If time had meaning once, it doesn’t now.
My life used to revolve around the steady advancement of the clock. Three months until graduation. Three days beyond that until my eighteenth birthday.
Not anymore.
That stopped the second I saw Madison’s picture of my sketch — irrefutable evidence she was following me, or at least going through my things. I can’t even guess why. Don’t want to guess why.
That sketch has never left my bag, and if she photographed it, she knows it has meaning. And then there’s the lipstick with the iris on it.
I don’t know if it has anything to do with my sketch, but I can’t rule it out.
It’s proof though that I’m the thing that led her to Chrystal, to The Wayside, to whatever she was investigating. And whatever she discovered, it was worth enough for Chrystal to give Madison her phone number.
What if she saw something she wasn’t supposed to see? Something that got her taken? Since I can’t figure out what, I start my search from another angle.
I started the morning by tracking down friends of Rebecca Wilder. Knocking on their doors, begging them to talk to me. When some relented, I asked about the man who promised to make her theft charges disappear.
And then I got a text from Jake, telling me the when and where of the meeting I agreed to have with Jake’s dad’s lawyer friend.
I laid my entire story on the table. Signed my name to a paper my parents will definitely see. Inky black letters on stark white paper with a pretentious “Caroline Waverly Lawson” scrawled beneath. I don’t know if it will save Mr. McCormack and Madison. I can only wait to see how badly it will destroy me.
I should care more, but my world has tumbled end over end, and the grains inside the hourglass spill minutes until the moment of my expulsion.
My best friend didn’t just keep things from me, she spied on me. She held on to the kinds of secrets that could get her kidnapped.
These facts make me look harder, ask more questions when I leave the attorney meeting and talk to more of Becca’s friends. But she’s been gone far longer than Madison, and no one seems to think she’s ever coming home.
So when the growl of an engine roars into my driveway I have to force myself from my room to unlock the door, and I’m turning away before Jake’s shoe hits the driveway.
I don’t have the headspace to be mad, even though there's a chance the cops are tracking his car, which means he’s led them right to me.
His silence sneaks up behind me and hovers, a gasp before the guillotine blade slices down.
Then, “Caroline.”
I click and drag a thick red line over the map glaring from my computer screen, stretching it to the matching red pin four miles away.
“Caroline, what is this?”
“A map.”
“I see that. What for?”
I stab my finger onto the computer screen, to the map stretching across it. “Each girl gets a different color pin and matching connection lines. School, work, home. See anything interesting?”
If he says no he’s a liar.
He spends as much time glancing back at me as he does studying the map. “It looks like there’s a group centered around that one area there.”
“Yeah. You want to know what’s right fucking by there? Chrystal’s trailer. And that empty house with the guy that tried to blow our heads off.”
He winces and I don’t blame him, because that click slide click still echoes through my head just when I think I’ve forgotten it. He says, “There’s something I need to —”
“You want to know what else is right by there? Less than ten miles away? Higgins Lake. The shitty side. That girl I found two years ago? I’m nearly positive that's where I was.”
My stomach threatens to revolt every time I think about it. What I could’ve and should’ve done. How that day changed everything. Because the day I found that girl was the day I found Willa.
Jake says, “You’re nearly positive?”
“I wasn’t in what you’d call the right frame of mind to be memorizing directions, okay? But even if I’m wrong, Preston said —”
“Preston said Madison could’ve made that call from hundreds of miles away. I googled the cell tower thing, and people call it ‘junk science.’ There’s tons of cases where these ‘experts’ that claim it works get ripped apart on the stand, or where the FBI hasn’t been allowed to testify because it doesn’t meet standards. It’s bullshit.”
“Why are you fighting this so hard?”
“Because you’re not making sense.”
“Just let me finish.” I need to speak the words out loud. I need someone to witness them.
Maybe this was how Chrystal felt all these years. Why she made forum posts and kept painstaking records. Maybe silence felt too much like concession.
My finger squeaks against the trackpad when I draw a thick line between “Emily Darby” and “Julie Smith.”
I smack my palm against the wall that holds printouts with data from each of the missing girls, and the edges flutter like they’re trying to jump free. “All of these girls. From mid-2013 back, make up that other cluster. Including Chrystal’s daughter.”
He steps closer, hints of cinnamon and leather teasing the air as he studies the screen. “There are outliers.”
It’s a reasonable counterpoint — there are several pins that aren’t anywhere near either group — but that hardly disproves the theory. “I haven’t gotten to research all the names yet to see if they’re truly missing. Just because Chrystal wasn’t right about everything, it doesn’t mean she’s not right about some things. She posted a list of girls on this forum —”
“You’re basing your hypothesis on posts from some conspiracy theory forum?”
“In part, yes. And one of the girls on her list — you remember that teacher from Howard High? The guy that killed himself when he was about to get arrested for murdering a girl? Well, that girl was on Chrystal’s list. Look at this, Jake, you can’t —”
“I need to tell you something.”
I shove my laptop to my bed and stand, because if he tells me Madison is dead, I won’t have the strength to move again. “What is it?”
“The cops found Chrystal’s body. Anonymous tip. Her place was trashed.”
It’s relief I feel first, followed by guilt. Anger for Chrystal close behind. “So the cops kill her and then ransack her home?”
“You don’t know it was the cops.”
“You don’t know it wasn’t.” I jerk my arm toward my laptop because evidence is evidence, and when a dozen girls go missing in only a few years and the cops don’t notice, there’s a reason. “And you weren’t the one interviewing friends of Rebecca Wilder today, Jake. Everyone thinks the cops are involved. Her parents were terrible but her friends reported her missing. The cops didn’t even try to find her. Ignored everyone when they told them about the guy she met.”
“You went out interviewing people?” He paces the room. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
“No. I’m trying to save other girls from getting killed. In case you hadn’t noticed, the cops are too busy drugging people and —”
“She wasn’t drugged.” It’s only after I’ve blinked twice that he continues. “I asked my dad to test the glass last night. He agreed to do it on the condition I” — he air quotes — “‘not involve myself further.’ I lied to him, Caroline. Do you know how hard that was?”
“No.”
He’s staring at me like he wants me to be lying, but I’m not. “The test was negative.”
“So you think I was faking getting sick that night?”
“No, I —”
“You think Chrystal was just … taking a really long fucking nap? Because she’s dead now. You just said that.”
“Maybe it was something else! Did you eat or drink —”
“No, I —” My thoughts freeze me in place. “Cigarette. She gave me a cigarette.”
I blink and he’s standing in front of me, his fingers curled around my shoulders, strips of heat melting through the thin fabric of my T-shirt, and his voice goes calm. “Maybe it was the cigarette. Maybe it wasn’t. Have you slept at all? Did you eat anything?” My response barely forms before he sighs and says, “Caroline. We don’t know that any of this is true.”
“Hidden connections.”
If time does exist, I found a way to stop it. We don’t move or speak. We both know what I’m trying to say. Mr. McCormack’s walls are covered with quotes from ancient philosophers to modern-day influencers, and they start with Heraclitus: “A hidden connection is stronger than an obvious one.”
Jake’s hands slip from my shoulders. “Is that what this is about? My ribs are covered in fucking bruises and my dad thinks I’m a criminal and you’re hanging out in drug houses and playing Girl Detective and it’s all because you’re trying to save Mr. McCormack?” The rise in his voice is so gradual I don’t realize I’m flinching away until he gets to the end.
“It’s my fault he’s in trouble in the first place! Without me, the cops would never have questioned him. If he didn’t have my license, they’d have absolutely nothing to prove their suspicions. And in case you’ve forgotten, Jake, Madison is still missing and the cops are too busy trying to prove Mr. McCormack is hurting me to actually look for her. She is running out of time.”
A voice in my head whispers: If it’s not already too late.
“And these —” I grab a handful of flash drives and fling them at him until they bounce from his chest and scatter onto the floor. “Do you want to know how many pictures she took that you appear in?”
“No.”
“I bet not.” I storm past him and rip my laptop from the bed and find what I’m looking for. Then I wait for him to register what’s on the screen. I went through every single remaining flash drive, and these are still the only six pictures that matter. The only six edited, out of sequence, pictures. “What the fuck is this, Jake?”
He won’t look at me. His chest heaves and the muscle in his jaw twitches, but he won’t look at me. “What do you want me to say?”
“Tell me why she’s obsessing over pictures of us. Tell me why and how she got a picture of my tattoo sketch.”
He shrugs, palms upturned. “I don’t know where she got your sketch, and I shouldn’t have to tell you about the first part. You’re the only person who doesn’t know. Or maybe you’re just the only person who pretends not to know, because you’re too busy throwing yourself at people who don’t care about you.”
It’s a full ten seconds before I manage a strangled “What?”
“I’m not just talking about Mr. McCormack, but him too. If he cared, Caroline. If he cared about you at all, don’t you think he would’ve called on your secret phone?”
His hand jacks upward to cut off my response, but I can’t form words anyway when he says, “Your girlfriend too. Here’s the thing. Nobody can make it from late breakfast in San Francisco to lunch in L.A. It’s a fucking six-hour drive even if you could hovercraft over the twenty goddamn accidents you’d probably pass along the way. And Disneyland? It doesn’t have Cinderella’s castle. That’s Disney World. In Disneyland it’s Sleeping Beauty’s. And maybe your dad didn’t drag you to California a million times when you were growing up, so you wouldn’t know whose fucking castle is in the middle of which Disney, but Jesus, Caroline. You’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met and if you didn’t realize you couldn’t drive four hundred miles between breakfast and lunch then you’re just trying not to see.”
I’m too hollowed out to understand any of what he’s trying to say. Every word steals a piece of me until I’m nothing.
“She lied to you.” His hand jerks toward his back pocket and then the stack of Willa’s letters spiral as he throws them onto the bed, jagged edges where I ripped open the envelopes catching and snagging on each other. “She’s not in California. All of what she wrote is bullshit. She dumped you and couldn’t even be honest about it, and I’m here. I’ve always been here.”
He read Willa’s letters. He took Willa’s letters.
I shovel them into my hands and one of the envelopes slices my palm, a line of sharp heat that swells with each heartbeat.
If I’m the ocean, I can create a flood to destroy everything.
I crumple the mess of letters and torn envelopes to my chest and stumble past him.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe I didn’t want to see. Maybe she made up the excuse about going to California because she knew I’d say no. Her mom was leaving, she said. She had to go too. Or she’d be stuck with her mom’s boyfriend. She had no choice. But I should stay. I needed to stay. My only choice was to not ruin my life.
And maybe hers was to leave me.
I don’t bother with a coat. The laces on my shoes flop uselessly, pinging against the tile floor. If Jake doesn’t get the fuck out of my driveway I’m going to test the structural integrity of Mabel’s sturdy Buick against his front bumper.
The metal handle of the garage door snaps from my hand and fire lances along the top of my ripped-off nail. Blood wells over my middle finger and a fat droplet free falls to the ground where it splatters onto one of Willa’s letters that’s slipped from my hand.
The ink, the blood, and the puddle the letter’s sitting in reach for each other until blue blurs into pink and another droplet of crimson muddles them both.
I leave a smear of red across the garage handle on the second try, and the door arcs toward the mass of grey clouds as I rescue my letter. A drip of water trickles down my arm and tucks itself into the crook of my elbow.
If it’s cold out, I can’t feel it.
I can’t feel anything.