it was either that or the ground, and since the snow had just melted, it was still pretty muddy. So we ended up sitting down and we talked.
I hesitate as I remember our conversation. We mostly talked about Kady. Lauren had been really sad all winter, what with her voice and not being able to sing, and Kady having gone all hermit on her (and me) with her writing and recording. We missed her. We wanted things to be like before. Without Kadence, it was like we’d had a massive power outage and were trying to light our lives with little battery-operated candles. That’s how Lauren put it, and that sounded about right to me.
At some point she started to cry and she laid her head on my shoulder. And that was that. Something about having her curled into my side, her dark hair falling over my chest…it was complete instinct. It wasn’t like I thought about what I was doing, but the next thing I knew my fingers were under her chin. I tipped her face up to mine, and…then I kissed her.
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