Girl Last Seen

by Brown, Anne Greenwood; Anastasiu, Heather;

  “Lauren said she wanted me to go solo,” she begins. “I never would’ve done it if she hadn’t given the okay. But then, when her voice didn’t get better as quickly as we hoped, she started getting really weird.” Kadence throws her hands up in the air, as if in exasperation. “It was these weird passive-aggressive moves, like she’d say, ‘Great show the other day. But what happened with that last line of the song? That wasn’t how we used to practice it.’ As if the way we used to practice things was the only way they could go.

  “I know it was hard for her, but I had to change things as I saw fit. The music was evolving. I know it hurt that it was evolving without her. I got that. So I understood when she said it. But some of the stuff that came later just made me go, what the heck is going on, Lauren?”

  Kadence gets up from the stool and begins to pace back and forth, even though the top part of her head is no longer in view of the camera, only her mouth and body. She continues, “Some of her comments started getting nasty, which was never the way that Lauren and I were with each other. She’d say, ‘Kady, I’m not trying to be mean, but I don’t think you’re a strong enough guitarist to hold that song on your own.’ Lauren was always saying that. Like it made her comments less hurtful if she stuck that on at the beginning.” Kadence makes air quotes. “‘I’m not trying to be mean, but…’”

  Kadence shakes her head. “It shocked me at first, but I got used to it and knew that whenever she said that, whatever came next was going to rip my heart out. I’m not trying to be mean, but you were really messing up the melody during the bridge of that song. I’m not trying to be mean, but without the harmonies, this other song totally falls flat. I’m not trying to be mean, but you’re not getting the views on your new video like we got on our old stuff and I’m not sure you can make it as a solo artist. I’m not trying to be mean, but you know I’m the lyricist and I’m not sure you should be trying to write songs on your own.”

  Kadence sits back down on the stool hard, her shoulders crumpling. In the next second, they are shaking. It’s clear that she’s crying. When she looks back up at the camera, her expression is broken. “It’s getting worse and worse. I know that I’m this confident person on the outside. And I guess”—she hiccups—“I guess that Lauren and I have had this symbiotic relationship over the past six years. I really relied on her, and I didn’t think that it was unhealthy or anything. She’s never turned on me like this before.

  “I don’t know, maybe it’s because she’s so upset about her voice. That’s probably what it is.” Kady wipes her eyes. “I should try to be more understanding. She’s probably hurting so bad that she has to take it out on someone, and unfortunately right now that someone is me. But you know, I’m hurting too, and it’s not fair. I don’t deserve to be put down all the time. Lauren was never in it one hundred percent. Not like me. She wasn’t the one putting in all of those hours trying to make us a success online. She wasn’t the one making the videos happen and advertising and getting the word-of-mouth going.

  “Ugh!” Kadence throws her hands up again. “I don’t even know what I’m saying! Or why I’m recording it! It’s not like I’ll ever post this. I just have to get this off my chest. I have to be able to talk to someone, even if it’s not a real, live person, even if in reality I’m only talking to myself.” Her shoulders slump again and she bows her head. Then slowly she gets to her feet and walks toward the camera.

  A few moments later, the image goes dark.

  Twenty-Three

  Jude

  Sheriff’s Office

  Friday, April 6

  10:00 a.m.

  The next morning a guard leads me out of my cell in cuffs. I’m led into a small room. It’s cinder block. A dingy light blue. Cheery.

  Two detectives sit in chairs opposite the one that the guard leads me to. I sit down, careful to keep my face a blank mask. The guard attaches shackles to my ankles and links a chain up to my handcuffs. I smirk. They must think I’m a very dangerous criminal. Oh look, I’m reverting to I-don’t-give-a-shit Jude. Guess it’s easier being him, at least in here. Glad some defensive mechanism is kicking in, because, truth is, most of last night I was scared shitless.

  “Don’t I get a lawyer?” I ask.

  The first guy across the table is blond and on the shorter side but solid, like he was a wrestler in high school even though now he’s gotta be in his late forties. He leans forward with his elbows on the table. “Only guilty people need lawyers. I’m Detective Kopitzke and this is Detective Miller. If you’ve got nothing to hide”—he spreads his hand wide—“then why don’t we have a little chat?”

  Yeah. I’m not an idiot. I wince overdramatically. “Really? You’re starting off with the oldest line in the book?” I shake my head as if disappointed. “For shame, detective.”

  The detectives smile easily. The one who hasn’t talked yet leans forward. He’s older than the other guy, mid-fifties with high color in his cheeks and a mustache that looks like it belongs in the eighties. A sheen of sweat covers his balding head. “Are you asking for a lawyer?”

  I hesitate while maintaining my mask of being a smirking, overconfident punk. Dad can’t afford a lawyer, and I don’t want the public defender. The public pretender. I think I’m smart enough not to say the wrong thing and incriminate myself. And I’m curious to know what evidence they based this arrest on. How bad is this?

  “Nah, guess not.” For now anyway. I shrug, then wink at the first detective, the one whose name started with K something. “Why would I need a lawyer when I can have a relaxed chat with you two gentlemen?”

  Detective K continues. “So you acknowledge that we have explained your rights and you are willing to continue?”

  I roll my eyes. “Yeah. So let’s hear it.” I lean back in my chair.

  “A warrant to search your house proved very fruitful,” the second detective, Mustache Man, finally pipes up.

  My jaw tenses. Crap. If they searched my house, my room, then this isn’t good. “And how did you get a warrant for that?” Who says TV never taught me anything?

  “The local news station was filming the concert,” Detective Mustache goes on. “And when they took a shot of the crowd, they caught you on camera with your own recording device. You seemed very intense on the video. Unusually so, and not merely in the manner of an avid fan. You appeared angry. And so we did some checking up on you.

  “Turns out that Jude Williams used to go by the name Nathan Williams. School records indicate that you were accused of stalking Kadence Mulligan and Lauren DeSanto, and later that your mother reported incidents of you being bullied because of it. She lodged an official complaint when she removed you from the school district and had you go live with her.”

  My hands ball into fists, a reaction that does not go unnoticed by either detective.

  “That was enough to get us a search warrant,” Detective Mustache finishes. I’m really starting to hate this guy, his blotchy cheeks, and the rodent that died over his lip.

  “And then what we found,” says Detective K, “well, what we found has us troubled, Jude.” He opens a folder and spreads out several pictures. The first is a picture of my video camera. The next few are screenshots from videos I’ve taken.

  They aren’t just videos from the night that Kadence disappeared. They’re videos of Lauren and Kadence over the past eight months, ever since I moved back to Pine Grove. In my defense, most are from the first few months. The first picture shows them in the lunch room, laughing together. It was right when school started, before Lauren lost her voice. There’s another picture from a video of Kadence sneaking off into a bathroom with a boy who is definitely not Mason.

  And then finally there’s one of Lauren sitting bundled up in the courtyard all by herself. The snow was falling that day. During the spring and fall, the courtyard is filled during lunch with everyone eating out there, but in the dead of winter it’s
totally empty. But this was a couple months ago, in February. Things were bad between Lauren and Kadence because of Lauren’s voice.

  I swallow, ashamed. For the most part, I’d stopped following them around. The pictures and the videotaping—I’d cut out all that creepy shit I’d been doing when my head was so messed up by the meds.

  But that day, Lauren…she looked so sad. So I followed her into the courtyard. I wanted to go up to her and ask what was wrong. To try to make her feel better and get her to laugh like in the old days. But of course I couldn’t. There were too many years, too much history between us. She sat under a tree and watched the snow fall. And she was so beautiful that the old compulsion got hold of me. I pulled out my video camera and recorded her for the entire twenty minutes she managed to brave the freezing weather. I switched back and forth between watching the zoomed-in camera screenshot of her face and looking up to see the real thing. To be in the moment with her even though she didn’t know I was there.

  I’m not proud of it. I recognized it for the invasion of her privacy it was. It was the last time I ever recorded Lauren. Kadence, well, she was a different story.

  “You see how bad this looks.” Detective Mustache’s voice breaks into my thoughts, bringing my ugly reality crashing back in.

  I shrug. Say nothing, I remind myself.

  “And then there’s the notebook,” Detective Mustache says. “Or should I call it more of a poetry diary?” He smirks and holds my beat-up, leather-bound notebook in his hands. In spite of the cuffs, I want to lunge for it. The skin on my neck feels hot and itchy, and my teeth grind together. My book, those pages…I can’t stand the thought of his blunt, fat fingers touching them for another second but there’s nothing I can do about it.

  Detective K takes the notebook from Detective Mustache and I feel a small measure of gratitude. I get that this is good cop/bad cop and that I’m being played as far as feeling any sympathetic connection with Detective K, but whatever. It still makes me feel better to get my journal out of Detective Mustache’s grubby hands.

  “So, Jude, tell us what you know about Kadence Mulligan’s disappearance.”

  I remain stonily silent.

  “Where did you go after Kadence Mulligan’s concert at Cuppa Cuppa on Friday, March 30?”

  More silence from me.

  “Okay,” Detective K goes on, “next question. Can you tell us your whereabouts from March 30 at midnight to one p.m. on March 31?”

  I stare coldly at both detectives. I don’t have the energy for the jackass act anymore.

  “See the thing is,” Detective K says, “if you can’t tell us where you were, things look bad for you. Let me make clear just how bad.” He opens the journal, and I can see that they have marked certain passages with little yellow tabs. He begins to read: Hatred, like pus, gathers and bursts from the blisters you burned in my skin.

  “You know, I get that.” Detective K says. “We all get angry sometimes. But this next one, Jude, well, this is where it gets a little problematic.” He starts reading, and I cringe from the first few words, knowing exactly which entry he’s reading. It’s from a long time ago. Right in the middle of the bad times.

  I dream of my hands,

  Long-fingered dreams,

  Knuckles against the blush skin of your throat.

  Will you cry out? Will you beg?

  Will you scream like the day you were born?

  Or will you die silent,

  Silent like the cold, cold night.

  “And then, well, Jude,” Detective K flips to the end of the journal, to the last few pages, “there’s the most recent entry. You were nice enough to give this poem a title.” He reads the poem I wrote most recently: “Buried in the Wood.”

  Twenty-Four

  Lauren

  Riverview Trailer Park

  Friday, April 6

  10:00 a.m.

  The woods are lovely, dark, and deep. Lovely, dark, and deep. I can’t get this line out of my head as I stare into the woods behind the Riverview Trailer Park. It’s not just the woods. I feel dark and deep. I haven’t slept more than a few hours each of the last seven nights. I mean, I’m dead on my feet. Dead on my feet. Ha. It’s almost laughable, but I don’t let myself go there. Enough with the inappropriate emotions. The less sleep I get, the harder they are to manage. When exactly will the horror of this moment set in? Four hours from now? Six? Next week?

  The constant pressure behind my eyes and the pounding in my head isn’t helping either. I don’t need a mirror to know that I look like hell. I feel like hell, but I suppose that—at least—is appropriate.

  I should have stayed home. I know that. But I had to be here. I’m not alone either. At least a hundred people have shown up to help with the search. School was even canceled because so many students wanted to come.

  Three large German shepherds are waiting in crates in the back of a Washington County Sheriff’s Department pickup truck. I suppose they’re going to lead the search.

  It’s all so freakin’ surreal. How is it that just yesterday I was in the woods with Jude? The instant replay of the cops cuffing him in my front yard flashes in my mind again. The shouts, the lights, my mom’s pale hand covering her mouth. It was all I could see as I lay in bed last night, unable to sleep.

  Then this morning, the detectives sat me down and showed me videos Jude had taken of Kadence and me. “Stalker,” we’d called him once upon a time. An old song by the Police drifts through my mind. Every breath you take. Every move you make…

  And now I’m, I’m…

  I’m second-guessing my decision to be here, that’s what I’m doing. A few girls from school walk by, and when they notice me looking, they glance away. Despite Jude’s arrest, people are still acting like me being here is an attempt to deflect attention from my own guilt. Hardly. Being here only makes me feel my guilt more keenly, but it’s not because of what they think. I can’t really blame them for what they’re thinking. I’d probably be thinking the same thing.

  A man in a shirt and tie is instructing ten younger-looking deputies. They’re all wearing brown field jackets with “Washington County” printed on the back. They’re all wearing radio headsets. The man in the tie is pointing and marking off a grid on a map.

  The Mulligans are standing nearby. Mrs. Mulligan is clutching her husband like she might fall down. They were already old, but they look ancient now, far older than the last time I saw them a week ago. Has it only been a week? It seems like a year.

  I’m hanging out at the back of the crowd. We’re all wearing protective gloves and the recommended long pants tucked into our socks to protect us from wood ticks and stinging nettle. It’s kind of a jungle back here.

  Back when Jude was Nathan, he and I had a fort in these woods. We’d take his dog, Coco, back here on rabbit-hunting expeditions, though we never actually caught one. It was more the idea of it that we liked. A hunting adventure! I don’t think either one of us could have handled hurting a rabbit back then.

  Funny how things change.

  Part of me would give anything to go back to that more innocent time. My stomach lurches at the memory of Nathan the boy and Jude the man. Stalker. What happened to him? You, a voice in my head whispers. You happened to him. I look around me, my breath coming in quick puffs in the cool air. What happened to all of us? How could it have come to this?

  I shouldn’t be here, I think again. But just as I’m about to go, the dogs are released from their crates. One of the deputies gives them some articles of clothing to smell: Kadence’s paisley blouse and Jude’s leather jacket. I feel sick. The dogs bark and wag their tails excitedly. I wonder if the dogs will pick up on my scent in the lining of Jude’s jacket. I wrap my arms around my body, imagining the dogs lifting their noses in the air and then charging straight for me.

  I sense the presence of someone right behind my shoulder
. I tense instinctively but don’t turn. No one has spoken to me since I arrived. No one has come within twenty feet of me. But I can feel the heat of another person. It feels male. Very male. I don’t know how I know this, but I do. I can hear him breathing.

  I’m about to walk away when a voice says, “I’m so sorry, Lauren.”

  I flinch and turn. It’s Mason. Again I have the ridiculous urge to laugh because he’s holding a hockey stick and I wonder if it’s like a security blanket for him. I don’t laugh though. Mainly because he does look really, really sorry.

  “What are you sorry for?” I croak out.

  His face looks pained. “For having doubted you. You don’t look like you’ve been sleeping too good.”

  I give a little shrug, then bow my head and study my feet.

  “Me neither,” he says, which doesn’t seem fair because he’s as good-looking as ever. “How have you been feeling?”

  “I have no idea,” I say on an exhale. I don’t plan on saying anything more, but Mason is looking at me expectantly so I add, “My parents are constantly asking me that too, and I have no idea. I know I’m supposed to feel a certain way. People expect me to be sad or mad or…scared. But most of the time I don’t know what to feel, or if I even know how to feel.” I throw my hands up in the air, exasperated. “And then when I do feel something, it seems like it’s the wrong thing to be feeling. I don’t know. I-I just…And being out here—” I break off again, unable to finish the sentence as I look around us. So much for being the word girl. I’ve got nothing.

  He nods and steps a little closer. “Don’t worry, Lauren. We’ll find Kady.” His words are perfect. And they stab at my heart. “This whole thing has been doubly hard on you. It’s not fair how you’ve been treated. I’ve missed seeing you at school.”

  I raise one eyebrow. It’s taken me a while, but I’m finally getting better at detecting a lie when I hear one. Mason and I have never really talked about what happened between us. I bet my absence from school has made his days a lot more comfortable. “You’ve missed me?” I ask, and my doubt is clear.