I DIDN’T KNOW ANYTHING about Velma anymore—but I knew that look. The one that said she was only barely holding herself together with Scotch tape and string. The one that said she was seconds from falling apart.

Not my problem.

So why was I so tempted to follow her?

Velma was out there somewhere in the night, needing someone—and Marcy was in here, supposedly, needing someone, too. And unlike Velma, Marcy needed me. Whether she knew it or not.

I stayed in the house, closed the front door behind me. Refused to let myself be distracted by the past. Velma was strong. She could handle herself.

Typical Shaggy party, everyone showing off for everyone else. Laughing extra loud so it would be clear they were having fun. Sometimes I wondered if anyone actually had fun at these things, or if we’d all just gotten really good at pretending. Maybe none of us knew the difference anymore.

I spotted Nisha coming out of the war room, shiny in a gold tank top with lipstick to match. The other girls in our crowd were on her heels, all of them cackling like witches.

No Marcy.

“Finally! You missed an epic takedown,” Nisha said when she spotted me. “Would you believe Detective Dinkley showed up?”

“I would,” I said.

“Okay, but would you believe she showed up in that outfit?” Haley said.

Shawna snickered. “You’d think if she’s so keen on being a detective, she could detect how to dress for a party.”

“Maybe she just likes wearing what she wants to wear,” I snapped. “Instead of whatever the internet tells her is cool that week. And give the ‘Detective Dinkley’ thing a break—we’re not kids anymore.”

“Why are you getting so pissy?” Shawna asked. “You’re the one who gave her that nickname in the first place, remember?”

“Yeah.” I remembered all right, and it made me want to puke. I wondered if the thought of Velma and what I’d done to her would ever stop making me so sick. Maybe if she disappeared from the face of the earth.

Which did not help the puking situation.

“Can you guys just tell me if you’ve seen Marcy? I need to talk to her.”

Nisha and Haley rolled their eyes at each other, and I knew what that meant. Daphne’s in a mood, just give her what she wants.

Spoiled brat, I thought. And everyone knew it.

“Upstairs,” they said in unison.

“You’re kidding.” No one was allowed upstairs at Shaggy’s parties. It was the only rule he had.

Nisha shrugged. “You know how Marcy feels about rules.”

So I broke the only rule of the night and crept up Shaggy’s opulent staircase. At the top was a long corridor lined with doors, all of them closed. I tiptoed down the dark hallway. Total déjà vu: Velma and I used to prowl this same hallway, flashlights lighting our way. Both of us pretending we didn’t know Fred and Shaggy were hiding behind the doors, waiting to jump out and scare us. They were awful at hiding—Fred got the giggles, and the smell of Shaggy’s pizza always gave him away—but it was fun to pretend we were clueless. Sometimes we let them sneak up on us and we faked some pretty good horror movie screams. Sometimes we snuck up on them, and they shrieked for real. That was the most fun of all.

I shook off the past. Again. There were voices coming from the room at the far end. Shaggy’s room. I almost knocked, then thought better of it. One useful skill I did pick up from those old days prowling around with Scooby and the gang: eavesdropping. I pressed my ear to the door, held my breath, listened.

“I don’t understand how you can do this.” It was Shaggy’s voice … sounding extremely un-Shaggy-like. “What kind of person are you?”

“You know exactly what kind of person I am.” That was Marcy. Which made zero sense. Marcy and Shaggy had barely ever spoken to each other, as far as I knew.

“Yeah, and I thought you were better than this.”

“I guess you thought wrong,” Marcy said.

“You don’t have to be so strong all the time, Marcy. You’re allowed to lean on someone.”

I recognized Marcy’s cruel laugh. “And you think that someone would be you? It’s true what they say, isn’t it: The dog has all the brains in this family.”

“Maybe you should, like, scram,” Shaggy said, his voice icy.

The doorknob turned. Marcy blew past without seeing me and shot down the hallway like a rocket. I chased her down the stairs, out the front door—one more girl throwing herself at the night, determined to be alone in the dark. This time, I followed.

I caught up with her at the end of the block. She was sitting on the curb, her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking. Crying, for the second time this week. Marcy, who never cried.

I sat beside her. Said nothing. I wasn’t about to screw this up again. She didn’t say anything, either. Including go away. That seemed like a positive sign.

“I’m not going to ask you what’s wrong,” I said finally.

“Good.”

Dead silence. Awkward silence. I could hear her trying to steady her breathing, pull back her tears. Trying to be strong.

“It would be really good if you would just leave me alone,” she said.

“I’m not doing that, either.” I paused. What would I want to hear if I were her?

Wrong question, Daphne.

Self-centered question.

Because I wasn’t her. Okay, so what would she need to hear? I took a shot.

“You can say whatever you want to me, Marcy. You can be as mean as you want. I’m still not going to leave you alone. I won’t do that to you.”

She sighed. Her shoulders were still shaking. I put an arm around them. She let me. Another good sign. I hoped.

“I screwed everything up,” she said.

“Not possible.”

“I thought I could handle it, and then, everything … it was too much.”

She sagged against me.

“We’ll handle it together,” I told her. “Whatever it is. You just have to tell me, and we’ll fix it.”

Marcy turned to face me. Even in the dim streetlight I could see her eyes were red, her face streaked with tears—but she smiled. “I love you, Blake. You know that?”

“Duh.” But it helped to hear it out loud.

Marcy jumped to her feet. “I have to go back in there and find Dinkley.”

“I think she left.”

“Crap. Do you have her cell number?”

“Why would I have Velma Dinkley’s number?”

“Okay, never mind, I’ll figure it out.” Marcy squeezed me into a tight hug. “I have to go fix this.”

“Fix what?”

“I’ll tell you everything in the morning, okay? I promise. Meet me at The Mocha at ten. All secrets revealed. Mochas on me. Deal?”

“But—”

“Please?”

“Whatever you need,” I said, and I held her tight, wishing I could hold on forever, knowing I had to let her go do whatever it was she needed to do. “You at least want to tell me what you and Shaggy were fighting about?”

She laughed, and it sounded genuine. I knew then, everything would be okay. “Oh, that? You know how he gets about people going upstairs at his parties. I’ve never met someone who managed to be so laid-back and so uptight at the same time.”

“See, not so hard to answer a question,” I told her, and for a second, I thought maybe she’d crack, that we would just solve everything tonight. But this was Marcy: She didn’t crack. “Okay,” I allowed. “Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.” She said it like a promise.

*   *   *

I barely slept. When dawn cracked the sky, I finally let myself get out of bed. This still left hours to kill, and I murdered each one of them slowly and painfully, waiting out the morning.

I got to The Mocha early, gulped down more coffee than I should have, planned what I was going to say. Or, because that was mostly impossible, given that I couldn’t imagine what she was going to say, planned how I was going to react. Whatever she told me, I promised myself, I wouldn’t flinch. I wouldn’t judge, I wouldn’t freak out, I wouldn’t do whatever she must be worrying I would do.

Most of all, I wouldn’t make it about myself. Marcy had been keeping secrets from me for a reason. I would prove to her that the reason, whatever it was, had been wrong. That I was her best friend, and I could be a good one.

By ten o’clock, I was ready.

No Marcy.

Fifteen minutes passed. No Marcy. I startled every time the door swung open. Deflated every time it wasn’t her.

Then another half hour passed. No Marcy.

Finally, I stopped staring at the door. When she’s an hour late, I told myself, I’ll leave.

I drank mug after mug of coffee. I waited. I fumed. I felt like Charlie Brown with the stupid football, falling for this again and again.

I swore I wouldn’t pathetically text and call Marcy to find out what had happened. Then I texted, called, texted again, pointlessly.

Finally, half the day wasted on waiting—and the rest of the weekend, I already knew, doomed to be wasted on wondering—I accepted the obvious. She wasn’t coming. She’d ghosted me. She didn’t care that she’d promised me, she didn’t care that I was worrying about her. She must not have cared, period, or she wouldn’t act the way she did.

What did it say about me, I thought—once I finally gave up on her, paid the bill, walked out alone—that the person I cared about most in the world didn’t care about me at all?

And what did it say about me that even then, I still wanted her to?

*   *   *

I had the whole weekend to be seriously pissed off. It didn’t help that my house was still filled with intruders, and I was in no mood to pretend otherwise. I wanted to rage. To tell them to get out. I really wanted to pick another fight with my mother. Or maybe wage a small thermonuclear war on her.

But there was that annoying voice in the back of my head. The one saying every time I yelled at her, I felt worse about myself. Especially when I did it in front of the step-brats. It always made them cry. And I almost always did it in front of the step-brats, because wherever I went, there they were.

So I shut myself in my room. Saturday, I worried. Sunday, I forced myself to stop. It wasn’t like Marcy was worrying about me, I reminded myself. So why waste the energy? Why not just think about myself? That’s what she expected of me. What everyone expected of me. Spoiled, sullen, self-centered Daphne Blake, right? Even my own mother clearly thought that, deep down. So why not prove them right?

Sunday night: still pissed. Monday morning: more pissed. I showed up at school ready to tell her off.

So you can imagine how pissed I was when she didn’t show up. Pissed at Marcy for cutting, again, pissed at myself for caring, still. Pissed straight through till the moment I got called out of fifth period, summoned to the principal’s office, where Shaggy’s mom was waiting. Except she wasn’t there as Shaggy’s mom—she was in uniform.

No one would ever say it to Shaggy’s face, but we all thought it was kind of weird that his mom was a cop. His dad basically pulled all the strings in Crystal Cove—and no one thought he pulled them, well, legally. But Lieutenant Rogers had been a cop when they met, and she stayed that way. My dad thought it was her way of giving back. Marcy thought it was her way of smoothing the way for her shady husband. Personally, I didn’t see why it had to be one or the other.

Anyway, she was a cop. And she was in school on official business. Lieutenant Rogers, reporting for duty—and that duty was obviously me.

Maybe some part of me had known. Maybe, beneath all that being pissed, what I really was, was terrified.

She shook my hand, tried halfheartedly to smile. “It’s been a while, Daphne. You’re all grown up.”

“Is this about Marcy?”

She looked weirdly satisfied. “Why would you assume that?”

“Can you just tell me what’s going on?”

“I gather you and Marcy Heller are very close.”

I nodded. If that’s what she’d heard, I didn’t see any reason to offer a more recent update.

“When’s the last time you saw her?”

I could barely breathe. “Friday. Why?”

“Did she mention any upcoming intention to leave town?”

“No. Why?”

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Daphne, but your friend Marcy is missing.”

“Missing?” It came out as a squeak. “Like, kidnapped? Or …” I didn’t want to think about any ors. I couldn’t.

“Judging from the email she sent her parents, it looks like she ran away.” Her voice hardened. “Would you know anything about that, Daphne?”

“What? No, of course not.”

“She’s your best friend, right?”

I nodded.

Shaggy’s mother smiled an extremely fake smile. I felt like a suspect, but I had no clue what she suspected me of. “I remember being your age, having a best friend. We told each other everything. All our secrets, all our problems. All our big plans. Is that the kind of friendship you and Marcy have?”

I nodded. Not like it was any of her business what kind of friendship we had. Or didn’t have. Or used to have. I no longer knew.

“So she wouldn’t have run away without telling you something, right? Why she left, where she was going …”

“Exactly! Which is why I know she didn’t run away.”

“You’re not doing her any favors, keeping her secrets. This is serious, Daphne. She could be in trouble.”

“I know it’s serious,” I insisted. “And she is in trouble, because I’m telling you, there’s no way she ran away on her own.”

Not without telling me first. Not without saying goodbye. And especially not the morning after she swore she was ready to confide in me, that we were going to fix everything together. It wasn’t possible.

“As I understand it, Marcy’s been going through a difficult time lately,” Lieutenant Rogers said. “Cutting school, breaking up with her boyfriend—”

“Something bigger was going on with her,” I admitted. “I don’t know what—I’m not lying about that, I swear. But I’m telling you, she was in trouble. Not the kind of trouble you run away from.”

“How do you know that if you don’t know what it was?” Lieutentant Rogers sounded skeptical.

“What if you’re wrong?” I said. “If she didn’t run away, then it means someone took her away.”

Lieutenant Rogers sighed. She wasn’t looking at me like I was a suspect anymore. She was looking at me like she felt sorry for me because I was a clueless idiot. “She emailed her parents to tell them she was leaving, Daphne. And we’ve searched her computer—there’s evidence indicating she was planning to go to Mexico.”

“No way. I don’t believe it. Something happened to her.” But I could tell, even as I was talking, that it was pointless. She was barely listening to me. I was just some hysterical girl refusing to face reality. How sad, she probably thought. Poor little rich girl gets abandoned by everyone she loves. Still can’t wrap her head around the idea that her best friend would ditch her without a word. Needs to invent some ridiculous kidnapping theory just to make herself feel better.

One of us was dead wrong. I just wished I was more sure which one.

“Her parents don’t seem worried about that possibility,” Lieutenant Rogers said.

I laughed humorlessly. “Marcy’s parents have never bothered to worry about anything Marcy-related.”

“It seems to me that’s all the more reason for her to run away,” she replied. “Unhappy teens act out. Be grateful you don’t understand.”

What I did understand was that Marcy was in trouble. I knew it, deep down. It was easy to feel uncertain about myself, but I was certain of Marcy Heller.

I knew her. I knew what she’d do, how she’d act, if she’d decided to run away, and it wasn’t like this. I wanted to be wrong, because then she’d be okay.

But something else was going on, I was sure—something worse. And if I was the only one who realized it, maybe that made me the only one who could save her.