Thirty-Seven

Lauren

DeSanto Residence

Sunday, April 8

6:00 p.m.

Jude and I didn’t learn about Kady’s death until this morning. Mason texted me around 4:00 a.m. to let me know what happened. Nuts in the gas-station junk food she was eating. No EpiPen. I called 911, but it was too late.

The sheriff found Kady’s laptop in Jude’s truck shortly after dawn. I don’t know what that will mean. No matter what Mason tells Kopitzke, I’m afraid for Jude. I still can’t understand it, how we got to this point. Kady is dead. I can’t find my bearings. Nothing seems real.

I don’t leave my bed all day. My parents remain close, but they’ve left me alone to grieve. There’s nothing they can do to make things better. I feel sorry for them. For Jude. For Mason. For me. Mostly for Kady. Despite everything, this wasn’t how it was supposed to end.

I struggle to know how to react. I don’t know what to feel. I’ve never lost anyone close to me. All my grandparents are still alive. It scares me to think that Kady isn’t here. She must be somewhere. Where is she? It’s impossible that she simply doesn’t exist. She was always larger than life and now…

Last night, after Jude and I left the warehouse, I felt amazing. I’d conquered my demons, conquered Kady, or at least her hold on me. I’d become the person I wanted to be—strong and if not completely forgiving, then at least willing to be the bigger person and walk away.

But now she’s dead. And I’m thrown right back into not knowing anything anymore. Should I have stayed? Would she be alive if I’d stayed and forced her to ride home with me? Should I have called the cops when I first thought about the warehouse? Yes. That’s what I should have done. Shoulda, woulda, coulda.

I don’t even know how to cry. It should be simple, but my body is a foreign thing. I can’t formulate a thought. I can’t muster up a tear—not one lousy tear—for my best friend. It’s not because I don’t want to. I just can’t find myself in all of this. I still remember her ugly words at the warehouse. But I also remember the girl who befriended me in seventh grade. The girl whose eyes would light up when we made music together back in the early days.

Every muscle in my body constricts. I feel like I could turn inside out. I open my mouth to scream but no sound comes out. I didn’t want this. I never wanted this. Kady made me angry and confused and all kinds of things I’d never felt before, but I never wanted her to die.

The whole time she was missing, I never really thought she was dead. Kadence Mulligan couldn’t be dead. The world is a strange and unfathomable place if something like that could be true. But it is. Kady is gone.

Jude comes over. My parents don’t protest. They let him into my bedroom and close the door behind us. He curls up beside me and doesn’t say a word. There’s nothing to say.

In the background, my small TV starts to play the familiar bars of the local news show. The local news anchors’ voices—barely louder than a whisper—trickle across the room.

Jude gets up to turn off the TV, but I stop him. I want to see Kady.

I sit up, and the screen fills with photos and video of her singing. There’s such life in her eyes.

My chest seizes and finally a sob rips up and out of me, racking my body into ugly convulsions that I cannot stop. I’m drowning, and I think I may die too.

“Shhh, shhh,” Jude says. He cradles my body in his lap, wraps me in his arms, and rocks me sweetly, rhythmically.

Though my eyes are now clouded with welcomed tears—tears that tell me I am human and not a monster—I watch the screen, desperate for another look at Kady, but it’s that blond reporter now talking to some official onscreen.

What about your previous prime suspects from when this was still categorized as a disappearance or worse?

“That’s enough,” Jude says. He sets me gently on the bed and gets up.

Lauren DeSanto and Jude Williams? Are they being held in custody?

The sheriff clears his throat. “There are no suspects in the case at this time.”

“But isn’t it true that the deceased’s missing laptop was found in one of the suspects’ possession—in Jude Williams’s vehicle—”

Jude clicks off the TV.

The silence beats at the walls, and I am afraid. For me. For Jude. And for Mason. What must he be going through right now? I hope he’s not alone.

“Is this my fault?” I ask.

Jude stops halfway between the TV and my bed. His face is somber. “How could any of this be your fault?”

I don’t know how to answer that rationally, but I can’t shake the feeling that somehow I’m to blame.

“Ren,” he says, and his voice is like a balm to my ragged heart. “Ren.”

“She was my friend, Jude. Forget about everything else. I didn’t want it to end like that. On a fight.” Another fight.

“Shhh,” he says again, sitting on the bed beside me.

He pulls me against his body, and it’s warm. It’s solid. It’s so real. It’s in that moment that I realize how much I need this. How much I need him.

“It isn’t your fault,” he says, “and I’m not going anywhere until you believe that.”

“Then you’re going to be stuck here for a very long time,” I say, my voice breaking on a cry that turns into a laugh. How can I laugh? How is it possible that Jude could bring that out of me? It’s sacrilege.

Before I can apologize, he says, “I can think of worse things than being stuck with you.”

His tone is somber, and I know it’s true. There are far, far worse things. Without saying a word, I know both of our thoughts are on the twisted but beautiful girl whose body has already long grown cold.