Mila’s not at school on Tuesday, and at lunch, the team is talking.
“It’s mono, I’m telling you,” says Raven. She leans back in her chair and crosses her arms over her chest. “Three juniors have it.” Raven might be meek but she also loves to be right.
Tamara bites her bottom lip, her brow knit with worry. “I’m not so sure. I heard from one of the Ellacoya guards that someone called 911 yesterday and reported an incident somewhere in the woods. A missing runner, maybe.” She leans in closer. “I heard him say Oak Tower.”
Julia gasps. “Tam, no. Are you sure?”
Tamara nods, a grimace on her face.
Noah slumps down next to her and slings an arm over her shoulder.
“What are you taking about, babe?”
“Mila,” Tamara says. “I think she’s missing.”
“What?” Noah asks. “She’s probably just sick.”
“No way,” Julia says. “If Tamara says she heard there was a 911 call, it has to be true.”
I swear I see Raven roll her eyes as Tamara flashes Julia a grateful smile. Julia’s always been Tamara’s gofer, even in elementary school. But Julia isn’t magnetic like Tamara, or a people pleaser like Raven. She’s cruel and insecure, always grasping to keep her place at the top by kicking others in the shins. Sometimes that means making up names like Sterile. Other times it means copying off Raven’s pre-calc test, getting caught, and crying her way out of it with a load of BS about not being able to study enough after working a shift at her family’s overpriced sporting goods store. True story. But most of the time it just means shitting all over everyone and everything.
“Has anyone seen her?” Noah asks. He shifts in his seat and his eyes scan the table.
Julia shakes her head no. “Hopefully she’s not pulling a Shir—” Her mouth falls open midsentence when she realizes what she’s saying.
“Seriously, Julia?” Raven says, her voice small.
Julia’s face reddens and for once she’s embarrassed. The whole town had been turned upside down looking for Shira Tannenbaum. She was Homecoming Queen and captain of the cross country team. She even still holds the county record for the 5K, the one Ellie and I are always trying to beat. When she came back unscathed, everyone talked about how Shira had ruined it for the next girl in trouble. Detective Parker was even quoted in the paper: “We all know teenage girls are capable of lying,” he said. “But now we know just how far they’ll go to protect themselves. Since the Edgewater killer is gone, we’ll think long and hard about how we look for the next girl who goes missing.” Asshole.
“I’m sorry, Rave,” Julia says. “But, I mean, she freaked everyone out. Had us all thinking Kendall Fitzwater was back, looking for new victims.” She shivers dramatically. “It was scary.”
Raven picks at the roast beef sandwich in front of her. “They don’t know for sure it was the Fitzwater brothers,” she says. “There were holes in Marlisse’s, Beatrice’s, and Abigail’s cases.”
“Weren’t they each missing one set of shoelaces?” Tamara asks.
Raven nods. “Died from head wounds. But the police didn’t have a slam-dunk case. No DNA evidence, either. Monty and Kendall didn’t even have alibis, and the cops still couldn’t pin it on them.”
“No one ever talks about the fact that those girls looked nothing alike,” Julia says carefully. “And they were killed at different times of day.”
Raven nods, a small sad smile crawling across her face. “Aren’t you guys glad we spent weeks memorizing all the details?”
Tamara throws an arm around her. “You were just looking for answers, Rave,” she says. “We all thought Shira was dead.”
Julia nods. “You’re right, though. Mila’s probably fine. Like you said, I bet she just has mono.”
“Totally,” Tamara says, like she’s trying to convince herself.
“I’m gonna go to the bathroom,” Raven says softly. She hustles off, wiping her nose on her T-shirt.
“Ugh. I should not have brought up Shira,” Julia says, shaking her head.
“I know, but . . .” Tamara looks around and leans in toward Julia. “Mila might be missing. She was supposed to cover a dinner shift but she ghosted. I texted her but the message wasn’t delivered.”
I freeze. That’s what happened when I tried to text Mila, too.
“Someone at Ellacoya called her mom but they couldn’t reach her at the hospital,” Tamara says. “That’s when the security guard brought up the 911 call. He thought maybe she was the missing runner from the call. But it was pouring rain all night, so who knows what the police found.”
“What’d I miss?” Ellie says, appearing by my side. Her hair is tangled around her shoulders and she looks pale, her skin nearly translucent under the cafeteria’s fluorescent lights. She sets her tray down across from me.
“They’re wondering where Mila is,” I say, leaning back in my chair.
“Oh,” she says.
“Tamara says she heard there might be a runner missing in the woods.” I roll my eyes, trying to convince myself that Mila going missing is ludicrous. After all, Deadwater is long gone. What are the chances that some psycho killer would come back just for Mila? It doesn’t make sense. “Isn’t that absurd?”
Ellie nods emphatically. “Ridiculous.”
“Have you heard from her?”
“Nuh-uh,” Ellie says, and rips open a bag of pretzels, spilling some on her tray. Her face gets red and splotchy, like it does when she’s anxious or uncomfortable. She glances at her phone and her eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Crap, I gotta go. Spanish prep.” She gathers her shit and bolts for the swinging cafeteria doors, leaving a bunch of pretzel crumbs behind for me to clean up. Classic.
I bite my tongue the rest of lunch and try to listen in on the chatter. But hearing Mila’s name over and over again makes me nervous and irritable. I slide my phone out of my pocket and type out another text to her.
If you get this, can you please respond?? There are some rumors going around school. Can we talk??
I wait for the message to be delivered, but it just stays green, stuck somewhere in space.
With five minutes left in the period, I push the caf doors open and make a left, toward the athletic hallway, looking for Coach. Maybe he’ll know where Mila is. He usually spends free periods working on lineups, or watching tapes from previous meets. Last year, after the Allison thing, shit got really bad and he let me hang out there during lunch. He wouldn’t speak to me, but he just let me sit. It was his way of saying, It’s going to be okay. At least that’s what I hoped. More likely, he just wanted to make sure his star runner would be back and ready the next year.
I pass the field hockey office, the lacrosse room, and the volleyball closet, before seeing Coach’s room ahead. The door’s closed with no light on inside. Shit. I’m about to knock anyway, when I hear the squeaky sound of sneakers walking along the tile floor behind me.
“Stella Steckler?” someone calls. “Is that you?”
I turn to find a tall woman with medium-length dark hair, tied back into a low ponytail. She’s wearing blue hospital scrubs, a peacoat draped over her shoulders. Her cheeks are high and round like Mila’s, and her nose has the same notch that Mila’s does, right on the bridge.
“Are you Mrs. Keene?” I ask.
The woman nods but doesn’t smile. She clasps her hands tight in front of her. “Call me Shawna,” she says. “I was coming to look for Coach Gary. He’s not here?”
I shake my head.
“You’re Stella, aren’t you?” she asks, looking at me with curious eyes. “Mila’s mentioned you. She said you were weird. In a good way, I promise. Mila likes weird.”
I snort. “I guess I am.”
Mila’s mom nods and looks to the ceiling, her eyes round and tired. “Have you seen Mila? Talked to her in the past
couple days?” she asks.
“No,” I say. A pit forms in my stomach.
“She hasn’t been home since yesterday,” Shawna says. I can tell she’s trying to be strong, but her shaking hands betray her. “She texted me that she was leaving on her run in the morning, but I worked an overnight shift so I didn’t see her before school. Then I got a call from Ellacoya that she didn’t show up for work last night. I assumed she would be home this morning, but . . .” Shawna trails off.
“You haven’t heard from her?” I ask.
“No,” she says. “And this morning, Mrs. Tannenbaum called saying Mila hasn’t been in school. I called the police right away.” Her voice grows louder and more urgent with each word. “And Detective Parker told me to just sit tight and wait, that she would come home, that that’s just what teenage girls do.”
Of course Parker is working this case. Fuck, Mila is now a case. Parker covers everything about minors, no matter the situation, even though he’s obviously so biased against us. But that’s what happens when you live in a small town with an even smaller police department. Everyone knows everyone—and everyone’s connected, most often through their indiscretions.
“But that’s not what my Mila does,” Shawna says. “She doesn’t just go missing. I found her wallet at home. She wouldn’t leave without it.”
My heart races. Where is she? “What about her dad? Or Naomi?”
“Naomi hasn’t seen her. I asked. Her dad? Fat chance. Thomas is probably holed up in some country club passed out in an overstuffed leather chair right now.” She looks at me. “Sorry. Probably shouldn’t say that.”
I shrug. “I’ve heard worse. Seen worse.”
Shawna gives me a knowing look and I wonder what Mila told her, if she knows I can relate. “Plus, I called him and he’s not answering, which isn’t unusual for him.”
My mind flashes back to the random Instagram comment on Naomi’s post. Come home, Mila. Come home to me.
“It’s just, everyone keeps saying Edgewater is safe now,” Shawna says. “But what if it’s not? What if someone took my little girl?”
Could Mila become just another headline in Edgewater? It’s impossible.
Shawna lets out a puff of air. “All those girls wound up dead,” she says quietly. “Well, except for that Tannenbaum girl. But I know how they treated Marlisse Williams’s case.” Shawna scoffs. “It’s no coincidence they didn’t take her disappearance seriously until one of the white girls in this town went missing. My daughter is half Puerto Rican. You think they’re going to pull out all the stops?” Shawna clucks her tongue. It’s almost like she’s talking like I’m not even here, like she’s unleashing her worst fears into the world, like saying them out loud will make them sound too outlandish to be real. But what she’s saying doesn’t sound outlandish. It sounds like it could be true.
“She’ll turn up,” I say. “She has to.”
Shawna crosses her arms over her chest. “Detective Parker said I should be wary of you.”
I wince. Of course he did.
Shawna doesn’t say anything else, but she looks off, past me and down the hall, and I wonder what she’s thinking. If she’s sizing me up as a suspect, or if she’s doing all the mental math we’ve been trained to do when we hear about a missing girl. We all know the stats. They’re drilled into us during every Dateline episode, every true-crime podcast. The first twenty-four hours are crucial in missing persons cases. You have the best shot of finding someone within seventy-two hours. After that . . . it’s a crapshoot. And it’s already been a day. Soaked in rain.
Shawna looks down at her phone. “I have to go. My sister is coming up from the city. If you or anyone else on the team hear anything, you call me right away, okay?”
But she doesn’t wait to hear my response. Shawna turns on her heel and walks quickly down the hallway, out the door and into the parking lot.
I back up against the cold cinder-block wall and slide down until I’m sitting on the ground. My mind spins and I wonder where Mila is, what happened, and how Parker will find a way to fuck me over yet again. Memories of last year flash through my brain. The popping sound of bone unlatching. The ambulance wailing through the mountains, on its way to rescue Allison Tarley. How Parker smelled of mint and tobacco when he sat down across from me inside the police station, looking at me with disdain.
But that’s in the past. It’s all behind me. We’ve all moved on. Just in time for another disaster. What if Mila is in trouble? What if she’s hurt? I rest my head back against the wall and try to steady my breathing. That’s when I realize that I’ve been crying.
15
ELLIE
Things start to get out of control on Wednesday. That’s when Coach calls a pre-bell meeting. Show up at six fifty, he wrote in his late-night email to the entire team. Attendance is mandatory.
Stella and I are the first ones there, and Coach looks drained when we enter the room. His usually flushed skin is a grayish color and beads of sweat gather above his lip.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He wipes his arm across his face, gathering perspiration in a neon terry wristband. “Yes,” he snaps. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
I try to make eye contact with Stella, but her gaze is trained on the door. She sits, spine straight in her chair, watching as the rest of the team files in.
I used to be able to tell her everything with just one look. We used to have a secret language, back when we were tiny, when our bodies collided with love and also with pain on a more regular basis. We didn’t use words or sounds, or anything that could draw attention. Our language was based on looks and gestures, and fingers that curled into fists. With the raise of an eyebrow, I could tell how Stella was feeling, if she was angry or hungry, or if she wanted me to tell Mom a small white lie to get us out of something boring like an open house or piano lessons. And she read my mind, too, when I bit the inside of my cheek, turning my mouth into a lopsided pucker. How it meant Let’s escape, let’s run.
“It’s been two days,” Tamara says, sliding into a seat nearby. “Mila would have texted if everything was fine.” She’s wearing an Ellacoya Mountain Resort hotel sweatshirt that has STAFF embroidered on the front and JOHNSON printed on the back. Everyone knows the Johnsons give them out at the resort’s annual holiday party. I wonder if Mila will get one this year. But as soon as the thought flickers in my brain, my heart rate quickens.
“My mom said the school staff and faculty had to stay late last night, that they had some meeting with Detective Parker,” Raven says, her eyes wide and her skin paler than usual. She always turns nearly see-through this time of year.
I suck in a mouthful of air and kick Stella’s seat in front of me.
“What?” she hisses. When she turns around, her lips are curled into a snarl.
Julia, Tamara, and Raven turn to stare and I know there’s no way to warn her about Parker now. If he’s involved, Stella’s in trouble. He was the first detective on the scene last year, who dealt with Stella.
“Never mind,” I mumble.
“Freak,” she mutters under her breath.
“Asshole.”
“You guys okay?” Raven asks, leaning over, her red ponytail swinging behind her.
“Mm-hm,” I say quietly. If only Stella and I could still read each other’s minds. If only we still cared to.
Julia scoffs. “Let ’em tear each other apart, Rave,” Julia says, waving her hand dismissively. “Who cares?”
Just then, Coach clears his throat at the front of the room.
The door swings open and in walks Principal Pérez with a tall, burly white man. He has a splotchy complexion and a thick neck that strains against his collared shirt. I would recognize him anywhere. He walks with a purpose, like he doesn’t have time for your bullshit, which he definitely does not, as he told me last year when he questioned me about Stella.
My sister’s breath catches and I lean forward, toward her. Even when she’s being a dick, she doesn’t deserve to get blindsided by this guy, who basically ruined her life last year. Parker scans the room and looks at us a little longer than he should.
Principal Pérez speaks first. “You must be wondering why we’ve gathered you all so early in the morning,” she says. Her long hair is pinned back and she’s wearing a muted beige dress, even though she usually favors bright colors. “As some of you may have noticed, Mila Keene has not been in school this week.”
The room buzzes as people begin murmuring to each other.
“What we’re about to tell you is not public knowledge yet,” Pérez continues, a little louder than before. “So we are trusting you to keep this information to yourselves until we can alert the entire school.”
Fat chance.
Pérez clears her throat. “Mila Keene is officially a missing person.”
I grip on to the sides of my desk and hold tight, hoping to ground myself. In my periphery, I see Noah shake his head in disbelief.
“We are only telling you this because you are Mila’s teammates,” Parker says in a low voice. “Her cross country teammates, and we have reason to believe that Mila may have gone missing while she was out for a run.”
Coach’s mouth thins to a straight line and his knuckles turn white, grasping his clipboard. I know he’s watching the season flash before his eyes—regionals, State, his fundraising numbers. A missing runner throws a wrench in all his plans. A missing Mila ruins his chance at excellence.
“Her mother noted that the last time she heard from her was . . .” Parker pulls out a slim black notepad. “On Monday morning around five a.m., when Mila set out for her usual morning run. She didn’t come back after that.” He clears his throat. “Right now, we have no reason to believe that Mila’s disappearance is connected to the cold cases. We’ve dealt with missing girls and runaways before. More times than we’d care to,” Parker says with a strange nonchalance. His eyes flit to Raven just for a second and I feel a stab of sorrow for her. But no one says what we’re all thinking. You never found the killer.
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