Fourteen

Lauren

De Santo Residence—Lauren’s Bedroom

Wednesday, April 4

6:00 p.m.

Jude makes me put his name at the top of the list. He says if we’re going to do this, then we’re going to do it right. Thorough is our mantra. If someone could have a motive to hurt Kadence, their name goes on the list.

I add mine below his. I’m already a suspect, and Kadence has hurt me too. Maybe not as directly, maybe not as viciously as she’s hurt others, but sometimes the cruelest acts are the silent ones.

We’re in my room because I don’t feel safe anywhere else. I’m sitting at my desk, head bent over a spiral notebook. My laptop beside the notebook. My ukulele by my feet. I feel calm now. The momentary tantrum from earlier has passed. Tantrums, that’s what Mom calls them. As if it’s something I never outgrew from when I was a little kid.

Jude’s sitting on my bed, on top of the blue floral comforter that I arranged perfectly back in place before he got here. When I glance over, I notice him looking at the dark smear across the dirty plate I left on my bedside table. “What the hell did you eat?” he asks.

“Hmmm? What? Oh. Organic black beans with a gluten-free tortilla.”

Jude’s face contorts and his eyebrows pull together. “Why would you eat that?” The way he’s acting, you’d think I’d told him it was a pile of poo.

“It’s good for me,” I say. “I’ve been trying to go organic, caffeine free, even gluten free, but that one’s pretty hard to stick to. I’m trying to do what’s right for me these days.” Mentally I add, inside and out and for once in my life.

Jude shrugs. “If you say so. But a life so free sounds pretty restrictive if you ask me.”

“Well…” He has me there. I can’t honestly say I get a ton of enjoyment out of black beans. “I didn’t ask you.”

The corners of his lips turn up, and his thumb and forefinger rub the satin edge of the fleece blanket that’s poking out from underneath my comforter. I’ve had that blanket since I was a toddler. I remember rubbing the satin—self-soothing in the moments I was feeling most upset. Are you good for me, Jude? Inside and out? Am I doing the right thing here? And then I look away before the questions show up on my face. Because seriously. If Jude notices, he’s perceptive enough to ask. I clear my throat and bend over my notebook.

Below my name, I write: “Mary.” I have to pull an old yearbook out of my desk drawer to remember her last name. “Blake.” I don’t know how I forgot that. In ninth grade, Kadence called her “Blake the Rake” because Mary was tall and thin with buck teeth. It didn’t take long for the whole school to catch on.

I remember thinking it was funny at the time. I feel bad about that now. Mary was actually pretty. She just had a slight overbite, and more importantly she was super talented. Easily the best girl in the freshman choir, and she beat me and Kady out at the eighth-grade talent show. Looking back, that’s probably why Kadence went after her.

I stare at the name a second longer, and a memory tickles at the back of my brain. It takes another moment for it to settle in. @MBlake96. I pull up Twitter and scroll back through my feed, but I can’t find it again. Doesn’t matter. I remember the most important part. Payback’s a bitch, Lauren.

“Oh yeah,” Jude says, seeing her name. “I forgot about her. Why is she on the list?”

I turn my head toward him, eyebrows raised. “Kadence made out with Mary’s boyfriend behind the bleachers after the last football game junior year.”

“That was a long time ago for her to still be mad about that.”

“It was pretty ugly,” I say, looking back at Mary’s name on the paper. “Mary ended up changing schools,” I add, my voice fading out at the end. Payback’s a bitch, Lauren. I frown in confusion.

Jude shrugs. “Okay. Good enough for me. Who else?”

“Justine Dow.”

“Really? How did Kadence piss off Justine?”

“Called her out when she got her period on a day she wore white pants.”

Jude shudders, and I laugh. It’s funny to see a big tough guy get weirded out by periods.

“Moving on,” he says. He gets up from the edge of my bed where he’s been sitting and stands right behind me, leaning over my shoulder as he looks at the names on the list. I can feel the heat rolling off his body. His hair tickles my cheek. “Be sure to put Jeremy Atkinson down.”

I nod, remembering that Jude had brought him up the day before. Jude had been accurate when he accused Kadence of toying with Jeremy’s emotions. I write down Jeremy’s name, then add Caleb Morrissey.

Jude taps Caleb’s name. “Kadence outed him to his dad, right? That was after I left too, but I still heard about it.”

“Yeah,” I say. “It was last year.” I turn around in my chair so I can see Jude better, plus it makes him take a step back and I needed him to do that. Jude’s physical closeness is unnerving. Exciting, but unnerving.

“Kady, Mason, and I were hanging out in Caleb’s basement,” I say, explaining how it all went down. “Kady invited this other guy to come over because she knew he was totally into Caleb. They drank a bunch of scotch, and Caleb and this other dude started making out. Kadence and I had gone upstairs to use the bathroom, but when I came out, she was telling his dad that there was something wrong with the TV downstairs, and he should probably come check it out.”

“Shit.”

“His dad’s a trucker. Very old-school macho. When he came down and saw what was happening, he grabbed Caleb by the back of his shirt and hauled him out of there. Beat him within an inch of his life.”

Jude’s face sours. “Dammit, Ren. Why were you friends with her? She’s vile.”

“I don’t know,” I say, looking at the floor. What Jude doesn’t understand and I can’t even begin to explain is that there were so many good memories too. Kadence could be really sweet. She made me feel special. She told me her secrets, and it made me feel important. Which is lame. I know that.

“It wasn’t like Kadence expected that to happen,” I say. “She thought she was helping him get out of the closet and all that. I mean, obviously it was completely naive and wrong of her, and looking back on it, she should have minded her own business.”

I hate the way Jude is staring at me. It puts me on the defensive. “And that thing with Mary…” I hurry on. “Kadence was just talking to her boyfriend but he was macking on her, and the next thing Kadence knew, they were kissing.” My shoulders flinch in reaction to my own words. Saying it like that reminds me of what happened between me and Mason. Am I as innocent in that kiss as I’ve been telling myself? “We were young. Stupid. Immature. I’d know better if it was happening today.”

Jude sighs like he’s really, really tired. So far we have four names on the list besides our own. There should be more.

“What about Kadence’s boyfriend?” he asks. “Mason, right?”

I make a scoffing noise in my throat.

“What?” he asks. He obviously doesn’t get it.

I roll my eyes. “Clearly you don’t know Mason.”

“Okay. Well, what about some psycho fan? We should look at your videos. Go through all the comments. Maybe someone threatened Kadence there. We could backtrack their IP address and find out who they are.”

“Here. Take it. I don’t want to read any more comments.” I stand up and offer him my chair, and when I do, we find ourselves face-to-face. Our chests inches from each other’s. He stares down at me, holding me in place with his eyes. I should look away, but I am transfixed by him. Transfixed, like some romance novel heroine. Or like a bird confronted by a snake.

I clear my throat and try to step around him, but we do that awkward simultaneous side-step thing. I feel like he takes up the whole room, and I’m suddenly feeling short on oxygen.

The moment is charged with anticipation. I feel like I can read Jude’s mind—if only for a second—and I wonder why he’s not moving, why I’m not doing anything. As good-looking as he is, I should be wanting to tackle him. I mean, my bed is right there. My parents are at work. This would be perfect if everything wasn’t so absolutely…not perfect.

In that moment I have two thoughts. One, I want to write a song about this. Two, it doesn’t matter how many names we put on the list.

Everyone, including the police, think I’m involved. I don’t need to rain that misery down on Jude. How would it look if suddenly we were seen as being together? As in, together together? Someone like Jude, someone who looks like Jude…how hard would it be for the police to investigate him as an accomplice? He has to know this too.

“Ren?” he asks.

I’m absolutely undone when he calls me that. I swear my heart is fluttering like a bird caught in my chest. A lyric pops to mind: Winged heart, you beat against me like a bird in flight.

“You all right?” he asks.

“Fine,” I whisper, my face heating up. “See what you can find online. I need to clear my head.” I bend down and scoop my ukulele off the floor, then sit on the bed and pick out a couple chords. Fingers busy, that’s better. So much better.

He looks at me with worry and compassion. I can’t recall any of my other friends ever looking at me like that. I sit cross-legged and strum a few bars while simultaneously watching Jude work. The music has the same effect on me as that old blanket did when I was a kid. The more I work the strings, the more the worry and stress eases.

I know, I know. I’m not supposed to play. But extreme circum­stances call for extreme measures. I slide my fingers down the fretboard, and for just a moment, the world feels righted again.

Jude scowls at the screen, his eyebrows drawn together. His leather jacket hangs off the back of my desk chair. His T-shirt is tight around the shoulders and arms, and the muscles in his forearms twitch and flex as his fingers work the keys. He’s trying so hard to help me. How could I have ever been so cruel?

Yes, he said all those nasty things to me in eighth grade, but he backed off right away. It was really only the one time. I didn’t need to tell the principal he was stalking me. I didn’t need to lodge the complaint that got him suspended from school. I didn’t need to retaliate by calling him names—names that I knew would hurt—and I really didn’t need to encourage the rest of the school to do the same.

I don’t deserve his forgiveness. It almost makes me feel worse. Winged heart, you should leave me. My soul’s torn apart.

After about twenty minutes, Jude turns in the chair and rests his back against the wall. “I’m coming up with nothing. You want to go visit Caleb?”

My eyes go wide and my palm slaps flat against the strings. It’s one thing to make a list. Quite another to actually go confront these people. “I don’t remember where he lives.”

“I googled it.”

“You want to go now?” I ask, hoping for the answer I know I’m not going to get.

“Lauren, I want to help. I don’t like the idea of people accusing you like this. It’s not right.”

How could I argue with that?

Jude goes out my window, and I meet him down the street, a block from my house. He holds out a spare helmet for me to wear. I laugh when I see it. “You came prepared.”

“It wasn’t like you were going to chicken out,” he says with a grin. Sometimes it’s weird how well he knows me.

He pushes the helmet down over my head. Then, for the first time ever, I’m flying down the street on the back of a freakin’ Harley. More importantly, I’m on a motorcycle behind Jude—correction, straddling Jude—with my arms wrapped around his waist and the heat of the engine underneath me.

It is the most amazing feeling, and I wish I could write down all the lyrics that are racing through my head. Ones that have already been written, like born to run and free falling and My restless hands are grabbing for a time that’s never there.

Then some that have not yet been written, like Redemption comes in pieces, but you assemble them with care and I’m riding on a feeling that I didn’t want to bear.

There’s wind and cold and warmth and fingers clutching leather. And then soon, way too soon, Jude is pulling to the curb and all the music in my head grinds to a halt on a dissonant chord.

That was quick. This town is way too small.

I’m staring at Caleb Morrissey’s house through the visor of the helmet, and it’s like, crap on a cracker, we’re actually doing this. Are we seriously doing this? Every wild and wonderful thought leaves me. Now, with the engine below me cooling and stilled, I really, really, really do not want to do this.

“Let’s do this,” Jude says happily, looking over his left shoulder at me.

Reluctantly I take off my helmet and dismount. I don’t want him to notice that I’m scared, so I smooth my hands through my hair. In part because it hides the fact my hands are shaking, and in part because I think it’s important for some reason to look my best when I talk to Caleb about the worst night of his life.

Jude rings the doorbell before I have time to chicken out.

There’s silence for a long time before we hear shuffling feet on the other side of the door. Then the door swings open and Caleb’s dad looms in the doorway. He’s in his fifties with iron-gray hair and several days’ growth on his cheeks. He eyes us up and down. “I’m not buying no raffle tickets or magazine subscriptions.”

He moves to close the door again, but Jude holds up a hand. “Sir, we’re here to talk to Caleb. Is he home?”

If possible, the man’s mouth turns even farther down at the corners. “That fairy don’t live here anymore.”

“Can you tell us where he moved to, sir?” Jude asks swiftly. I’m glad he’s managing to ask the questions, because I’m officially struck dumb and standing here like an idiot. Caleb doesn’t live here anymore? Oh no, surely it’s not because…Not because of what happened that night…

“Please, sir,” I say, using Jude’s tone of deference. I hate it even as I use the term of respect, but suddenly I have to find Caleb, and not just for our list of suspects. I never thought he’d get kicked out of his home. “Please, we need to talk to him.”

The man stares at us for another nerve-racking second, then finally wrenches his thumb over to the right. “End of the street,” he growls. “Last house on the left. Red door. Lives with his grams.” With that he turns on his heel and slams the door in our faces.

Jude turns toward me. “Friendly guy,” he deadpans.

It’s only a half-minute ride down the street to the end of the block. Jude walks up to the red door and knocks like none of this is a big deal.

I bite my lip, praying for a nice old lady to answer the door and tell us, “Sorry, but Caleb isn’t home.” When the door opens, however, we see the hulking shoulders of Caleb Morrissey himself, six foot two and wearing a camo hunting jacket. As soon as his eyes narrow in on me, the easy expression on his face falls to a sour scowl. “What do you want?”

I step back, unconsciously moving myself slightly behind Jude. What were we thinking? That we’d just show up and say, “Hey, where were you the night of Kadence Mulligan’s disappearance, and did you by chance have anything to do with it?” Yeah, because that was going to work.

Again, Jude saves the day.

“Hey, man,” he says and sticks out his hand. “I’m Jude Williams. Nice to meet you. I take it you already know Lauren here.” He gestures at me.

Caleb stares at us both, his eyes hard. Caleb was more Kady’s friend than mine, but he was always nice to me. For such a big hulking guy, he was a sweetheart. He was never feminine, not like some of the stereotypical gay guys you see on TV. In fact, I might never have known if Kady hadn’t told me he’d confided in her, or if I hadn’t seen him making out with that one guy on his couch.

Of course that was the night it had all gone to hell, the one time he’d let himself be himself, uncensored.

And then when he showed up at school with two black eyes and a broken nose, I never said anything to him about it.

“What do you want?” Caleb asks again, his voice harsher now, and I realize I’ve been staring at him as these memories of the past fly through my head. But all I can do is continue to gape. He’s looking at me like I’m the squishy residue of a bug on the underside of his boot. Which isn’t undeserved.

“Well, have you seen the news lately?” Jude says, filling the silence, his tone light and almost jovial. “Our girl Lauren here’s being called a murderer.”

Caleb nods his chin once, his attention on Jude now. “Yeah, I saw.” Meanwhile I stare at the ground, totally mortified. What is Jude doing?

“Well,” Jude says, clapping me hard on the back, “of course she didn’t actually murder Kady, but the whole thing has got her looking back on all the shit she and Kady pulled. And she’s wanting to make amends. She might not have done anything to Kady, but she knows they both hurt a lot of other people along the way. She’s on what you might call an amends tour. Like they do in twelve-step programs.”

My mouth drops open and I stare at Jude. But when I glance at Caleb, he no longer looks like he wants to slam the door in our faces. Close it, maybe, but not slam it.

He eyes me critically, so I nod. And even though I want to stomp on Jude’s foot with the heel of my pointy boot, in a way, he’s not wrong. I do wish I’d told Caleb I was sorry. I do owe a lot of people apologies.

“So can we come in?” Jude asks.

“No,” Caleb says. I can feel the waves of hostility coming off him again, and I’m about to turn around and head back to the bike when Jude says, “Hey, cool tea set.”

“What?” Caleb asks.

Jude pushes past him into the house, dragging me along with him.

“Hey!” Caleb says as Jude casually picks up a teapot that’s sitting on a doily on the end table beside the sofa. He lifts off the lid and turns it around in his hands. Meanwhile I stand nervously clutching my hands together, glancing back and forth between Jude, Caleb, and the door.

“Dude, put that down,” Caleb says. “That’s my grandma’s. You’ll break it.” He takes the teapot from Jude and gently sets it on the end table. “You can go now.”

“Give us a second,” Jude says. That was the line Jude used on me when he stood outside my bedroom window. I’d let him inside. I doubt Caleb will give in so easily. Not with me standing here.

“Say what you need to say then and get out,” Caleb folds his arms in a no-nonsense gesture.

“We’re here to talk about Kadence,” Jude says.

Caleb’s eyebrows shoot up. “I thought she was here to apologize.” He gestures at me.

I swallow hard. “Yes, I am. I had no idea what Kadence was planning to do to you, but I saw it happening, and I didn’t stop her. In a twisted way, I thought she was doing it out of friendship. I’m sorry. I had no idea of the consequences. Please believe that.”

At this, Caleb’s jaw goes so taut that the veins on his neck and forehead stand out. “Is this some kind of joke?”

“Caleb,” I start to say, but he interrupts me.

“No. Don’t even.” He laughs a low, bitter grumble. “You know what? Kadence told me the same thing about you. A few weeks after it happened. She came up to me, mascara running down her face, crying me a river and saying how it was all your idea, how she came out of the bathroom and saw you sending my dad downstairs. She kept saying it wasn’t your fault, because you were only trying to help. That you thought it wasn’t right for a father and son not to be open with each other and that you never meant for what happened to happen.”

I stare at him for what feels like minutes. My mouth is hanging open, and by the time I process what he’s saying, I’m sputtering. “But—but that’s not true! Kadence was the one who told your dad to go downstairs.”

Caleb interrupts me again. “I don’t even care. Do you understand that? It doesn’t matter to me which one of you did what. I was the one who got beat up that night.” He pounds a hand against his chest. “Both of you little girls ran back to your homes with your nice parents and got tucked into your little beds. I was the one who had no home, no bed to sleep in that night. I was the one whose father said he had no son anymore.

“So I don’t care about all the stupid little games you and your friend like to play. I don’t care that you feel sorry now.” He’s all but yelling and each word is making me wince. I hate confrontation, and no one has ever out and out yelled at me before. And he’s not nearly finished.

“Because I bet you barely even do feel sorry. I bet all this is you feeling bad because finally your perfect little life isn’t so perfect anymore. People are calling you bad names on the TV. Boo-hoo. Poor little Lauren DeSanto. Kadence Mulligan isn’t around to be your shield anymore. You lost your voice and suddenly you aren’t so special anymore. Now Kady’s missing and everyone’s blaming you. Again, boo-hoo for you.”

I step closer to Caleb. He’s still got over a foot on me, so I’m sure I don’t look too threatening, but it’s time to start fighting my own battles, and his sarcasm is making me mad. “You sure have a lot of anger built up towards Kadence and me, don’t you, Caleb? In fact, the way you are talking right now, it sounds like between you and me, you’re the one who had the most reason to wage a vendetta against her.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” He looks at me like I’m crazy, then over to Jude.

“Oh my God,” Caleb scoffs, staring at me in disbelief. “You’re not here to make amends at all, are you? You’re here to accuse me of having something to do with her disappearance.”

None of this is going the way I thought it would. Not that I really thought out exactly how it would go. But I’ve come this far, so I go ahead and blurt out my next question.

“Where were you on the night of Friday, March 30?”

“Are you serious right now?” He looks over at Jude. “Is she serious right now?”

Jude gives his trademark easy smile and shrugs.

“Tell me if you have an alibi, and then we’ll go,” I say, unwilling to give up at this point.

Caleb shakes his head in a mixture of disbelief and disgust. “I cannot believe the balls on you. You and your friend destroy my life, and now you come back here and try to pin some huge crime on me?” He drags his wallet out of his pocket, still shaking his head. After flicking through some bills, he pulls out a concert ticket stub and waves it in front of my face. He stills it long enough for me to see that it’s for a concert in Minneapolis on the thirtieth. The headline act started at nine thirty. “Me and my friend Jake went to this concert together and then stayed with his cousin in St. Paul overnight. We stayed all weekend.”

I reach for the ticket stub to get a better look, but he snatches it away before I can. “No way,” he says with a laugh. “You think I’m going to let you steal the evidence of my alibi so you can try to frame me for whatever you did to your friend? I always knew the pair of you were twisted. Should’ve known it would end up like this one day. Got to say though, if one of you was going to end up in the ground and the other with blood on her hands, I’d have put all my bank on Kadence coming out on top. Guess you never know. Gotta watch out for the quiet ones.”

I take a step back and my breath shoots out of my lungs as if I’ve been punched.

“I think that’s our cue to leave,” Jude says, stepping over and put­ting his hand at the small of my back. He gives a nod to Caleb as we pass and then leads me to the front door. We leave the house without another word.

Before he turns the ignition, Jude looks over his shoulder at me. “Do we try to find Mary now?”

“No,” I say. I still don’t quite have my breath back. “I’m beat. I don’t think I can do this again. Not today anyway.”

“That’s fine,” Jude says. “Hey, are you okay?”

I don’t have an answer. I don’t really know how I feel about anything anymore, except that I think I might throw up. Please don’t let me throw up in front of Jude.

He looks at me uncertainly, his eyebrows furrowed. I get the sense that he’s studying me. “Well, if you still want, we can pick this up again tomorrow. I can do a little checking on my own at school too, if that’s okay with you.”

“Yeah. Whatever. Just get me home.”

“Ren.” His voice softens. “Close your eyes. Try to enjoy the ride.”

Thirty minutes later he drops me off in front of my house. I run to the door but turn in the doorway as he drives away. I watch him until he disappears around the corner.

Later that night, I think about telling Jude to forget this whole thing. Anyone else we talk to is going to be more of the same. I mean, seriously. What were we thinking? But before I can pick up my phone, I hear a sound. It’s small. And muffled. And I’ve heard it before, though not often and not in a while. It’s a sound that makes my heart twist and my hands soften.

I creep down the hall to JJ’s room. I know if he hears me coming, he’ll cover up the evidence, so I push his door open slowly and wait for him to look up.

Not surprisingly, I find him sitting on the floor with his back against the side of his bed. His room is a disaster, littered with clothes, game controllers, and old Pokemon cards he bought at a garage sale. I am prepared for all of that. What I am not prepared for is the angry red welt under his left eye.

I drop to my knees in front of him and push the dark hair off his face. “What happened?”

He twists away from me, turning his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “Go away.”

“Don’t tell me it doesn’t matter. Did somebody hit you?”

That’s when JJ looks at me. Like really looks at me. There’s a sheet of tears over his eyes. He doesn’t blink. God love him, he doesn’t blink. “I went to the park after dinner. People were saying things about you. I handled it.”

“You handled it?” I rasp, then, “You handled it? How is getting hit handling it?” Righteous anger is building up in my gut. There is no way this sweet kid is going to suffer for me. I might be many things but being above taking down a middle schooler is not one of them. “Who was it?” I demand.

“I said it doesn’t matter,” he whispers back.

“I said, ‘Who was it?’”

JJ hits the power button on his game console. The familiar Minecraft music comes on, and that’s the end of our conversation. Stubborn kid.

“Fine,” I say. “Put some ice on it.”

“I will. After Mom and Dad go to bed.”

Before I leave, I turn and say, “I hope the other guy looks worse.”

A small smile creeps over JJ’s tear-stained cheeks, but he doesn’t take his eyes off his game. “He does.”

So I guess JJ did handle it, though there’s nothing there to celebrate. It’s not like I feel all warm and fuzzy about my little brother using his fists to defend my reputation.

I go back to my room and throw myself across my bed. Maybe I don’t have to take out my frustration on a punk playground kid, but I know one thing for sure. I won’t be bailing out on Jude. Next chance we get, we’re going to hunt down Mary Blake.

Jude wants to deflect the attention off me for my sake. I don’t care so much about that, but this will be the last time my family pays the price.