Nine

Lauren

Sheriff’s Office

Monday, April 2

10:15 a.m.

You know how the police in TV shows always say, “Sorry, ma’am, we don’t deem them to be a missing person until they’ve been gone at least twenty-four hours?” That is not a joke. They really don’t—at least when that person is an adult (even if just barely).

Which is why the county sheriff didn’t send someone to talk to Kadence’s parents until late yesterday afternoon. Too late by Mr. Mulligan’s estimation, since apparently he’d already plastered the town in missing person fliers. I guess they asked Mrs. Mulligan for a list of Kadence’s closest friends. Which is why I’m sitting at a table in the middle of a cinder-block room, biting my nails down to the nubs.

I know they’re going to be talking to Mason too, but I don’t know if it’s already happened or not.

I sit back in my chair and let my arms hang down, though my foot is bouncing against the floor. It takes me a second to realize I’m beating out the rhythm to Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda.” I have to put my hand on my knee to quiet my mind.

The room they put me in is painted blue like the chandelier Kadence made for my birthday. I suspect the color was chosen on purpose because someone read that it had a calming effect. It’s not working. My palms are sweating.

I hum-sing a line from a new song I’m working on. I know I’m not supposed to do that, but it calms my nerves even though the sound comes out rough and scratchy. Metamorphosis, you make me change my dress. My shoes, my face, I am such a mess.

I wonder what Kadence would do in this situation, and I try to channel her. A kind of What Would Kadence Do? moment that tells me that Kadence would smile.

I smile.

It feels all wrong. This is all wrong.

The chair across the table from me is empty. Behind the empty chair, there’s a mirror. I’d bet a hundred dollars there’s someone watching me on the other side of it. I watch CSI reruns. All three cities.

My parents are outside in the hallway, waiting for me to be done. They wanted to be in here with me, but one of the unexpected perks of turning eighteen is you get to fly solo when interrogated about your best friend’s disappearance. I’m glad my little brother, JJ, is at school and doesn’t know what’s going on. Better he be wrapped up in all the usual junior-high drama than any of my own.

Man, Kady, I wish you were here. The thought hits me unexpectedly. It shouldn’t. It’s what I’ve been waiting to feel all this time. It’s just that sometimes, like at a funeral, the reactions everyone expects you to have are delayed. And you feel guilty, wrong even, for not feeling the way you know you should.

I’ve always been that way though. My emotional reactions to things can get a little disjointed. Like in first grade, when Billy Thompson killed a frog during recess, poking its guts all over a rock, I didn’t start screaming until the middle of class a few hours later. I didn’t calm down for another forty-five minutes, and then only when my parents came to pick me up. And yet…when my dad took me deer hunting a few years later, I was fine.

A blond man walks in holding a Styrofoam cup and a tiny tape recorder. His broad shoulders strain his shirt. He sets the tape recorder on the table and gestures at me with his cup. “Can I get you something?”

The vending machines I passed in the hallway didn’t have anything remotely organic. I was bummed at the time because I didn’t get breakfast, but maybe it’s a good thing I took a pass. Is this guy hoping to trick me into giving up a DNA sample? Or am I being crazy paranoid? I feel more sweat break out on my forehead. At least now he won’t go mining for my saliva in a half-eaten Hot Pocket.

“No, thank you,” I say and sit up a little taller. What would Kadence do? A small part of me recognizes the irony in trying to emulate Kady when only days ago I was swearing that I was done with her forever. The other part of my brain is telling me to shut up because all I want right now is to get out of here.

My fingers feel twitchy. I wish I was holding a guitar. People don’t realize it, but guitars are like shields. They provide a layer of separation between you and the crowd. From anyone who wants to ask you questions.

“I’m fine.” I add, “All things considered.”

He shrugs, sits down, and pulls a yellow pad out of the desk drawer and a pen from behind his ear. He hits the Record button.

“My name is Detective Kopitzke. Let me start by saying that you are not a suspect.”

I nod.

He tips his head. “Is something funny?”

“No,” I whisper. Was I smiling?

“We asked you to come in here today because we understand you are one of Kadence Mulligan’s closest friends.”

I arrange my mouth at the last minute into some kind of expression, I’m not sure what.

“As you know, we’re trying to find your friend, and we’re hoping you can tell us if there’s somewhere special she likes to go. Is there anywhere you like to go with her?”

The question gives me pause. Kadence always made me feel like I could follow her anywhere. That if I didn’t, I would miss out on something awesome. Most of the time she was right. When someone asked, “What’s going on Friday night?” ninety-nine people would answer “I don’t know,” but Kadence would say, “So, so much! I can’t decide!”

But then there were other times too. Times when she took off by herself for her little “camping trips.” The first time she did that, we were only thirteen. Mrs. Mulligan called our house, asking if Kadence was there. Apparently Kadence had told her we were having a sleepover, but that wasn’t true. She had other plans, and she never thought twice about lying to make those plans happen. That night, her plans had included camping out in the woods along the creek. She said she needed a break from her parents sometimes. I understood that, but camping? Alone?

Detective Kopitzke leans back in his chair, and I realize I’ve forgotten to answer his question out loud.

“She used to go on these little camping trips,” I say. “She’d take off overnight. Sleep in the woods or a tree house or someplace.”

His eyebrows go up. “She doesn’t strike me as what you’d call the camping type.”

I feel a prickly sensation at the back of my neck. “I know. She was pretty high maintenance. Is,” I say when I realize I’m thinking of Kadence in the past tense. I have to stop that. I can’t do that out loud. Not with big, blond Kopitzke taking notes. “Is high maintenance. Not that high-maintenance girls can’t camp. Just that it’s hard to understand Kadence going anywhere she can’t plug in a flat iron. But then, maybe that’s why she always camps alone. God forbid someone should see her without full makeup.”

I’m rambling. I laugh a little, embarrassed. “That’s not my line, by the way. It’s Kady’s. ‘God forbid someone should see me without makeup!’ She says that a lot. I don’t know anyone who has seen her natural face since eighth grade, including me.” I sit on my hands as if this can make me shut up.

“When’s the last time she went on one of her camping trips?”

“I don’t know. When we were sixteen? At least that I know of.”

Kopitzke scribbles my answers on his yellow pad. “And how long would she be gone?”

“Usually just overnight.”

“Does the fact that she’s been gone three days worry you?”

“Yes,” I whisper, staring down at my lap. Does looking down make me look shifty? Guilty of something? I quickly look up and meet Detective Kopitzke’s gaze. I smile again, but my cheeks feel tight. I imagine tiny hairline cracks running across my face.

“Do you miss her?” Kopitzke asks.

I don’t answer right away. There was that little twinge I felt a few minutes ago when I wished she was here. But aside from that, the most honest answer is no—I don’t miss her. The moment she announced she was going solo, I understood more about our friendship than I’d cared to admit to myself. I was Kady’s friend only as long as I was useful to her. It was a good six-year run, but it’s over now.

Detective Kopitzke leans forward across the desk at me. “You’re hesitating.”

“I don’t know,” I whisper, voice cracking. “We haven’t been spending a lot of time together. It’s hard to miss what you don’t have.”

“I understand you used to perform with Kadence, that the two of you were like a band or something.”

“Or something.” My eyes drop slightly to his jacket lapel where there’s a coffee stain. I wonder if Mrs. Detective Kopitzke didn’t have time to take in the dry cleaning or if it’s from this morning.

“But you can’t sing anymore.”

I try to keep my teeth from grinding. “Not now. No.”

“How does that make you feel?”

Oh, so now he’s a shrink? He wants to know how it makes me feel? A tremor runs through the muscles in my arms. I cannot allow myself to feel anything. Not here. I cannot show this man how humiliated I am for letting Kadence run my life. How I’m the lowest of the low for kissing Mason, but even lower for how I treated Jude. That’s something I try not to think about too much, but lately—ever since I saw him at Cuppa Cuppa—he’s back front and center in my thoughts.

Kadence used me, turned me into someone I’m not, and even though losing my voice and not being able to sing totally sucks, at least it gave me the chance to step back and reevaluate my life and what’s good for me.

Do I miss Kadence? No. No, I don’t.

But I don’t tell him any of that and just shrug. It makes me look like a brat, but I’m pretty sure smiling looks worse. I’m totally stuck. I don’t know how to act, how to look, how to sound. I tell myself to act naturally, but I’ve lost my grip on what that feels like. I shift in my chair and roll back my shoulders, hoping to reconnect with my body.

Detective Kopitzke studies my face for several long seconds. Then he says, “We understand you were the last person to see Kadence Mulligan on Friday night.”

Something about the way he says “last person to see her” sets off alert buttons in my head. Suddenly I can picture them hooking me up to something that measures how much sweat I can produce in an hour. I mean, sweat equals guilt, right? I think I read that somewhere.

Kadence would never let the pressure get to her.

“I don’t know if that’s true,” I say. “She stuck around the coffee shop for a little bit after the show. It was just me and her for a few minutes, then she left. Went out the back door, headed for the parking lot. I don’t know who she might have seen back there. Obviously she managed to get herself home though. Her car was there.”

I’m rambling again, but I’m proud of myself too, because that’s a fine piece of logic if I ever heard one. Kopitzke makes some kind of note. I try to read it, but it’s at a bad angle and he’s too far away.

“We understand that you and Kadence got in a pretty big fight recently at school.”

My body goes rigid and I swallow loudly. Did Mason tell him that? Why would he? He had to know how that would make me look. For a second my temper flares, but I get it back in check. I mean, even if Mason had said nothing, the story would have come out. There were plenty of witnesses. Like a whole cafeteria full. Better walk carefully on this one.

“It wasn’t that big.”

“Then tell me how you would describe it.”

I roll my eyes. “It was a couple days before spring break. People were getting antsy. They were happy for any kind of excitement. Trust me. As cafeteria drama goes, it wasn’t that big of a deal.”

“I understand the fight was over a boy?”

I sit back in my chair and cross my arms. I’m afraid the posture makes me look sullen and oppositional, but I can’t help myself. That’s exactly how I feel. “Kadence was paranoid. She accused me of hooking up with her boyfriend.”

“Mason Sisken.”

I don’t respond.

“Was she right?” His pen is poised to write down whatever I say.

“She was misinformed.”

“What would make her think you and Mason were together?”

“I don’t know.” My eyes glance over at the wall with the door. “You’ll have to ask her.”

“Well, Lauren, we can’t exactly do that now, can we?” He leans back across the table, his hands folded like he’s begging me to come up with something that he can use. “Think. What would make her accuse you of something like that? Were you alone with him at some point?”

The memory of the kiss hits me hard in the gut. Mason and I had gone to the F.U. Fort, a rotted plywood lean-to that got its name from the words spray-painted on the outside wall. It’s in the woods behind the high school, and it’s held together with bailing twine, chewing gum, and the prayers of blunt-smoking dropouts.

As little kids we thought it was really scandalous. We whispered about it. The big kids drank sloe gin back there. Mason and I hadn’t been drinking when we went. I don’t even know how we ended up there. I mean, not exactly.

“Lauren?”

“I’m sorry. What was the question?”

“Were you alone with Mason at some point? What would make Kadence think something had happened between you and him?”

I suck on the inside of my cheek. “I don’t know. Maybe because that’s the kind of thing she would do with someone else’s boyfriend, so it was easy for her to assume that someone would do it to her?” Snarky. I sound snarky, and I doubt it’s helping.

“Kadence fooled around with other people’s boyfriends?”

“Sometimes.”

“Can you give me any names of those other people?”

“There was this one girl? Mary? She moved to a different school though.”

“Did Mason know about any of this?”

I pause and hold my breath, weighing my words. I’m not such an idiot that I don’t see my opportunity when it comes. Mason had no trouble pointing the finger at me by telling the detective about the fight—that is, if he was the one who told. Well, ever heard of payback? I could do the same to him. Who doesn’t like a jealous boyfriend as the prime suspect? People eat that tabloid crap for breakfast.

But…I can’t do that to him. I tried to tell him once about Kadence cheating, but he never believed me. Mason is sweet and a little naive. If he’s the one who told Kopitzke about the fight, I’m sure he wasn’t being malicious. He probably thought he was being helpful.

I shake my head. “No. I don’t think so.”

“So what happened in this fight between you and Kadence?”

I toss my arms up in the air, and they fall into my lap with a slap. “I told you it wasn’t a fight. We were friends. She yelled at me in the cafeteria for a bit, then it was over. I apologized.”

“Apologized for what? I thought you said nothing happened.”

“I apologized for whatever she thought had happened. That was how it was between us. She got upset about something, and I apologized to smooth things over. Then we moved on.”

“Some of your classmates said she pushed you.”

“She didn’t.” Even as I say the words, I remember the feeling of staggering backwards, tripping on a stool. Banging my head against the floor. I sway a little in my chair.

“Was there any physical contact between the two of you?”

“She might have put her hands on my shoulders.”

“What did you do in response to that?”

“I twisted away. Like this.” I demonstrate. Crap. I’m doing that thing again, letting him lead me down that road I was talking about before. I’ve already said too much. I need to stop. If I wanted to hurt Kadence, it wouldn’t be because she grabbed my shoulders and shook me around on Taco Tuesday. I have wayyy more material to work with than that.

“But she didn’t push you. Not even by accident?”

“Well, maybe by accident. When I was trying to twist away from her, maybe I got knocked off balance.”

“That sounds pretty physical. Putting her hands on you. Are you sure there was nothing going on with you and Mason?”

I stare him down. This guy would not let up. “I told you. There was nothing going on between me and Mason. There is nothing going on between me and Mason. Are we done yet? Can I go home?”

“As I said, you aren’t under arrest. These are just some friendly questions. You are free to go whenever you want.”

“Then I’d like to go now.” I push my chair back and start to stand.

“One more thing.” He raises a hand, and a second later a woman in a white shirt and black low-rise pants comes in. She has a badge hooked to her waistband. She sets a clear plastic bag on the center of the table. The bag is marked evidence with a bunch of numbers, and there’s a piece of wide yellow tape with the words do not break seal printed on it. But more than any of that, I am transfixed by what is inside the bag. It’s a green Cuppa Cuppa uniform shirt.

Slowly, I sink back into my chair. “Where did you get that?”

“From the garbage bin at your house,” the woman says.

My eyebrows shoot up. “You can’t go through our garbage.” I’m impressed by how calm I manage to keep my voice, but my heart is crashing against my rib cage.

“Actually,” she says, “we can.”

I stare at them both. They’ve got to be kidding me. Why is this happening?

The woman leaves and Detective Kopitzke flips the bag over. There’s a bloodstain on the shirt. It’s not big, but it’s enough. My forehead prickles as I break into a cold sweat.

“Do you mind telling me how this blood got on this shirt?” he asks. “And while we’re on it, how it ended up in your trash?”

I can tell that they’ve already determined it’s Kadence’s blood. My mind scrambles to explain it convincingly. “It was an accident,” I say, my already fragile voice shaking.

“What was an accident? Exactly.”

My hand trembles as I raise it to my mouth and bite at a hangnail. “Kady cut her hand packing up her gear when she left the coffee shop Friday night. I said I’d get her a paper towel but”—I swallow loudly—“but she just used one of the old uniform shirts that were piled up at the end of the bar. Charlie wanted me to trash them when I finished closing because we got a new color for spring, and they’d just come in. I only took the shirts home because the…um…the dumpster at work was overflowing that night.”

“So what’s the color of the new spring shirt?” he asks, cutting me off, and I can tell he doesn’t believe me.

“Um…I don’t know.” Then I add, “Yet.”

When a look crosses his face that tells me I’m confirming all his suspicions, I start talking fast. “That’s only because Charlie screwed up the order, and the logos were all wrong. He had to send them back.” Damn that pot-smoking dumb ass Charlie. If I’m in trouble because of him…so help me…

“Your boss…That’s Charlie Horn?” Detective Kopitzke writes his name down on the notepad.

“Right.”

Detective Kopitzke’s mouth torques. “Do you know what Kadence cut her hand on?”

“Not exactly. It happened in the parking lot when she was loading her car. An amp or something? Some loose piece of metal? I don’t know.”

“Well, that sounds like a perfectly reasonable explanation.”

I can’t tell if he believes me or not. “Yes, it is. Can I go now?”

“Yes, you can go. Please stay in town though. We’ll likely have more questions.” He looks at me in a way that makes my stomach sour. “Oh, and Lauren? Kadence’s parents have asked for a press conference this evening. Are you willing to participate? I’m sure it would be a great comfort to them to have you there.”

After all he’s practically accused me of, I can’t imagine why he’d want to have me there, but saying no doesn’t sound like a good idea, and as always, yes came more easily. “Yeah, sure. No problem.”

When he escorts me through the door, Mom and Dad are sitting on the bench in the hallway. They both stand together like they’ve been propelled from their seats.

“Is she done?” Dad asks. He wraps his arms around me, and I have a flicker of calm.

“I hope she was of some help,” Mom says.

I roll my eyes and pull out of Dad’s hug. “I’m hungry,” I say, which makes them all turn their heads toward me with the same strange expression. Why do I keep saying exactly the wrong thing?

“Of course, honey,” Mom says. “You’re all worn out. She hasn’t been sleeping.” She addresses this last comment to Detective Kopitzke. I want to kick her. What will he make of that? “She misses Kadence so much,” Mom adds.

Detective Kopitzke and I exchange a look. “Six o’clock,” he says. “Be back here by then.”

“What do you want me to say?” I ask.

Detective Kopitzke stares at me for a few seconds. Then he says, “When someone is missing, most people ask the viewers to call in with any tip or information they might have. In some cases they ask for their loved one’s safe return.”

Oh, I think. Duh. Why didn’t I think of that? Detective Kopitzke’s looking at me like he’s wondering the same thing.