by TE Carter
“What if they weren’t Wayne Breward’s sons? Would that make a difference?” she asks the detective. Gomes.
“It doesn’t matter, because they are. This town isn’t going to let us forget that,” Gomes says. “Tariq can go talk to the boys. We’ll call Gretchen in at the same time. Shannon, I want you here with me. She’ll probably feel better talking to a woman.”
“What’s the point?” she says. “We can’t help her.”
Gomes says nothing, leaving her alone with Tariq. Their roles have been assigned and that’s that. As the door shuts behind him, Officer Thompson turns to her partner.
“You could have backed me up, Tariq. You know there’s something here.”
“I do, but what good does it do if we get the whole thing thrown out before we even start?” he asks.
“He’s going to make it impossible on them. How am I supposed to get a girl to open up? I know he’s just … Gomes. But if I’m a teenage girl, he’s a nightmare. He doesn’t get it, and he doesn’t know how to talk to them. How to listen to what they don’t say instead of worrying about what they do.”
She stands and moves to the vending machine, debating between the two options. There’s a quiet pause and she leans against the machine, pushing her hands hard against it. “Do you think they know where that girl is?” she asks.
“Who?”
“I don’t know. These girls. Those kids. Anyone. How can a girl disappear?”
“She can’t. People don’t just disappear.”
“Tell that to Alex Frias. She was fifteen. We should’ve found her,” she says.
“We will. We’ll find her,” he replies. “I promise.”
chapter twenty-seven
The cops bring Gretchen in first. I already know her story. At least most of it. I saw it happen. I watched his hands, saw the bruises he’d left in places only I could see. I could have breathed in the plaster from the walls if I still had lungs.
She looks different, but not in the way she’s walking or how she’s dressed. Her hair is shorter, but that’s not what it is, either. It’s that she holds herself with the fear still clinging to her. She hasn’t forgotten; the memory is in the way her shoulders hunch, protecting herself from the outside, and in how she sits at an angle, keeping her eyes on the door. She’s in control of herself, but it’s in spite of the fear. I don’t know how much time has passed since it happened to her, but the fear has made her work harder to breathe.
Gomes sits across from her, Officer Thompson beside her. She leans in and offers to take Gretchen’s bag, but Gretchen clutches it closer to herself.
“I’m fine,” she says.
“Okay, Miss Van Elkland,” Gomes says. “I’m the detective leading this case. I understand you made the first claims of assault against Noah and Caleb Breward. I also understand you played an integral role in getting Kailey Howe to come forward with her accusation, and that you’ve been building a social media campaign to generate renewed interest in finding Ellie Frias as well?”
“Why do you make it sound like a bad thing?” Gretchen asks.
“Miss Van Elkland—” Gomes starts.
“Gretchen. Please call me Gretchen.”
“Gretchen, these are very serious accusations, as I’m sure you are aware. You claim that on the night of April 4, Caleb and Noah Breward raped you repeatedly, as well as physically assaulted you. Is that accurate?”
“Yes.”
“I also understand that you saw a doctor after the incident.”
Gretchen nods. “I did. But he said … they said it doesn’t prove anything.”
“Who is ‘they’?” Gomes asks.
“The doctor. The people at the hospital. They had someone from the hotline there, but they said the results … they weren’t enough.”
Gomes reviews his report and writes something down. “We want to help you, but you can understand that we have some challenges ahead of us. Without any kind of proof…”
He doesn’t want the case, but he doesn’t want this damaged girl in front of him, either. He just wants to work somewhere where these things don’t happen. He still wants to hope that there’s a place like that.
“I have proof,” Gretchen says. She puts her bag down and takes out the lip balm, placing it in front of her. It sits on the table between her and Gomes. “I found this. In the house where they took me. Kailey and I weren’t the only ones.”
Gomes stares at it. “I’m positive you don’t think I can arrest someone because of ChapStick.”
Gretchen sighs and looks to Officer Thompson, continuing to tell her story. But she speaks to Thompson now, not Gomes.
“I met him in class,” she says. “It was that required writing class the college makes us all take as freshmen. He thought it was pointless. Honestly, he was a bit of a tool. He complained a lot. But he was also … I don’t know. Funny? It was distracting during class. The class was boring. There was something about him. I found him both repugnant and kind of cute in a weird way.” She ties the cords of her bag around her finger, pulling them tight until the blood collects and turns the finger purple. She loosens the cords with a sigh.
“Was there a previous relationship?” Gomes asks. Gretchen still won’t look at him, but she continues.
“No. He stopped me one afternoon after class. Asked me if I had notes from the last lecture. He said he’d missed class because his brother was sick and he could use some help. I pictured a little kid. I didn’t realize his brother was fully capable of taking care of himself.”
She shakes her head, running her fingers over the knuckles on her opposite hand. Her breathing catches and she shakes her head again to avoid crying. “I told him I did. I said I had the notes, but I needed them to study so he needed to copy them. He invited me over, said he’d copy them in his dad’s office.”
“So you went to the house?” Gomes writes it all down.
“No. Well, yes, but not his house. It was empty. Not completely, but it was … I don’t know. It was like a house, but not really. There were only a few pieces of furniture and it was dark. He brought me to a room with a light in it. And a bed. It was him first, but then his brother … Caleb. He came in and they both…”
Officer Thompson gets up and grabs a box of tissues from a small shelf in the corner. She hands them to Gretchen, who pushes them away. She can’t say it. She doesn’t want to have the word grow inside of who she is.
“What can you tell us about the house? Do you know where it was in town?” Gomes asks.
“I don’t. I wasn’t paying attention on the way there. It wasn’t near much, but I don’t know. I’m not from here. I live at school and I was talking with him on the ride. I thought … I just didn’t think…”
“It’s okay,” Thompson says.
Gretchen nods. “When it was over … when we left … it was dark. There were boxes and stuff by the room. It was in the basement, but I don’t know. It was a house. A random house that felt like any other house. Except it was somehow … it just felt forgotten.”
Gomes sighs, but writes it down. He knows how hard it is to find a place that’s been forgotten in Hollow Oaks. That’s every place.
“From what we’ve seen, you have a tendency to get behind these … what do you call them? Women’s issues?” he asks.
“What he means,” Officer Thompson says, and she turns to glare at her colleague, “is that most people who know you would say you identify strongly as a feminist, right?”
Gretchen nods. “But I didn’t want this. I don’t feel redeemed because it happened to me personally. I’m not basking in the revelation that the things I believed, that the things I value on a big scale, that they’re going on here. I would give anything for it not to be true.”
Gomes closes his folder and puts his pen down. “Talk to me, Gretchen. What are you hoping to accomplish?”
“I don’t know what you mean. What’s there to accomplish? I just need someone to know. I need you to stop them.”
“
I mean, what’s your motivation? Is it money? The Brewards are extremely wealthy.”
“That’s not appropriate,” Officer Thompson says.
Gretchen laughs. “My parents do fine. We’re fine. I don’t need money.”
“What is it then? This is a big accusation, and you’re not giving us much to work with. Is there something else behind it? I hear it’s helping you achieve a big online following. Are you enjoying being the leader of a revolution?” Gomes asks.
I get it. I do. I know he needs to say it, because someone will. I know he needs her to be ready, but I also know that she’s just a girl sitting in a chair with nothing but her bag and a box of tissues. I know she’s no revolutionary.
“Do I have to continue? Should I get a lawyer?” Gretchen asks Officer Thompson. She turns to the side so she and Gomes can’t see each other.
“Can we have a minute?” Officer Thompson requests, and Gomes takes his file.
“I have what I need,” he says, and leaves the two of them in the room.
“I apologize,” Thompson says. “We don’t get many cases like this, and we’re all under a lot of pressure. He does believe you. We all do. It’s just that … it’s going to get worse.”
“I know. It’s not like plenty of people haven’t said it already. It’s not like I don’t know how these things go. That’s the one thing my supposed online following has taught me. I know all about the kinds of things people say.”
“I want to help you. We all do.”
“I shouldn’t have even stayed. I thought about moving back home. Leaving school.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“It’s … someone needs to say it. Why aren’t you looking harder? Why didn’t you find Ellie Frias? How hard can it be to find a girl?” Gretchen asks.
“Like I said, we’re under a great deal of pressure—”
“You should be. I don’t know where she is, but I told you what happened to me. That should be something. The rest is on you now.”
I go and sit beside Officer Thompson after Gretchen leaves, resting my intangible hand on her knee. She’s crying. I’m grateful for her, even if she feels like a failure. At least she’s asking.
It’s impossible in a town like this. It’s impossible in any town. Girls disappear. Girls are brought to secret places to be used and nothing is done, because it’s how things are. Because they’re only girls.
“Fuck me,” Thompson says, and she leaves, turning off the light in the room.
I sit alone in the dark.
chapter twenty-eight
While I wait for the cops to talk to Kailey Howe, I go to school. I don’t know why, but I guess it’s because it’s something that was part of me. Leaving the house, getting back into the town, it fills me with the things I was, and I walk into school, remembering how I felt every day when I got here. How when I started, it was scary. New. But by the time I was a sophomore, it was just a place I had to go. Routine. Part of the normal.
School has always been an odd place for me. It was comfortable at times. At Saint Elizabeth’s, I liked school itself. I liked when I was in classes. Unless the teacher got a call or needed to go into the hall with a student or there was a sub. When the teacher was there and I planned my day so I could avoid being in the room too early, I liked it. I loved the things they knew and how they were excited to tell me about them. I didn’t care what I learned. I loved hearing about the American Revolution and learning how to count in French. I loved reading short stories and watching videos about the planets. Information thrilled me.
But then there was lunch. There were the minutes between classes. The bus rides. There were the comments. The things girls wrote about me on the walls in the bathrooms. There was Greg McCarthy, the boy I’d thought was cute in sixth grade, who passed me a note and asked me to wait for him after lunch. There was the group of kids who waited with him. Who laughed, took pictures, as he threw tomato sauce all over my shorts because he’d heard Anabelle Henry say I had my period. There was the time Nate Lambert tripped me walking down the hall during a fire drill. For no reason but because it was funny.
Those things all disappeared in high school. When I did. Kate helped me escape them. And then Caleb made me count.
The halls of the school are empty now. Except for one kid, running somewhere. His sneakers squeak on the linoleum. Under the row of lockers to my right, there are pens and a tin of breath mints and pieces of paper and someone’s watch. The daily detritus of teenagers. Tonight, they’ll be swept away and replaced tomorrow with more pens and paper and maybe a ring and an empty water bottle instead.
There’s a sign on the wall. The tape on the top left is loose, so I have to bend down to read it. It’s for drama club auditions. For a play that already came and went, but the sign’s still there.
I walk past the auditorium. I wonder if they had an assembly when I went missing, if the police came or if the principal stood on the stage asking for information. We always had assemblies about the most random things, and I know in the movies, they have them when something dramatic happens. But that probably doesn’t happen in real life. I wasn’t as important as yearbook photos and class ring orders.
When I see Caleb, he’s sleeping. In the back of a classroom, his hoodie up, the teacher talking and ignoring him. There’s nothing on his desk. He couldn’t even be bothered to bring a notebook to school.
The police are questioning girls he’s hurt, and he sleeps. He hasn’t been arrested. He just continues and has the opportunity to do it again, like he did when he threw me away.
If I could tell him, if I could communicate somehow, I don’t know what I’d say. That I thought I loved him? That I believed he loved me? Would I tell him how agonizing it is being dead? Would I ask him why? Why he lied? Why he hurt me? Why I didn’t deserve to be alive? Or would I leave him in silence, the way he left me?
I don’t think it would accomplish anything, but I wish, for just a moment, that I could tell him. That I could let him know how I still see it all. How I remember. I wish I could show him how much better I know him than anyone.
After the bell rings, I wait in the hall during passing. Kids come and go by me, through me. This is what life is. We breathe, we go on, and we don’t remember.
The boy at the water fountain won’t know tonight that it was between his third and fourth classes that he was thirsty. He won’t know that the girl he’s liked for a year walked behind him while he was drinking, that she slowed to give him a chance to stop her. She won’t remember that her pen came loose when she accidentally took the corner and crashed into another girl, that it joined the others under the lockers. It won’t matter to her that the pen she got later from the boy who sits next to her in chemistry was the pen that he got from the girl who sits behind him in history. He won’t know that the girl who sits behind him still has the same gum on her shoe, but the pink’s lost now.
Caleb stands by Gina Lynn’s locker like he stood by mine. He has his arm around her, one hand resting on her hip, and he whispers something into her ear. She laughs.
“Hey, Caleb. Out on parole?” The guy who yells it is familiar, but I can’t remember his name. Brett maybe. Or John. Or Ezekiel. It could be anything. He could be anyone. Just like I was.
Caleb smiles, turning away from Gina Lynn. “Some girls just can’t stand that I’m taken.”
“You shouldn’t joke about it,” Gina Lynn says as the guy in the hall continues by them.
“Why? It’s a joke. Like I’d waste my time on trash like that. I have you.”
“I know, but people might think you’re not taking it seriously.”
He kisses her. I haven’t seen him like this in months. I’ve seen what he really is. What really happens, but with Gina Lynn, it’s still the game. It’s still the softness I wanted to believe he had in him. He doesn’t hurt her; he kisses her and he means it with her. It’s like the way he was on those summer evenings. The boy I let into my life. The boy I called my first love. But now, I
can see the rot behind the smile. I can see what he is and I wonder why I never noticed it before. It’s so clear to me now.
“You need to stop worrying,” he says. “Besides, you’ve got my back, right?”
She nods, but for a moment, she hesitates. He closes her locker and puts his arm out, waiting for her to fill the space. She looks down the hallway instead. She looks through me, looks past where I stand, by what used to be my locker. She opens her mouth, almost says something, but then blinks. Forgetting whatever it was she was thinking, she slides into the place he made for her.
They pass me. His arm around her, her smiling, and I remember why I haven’t come back here. There are no places left in this town where they aren’t.
chapter twenty-nine
I’ve never seen Kailey Howe before. She’s small and thin. Red hair. Young. They usually are. Except for Gretchen, they’re always young. I think they figure we’re the weakest. Kailey might not even be in high school, but I can’t be sure. She’s so tiny that she could be older than I’d expect, but she looks like a child.
Thompson lectured Gomes earlier on trying to listen better. He’s the lead on the case, but he knows he’s not cut out for dealing with these girls. He doesn’t want to be here, but I admire that at least he asked questions. At least he’s trying to make sense of how we think.
Now, he shifts in his seat. Even he knows it would be hard for anyone to look at this girl and assume she has a motive. Like I said, pretty and sweet. Good girls. That’s how you get people to listen.
“I was running,” Kailey says. She looks at Gomes. She stares directly at him while she speaks. Waiting for him to tell her she’s wrong. That it didn’t happen. That he can make it disappear. “I always used to run. Every morning and every evening. All summer. Even in the winter, although not there. But I don’t really run anymore.”
“And you were running that morning?” Gomes confirms.
“I was. I usually took the route by the lake.”