Madge stood in front of the dusty attic window tracing her fingers along what had to be Sloane’s handprints, watching for her friends. It’d been over a month since one of the valets had driven Trip’s expensive car off the property and over to the used car lot in the center of town. Like so many others, Trip had simply disappeared from Hawthorne Lake, never to be heard from again. Unlike the others, however, his picture was everywhere. The Captain had spent long hours talking in soothing tones about the moment he’d discovered his grandson was guilty of murder—the importance of equality and justice in a world where the rich were rarely held accountable for their crimes. The Captain was a local hero and Willa was Hawthorne Lake’s sweetheart. In that way, things were very much the same.
Madge was trying to force herself to forget because she knew she’d never, ever be able to forgive. But the anger was still there. Black and terrible. She did her best to keep it at bay because Willa wouldn’t have wanted her to be angry or sad. Willa would have wanted her to move on, to live her life, to find pockets of happiness and hope.
So Madge spent her days trying to avoid the news, where Willa’s beautiful blonde picture and the Captain’s soundbytes were in heavy rotation. She holed up at the Club with her friends. The Captain had pumped up security to protect her family from the media. At least that’s what he’d said in interviews.
Of course, every time she returned home, she was reminded that everything had been paid for in her sister’s blood. She’d have to learn to live with that, too …
Jude Yang’s car pulled up the drive, and Sloane climbed out. She leaned into the window and said goodbye. Even from the distance, Madge saw his face light up. The two had been spending more time together. Even though he was headed back to school in a couple weeks, Madge knew something had sparked. Lina called out to Sloane, and Madge watched her jog over. The girls laughed together and turned toward the entrance, where they bumped into Rose and James. He squeezed her hand for a beat before hurrying off.
It was hard for Madge to watch Rose and James together. Hard to watch him falling in love after all the years he spent ignoring her sister. But he was entitled to some happiness. He was back in rehab, seeing a therapist, doing community service—not because he had to, but because he’d volunteered. He spent far less time at the Club than in the past. Another sign that Willa Ames-Rowan and James Gregory were never meant to be together. James had pined for Rose long before Willa had died. Probably long before Willa had even developed a crush on him. She wondered how long it would have taken Willa to realize that she didn’t have to be with someone like James just because it was expected or convenient or profitable. She should have had the chance to figure it out.
Madge listened for her friends’ footsteps on the wood stairs.
“Creeper! Were you spying on us?” Lina pushed open the door to the attic and laughed at Madge, still perched at the window.
“Bird’s eye view.” Madge raised her eyebrows.
Sloane threw herself into the old couch. “I can’t believe you’re leaving for school tomorrow, Lina. Why can’t you stay around here like the rest of us?”
Lina snorted. “Yeah right. You think my parents could wait until college to get rid of me?”
Madge knew the housekeeper had probably spent the last week packing her up for boarding school just like all the other years.
“We’ll be okay, though, right?” Rose asked.
Madge considered her question and wondered what it really meant to be okay. Had she ever been okay? Would she ever be okay? She’d finally removed Willa’s flip-flops from under her bed. Did that mean anything?
“Better than okay, we’ll be fabulous,” she said at last. Even if she wasn’t sure it was true, it was exactly what Willa would have said. It felt good to borrow one of her lines.
Just then her phone buzzed. In a fleeting instant of forgetfulness and habit, she wondered if it was her sister calling to yell at the girls for not waiting for her or to ask Madge if she could borrow her turquoise necklace or warn her that Carol was pissed again. But then she remembered.
That habit would be hard to break.
When she looked down, she had a new text from an unknown number. Her heart raced. It was the kind of text that you knew not to open, Spam or a virus or something that would otherwise destroy your phone: a single link, like the one Trip had sent. But it didn’t take long for Madge to recognize the address.
www.thisiswar.com
And one by one, the other girls’ phones sounded and buzzed. Their foreheads wrinkled in confusion.
“I thought Jude took this down, right Sloane?” Lina asked.
Before she could stop herself, Madge clicked the link, her heart pounding now. When the website came into view, it looked different. Madge released the air she’d trapped in her lungs. Thank God.
“Someone else stole our site,” Rose said.
“But …” Sloane turned her phone toward the girls. There were 10,541 comments. Madge narrowed her eyes and took the phone, clicking the newest comment. It featured another link, and before clicking, she looked up. All the girls nodded. When she clicked, the browser took them to some town’s local paper and a short article appeared on the screen with an accompanying picture.
Boy Accused of Date Rape Faces Vigilante Justice
The picture was blurry, obviously taken with a phone. A boy around their age was bound to a telephone pole at a busy intersection in New Haven, Connecticut. It wasn’t the fact that he was completely naked aside from a lacy bra and boxer shorts that made Madge drop her phone. It was the acronym that had been scrawled across his chest in thick black marker.
W.A.R.