Well, that went well.
St. Francis doesn’t offer a ton of criminal justice classes, but I’d bet lying in a missing persons investigation is grounds for prosecution.
I didn’t lie about anything that mattered, just about the things that would stop me from figuring out exactly what Madison was doing at The Wayside, and who the number in the matchbook belongs to.
I’ve tried to call it, three times. Not a single answer. Generic voice mail.
This entire morning has been a stream of questions without a single answer.
Rain batters my windshield, cocooning me in the safety of my car as I let my head thud onto the steering wheel.
My breath escapes slowly, almost a sigh, and I force my knotted shoulders to relax. Heat blasts from the vents, drying my clothes much too slowly. My tattoo throbs, but since my ibuprofen is in my backpack, which is inside the school I can’t go back into because I’m not that much of an idiot, I take another hit from my vape.
I should go to class. I should’ve gone yesterday too. My sporadic attendance and generally sucky homework performance since Willa left means I’m handing over valedictorian and I can’t even bring myself to care.
I should go back inside.
Though that could mean running into Mr. McCormack again. Questioning me about my school performance will just be his warm-up. Then he’ll ask about the matchbook from The Wayside.
That’s where things get tricky.
I don’t know why he stood up for me years ago when everyone else looked the other way. Or why he didn’t tell my parents right away when he found me, with my girlfriend, in a bar. I’ll owe him for both those things forever.
But he’s still my teacher, and I’m walking the finest of lines, with no way to tell when I might step a fraction too far. And if he tells my parents what he saw that night, I may never get to leave the house again.
For my own good, of course. And I can’t figure out why Madison was at The Wayside if I’m confined to my bedroom.
So. That’s settled.
I slam my finger into the start button and the engine fires to life, fogging the glass within seconds, and I take one last hit.
My passenger door flies open and my scream gets tangled in my lungs. I cough out mist and all the air in my body until my eyes water, while Jake Monaghan mumbles apologies for jumping into my car without warning or invitation.
I blink the tears from my vision and glare at him. “So … what the fuck?”
“Sorry. It was raining.” When I stare at him, he adds, “I wanted to talk to you, and I would’ve knocked and waited, but —”
“It was raining.”
“Yeah.” He pauses. “I can’t be in there anymore. Everyone’s crying or gossiping.”
He nods toward the vape. “How often do you use that thing?”
“Not often enough for this day.”
This, too, is the detectives’ fault. It was like they knew I was headed toward the nearest exit after our “interview,” because they hand-delivered me to my next class, which gave gossip time to spread and Jake time to track me down. And now he’s in my car asking questions while I’m supposed to be leaving.
I try to mask the impatience in my voice. “Why do you want to talk to me?”
“What did those detectives ask you about?”
“Shit that’s none of your business.”
“C’mon, Caroline, my dad’s a judge and …” He holds out his hand until I drop the vape into it. “She was my friend too. I want to help, not just hold a fucking candle, you know?”
“Flameless candle. In broad daylight.”
“Yeah, what the hell was that about?”
His look of genuine confusion is enough to put me over the edge, and all the stress of the last few hours comes out in the form of highly inappropriate laughter. “It was supposed to be last night, remember? But it rained so it got moved to this morning.”
Mom moved it because she couldn’t bear a low turnout for her event, and she couldn’t get canopies set up in time.
“The logical thing to do would’ve been to nix the candles, but my parents got into a huge fight over them. My dad wanted locally sourced, organic beeswax — if you’re going to save the girl, you might as well save the bees too, I guess — and my mom disagreed because I don’t think she knows how to do anything else. And then everything fell apart because we had to move it to the new field since it’s farthest from the entrance and therefore inaccessible to lurking media.”
It takes Jake several tries before he finally forms words. “So, she went out and bought a thousand flameless candles on some sort of principle?”
I shrug, because I’m not sure I have the words to fully explain why my mom does the things she does, or if I even understand enough to explain them.
It’s a full minute before Jake says, his voice low, “Do you know something, Caroline? About Madison, I mean. About her disappearance?”
The question hangs in the closed-up silence of my car, the steady stream of rain pinging off the roof and draping us in curtains of glass and water.
I didn’t an hour ago, but now I might. Except I’m not ready to share yet. “The detectives asked all the expected stuff. My name. Where I live.”
“And?”
“And they asked me where I was the night Madison disappeared.”
That was my first lie. I barely made it through the first five minutes.
Jake hands me the vape and rubs his palms down his thighs, like he’s afraid of my answer. “Where were you?”
Truth: Starting the first phase of my tattoo at a place that doesn’t get hung up on legalities like age restrictions or parental permission. “Out. Madison’s calendar showed I was supposed to meet with her to start our chem project.”
I was supposed to meet her. And I bailed.
Not because I had to start my tattoo that night, or even because I wanted to, but because I knew exactly how the night would go if I met up with Madison.
We’d make it less than thirty minutes before Madison would start to twirl her hair and then say, “So what’s up with you, Caroline?”
She’d been building up to it for weeks — sharp inhales at the first lull in conversation that I had to cut off before she could call me out on breaking the promise we made to each other when we were fourteen, when we swore we’d never lie to each other. Never hold back the important stuff.
That night we sat on her balcony, moonlight straining against a wall of silver clouds, and sipped at Dixie cups filled with the vodka we replaced with water after breaking into her parents’ liquor cabinet. We vowed not to sleep until the sun trickled into the sky and scared away the dark.
We talked about boys and I was just drunk enough to talk about girls, and then I froze, head spinning too fast to run. But then her cold fingertips found mine beneath our shared blanket and I didn’t try to stop the tears that dropped to my cheeks. We spent the night huddled in the corner, until our breath turned white and then disappeared with the dawn.
She never told anyone, and I tucked her acceptance into my heart and let it convince me my spaces were safe. Then, that night after my game, I told my mom who I was and those spaces collapsed. I never quite found my way back.
So when I found Willa again, I didn’t tell Madison. This time, I protected my safe space with everything I had, even from the one person who’d never betrayed me.
I broke my vow to Madison. I lied to her. And Willa left anyway.
I gave everything, and it still wasn’t enough. I still wasn’t enough.
Then I didn’t know how to tell Madison I’d pushed her away for someone who left me behind.
And even now as I sit here in this car, with Jake staring at my temple like he can pull the thoughts from my head, I can’t stop remembering how Madison seemed quieter lately, her smile a watt dimmer.
And not once did I ask why. Or what was up with her. I did to her what so many others had done to me.
I walked away.
Since then, all I’ve done is hand out flyers and wait.
“What’d you tell the cops?” Jake stares through the windshield to the blur of trees struggling against the wind.
“That I was sick.” I avoid his gaze when he turns to me, but I can feel the accusation in it like a scrape across my skin. “What difference does it make, Jake? My answer isn’t going to bring her back.”
I want there to be more conviction in my voice, but my words fall flat and quiet, closer to a question than I’m willing to admit.
But there is something I can do — I just have to get Jake out of my car to do it.
My phone buzzes in my cup holder and an email notification from Mr. McCormack lights up the screen. My phone case fogs with the sweaty heat of my hands when I press my thumb to unlock it.
The screen shifts and I’ve barely read the first word when Jake’s hand darts out to grab my phone. I lunge for him and my fist connects with the side of his head, sending stabs of pain through my knuckles.
He yells, “Jesus, Caroline! You didn’t need to concuss me with your douche flute.” He rubs the spot on his head that has only the smallest smear of blood.
“Next time don’t try to steal from me! And I didn’t mean to hit you with it anyway. It was just in my hand.”
His brows are furrowed. “Why is Mr. McCormack emailing you?”
I click the locks. “Get out.”
“No. You shouldn’t be emailing him. Or texting him. Or hanging out in his class after —”
“Mr. McCormack emails everyone. And I don’t think I asked for your opinion.”
“You don’t —” He shakes his head, his eyes not betraying his thoughts.
“What?”
He shakes his head again, lips pressed so tight they’ve lost all color. “Just … trust me.”
“Not good enough, Jake. If you know something, tell me, otherwise get out so I can leave.”
He presses his palms together, fingertips to his lips, then peels his hands apart so he can rake them through his hair. “Preston Ashcroft’s brother is on the new task force for Madison’s case.”
“Preston Ashcroft is also the biggest gossip in the entire school. Why would anyone tell him anything?”
“I know, but just … Just listen, okay? Madison had this burner phone she used sometimes to score weed.”
I raise an eyebrow, but it’s more to cover the guilt weighing heavily on my chest. At some point, it seems Madison started lying too.
Jake’s face is splotched with red, his jaw clenched so tight I take pity on him and say, “Relax, Jake, I’m not the NCAA coming to drug test you for eligibility.”
He nods toward my vape. “You wouldn’t exactly be setting the right example.”
I flip him off and his laughter fills the car before he says, “I don’t smoke, and Madison didn’t much either. You know that. Just for parties and stuff. But that’s not the point. Preston says they found out about the phone because they got a warrant to search Mr. McCormack’s earlier today, and Madison texted him from her burner the night she went missing.”
I fiddle with the heat so I won’t look as rattled as I feel. “So?”
Mr. McCormack converses with plenty of his students. He does movie nights and chaperones overnight trips. He’s got an insufferably enthusiastic open-door policy for any student who wants to talk. But he’s always professional, never letting anyone slip past a line. He talks with lots of students, all the time. By email and phone — his St. Francis–supplied cell phone.
If he was trying to hide something, he’d be smarter than that.
Whatever the cops are thinking, they’re wrong.
Jake says, “So he called her after the text. And she answered. And then no one heard from her again.”
My face flushes hot, blood prickling beneath my skin. “He’s the most popular teacher on campus. Kids call him all the time. He probably gave her the ‘I don’t think about my students like that’ speech.”
My brain scrambles to predict where this goes next, and I’m about to say Mr. McCormack will just provide an alibi for that night to clear himself. Except, I happen to know who his likeliest alibi would be and I doubt it’s going to work in his favor.
I take a long hit off my vape, because self-destructive tendencies define me today. “Since when does talking to someone mean you kidnapped them?”
“It doesn’t. But it makes you a hell of a suspect when you’re the last person to do it before they disappear.”
The wind gusts, battering my car and sending a funnel of leaves spiraling across the grass, and there’s this pause in time where I wait to hear Madison yell, “Leaf tornado!”
But there’s only silence.
I throw the car in reverse. “I have to go.”
“What did you find in the locker?”
If I tell him, he’ll insist on coming with me. If I don’t, he could march right into school and tell Preston Ashcroft. Or Headmaster Havens. Or the idiot detectives.
There is no winning in this situation. “A matchbook. From a bar I know in West Virginia.”
“A matchbook from a bar you know in West Virginia.”
“That’s what I said, yes.”
He clicks his seat belt into place. “I’m coming with you, for whatever it is you’re about to do.”
Whatever I’m about to do.
I’m going to stop holding candles and start doing what the cops aren’t — find my friend.
There’s no way Madison spent time at The Wayside. She’s meant for cocktail parties, not dive bars set along the side of the road. She wouldn’t fit in there. People would have noticed, and talked.
I would’ve heard about it.
Except the matchbook with her handwriting is real, and I didn’t hear about it, and that means whatever Madison was doing, it was a secret.
The Wayside is my secret — mine, and then mine and Willa’s — but never Madison’s.
There’s only one way to find out when that changed.
And the whole drive to The Wayside, I’ll try to make myself forget it’s a place where Willa’s presence is permanently soaked into the air, where I can close my eyes and still hear her voice.
If she were here, if she hadn’t run for California, she’d wrap her arms around me, her fingers threading through my hair, and this fog in my head that makes it hard to think straight would vanish. The tremble of panic in my blood would calm. Willa was quiet strength, endless optimism, the girl everyone told their secrets to because they knew they’d be safe with her. That she would understand, free of judgment.
If she were here, I’d kiss her and the world would be right again.
Instead, she’s gone and every minute is more wrong.
I jam the car back into park, toe off my shoes and raise my hips, ignoring Jake’s hard exhale as I slide my damp tights down my thighs. “We’ll go through the service entrance since the media are all out front. Are you allowed to leave or do I have to hide you under a blanket in the trunk?”
It takes him a moment of stunned silence before he manages, “Why do I feel like you’ve actually done that before. I can leave. Special Senior privileges.”
Of course. How could I have forgotten the enormous honor of being awarded Special Senior privileges: “seniors with high academic and social standing who’ve demonstrated consistent adherence to St. Francis’s guidelines for personal conduct.” See also: students whose parents hold enough influence.
I look Jake over, and he’s every bit the Special Senior. And nothing like a Wayside patron. “Do you have anything else to wear?”
“Not on me.”
“Give me your tie, and …” I survey him and he frowns. “I don’t know, roll up your sleeves, I guess? Hold on.”
I run my fingers through his hair, mussing it the best I can, the strands tickling my palms. It’ll have to do. Jake is gonna look like his Uber dropped him on the side of the road when his daddy’s credit card got declined no matter what I do.
After a quick forage in my landfill of a back seat, I come up with a jean jacket and a pair of black Chuck Taylors to fix my prep-school girl ensemble.
I loop Jake’s tie around my neck and leave it sloppy. “You’re just trying to get out of our calc test next period, aren’t you?”
He gives me a crooked smile. “You’re my only competition in that class anyway.”
I throw the car into reverse, but not before I sneak a glance at Mr. McCormack’s email.
It reads simply:
Ms. Lawson,
I’m requesting an immediate meeting to discuss your attendance and academic performance. Failure to comply will result in a demerit and an official letter to your student record.
Mr. McCormack