Libby Lucas knows what happened before she even reads the notification on her phone. Madison Caldwell is dead and Chloe Winthorp is missing. In their little neighborhood of just sixty-seven residents, it’s unnerving to say the least.
Last night, she watched from her reading nook as police searched Chloe’s room. They were there for a good three hours, dusting for fingerprints and digging through drawers. All of Belgrave Circle was a light show of alternating red and blue. Now it’s barely 6 a.m. and all is dark again. Quiet. You’d never guess that a mere twelve hours ago, a girl had been strangled and left for dead in the gully.
Madison Caldwell is dead. Chloe Winthorp is missing.
The staccato statements repeat on a loop as her brain short-circuits. It doesn’t seem real—any of it. In all of Libby’s sixteen years on this earth, in this circle, she’s never experienced the death of a peer. The neighbor, Ms. Starkey, died a couple summers ago. Libby’s mother used to tend to her plants while she visited her sister in Florida for the winters. But Ms. Starkey was in her nineties, and that made her passing more expected. It was almost as though it was an afterthought, actually, Libby muses as she remembers walking by the house while movers marched in and out, hauling furniture onto the lawn for an estate sale. “Oh, Ms. Starkey must have died.” Her mom said it as nonchalantly as one might say, “they’re calling for rain on Tuesday,” and Libby told herself that was just one more thing she would probably come to understand when she’s older—how humans can be as indifferent to the end of a life as they are to a weather forecast.
This one feels different, though. Madison Caldwell is young. People will not be as quick to write her off. Because if Madison Caldwell could be murdered, so could their kids. It’s tragic, titillating, and ironic. Never has Belgrave Circle felt more alive than it does now after the death of one of its own.
No one’s found Chloe yet. Not to Libby’s knowledge. But, her mom is best friends with Chloe’s mom. If anyone’s going to be among the first to hear anything, it will be her.
She sees a lot of things from her bench beneath the tall turret window in her bedroom. Her parents built it as a quiet place for her to study, but the study Libby conducts is most often not confined to books—the exception being her favorite graphic novel series, Crestfall. Instead, she observes the neighborhood below. Rowan’s yard is a smattering of red and golden leaves to her right, the fire pit brimming with them so it appears to be ablaze. To her left is the street where people walk their dogs and their kids; they’ll come from across town to take a stroll in her crescent-shaped community, meandering down all the side streets and stone bridges. Behind her—
Libby sucks in a breath and holds it. Her right hand presses against her chest, as though she’s trying to calm her racing heart; instead, she clutches the heart-shaped locket she only recently remembered she had upon finding it in the drawer of her nightstand. It’s silver with raised filigree that she imagines to be a code written in braille, the key to unlocking all her secrets.
The cops are parked outside Reeves Singh’s house. It isn’t part of the circle, but behind it, one of the many identical single-story houses that form her neighborhood’s outer shell. The backyard is dusted with blood-red leaves that cling to the soccer goal. Every night for as long as she can remember, she has watched Reeves practice his footwork and launch the ball into the net. Except last night when she’d gone to the play. Where had he been?
A light turns on in the kitchen, illuminating the space above the Singhs’ sagging deck. Even from her perch fifty yards away, Libby can tell that Reeves’s house on Rainbow Row does not have marble countertops or updated cabinetry, staples for the dwellings of Belgrave Circle.
Libby scrunches her brows, wondering what the police can possibly want to talk to Reeves Singh about, and then it dawns on her. He is—was—Madison Caldwell’s boyfriend, and quite possibly the last person to have seen her alive.
If there is such a thing as a golden couple at Monroe Academy, Reeves and Madison were it. Both were as beautiful as walking statues, especially Reeves with his strong jaw and chiseled athletic physique. Madison sang soprano in the choir and danced at halftime shows, sequins shimmering like starlight. The way they fit together was as satisfying to watch as peeling the skin off a mouse in one piece.
Several times already this semester, Libby caught herself staring at the ropy veins that twined in Reeves’s forearms. He noticed her once, in the seventh-hour history class they shared, and a dimple dented his cheek. Libby squinted then and pursed her lips as though she’d just sucked on a lemon, forcing herself to find Uzbekistan on the world map on the wall behind him. Her face suddenly scorching, she promised herself she would never do it again.
But she lied. Even as she recited the oath in her mind, she knew she would never stay true to it. Rather, she amended her promise to be that she would simply never stare at Reeves Singh again and get caught.
He would never catch her from up here, never feel the weight of her gaze as he sinks ball after ball into the net. Or when he sits shirtless on the back deck while his mother cuts his hair.
The memory makes her cheeks start to heat up again. She licks her lips as her wandering eyes find purchase on Reeves being walked out of his front door, a cop on either side of him, and her breath hitches. Her hand flies to the silver locket around her neck and she leans even closer to her window, the chill wicking the warmth from her face, to zero in on Reeves’s shrinking figure. Her gaze travels down to his hands, as though searching for blood, but she knows as well as anyone that there was no blood at the scene.
She watches as Reeves gets into the back of an unmarked car. A woman with braids shuts the door on him, then gets in behind the wheel. A man with a mohawk ponytail sits down in the passenger seat. Reeves’s parents and his sisters stand at the edge of the yard and remain there even as the car pulls away.
Libby tries to swallow but her throat is too dry. She leans away from the window, so the back of her skull rests against the wall. She draws her knees up toward her chest and just sits there, a vacant stare plastered on her face.
They took Reeves Singh.
Monroe Academy’s golden boy.
Why? What could they possibly have—
She checks her phone and scrolls for news. Madison’s and Chloe’s names and faces are everywhere, but there’s no mention of Reeves. Yet.
What the articles do mention is how the missing girl and the murdered girl were best friends. But Libby knows the truth. She remembers lying in the dark, she and Chloe so close their foreheads were nearly touching, as Chloe wept and told her every terrible thing Madison had done to her. About the Snapchat and the rumor that threatened Chloe’s dream of becoming an actress and of leaving Black Harbor. Tears well in her eyes at the memory. She wipes one away and watches as the water fills the artful, recessed swirls of her fingerprint. Libby puts it in her mouth. Tasting salt, she prays that she didn’t leave any trace of herself on Chloe’s window.