They'll Never Catch Us

by Jessica Goodman

  My throat grows dry and my fingers begin to tingle. I could push her away. Hard, so she falls. So her skull collides and crashes with metal. But I curl my hands into fists to keep them steady. I sidestep away from her and try to hide my trembling fingers, tears pricking my eyes.

  “Only a matter of time before they get you two in there for some real talk.” Julia snorts, then pauses, thinking for a beat. “Where were you anyway, Ellie? Where were you the morning Mila disappeared?”

  By now the rest of the team has gathered to watch and I feel their eyes drilling holes into my skin, fear rising in my throat. That’s when Stella appears, fully dressed and ready to run. She drops her bag down onto the floor with a thud.

  “She was with me,” she says. “We were doing circuits at home. So fuck off.”

  Julia rolls her eyes. “Like I’d believe you anyway,” she says, a smirk crawling across her face. “Whatever. I’m heading out there.”

  The group disbands and everyone follows Julia out the exit over to Coach and the boys, who stand huddled around a clipboard in the center of the track.

  Stella turns to the door, but I grab her arm and pull her to me. I want to say something but there’s nothing, no sounds. Just her dark eyes, searching mine.

  Stella wiggles out of my grasp and smooths out her low, frizzy ponytail. “You’d do the same for me,” she says.

  What do you know? I want to ask. But Stella turns and jogs to the rest of the team. I follow her slowly but my legs are made of stone and my ears are ringing like I’ve just been hit.

  “Sprints, Ellie,” Coach barks when I get close. The exhaustion in his voice is gone and replaced with a gruff disconnect. He’s trying to make everything normal. Make us forget.

  But we can’t. Not when there are dozens of reporters standing as far away as the school can make them, recorders and cameras in their hands.

  I jog toward the rest of the group and line up to run hundreds across the clay-red track. I duck low and shoot out into space, pummeling the ground beneath me.

  Coach paces up and down the sidelines, yelling at us to hustle and fight for it. He holds his clipboard over his barrel chest and tilts his head toward the sky, looking for answers or salvation. It doesn’t take long before my heart is pounding and my muscles ache.

  I’m out of practice. Off. I can tell. I push myself, squatting down to touch the clay with the tips of my fingers before exploding again back in the opposite direction. It feels good to burn, to have my body rebel against everything I’m trying to do. It makes me think of Mila. The way her muscles arched along her back as she fought for every single stride.

  “I don’t have to remind you that regionals are next week,” Coach yells. “If we have any chance of winning, of bringing home something good, something to be proud of, you’re going to have to work harder than this.”

  I explode again, sprinting back to the starting line. Regionals. A way out, one that will take me far, far away from here. A future that doesn’t involve Noah or Mila or being in Stella’s shadow. All of a sudden it seems essential.

  But we all know what regionals mean. That’s the meet that won Stella her spot at Georgetown. After the race, the scout dressed in blue followed her to the parking lot. Coach asked me to hang back, to let them have some time, and I could only see it from afar, how he shook her hand and nodded enthusiastically, slapping her on the back. Stella’s face lit up. Her whole body relaxed for the first time in what seemed like ever.

  When we got in the car to head home, Mom looked at her, eyebrows raised. “So?”

  Stella nodded in the passenger seat. “I’m in.”

  Mom’s hands flew to her face, covering her eyes, and her shoulders heaved up and down. “Stella,” she whispered. When her hands dropped, we could see she was crying, so proud, so relieved. “You did it.”

  None of us knew then that Stella would only hold on to the spot for another month or so. It was out of her grasp before she could even order a T-shirt from the campus bookstore.

  This year, regionals was supposed to be my turn. My chance to impress the coaches enough to get a handshake deal as a sophomore.

  Mila should be finalizing her scholarship too.

  That’s the thought that slows my legs and nearly makes me collapse onto the ground.

  “Pick it up, Ell!” Coach yells.

  I trudge along, but my mind begins to spiral, playing the if-then game against my will. If I do two hundred squats today, I’ll shave ten seconds off my PR. If I don’t get eight hours and three minutes of sleep the night before regionals, I’ll lose. If Mila comes home tomorrow, I’ll come clean about Noah. If I . . .

  The rules are coming to me, but that’s when I spot a man walking toward us from the school’s main building. Dressed in a dark suit and an overcoat, he can’t be a teacher or a member of the staff. Everyone wears fleeces and hiking boots. As he gets closer, his face comes into focus and the glint of his silver badge catches the falling sun. Detective Parker.

  I keep running but my eyes stay trained on him as he motions for Coach to join him by the water station. They talk for a few seconds and Coach smacks his clipboard against his thigh. He grimaces but then nods and turns to us, to where Stella leads the pack, finishing her hundred-yard sprint. When she crosses the finish line, she slows to a walk, hands on her hips, until she looks up and sees Coach and Parker.

  Coach holds up his hand and cocks his head. Stella peels off the track, annoyed to be taken out of practice. I can tell by her gait, the way her feet flop in front of her. She wants to keep running. She’s not done.

  But when she gets closer to Parker, her posture changes. She straightens her spine, rigid and still, and stays silent as Parker’s mouth moves in small motions. The reporters notice, all at once, and a flock of heads turns to watch the interaction. After a few seconds, Coach pats Stella’s shoulder and she starts walking with Parker back toward the school—no, the parking lot. Parker opens the back door of a black sedan, an unmarked police car, and motions for Stella to slide in. He walks around the front, and soon they speed away.

  21

  ELLIE

  “What happened?” I yell as I barge into the house, not stopping to kick off my muddy sneakers or drop my training bag in the hall. I bowl through the first floor, looking for Stella, or Mom, or Dad, or anyone who can tell me something about where Parker took Stella. But the living room is empty. The kitchen is too. It’s dark by now and usually Mom is here, opening up delivery from Tofu Garden or throwing a chicken breast in the oven. If all were right, Dad would be typing on his keyboard in the office, a comforting click-clack floating through the house. Stella would be lifting weights downstairs and I’d be catching up on trashy reality TV. But everything is not right.

  The air is still and there’s an unwashed head of lettuce on the counter. A kitchen knife set beside it, like someone would return at any second to finish the task. I grasp my phone so hard it starts to make indents in the side of my palm. No one has returned my texts or my calls.

  I pull out a stool at our breakfast bar and a chill creeps up my neck. I hate being alone. Always have. That’s why I sought out Bethany when Stella disappeared into running. Why I gravitated toward Noah when Bethany left.

  But that’s when I remember the reporters. They were all there, capturing Stella and Parker’s interaction. I flick on the TV and fumble for the local news. Some blonde lady is talking about apple pie up at the old cider mill, tasting various kinds of Honeycrisps and Galas, as if this is the hard-hitting content I crave.

  I tap open Twitter on my phone and search Mila Keene with shaking fingers, afraid of what might pop up. At first, I’m greeted by her face. Her beautiful smiling face. Everyone used the same photo, the one from the meet where she won. Red cheeks. Huge grin. My heart beats hard but I push away the memory, the grief, the shame, and keep looking.

  Finally a few thumbs down, ther
e are a few tweets from one reporter. Trish Rollins. She looks young from her avatar. She sent the first one at 5:45 p.m., a few hours ago.

  BREAKING: Edgewater PD has brought a 17-year-old member of EDG XC team in for questioning in #MilaKeene case.

  Another one followed.

  Per sources, the runner, who we aren’t naming bc she’s a minor, sent #MilaKeene threatening text messages before she disappeared. No word on what they said, but this story is still developing.

  She posted a photo with the message. It’s grainy and shot from far away, as if she were running to get a better look. You can’t see Stella’s face, but I can make out her dark, frizzy hair as she bends to duck into the car. Her knuckles are clamped around the metal door, white with rage.

  * * *

  —

  The house is quiet and dark when I finally hear the front door open. No one says anything but I can make out footsteps diverging. Mom and Dad heading to their room. Stella climbing the stairs. I look at the clock on my phone. It’s near midnight. Stella pads into the bathroom and turns on the shower. I wait for her to finish, and then a few minutes more, before I tiptoe out of my room and over to hers, knocking softly against her door.

  She doesn’t answer but I see a sliver of light peeking through the crevice between her door and the floor. Gingerly, I push it open and there she is, sitting cross-legged on her bed with wet hair and an oversized T-shirt bearing the words RUN LIKE HELL.

  “Oh, hey,” she says. Her face is blank and her eyes are distant.

  “ ‘Oh, hey’?” I ask. “Are you kidding?” I rush to her and throw my arms around her, hugging her tightly. She feels foreign under my touch, all bone and muscle, tense and unyielding. But I hold her closer because we don’t do this often.

  Stella recoils. “Off, Ell.”

  I inhale the clean scent of her hair before releasing her, and sit back on her yellow bedspread. “What the fuck happened?” I ask.

  “I’m sure you saw the news.” She shrugs as if none of this is surprising, as if none of it’s a big deal.

  “What did they ask you? What did you say?”

  Stella’s face falls and she looks tired and a little broken in a way I’ve never seen her.

  “They think I had something to do with this,” she says. “But that’s not a surprise after last year. After those fucking texts.”

  “What texts?”

  She purses her lips and hesitates for a moment. Then she digs her phone out from beneath the covers and tosses it to me with her messages to Mila open on the screen.

  Georgetown? Are you serious, Mila?

  I can’t believe you would backstab me like this.

  I trusted you and you betrayed me.

  I thought you were different. But you’re just like the others.

  You’re going to wish you hadn’t done this.

  My face must say something because Stella looks directly at me and her mouth falls open. “I didn’t do anything to Mila, you know. I just want to say that out loud. I didn’t.”

  My throat tightens. Of course Stella wasn’t involved. I know that. She sniffles beside me, a raw, strangled sound. It’s not one born out of self-preservation. It’s one of loss. Of fear.

  “It’s going to be okay, Stell.” We both know it’s a lie, but what else is there to say?

  Stella tilts her head up to the ceiling. Her bare walls are stark white except for the row of race bibs taped up above the bed. The moonlight drifts through her window, casting a golden glow on her face. Stella looks so small, so fragile, so unlike the girl who won State last year, unlike the girl whose rage is a sweeping, rolling sea, who wears armor made of barbed wire. This is what my sister looks like when she’s stripped of all her superpowers.

  Stella closes her eyes and tries to suppress a shudder. Her shoulders still shake. When she opens her eyes, she tilts her head toward me. “So, are you going to tell me the truth, Ell? Where were you the morning Mila disappeared?”

  It’s not an accusation, but I can’t help but stiffen. My mouth is dry and my hands are clammy. It’s the one question I didn’t want to answer. The one that could cause everything we’ve worked for to unravel.

  “I covered for you,” she says. “In the locker room before practice, I said you were with me, working out. I told Parker the same thing tonight.” She looks at me quizzically. “Where were you, really?”

  I rack my brain for the truth—any truth—until I know what I have to tell her. “I was with Noah,” I say softly.

  Stella’s face twists in confusion. “What? Why?”

  “We were together all summer,” I say. “Sneaking around behind Tamara’s back. We were lifeguarding together and it just . . . happened.”

  “Ew, Ellie.”

  I laugh because that’s the most Stella response ever. Ew.

  “So you guys were, like, hooking up or something that morning?”

  I shake my head. “I was breaking things off with him. Something happened over the summer.” Stella’s quiet, waiting for me to explain. The words are slippery on my tongue and my stomach flips as I gather the courage to say them out loud. “I got pregnant and had an abortion,” I say in one breath.

  Stella’s eyes go wide. She reaches for my hand and holds it tight in hers. My heart snaps and I wonder why I waited all this time to tell her, why I didn’t realize back in August that she would be there for me, that she was the one person who wouldn’t care or judge or say a goddamn word. If I had, then maybe none of this would have happened.

  “I’m okay now,” I say, lying with a shaking voice. “But that changed everything. It just took me a little while to break it off, you know? So that’s where I was.”

  Stella leans forward and wraps me in a hug. Her wet hair is cold against my bare skin but I don’t let her go.

  “It’s fine,” Stella says, her body so close to mine. “Everything is going to be fine.”

  But we both know it’s not. A girl is missing and Stella has a target on her back. But for tonight, just one night, we’ll pretend like everything is just that. Fine.

  22

  STELLA

  News leaks quickly in the mountains, where the coroner also sells wildflowers at the farmers market and the CSI tech moonlights as a fly-fishing guide. That’s how rumors spread around here. Slowly in the beginning, whispered in the Hellers’ sporting goods store and in the rows of plants at the nursery. Almost unnoticeable. A soft breeze drifting through town. But then it becomes a rolling tide, sweeping through living rooms and locker rooms, rushing through the open air so all at once everyone knows: Stella Steckler is a suspect.

  That’s what the front page of the Edgewater Eagle says. It’s lying facedown on the kitchen counter and when I flip it over, a headline jumps out at me. RUNNER QUESTIONED IN KEENE DISAPPEARANCE. Just my story alongside Mila’s. The article goes on to mention what happened last year, that the unnamed runner had a history of violence, and that she—I—had sent “threatening” text messages to Mila. Those fucking text messages, sent in a fit of rage. Even I can see how bad this looks. Sure, the press can’t name minors, but everyone knows it’s about me.

  The story ends with a rehashing of the cold cases—how three runners were found dead on the Oak Tower trail only days after going missing. How the killer left nothing at the crime scene, but took shoelaces from each of their sneakers. How a madman may still be on the loose.

  The final paragraph mentions Shira: But police haven’t ruled out the possibility that Keene simply ran away. “We spent weeks looking for Shira Tannenbaum five years ago,” Detective Parker said. “Maybe Miss Keene will return to us on her own.” I can practically hear the smirk in his voice, like he’s already decided who Mila is.

  Everyone hated Shira for what she did, but still I wish Mila’s fate will mirror hers. That she ran away to have a weeklong vacation with her best f
riend, Naomi, or that she just wanted to clear her head before regionals. But with each passing day, the chances of finding Mila, of having her back, are getting smaller and smaller.

  “Give me that,” Mom says. She rushes out from her office and snatches the paper from my grasp.

  “It’s not like it’s a secret,” I say.

  She throws it in the recycling and presses the start button on the blender so a sawing sound rips through the entire kitchen. “Whatever,” I mumble.

  “Here,” Mom says as the noise cuts off. She pours the green liquid into a glass and slides it across the counter. “We can at least pretend to be normal.”

  “Thanks,” I say. I perch on a stool and look at her for the first time in a while. Her hair is unbrushed and a little greasy at the scalp, and she’s traded her usual trousers and blouse for a loose cotton tee and jeans. Her skin is thinning around her eyes and sags at the corners of her mouth. I wonder how close she is to the edge. How much I’ve already caused her to break, to spiral.

  She was like this for a while after Allison Tarley and her coach pressed charges. I worried it would cause her to relapse, to find some way to forget the fact that her daughter Stella was trouble. But she held strong. I just need her to do that now, too.

  “You know I didn’t do anything to her,” I say. “To Mila. You believe me, right?”

  Mom exhales deeply and looks to the ceiling. She waits a second too long and my heart sinks. “Of course, Stella. This is all just a misunderstanding. It has to be. Mila will turn up soon.”

  Before she can say more, her phone rings in her pocket. She pulls it out and I can see Principal Pérez’s name bold and blaring. Mom slides her finger across the screen to answer and brings the phone to her ear. She turns away from me. “Lauren, hi!” Her voice is lighter, an act of self-preservation. It’s the same one she uses when clients are on the fence, unsure if they really should spend their hard-earned money on a second home in a town once called Deadwater.