They'll Never Catch Us

by Jessica Goodman

  I watch a dark, quiet Edgewater go by in a blur of trees and houses just as the first signs of sun begin to peek out over the graying horizon. Soon I’m in town. I pass the public library, where the windows are frosted, and the small bowling alley Bader’s parents own. I look up past the quaint brick buildings to the mountains in the distance, and for a second I feel like I can’t breathe, like I’m trapped here in Edgewater, caged in by the peaks that surround us on all sides. People come here to feel free, to have space, to run away. But I’ve been running my whole life, and I’m still stuck here.

  The sun is rising now, a mix of pinks and yellows and dull whites. I pick up my pace, trying to outrun the light. But all I can picture is Mila inside the pit.

  “Stella Steckler.”

  The voice is loud and gruff, almost a little surprised. But I know it immediately. It forces me to stop.

  Detective Parker is standing right in front of me, outside Mo’s Diner, dressed in wrinkled khakis and a thin down jacket zipped up to his chin. He’s wearing a wool beanie and clutching a paper cup of coffee in one hand and a manila folder in the other. We’re the only two people on the street.

  “Parker,” I say. I rest my hands on my hips and try to catch my breath.

  “What are you doing out here so early? Don’t you know there’s a ‘no running alone’ mandate right now?” He looks concerned. Not about my safety, though, but about the information he revealed last night.

  I don’t say anything.

  Parker takes a step toward me. “Look, I won’t tell if you don’t, but we have some unfinished business, Miss Steckler.”

  “I saw the press conference,” I say, my voice small and shaky.

  Parker nods and cocks his head. “Then you must know that Mila was with someone the morning she disappeared. It appears she went on a run with someone on the cross country team. A girl. A friend.”

  I know where this is going, but I remind myself I have nothing to hide.

  “Can you just tell me again where you were that morning, Stella? Where were you the morning of Mila Keene’s disappearance?” Parker takes a sip of coffee and purses his lips.

  He knows my answer and it won’t change. It’s the same thing I told him when he questioned me after practice weeks ago. “I was at home,” I say. “I went down to the basement, like I always do, and lifted. I did a few arm circuits, mostly working on my biceps and triceps.”

  Parker nods. “Right, right. You mentioned that,” he says, looking toward the diner. The light’s on inside, but no one’s there except Mo, filling salt shakers at the counter. I want to run, but I plant my feet firmly in the ground. “Walk me through the timing of it again, will you?”

  “Don’t you have all this written down somewhere?” I ask, exasperated.

  Parker narrows his eyes. “You want me to bring you in for real again? With lawyers? Your parents? You want me to alert the school, Stella?”

  I can’t tell if he’s bluffing but I squeeze my eyes shut and try to remember every single detail I shared last time. “I started around 5:15 a.m.,” I say slowly. “That whole first part takes about twenty minutes, and then I did an ab workout.” This is the part where I have to lie. “That’s when Ellie came down, too. It’s basically impossible to get her up before 5:45. So she joined a little after that.”

  “Mm-hm,” Parker says, staring at me with dark eyes. He’s quiet and the discomfort shifts inside me. “That doesn’t prove much, though,” Parker says. “The photo we have was time stamped at 6:07 a.m. Plenty of time for you to get to Mila after that.”

  I suppress a gasp. “What photo?” I ask.

  Parker raises his eyebrows and rocks on his heels. He looks the same as he did when he called me in for questioning in the Allison Tarley debacle. Like he knew he would win.

  “We found a photo on Mila’s phone. That’s how we know someone was with her that morning.”

  Mila’s phone. That first search feels so long ago now.

  “Can I see it?” I ask.

  Parker smiles thinly. “No.”

  “But if you have a photo, wouldn’t you know who was with her?” My mind is moving too fast for me to keep up and I don’t understand what he has, what he knows.

  Parker’s mouth turns into a firm line and he sets his coffee down on the ground. He opens the folder he’s carrying and sifts through a bunch of papers. Then he stops. “You may have gotten away with what you did to Allison Tarley, but this is not a game, Stella. This is not another Shira Tannenbaum situation. A girl is dead. You were too young to understand what it was like when the other murders happened here in Edgewater, but I remember,” he says, his voice rising in the quiet, cold street. “I will not let this crime go unsolved. I will not let this town be known as Deadwater ever again. Someone has to pay for what happened to Mila. Do you understand me?”

  I open my mouth to respond Yes but my throat is sand. I know what he’s saying. He’s willing to pin Mila’s death on just about anyone if it means saving Edgewater’s reputation—his reputation. And I’m the only lead he has. But I’m not willing to take the fall. Not now. Not again. I step back and swallow my words.

  Parker mutters something under his breath. He looks at the piece of paper in front of him and cocks his head. His mouth turns into a small knowing smile. Then he flips it around and thrusts the photo toward me so it’s only a few inches from my face.

  Mila’s smile fills most of the page. It’s a selfie taken at the beginning of the trailhead. I can tell by the mountain range behind her and Ellacoya’s main lodge in the distance. The sky is all purples and blues and pinks signaling dawn. She’s making a peace sign at the camera, her eyes shiny with hope.

  But there, in the top left-hand corner, is something else—someone else. The back of a head. Another set of limbs. Another girl, facing away from Mila so only her ponytail can be seen. Her dark, wavy ponytail. Hair that is shiny but just a little frizzy, probably from the mist. Her shoulders are square and tense. She’s almost out of frame and sort of blurry. From any other angle, she would have blended right into the background, the dark woods behind her. But in this light, it’s clear—at least to me.

  The girl is Ellie.

  “You’re telling me this isn’t you?” Parker asks.

  I shake my head and will myself to speak. “No,” I say. “That’s not me.”

  “Well, then, who is it?”

  I shrug and avert my gaze.

  “Nothing?” Parker says.

  My face reddens and an icy breeze whips between us. Storefronts are starting to open and I know I have to flee before anyone sees us together, before more threads of gossip begin to float through town.

  I shake my head again and spit out the words. “That’s not me.”

  Parker looks at me, suspicious, and before he can say anything else, I turn and run—away from Parker and that photo of Mila and Ellie, now burned into my brain. I run until I get to our street, still silent and sleepy in the gray morning. Porch lights are only just starting to turn on. I run until I get to our driveway, the grass damp with morning dew. I slow and clasp my hands behind my neck, gazing up at Ellie’s window. What have you done, Ellie? What do you know?

  I shake my head, trying to find the answers. But there are none. All I know is that I have to find a way to protect myself. Everyone is going to continue to point fingers at me until they have another suspect, someone else that fits the bill. But if that someone is Ellie, I have to find a way to protect her, too.

  35

  ELLIE

  The front door slams hard and I know Stella is home. She takes the old creaky steps two at a time and I hear her bound from the landing straight to her room. It’s nearly seven a.m. and the article has been up for an hour. I was dying to talk to Stella when I first saw it, but her room was empty, and she wasn’t answering her phone. My stomach flips as I approach Stella’s bedroom.
/>   “Stell?” I ask cautiously. “Can I come in?”

  Stella grunts and I push open her door. She’s pulling on a hoodie, her hair damp with sweat.

  “Where were you?” I ask.

  “Out,” she says, not looking at me. “Close the door. We have to talk.”

  I do as she says and take a step farther into her room.

  Stella turns to me with expectant, furious eyes. She’s about to say something, but I cut her off. “Wait, there’s something you have to see,” I say, and toss her my phone.

  Stella catches it and her eyebrows shoot up as she looks at the screen. “What . . .”

  “Read it,” I say.

  I’ve already seen the article, but I take a seat next her and read it again over her shoulder. Stella’s mouth drops open just a little and her eyes move over the words. At first I didn’t recognize the blog, but as soon as I saw who wrote the post, my heart dropped.

  I Broke My Own Collarbone So I Could Stop Running

  By Allison Tarley

  I was always the fastest girl in Langston, New York. I won races, trophies, and a scholarship to a Big 10 School. I was told I could go pro. I was told I had Olympic potential. All I had to do was work harder, run faster, train longer, and fight harder. Seems great, right?

  Wrong.

  When I started junior year, I was healthy and strong. By December, I was not. I lost over twenty pounds in a semester. At the time, I thought this meant I was doing everything right. I was eating what my coach wanted me to eat, even if I only subsisted on dry grilled chicken and steamed spinach. I was training harder than I ever had before, even if that meant my bones were brittle and I had stopped getting my period.

  But what I didn’t realize was that none of this was normal. No girl, no athlete is supposed to push her body to the point of breaking, over and over. But I did. Because that’s what my coach told me would put me over the edge. He said no college would want a flabby runner who had to be trained and disciplined. They wanted machines. Girls who don’t think. Girls who perform. So I became just that.

  I tried not to care when he berated me in front of my teammates, saying that I needed to train more because I was better than them, that they would never be as good as me. I tried not to care when he caught me sneaking a protein bar after a meet and snatched it out of my hands in front of the whole bus, calling me a pig.

  But I finally broke when I lost the New York State championship. Another student, Stella Steckler from a neighboring town called Edgewater, came in first, and I didn’t even place in the top three. Which makes sense now that I know my body was rebelling against what I had put it through. Sure, I might have had potential at some point. But not after running more than I ever had before, subsisting on no nutrition, and dealing with anxiety and depression that totally consumed me. My coach, who I trusted to help me succeed, to help me be the best, destroyed my mental health and made me more prone to injuries.

  That’s when I decided I wanted to quit. But I knew I couldn’t. Well, that’s not fair. I was scared to quit. I was scared of what my parents would say, I was scared of losing my identity as a runner, and of course, I was scared of what my coach would do.

  So at the final race of the year, one that was supposed to be just for fun, I did something awful. (This might be the moment where my name starts to ring a bell. Maybe you ask yourself, Oh, yeah, isn’t this that girl who was attacked by that violent runner in the Catskills? The answer is yes. But you don’t know the whole truth just yet.)

  In the final moments of the race, I found myself fighting with Stella Steckler for gold. But I didn’t want to win. I just wanted a way out. So I asked Stella to hurt me. I wanted a reason to never run again.

  Stella said no. Stella kept running. Stella stayed focused.

  So, I flung myself at her and forced my body into her path until we collided. I tripped and tumbled off the trail. I broke my own collarbone. It was my fault. Stella was blamed for the whole thing, and I let her take the blame. I even pressed charges against her because that’s what my coach told me to do. We dropped the suit eventually, but the damage was done. Stella lost her spot at her dream college and I descended even deeper into a depression.

  Now, after nearly a year of therapy and recovery work, I realize how wrong I was, how much damage I actually caused.

  I’m coming forward because I want to be a voice for all the other athletes out there who find it so difficult to stand up to their coaches, who trust them implicitly only to have their dreams stolen.

  But I’m also coming forward for another reason. Recently, a talented runner, Mila Keene, was found dead in Edgewater. The police think it’s a homicide. They also think that because of what happened last year between Stella and me that she had something to do with it.

  I don’t know Stella well, but I know that she is not violent. When I asked her to push me, to hurt me, she didn’t. Yes, she’s fierce. Yes, she’s a fighter. But she’s not a killer. I know this because I had her branded as one. And that was so, so wrong. I hope everyone else in Edgewater can see that too.

  When Stella finally looks over at me, she has one hand over her mouth. “She told the truth,” she says.

  “You never told me what really happened,” I say, the words chalky in my throat.

  Stella shakes her head. “I didn’t think anyone would believe me.”

  “I would have,” I say, choking up. “I would have, Stella.”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” she says. “Mila’s dead and we don’t know who killed her. Do we?” She looks up at me with a scowl and disappointed eyes.

  I wish I could tell her about everything, let the words tumble out and ask for her help. But all I can do is shake my head and say nothing at all.

  36

  STELLA

  I thought Ellie would tell me the truth about where she was that morning. I really thought she would.

  37

  ELLIE

  I can’t get out of bed on Monday. My stomach hurts and my head pounds, and I know it’s not the flu. It’s fear.

  “Ellie, you’re going to be late!” Mom calls. She swings open my door and looks at me with worried eyes.

  “I can’t, Mom,” I say. “Sick day.”

  She walks into the room and presses a cool hand to my forehead. “You do feel a little warm. I’ll call Principal Pérez.”

  I roll over and listen for my family’s routine. Dad’s jangling keys. Mom heading downstairs to make eggs. Stella blending a smoothie. She doesn’t even say goodbye when she heads off to school. I keep replaying our conversation from yesterday over and over.

  We don’t know who killed Mila. Do we?

  Soon the house goes quiet. Doors slam and engines start. Then, when I’m all alone, time starts to disappear. I lie on my side and look out the window, watching the sun pass through clouds. The branches on the big oak shake, a few dead leaves fluttering to the ground below. But even that is too light to bear, too full of life. I don’t deserve to see that kind of beauty. Not when Mila is dead.

  I pull the covers up tighter around my chin and close my eyes. I am raw and numb, a slab of salted meat waiting to be seared.

  My phone buzzes on the side table. But I don’t have the energy to look at who’s texting, trying to wake me from this nightmare. Instead I roll away to face my blank wall and wonder what will happen next. How I’ll survive this.

  But then something taps hard up against the window. At first it sounds like a branch, thwacking against the house. But when I look over my shoulder, I see a hand, curled into a fist, knocking against the glass. It’s a big hand, almost the size of my face. Noah.

  His profile appears as he swings his legs up off the trellis and crouches on the angled roof. Before I can leap up to shut the latch, he lifts the window and climbs into my room. “There you are.”

  I try to push myself
up in bed, but my arms are weak and my joints are creaky. I slump against the headboard. “You look like shit,” he says.

  My mouth is dry but I search for something to say, something that for once is true. “Maybe that’s because I can’t live with myself now that everyone is blaming Stella for what we did to Mila.”

  Noah’s face turns gray, but he doesn’t say anything.

  “You were there too, you know. What do you think everyone’s going to say when they find out? You think Mr. Johnson will help you get into Princeton now?”

  Noah comes closer, towering over my bed. “Ellie, come on,” he says. “I came here so we can talk about all this. So we can come up with a plan.”

  “We have to go to the police,” I say, shaking my head, tears falling down my face. “I can’t do this anymore.” I push the covers back and stand on the other side of the bed so it’s in between us.

  “Calling the police is out of the question,” he says, running a hand through his hair. Hair I used to love touching. It was always so soft against my fingers. “It would ruin everything.”

  “We already have ruined everything.”

  Noah is quiet for a second but I can feel him thinking, the gears in his brain turning as he tries to figure out how to handle me, how to shut me up. But I won’t let him. Not anymore.

  “You ruined everything,” I say, nearly choking on the words. “If you hadn’t made me feel like getting an abortion was the most shameful thing in the world, none of this would have happened.” The tears are flowing now and I don’t want them to stop. I want him to feel the fury swirling inside me, to understand that it didn’t have to be this way. I start pacing across the room, the wood floorboards cold and hard against my feet.