Tony
Rustin wanted me to meet him in the parking lot of an abandoned grocery store. I took the same exit where I had followed him on the day we fought, the same exit I took on the night of the vigil. He gave me directions based on landmarks rather than street names: go left at the old ski chalet, hang a right at that circle of pine trees. I did four switchbacks and considered turning around before a cracked road deposited me in the grocery store parking lot.
Rustin was already there. He was sitting in his car when I pulled up. I parked next to him, but he didn’t seem to notice me. I rolled down my window and killed the engine.
“Hey,” I said.
He blinked a couple of times but didn’t acknowledge me, and something dark settled in my gut as fear crept from the base of my spine. My head whipped around the empty lot, suddenly certain that this was some kind of trap, that Rustin’s goons would start popping out of oblivion with baseball bats and chains, ready to pulverize me. Nothing happened.
“Rustin?”
He gripped the steering wheel, licked his lips, then finally turned to look at me. I could see that his eyes were glossy, red-rimmed, like he’d been crying.
“I don’t know where she is,” he said finally.
I got out of my car and crouched so I was staring into his window. “What?”
“Hope.” He blinked. “I don’t know where Hope is.”
I nodded slowly. “Okay.”
He blew out a defeated sigh. “You were right. She planned the whole thing, and I went along with it.” Rustin’s eyes raked over me, something like hatred in them. “She just wanted to teach you a lesson, and I figured what the hell? It was all in good fun.”
I bit back bile. All in good fun, and I was on my way to jail.
“I took Hope to my parents’ cabin in the woods. She was just supposed to stay there a day or two.” He shrugged. “No big deal.”
“So you were buying her food.”
“Yeah.” He gestured to the floorboard on the passenger side. A grocery bag sat there, a can of Pringles sticking out, nestled between some hummus and another package of mini muffins. “I was going to bring her this last stash and be done with it. I was over the whole thing, and it got blown way out of proportion. The stuff on the news, the candlelight vigil.”
“And?”
“And I went to the cabin, but Hope wasn’t there.”
I crossed my arms in front of my chest. “So?”
“So she was supposed to be there. She had no way of leaving. No car.”
“She probably just went for a walk or something.” I shrugged, anger burning in the pit of my stomach. Rustin had helped Hope pull one over on me. And now he was sad because Hope had left him? I would have laughed. I should have. That was Hope. Your best friend one minute, a royal bitch the next.
“So what are you telling me this for? What do you want from me?”
Rustin shook his head. “I figured maybe she went for a walk or something last night. But she wasn’t back this morning.” Rustin looked at me, and now I could see there was actual fear in his eyes. “And she wasn’t now either.”
Bellingham’s words came back to me: The police have just recovered a body.
“Take me to where you took her.”
Rustin screwed up his face. “What?”
“Take me to where you stashed Hope.”
“She’s not there. I told you.”
I glared, and Rustin blew out a low sigh, but he gestured for me to get in the car. I did, and he turned the key in the ignition. We were silent as he threw his car in gear and slowly pulled out of the parking lot.
My mind whirred as the forest around us got denser, doubt hanging at the edge of my periphery. What if this was just another part of Hope’s plan? What if Everly was in on it, and they were all just trying to teach me a lesson? I shifted in my seat, and Rustin looked at me, a muscle in his jaw flicking.
“You okay, bro?”
“Tell me about Hope’s plan.”
Rustin frowned, not taking his eyes off the tree-lined stretch of highway in front of us. “What?”
I raised my eyebrows, and he nodded. “It wasn’t all that super-detailed or anything. I was there when Hope called you that night.”
I swallowed, the lump in my throat rising fast. That night…
“We were just screwing around. Hope was only going to be gone a day or two. She dumped her cell phone, forwarded most everything to a new one and”—Rustin shrugged—“that was pretty much it.”
“She didn’t say anything to her parents?”
Rustin snorted. “You know her parents. We were both surprised that they even noticed she was gone.”
I nodded. “And then what?”
“Then nothing. It wasn’t supposed to be a big thing… At least I didn’t think it was supposed to be. She was going to be gone for, like, a day or two. You’d feel super bad, she’d come back to school, and that would be that.”
Anger boiled inside me. That would be that. I had a lawyer. I had been interrogated by the police. My parents couldn’t even look at me.
That would be that.
That was Hope. Nothing mattered but getting her revenge.
And now she was missing.
Was she?
“And what about Everly?”
Rustin took an easy corner, letting his foot off the gas. “What about her?”
“What was her role?”
“Nothing. Like I said, no big fancy plan. Just what I told you. Except…” His voice trailed off as he squinted down the dark road.
“Except?”
“The thing got out of hand. Her parents got involved. The police. The whole vigil and all the specials. I wanted to tell Hope I was done. I could get in real trouble for that shit, you know?”
I knew.
“So I texted her, but she didn’t answer. Called her. No answer. Finally, I went up to the house and”—another shrug—“she wasn’t there.”
Rustin took a blink-and-you’d-miss-it turnoff and slowed to a crawl. I could hear the pebbles from the dirt road plinking off the car, could feel the crunch of gravel underneath as we pulled down a narrow drive, a plain clapboard house framed by redwoods coming into view.
“She was supposed to be here,” Rustin said, his voice choked.
He parked the car, and I followed him, keeping a good pace behind, my ears pricked for anything that could be a warning: Hope’s giggle as she watched from somewhere. Everly’s whisper as they waited for me. But there was nothing. At the porch, I hung back.
“Dude,” Rustin said over his shoulder, “you coming?”
I nodded, waited for him to push open the door and step inside before I joined him. The place was decent but a mess: a small living room with mismatched furniture pushed askew. A broken leg on the table, but a nicer TV than the one we had at home. A stash of grocery bags on the kitchen counter. An empty bag of baby carrots was in the garbage can; the package of mini muffins on the coffee table.
Nice enough place, but not exactly Hope’s style.
“So I’m just supposed to believe that Hope has been hanging out here for a week?”
But Rustin didn’t answer me. I turned to see that he was picking something up off the porch. Hope’s hoodie.
My stomach clenched.
Still, I told myself, that doesn’t mean anything.
“This is Hope’s.”
Rustin looked at the discarded hoodie. His face had gone ash white, his mouth hanging open. He shook his head slowly. “I didn’t do this, man. I didn’t tie her up. I dropped her off. She was fine. I got her the blueberry mini muffins.” He looked like the mini muffin run was a holy baptism. I wanted to rip his head off.
“What part of the plan is this, Rustin? Is this part of it? You lead me up here, and she’s supposedly”—I slapped at the hoodie—“been hauled off by some madman or something? You’re as fucked up as she is.” I stomped out of the room, sure if I stayed another moment I’d have Rustin by the throat up against one of those lame-ass, plaid-flannel paintings that were all over the walls. Rustin ran up behind me.
“Man, I’m serious. There wasn’t anything else. I was supposed to pick her up, and she was just supposed to…you know, be here.”
“Then where the hell is she?”
Rustin started to tremble, his eyes taking up his full face. “I don’t know.”
I should have cared about Rustin, but I was too freaked out, too pissed. I grabbed him by the shirt and thumped him against the wall. “Who else knows about this place?”
“Here? No one. I mean, my mom and dad and…” Rustin wouldn’t meet my eye. I shook him again.
“Who else?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how anyone would know that she was out here.”
I let Rustin down and raked a hand through my hair, looking around the small place. “Is there any way she could have gone somewhere on her own?”
“I don’t know, man. I guess if someone else was in on…”
“You don’t know?”
“I thought I did. But you know Hope.”
I didn’t.
“Call her,” I said.
“Huh?”
“You said she had a new phone. Call her. See if she answers.”
“I’ve been—”
“Call. Her.”
Rustin finally nodded and obediently pulled out his phone.
“Put it on speaker.”
He dialed, flipped the phone on speaker, and we both waited for the connection.
“It’s ringing.”
I cocked my head, my eyes going wide. “It’s ringing here.”
The sound was low, muffled, but unmistakable. Hope’s phone was inside the house.
I started yanking pillows off the couch.
Rustin held his phone out but jumped in, shaking out an afghan and rifling through a stack of magazines.
“Where is it?”
I dropped to my knees, peering under the couch. It was still plugged in and must have fallen. “Here!”
“She left her phone. She would never leave her phone.”
“She did once before.”
Rustin nodded. “Yeah. Yeah.” He pumped his head. “Maybe she’s just messing with me too, you know? Maybe…” He blew out an unconvincing half snort, half laugh. “Maybe she’s just messing with me too.”
“We have to go to the police, man. Or at least her parents.”
Rustin paled and paused for a beat. “No, not right now. I mean, she’s Hope, right? She’s probably…”
“Everly didn’t come home last night,” I said slowly.
“Well, there you have it. Everly probably came by and picked up Hope. The two are probably halfway to Mexico right now. You know? Probably laughing their asses off at us.”
Part of me wanted to believe him. Part of me wanted to be like him and believe again that Hope was playing a prank, that everything would blow over with Hope staging a big Ta-da! at the end. But there was a body in the woods.
“We’re going to the police,” I said.
“No, no way.”
“Hope could be in trouble.”
Rustin seemed to consider that, seemed to savor the idea a bit. Then he shook his head again. “No, she’s not.”
“If you didn’t believe Hope was in trouble, you wouldn’t have called me.”
He dug his hands in his back pockets, suddenly the picture of cool. “Yeah, well, I’m beginning to see that was a mistake.”
“Whatever, dude. Let’s just go.” I turned and pulled the door open. “You coming, or do you want me to drive?”
“We’re not going to the police, okay? Hope is probably fine. She and—”
“She and Everly took off. Some grand prank. I get it. We’re going to go tell the police and let them handle it.” I left the house, didn’t check to see if Rustin was following me. And then I stopped.
I could see them clearly now: tire tracks. Thick and heavy in the mud. But the tracks weren’t what made my stomach drop, made me catch my breath. It was the tracks that stopped where the tire tread started. Footprints. First two pairs, one small and erratic. Then a single pair. I could see where someone had dug their feet in. Where they tried to hold their ground. And I could see where that person had been dragged away.