When I close the Myerses’ front door behind me, my voice echoes through the empty hall. “Sun? Are you home?” Dim lights shimmer off the hardwood floor as I kick my Vans onto the shoe mat. Keely’s yellow Converse are missing.
“Olivia? Is Keely with you?” Sun appears at the end of the hallway, pale with her arms wrapped over her housecoat. “Have you heard from her?”
“No, I tried calling, but she didn’t pick up for me either.”
Sun places her hand on her forehead and paces. “This isn’t like her at all. She always keeps in touch. Always. Roger is going around and checking parties, but we still haven’t found her.”
When I reminded Keely earlier that the rules have never stopped her from getting what she wanted, I didn’t mean for her to sneak out and get in trouble today. I meant more that she could still talk to Shawn. Oh God—I’m such an idiot.
Sun calls Roger with the house phone connected to the wall. “Yes, Olivia is here now . . . Keely isn’t there? Where else could she be?” She sucks in a breath. “Okay, I’ll try to stay calm. Just get her home safe, Roger. Please.”
By the time Sun hangs up, her eyes—dark brown, just like Keely’s—are glassy with tears. I want to tell her Keely’s okay, that she must have just snuck out with Shawn, because there’s nothing else she would have done. But Sun looks genuinely scared.
“Keely is still grounded,” Sun says, “so when we saw she wasn’t in her room, we got very worried. It isn’t like her to sneak out. She didn’t tell you anything at all about where she was going?”
Kicking at the floor, I hold my hands behind my back. I can’t lie to Sun, but if I tell her the whole truth about what I said, she’ll be so mad at me. “Keely mentioned she was upset she couldn’t hang out with Shawn anymore, and she did mention something about a party, so . . . maybe she’s with him?”
“Maybe. Roger has a call out for Shawn.”
“I’m sure Keely’s okay,” I say, and I mean it. She’s probably at the docks, drinking Smirnoff Ice with Shawn, leaning into him with a flirtatious smile. But saying those words to Sun feels so fake, and it would offer her no comfort.
I follow her into the kitchen. With a sigh, Sun picks up a steaming pot of tea, and the sweet smell of chamomile breezes with the draft from the open window. Awkwardness pricks my arms, and my hands cross behind my back like a guilty little kid.
“Maybe you should go to bed, Olivia.”
“But Keely—”
“Roger and I will deal with it. Having you up won’t help. We can talk about you being late for curfew after we find our daughter.”
My shoulders are heavy as I go to my room, shut the door, and press my back to it. Engulfed by the silence, I crawl under the covers of my bed, which, after all these days, has started to smell a little like home.
When I manage to fall asleep, I dream of being held under water until my airways fill with seaweed and raw fish.
Footsteps pacing outside my room startle me awake. Golden sunlight pours through the blinds. Roger’s voice booms through the walls, and recollections of last night clap into my head like thunder. Keely must be getting yelled at for sneaking out. I tear out of bed and into the hallway.
“Hey, is Keely back?” I say, but as soon as I’m in the living room, the answer stares back at me. Tears stain Sun’s cheeks, Roger is still in his uniform—and several other cops are flooding in through the front door. They move through the living room in a row, like worker ants. A female officer ducks into Keely’s room, followed by Officer Jones holding a yellow notebook with sunflowers on it. Keely’s journal.
“Olivia, come here,” Roger says. I’ve never seen him look so scared.
“What’s happening? Where’s Keely?” My voice shakes. Gently, Roger pulls me into the living room with him and Sun.
“Olivia, if you know anything about where Keely could be or who she could be with, now is the time to tell us. Please, no secrets.”
“But why? Where’s Keely? Is she okay?”
“They never found her,” Sun says, voice strained. “She’s missing.”
The room spins. “But . . . no, she can’t be missing. She has to be with Shawn. There’s no one else.”
Roger’s composure cracks; his shoulders tremble, and the cop demeanor can’t mask the fact that he’s a terrified father right now. “I’ve already spoken to Shawn, Miles, and all of Keely’s usual friends. They were at a party at the Garcias’ house, and according to everyone—including Shawn Watters—Keely just disappeared. No one knows where she is.”
Pressure builds behind my eyes like an overflow of water in my brain; I want to say something, anything that could help them find her, but I have nothing. Nothing but Shawn. The sudden urge to call my mom pokes at me, but worrying her all the way in New York City won’t help find Keely here, now.
When Officer Jones comes over and taps Roger’s shoulder, he snaps out of it. “Sir, we reviewed her journal and we can’t find anything helpful other than her interest in Shawn Watters.”
“Damn it,” Roger says. “Thank you, Jones. Please put it back where you found it. Olivia, is there anything else you know? Anything about where Keely might go or who she could be with?”
“I’m sorry, I—I don’t know.”
Sun grabs Roger’s arm. “Roger, you have to go look for her now, please.”
“You’re right. You stay here in case she comes home.” He nods at the other cops. “Come on, everyone, let’s move!”
Before I can offer my help, the other cops follow Roger, their footsteps thundering over the hardwood until the last person slams the door closed. The silence they leave behind is suffocating. That image I have of Keely drinking Smirnoff Ice with Shawn at the docks is replaced by my worst nightmares: her body, gutted and mutilated, blood seeped into the earth, throat cut. Exactly like the way the animal killer left the squirrels and deer.
“I’m going to go look for her too, okay?” I say.
Sun doesn’t reply, just goes into the kitchen, her body shaking. Clearly, she’s too worried to care what I’m doing. Running to my room, I grab my phone off the nightstand and text West to pick me up. Even though I want nothing to do with Miles, he’ll know where Shawn is. I frown at our messages, because there’s an unread text in my inbox sent at 3:58 a.m.
I’m really sorry for what I said, I didn’t mean it. I still want to be friends. I just can’t believe you’d go swimming with him, but not me :(
My skin crawls. For Keely’s sake, I ignore the weird feeling and text Miles back.
Are you with Shawn?
Yeah, you heard about Keely?
Where are you?
Shawn’s place.
Stay there, I’m coming over.
The AMBER alert for Keely blared from my phone shortly after Roger left, and it made this all too real. West drove us here in a hurry. Now we’re at Shawn’s house, and Shawn cradles his head in his hands and sits on his living room couch while I stand over him.
“I swear, I don’t know where she is,” he says.
“But she was with you last night, right?” I ask.
“Yeah, but . . .”
“Come on, Olivia,” Dean drones from his spot beside Shawn. His arm rests over the back of the floral couch while he picks at a loose string. “We already told the cops everything. Why are you playing detective?”
Faye leans against Miles on the love seat, a bottle of Gatorade loosely clutched in her hand. Miles hasn’t looked at me or West once since we got here. Apparently Shawn’s parents have already joined the search effort to find Keely. West leans against the wall by the front door and silently watches.
“I’m worried about my best friend.” My eyes sting, but I try to keep it together. “Shawn, please, what happened to her?”
“I don’t know! She was at the party and then she was just gone!”
“Relax, cousin,” Dean says. “You have an alibi. We all saw you.”
Shawn’s shoulders shake, and his light brown eyes meet mine, desperate and pleading. “Look, I’m worried about her too, okay? But I swear, I don’t know anything. I’ll tell you exactly what I told her dad: we were all wasted, hanging out in Emma’s living room, then Keely went to the bathroom and never came back. Emma said Keely went into the backyard to pee because the line for the bathroom was huge. You know Keely, she’s always doing crazy shit like that.”
Shawn could be telling the truth, or he could be lying, but the fear on his face is evident. Either way, I don’t trust him.
Faye limply stands like this situation is boring her. “Okay, my head is killing me, I feel like death, and this isn’t helping anyone. Shawn doesn’t know anything, Liv, so are you going to do something about Keely or just keep wasting time?”
“We should look for her,” I say.
West stands from his position against the wall. “I agree.”
“The cops are already searching the woods,” Miles says and flashes his phone screen. “It’s all over the news and the Caldwell Police’s Facebook page. The adults are saying they don’t want kids involved, they’re worried more of us will get lost or something.”
“You’re going to sit here and do nothing, Miles?” I say. “This is Keely we’re talking about.”
Dean laughs. “That girl was wasted, Olivia. Like always. They’re going to find her passed out on the side of the road somewhere.”
“Don’t you guys get it? She could be hurt! Some sick person is murdering animals in town, and now my best friend is missing, and—”
When West’s arm wraps around me, I suck in a breath and hold in my tears. “Hey, we’re going to find her, whether they help us or not,” he says, and his voice is the only comfort in this strange place. We share a quick, shy smile, reminding me of what almost happened last night—but now is not the time. I can feel Miles glaring at us.
Out of the four of them, Faye is the only one still standing. “Olivia is right,” she finally says. “The least we can do is look for Keely.”
“You serious?” Dean says. “Babe, you saw how drunk Keely was. She’s probably fine. The cops will find her.”
“You don’t have to come, Dean.”
“I want you to stay,” Dean says.
Faye avoids his gaze but keeps her posture strong. “We should start at Emma’s house.”
“That’s where the cops started,” West says and smooths his hand over my shoulder. “It’d make more sense to start farther out and move in. We should split into groups to cover more ground. Keep your phones on you so we can stay in contact and know whether they found her or not. Agreed?”
Everyone is quiet as they exchange uneasy glances.
“We can’t do anything the police can’t do,” Miles says.
“But it’s better than nothing, Miles,” I say.
After a moment, Miles nods, unsure. “Okay, I’ll help.”
Dean lets out an annoyed sigh. “Fine, looks like we’re all going. Shawn, get your shit together.”
We split into three groups: me and West, Miles and Shawn, and Dean and Faye. We began on the outskirts of town, but now West and I are deep in the forest. West marks an X on every few trees we pass, as he’s done for the past two hours we’ve waded through the trees. The deeper we get, the hotter it becomes, the more terrified I am for Keely’s safety. The sun reaches its peak, bleeds through the leaves, and blinds me. When something stings my leg, I slap it, and a black fly buzzes around me. I wag my arms in a useless attempt to scare off all these terrible bugs.
“You okay?” West asks from in front of me.
“Fine,” I mutter, “let’s just keep going.”
I take his hand and he hoists me over a fallen tree. I hop over the other side but stop to catch my breath, dizzy from being in the heat for so long. Dehydration creates a dry, sandy sensation on my tongue. A canteen materializes in my hand, and I immediately twist off the cap and chug some water back.
“Didn’t realize you were so thirsty,” West says. “Sorry.”
“Thank you.” I wipe my mouth and give him back the canteen. “You’re always prepared for everything.”
“Yeah, I was a serious Scout. Becoming an Eagle was the proudest moment of my life.”
“I remember.”
“I wanted to say sorry, by the way.”
“For what?”
“‘Scout’s honor.’ I messed up. I didn’t get you home on time.”
“It’s okay. I just want to find Keely.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” West gets down on one knee and scans the ground.
“What are you looking for?” I ask.
He grabs a handful of brushwood and throws it to the side. “A trail. I thought I had something, but it could’ve been a deer. Come on, let’s keep moving.”
The emergency signals on both our phones blare from our pockets again, cutting into the sounds of the forest. I take mine out, and it’s another AMBER alert for Keely. She hasn’t been found. It’s already noon.
“Hey, hold up.” West gets down on one knee. “Looks like something cut through this way. These branches have been stepped on.” He brushes twigs away from the dirt. “This part of the forest is really wet. Check this out.”
It’s barely visible, but there’s a partial shape of a footprint. That diamond pattern belongs to a Converse.
“That could be Keely’s shoe!” I exclaim. “I have to text Roger!”
“Yeah, and tell him we’ll keep going. We’re onto something.”
I text Roger and send him our GPS location, hoping it will be enough to guide him. West moves more sticks out of the way.
“There’s too much shit in the way, but I think I’ve got a trail.” He holds up a branch and allows me to pass. “Come on, this way.”
After climbing over the thin trunk of a fallen down aspen, my feet get caught in nettles that scratch at my ankles. I duck beneath a spiderweb as birds squawk above us. More fallen-down trees and thick, unruly foliage, and then we find ourselves in a sparse area of trees. West is focused on the ground the whole time.
“Shit,” he says.
“What is it?”
Pressed into the dirt is another footprint, but this one is way bigger than the last. Bloodcurdling images of Keely being attacked make their way into my mind, but I snap my elastic to keep them out.
West takes a picture with his phone. “Looks like the trail splits. Bigfoot took off over there, but Keely’s footprints go that way.”
“Does that mean she’s okay? If there was a man here, he didn’t hurt her?”
“I don’t know.” West marks an X on a tree and circles it. “But we can’t stop now. It’ll rain soon, I can feel it. I swear this is the rainiest summer I’ve ever seen in my life.”
West is right. Before long, dark gray clouds roll in as the wind brushes the tips of the trees. The smell of rain drifts into the air.
Up ahead, there’s a pointed roof of a structure between the trees. I think it’s an old fort or something, until we reach a rough trail that leads into a clearing.
A log cabin. Not one like the Hendrickses’—this one’s a real cabin made out of stacked, decaying logs. The door is topped by a set of antlers, and a window is on each side—no glass, but they lead into the pitch darkness of the cabin like two inky eyes. Leaves and branches cover the ramshackle roof, and the wood rots at the joints so the structure half collapses into itself.
“What is this place?” I ask.
“An old hunting cabin, by the looks of it.” West squints into the light. “There’s lots of abandoned shit in these woods. Hey, Keely, you in there?”
A distant caw from a crow resounds through the woods and rustles through the trees. Other than that, dead silence. The cabin’s obscure gaze traps me. Part of me wants to see what’s inside. A bigger part is too terrified to budge, scared something will crawl out of those pitch-black eyes if I make a wrong move.
But Keely could be in there. I take a step toward it, only to be gently pulled back on by West.
“Olive, don’t. It could collapse on you.”
“But we have to check. We saw Keely’s footprint, West. She could be in there.”
His jaw tightens, but he nods. “Then let me do it.”
West moves toward the cabin. Just as he’s about to turn the flashlight on his phone to peek in the windows, something flutters in the corner of my eye. It’s a monarch butterfly—but on the ground near it is another footprint.
“West, look!”
He hurries over. “Fuck, she has to be here somewhere. I think they go that way. Come on, let’s go.”
We wind over roots and crunch over twigs. I now have a crosshatch of cuts all up my legs, and the fully gray sky casts a shadow over the entire forest. When the sound of trickling water reaches my ears, I stop.
“Wait,” I say. A distant memory flows in, something I haven’t thought about it years: when we were kids, Keely and I loved roaming the forest, but Roger always told us that if we ever got lost, there was an easy way to get back to town. “The river leads to the ocean,” I say.
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s something Roger used to say when we were kids. He said that if we ever got lost in the woods, we can follow the river, because the river always leads to the ocean.”
We’re running now, and rain begins to splatter my arms. The trickling gets louder. I reach the river and skid to a halt. Upstream, beneath a tree, I see her: legs bent, yellow dress barely covering her body.
All the hope I had stops, settles over me the same way the wind calms and leaves the forest in a quiet, solidified state.
She isn’t moving.
I run, trip over my own feet, and skid on my knees until I’m beside her. Her legs are sliced up from sticks, and bug bites have created fat red hives all up her arms. Mud splotches her skin and her eyes are shut peacefully.
“Keely, oh God, no, no, no.” I hover my hand over her cheek, too afraid to touch. “West, she’s dead, she’s—”
West gets down on his knees. Gently, he presses his fingers to her neck. My brain throbs, and I snap my elastic over and over again, wishing I won’t feel anything, wishing this is nothing more than another one of my fucked-up nightmares.
“She’s dead. Oh God, West, she’s dead.”
“Olivia, calm down. She isn’t dead.”
West smooths Keely’s hair from her face. She grumbles as he lightly shakes her shoulders, and her head falls to the side.
“Keely!” I say.
“Huh? Liv? West?”
The relief is enough to cripple me. “Keely, you’re okay.”
Her eyes lull into her head. “Guys, I was so thirsty I drank river water, and now I feel really sick . . .”
“Here.” West pulls the canteen to Keely’s lips, and she slowly drinks. “There, you’re all right. Who did this to you?”
“I don’t know, I just woke up in the woods.” She relaxes, but her brows pinch in pain. “I really don’t feel good. I want to go home.”
“Everyone’s looking for you, Keel,” I say. “We were so worried.”
But Keely doesn’t reply, just falls back asleep. So I do the only thing I can: I call Roger and tell him to follow the river to us.
I’ve never been the type of person to hate hospitals, maybe because there’s something sobering about being surrounded by life-saving medicine and machines. After my fall, I remember feeling safe waking up to white lights and my friends and family.
But right now, I hate it. Because the anticipation of finding out what happened to Keely has me caught in a time loop—it’s only been three hours, but it feels like ten. This is the second time Keely’s been in the hospital, but I’m even more worried now than I was before.
Rain slams against the windows of the waiting room, and West returns with a bag of chips and a soda from the vending machine. He sits next to me. Just as West is opening the chips, Roger emerges from the hall. We both jump to our feet as he comes over, thumbs hooked to his belt, his face drawn with exhaustion.
“How is she?” I ask.
Roger is quiet. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you found her,” he eventually says. “Keely doesn’t remember anything about who took her or why, just that she woke up confused in the middle of the forest and kept walking until she found the river.” Roger places his hand on West’s shoulder. “Taking a picture of that footprint was smart thinking, West. It could be anyone’s shoe, but it’s the only lead we’ve got. The team is still investigating for evidence in the woods, but the rain’s almost surely washed it all away.”
“I just hope you find who did this to her,” Wests says.
“We will. Nothing like this has ever happened here, not in my thirty years on the force.”
“Can I go see her now?” I ask, and Roger nods. Sun is talking to a nurse in the hall when I slip into Keely’s room. She sits upright on her bed, surrounded by white sheets. The nurses have combed the sticks out of her hair and tied it into a ponytail. I want to hug her, but hold myself back when I see the tears dried on her cheeks.
“Hey, Keel,” I say delicately.
She wipes her eyes with the sleeve of her hospital gown. “Hey.”
“How are you holding up?”
“I don’t know. I feel like shit.”
Taking a seat in the vinyl chair beside her bed, I can’t stop fidgeting.
“Come on, Liv, please don’t look like that,” Keely says with a groan. “It was super uncomfortable, but the doctors, like . . . checked me out. Nobody did anything to me. I’m actually fine.”
“Trust me, I’m really glad about that, but I still don’t understand what did happen.”
“Honestly? Me neither. I was at the party, then everything went black, and suddenly I was wandering through the middle of the woods, totally confused.”
“Did someone drug your drink or something?”
“Apparently not, they ran tests and I just had a lot of alcohol in my system. Which is kind of weird because I only had a few mixed drinks. Guess they were stronger than I thought.”
“Well, what’s the very last thing you remember?”
“God, it’s all so foggy. But I remember being at Emma’s party with Shawn and them. Then I ended up losing them. I went to the bathroom, but I remember it being occupied for like, ever. Pretty sure people were doing coke inside, so Emma told me to just go to the bathroom in the backyard, which is so gross, but I did it because I was dying. The last thing I remember is looking for a place to pee.”
“And that’s when you could have gotten lost.”
“That’s what people are telling me.”
“But we found you so deep inside the forest, and when West was tracking you, he found a guy’s footprint.”
“Yeah, my dad showed me. But if some guy took me out in the woods, why wouldn’t he, like, do anything to me? As messed up as this sounds, I’m almost more freaked out that he’d drop me in the woods and just do nothing.”
“That is really weird. Maybe he wanted to, but chickened out.”
“I don’t know, or maybe the footprint was totally unrelated. Either way, crisis averted.” She holds up her phone. “To make everything worse, stupid Shawn just texted me and said we’re done hanging out. Apparently, I’m too much drama.”
Anger soaks up some of my anxiety. “He’s such a dick.”
“I know!” Tears gloss over her eyes. “But honestly, he’s right. I am too much drama. My freaking cop dad questioned the guy I like over all of this and when I got alcohol poisoning. Drama literally follows me.”
“Screw him, Keely. You’re worth so much more than some idiot guy who disappears at the first sign of trouble.”
“Yeah, I know. But I still really like him. How dumb is that?”
“It’s not.”
Someone knocks at the door, and we turn to see Roger and two younger cops.
“Lemon, we need to get an official statement from you now, if you feel up to it.”
Keely sighs. “Fine.”
After telling Keely I’m glad she’s okay again, I leave the room and meet West in the hall, and we walk together past the vending machines to a vacant part of the hall.
“Don’t you think it’s weird?” I say to West.
“Yeah, there’s a lot of that going on here lately.”
“But before I came here, things were normal, weren’t they? Someone had been killing squirrels, but after I arrived, it was a deer, and then a dog—and then all of a sudden Keely gets dropped in the forest?”
“Yeah, it’s fucked up, but what does it have to do with you?”
A nurse rolls an elderly man on a gurney past us, and I keep quiet until we’re alone again. I hesitate. I don’t fully understand what I’m thinking—maybe I shouldn’t say it at all. “I . . . I don’t know. Forget it.”
West scans my face, like he’s trying to read me, before he pulls me into a hug. I melt against him, and he smooths my hair down.
“You’ve been through a lot, Olive. You should get some sleep.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right.”
But something tells me sleep won’t take this feeling away.
Strange things have been happening in this town. And I can’t help but feel like I’m the cause of it.