Dedication
To Judy and Bill and long summers filled with books
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Kathleen Peacock
Back Ad
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
FOR WEEKS AFTER THE DAY RILEY FRASER DISAPPEARED—A cold Saturday in March that seemed ordinary in every other way—people thought he would come back.
It’s not that bad things never happened in Montgomery Falls. There was the schoolteacher who poisoned her husband with arsenic in 1919 and the textile mill fire of ’44—the one that killed thirteen men. There was the man who died on the old rail bridge and the university student who went for a walk five years ago and never came back—the one a group of kids found near the spot where chimney swifts nest in the thousands.
But those things were few and far between, spread far enough apart that they didn’t threaten the town’s reputation as good and safe.
When bad things did happen, they certainly didn’t happen to boys like Riley; they didn’t happen to boys who shone so bright the whole town waited to see what their futures held.
And so Montgomery Falls rallied.
There were search parties and flyers.
Announcements and pleas for information.
There were public meetings and Facebook groups and vigils as Riley’s father flew in from Toronto and offered a reward so large that Riley’s face was on the national news.
But as the days stretched out, as the river rose with snowmelt and swelled up past its banks, the rumors started.
What if Riley Fraser wasn’t as perfect as he seemed?
Maybe he had gotten a girl into trouble. In fact, hadn’t something happened just before he disappeared—some sort of incident at a party?
Maybe he was still upset about his parents’ divorce—a split so contentious that it had been the talk of Montgomery Falls for over a year. Everyone knew Riley went a little wild after his father left. Everybody said that the divorce was proof that no matter how much money you had—and some people claimed the Frasers could buy and sell half the town if they wanted to—there were some things you couldn’t fix.
Wasn’t Riley one of the kids who found that university student up by the mill a few years ago? Riley and his brother and that Montgomery girl from New York. What if something like that changed you? Wormed its way in and hollowed you out.
And if all of that wasn’t enough, plenty of people remembered what Riley had been like when his family first moved to town. Quiet and skinny and just a bit odd. A far cry from the charismatic, popular boy who went for a walk in the woods one day and didn’t come back.
It didn’t take Riley’s mother long to stop leaving the house. It took even less time for his father to fly back to his new life in Toronto, leaving Riley’s brother—two years older and as dark as Riley was golden—to drop out of college and move home.
More than 900 miles away, I knew none of this.
I hadn’t spoken to Riley Fraser since the summer I turned twelve. Not since the day he kissed me—a first kiss that tasted like lucky pennies and grape bubble gum—on the old swing on my aunt’s front porch. Not since the day he figured out what I really am.
I didn’t know Riley was missing or that his photo was on posters from the border of Maine to the edge of the Atlantic Ocean.
Even if I had known, there wouldn’t have been anything I could have done.
More than 900 miles away, my own world was crumbling.
Now, of course, it’s different.
Ask me where I was when Riley Fraser disappeared.
I can’t tell you.
I don’t know where I was.
Or what I was doing.
Or who I was with.
But ask me what happened to Riley Fraser—ask me that, and I’ll tell you everything.
One
BAD GIRLS GO TO NEW YORK. I SAW THAT ON A T-SHIRT once. I had been wandering around a street fair with Lacey when she spotted it on a vendor’s cart. She reached past me, careful not to let her arm brush mine, lifted the shirt, and then held it up to her chest. The guy behind the table tried to convince her that purple was her color, that the shirt looked so great against her skin that he’d practically give it away—as long as she took his number at the same time.
Things like that are always happening to Lacey.
“Aren’t you the one who’s usually giving it away?” I asked, rolling my eyes skyward as I tried to bring her down a peg or two.
“Jealous?” she retorted.
“Not even a little.”
It was fine if she saw through the lie. For someone who seems to have everything and has always been able to tell people exactly what she wants, Lacey may be the most insecure person I’ve ever met. My jealousy reminds her that she’s doing okay, that things are on track, that people want to be her even if she desperately wants to be someone else.
If Lacey’s life were a movie, I’d be the plucky sidekick. The short, fat redhead who provides comic relief and moral support without ever stealing the scenes. The one always standing just a little bit behind her in Instagram pics.
And that suits me just fine.
At least it had. Back when it seemed like there was safety in Lacey’s shadow, when being near someone with a personality that big allowed me to be part of things without ever drawing too much attention to myself.
Before it had all backfired and my entire life blew up.
From where I’m sitting right now—eight rows back on a bus that smells like week-old pizza and dirty socks—that T-shirt had gotten it wrong: Bad girls don’t go to New York. Bad girls get put on a Greyhound back to a place they’d rather forget.
The bus slows and pulls into a gas station with peeling paint and a hand-lettered sign advertising live bait. Stop forty-three, I think as a trickle of people climb aboard and search for spots.
Up until now, I’ve been lucky: I scored a pair of seats at the start and somehow—possibly through a combination of guarded posture, prayer, and the sound of the Violent Femmes blaring from my earbuds—have managed to hold them for the first ten hours of the trip.
But luck deserts me as a plump woman with gray hair stops in the middle of the aisle and shoots me a friendly smile. The scent of vanilla wafts from her like perfume as she glances from my face to the backpack on the empty seat next to me.
When I don’t immediately make room, the friendly smile slips a notch. It doesn’t disappear completely, though, and she doesn’t keep walking.
I hesitate a second longer before pulling my bag onto my lap. As the woman lowers herself next to me, I tug th
e sleeves of my shirt down as far as they’ll go and then hunch in on myself, trying to make my body as small as possible. Lacey calls it my “subway slump.” Also good for crowded shopping malls, the hallway between classes, and apparently, the bus from New York to Canada.
But there’s only so much you can do when you’re big. You can twist and contort all you want, but volume is volume, and with both of us fat—“overweight,” my dad always corrects, as if that somehow sounds better—a trickle of sweat forms where our hips press against each other.
Before long, my shoulders start to ache from the effort of holding my torso as still as a statue, and eventually, the distance between New York and where I am now—not to mention all of the hours and weeks it took to get to this point—catches up with me. I slip a little farther down in my seat, and as the bus makes its way across Maine, my eyelids get heavy and then heavier.
Eventually, I close my eyes. I close my eyes and pull in a deep breath and—
Water rushes up my nose and down my throat, filling my lungs.
My eyes fly open as pressure rips through my chest. I gasp and struggle as someone tries to hold me under. Fingers dig into my arms. Whoever it is, they’re stronger than I am. I manage to break free just long enough to glimpse a wide face and gray hair and catch a handful of words—“I’ll show you. You’re not laughing now”—before I’m forced back down.
I’m forced back down and I can’t breathe and I can’t break free. I can’t break free and . . .
Everything shatters, and I’m left struggling for air in an unfamiliar place.
The bus, I realize as I press a hand to my chest. I’m on the bus. Even though the sensation of being unable to breathe was only in my mind, my lungs ache and my heart races.
“Are you all right?” The woman in the seat next to me has a hand on my shoulder. Her fingers must have skimmed the exposed skin at the collar of my shirt; they are, in fact, perilously close to touching skin right now. “We’re almost at the border. I thought I should wake you.”
Outside, the rushing landscape slows and then spins as we make the turn for the border crossing.
The woman’s face knots with concern as she removes her hand. She glances toward the front of the bus, wondering, maybe, if she should call out to the driver.
Other people twist in their seats to see if anything interesting is happening, but they barely register. I stare at the woman, trying to reconcile the concern on her face with the sensation of being held underwater. I force myself to nod, to tell her I’m fine, to play the whole thing off as a nightmare as the bus comes to a stop.
She doesn’t look convinced, but she gathers up her things and disembarks with everyone else. Determined to put as much distance between us as possible, I linger for a few minutes before stepping off the air-conditioned bus and into the summer heat. Shouldering my bag, I head to the small customs building at the edge of the parking lot.
A faint but steady ache begins to chip at my temples as I slip through the door and take my place at the end of the line.
As people inch forward, I can’t help but think that what just happened is some sort of omen and that maybe it’s not too late to sabotage my father’s plans and head home.
It wouldn’t even be that hard.
All I would have to do is step out of the line. Head to the bathroom and shred the documents Dad’s lawyer drew up. Flush the pieces down the toilet like contraband. They can’t let me cross without those papers—no matter what destination is printed on my ticket. They won’t let me cross, and I’ll use half of the money in my bag to get myself home.
Between problems with his publisher and his upcoming trip to California, Dad might not even realize I’m back. Not right away.
Of course, it’s not like my father is the only one in New York I have to worry about. As much as this trip feels like a punishment, there might be a tiny part of me that’s almost relieved to have an escape.
A very, very tiny part, but a part of me nonetheless.
And so I stay in line until I reach the front and then hand the letter and my passport over to a customs agent whose open, friendly expression practically screams, Welcome to Canada! He asks to see my bus ticket. “Mary Catherine Montgomery on her way to Montgomery Falls? A girl who has a whole town named after her.”
I force myself to smile. It feels tight around the edges. “Coincidence,” I lie.
“New York,” he says, still scanning the ticket. “Hell of a bus trip. You know you can fly into Bangor or Saint John and then just take the bus from there?”
“Yeah,” I say dryly, “I’ve heard that.” My father claimed the bus would be an adventure. Like being Jack Kerouac or Paul Simon. I didn’t bother telling him that I had only the faintest idea who he was talking about. Personally, I think his choice was motivated less by the romanticism of traveling America by road and more by the idea of saving a few hundred bucks on the ticket. Dad’s last two books were critical and commercial flops, and he hasn’t sold a screenplay in years. Things have been tight for a while—not that we ever directly talk about it.
The agent hands everything back. “Someone meeting you at the station?”
“My aunt.” It’s all in the letter, but he nods as though me saying those two words makes some sort of difference and tells me to enjoy Canada.
I buy a bottle of Coke in the duty-free shop and then wander back toward the bus, pausing in front of a bulletin board to take a drink. The headache is still dancing around my skull, but it’s not nearly bad enough for me to reach for the pills in my backpack. On the scale of one-to-awful, it’s a four at most.
My eyes trail idly over the brightly colored flyers on the board next to me. A hardware store on the US side that will hold parcels for Canadians. Reminders that plants aren’t supposed to be taken across the border. Ads for whale-watching tours along the coast and antique sales up and down the valley. Ordinary, forgettable stuff. But in among the other notices, partly covered by a plea for the return of a lost engagement ring, is a missing poster.
The word “missing” by itself wouldn’t be enough to hold my attention. Not really. It’s the name underneath that wraps itself around me and pins me to the spot.
Riley Fraser.
It has to be a coincidence, I think. There have to be about a thousand Riley Frasers in the world. But I still find myself reaching out and peeling away the flyer for the lost ring to reveal a black-and-white yearbook photo.
The boy in the picture is handsome. Chiseled jaw and wavy hair kind of handsome. The kind of handsome that gets crowned prom king or maybe class president. Even though the smile on the boy’s face looks forced around the edges, it’s wide enough to bring out the dimple in his left cheek.
A dimple isn’t proof, but there are other hints. Planes and angles around the eyes and the mouth. Echoes of a boy I used to know. The boy I’ve spent years trying not to think about.
There are a thousand Riley Frasers in the world, and the boy on the poster is mine.
Two
THERE’S A MOMENT, WHEN THE BUS CROSSES THAT IMAGINARY line between the US and Canada, that I catch myself listening for the second something changes. It’s a thing Dad used to do on our infrequent trips back to his mother country. “Do you hear it?” he’d ask as the car rolled toward the place where America ended and something else began. He swore there was a sound when you crossed, one you could hear if you really tried.
According to my father, hearing that sound was about a thousand times better than any lucky penny you could find. Hear that sound and you’d better make a wish.
For someone who doesn’t believe in magic, he talks a good game.
At six, I had tried so hard I gave myself a headache and threw up thirty paces over the border. At nine, I had been suspicious, but unwilling to completely discount the idea. Now, at seventeen, I know it’s bullshit, but I still find myself closing my eyes and holding my breath.
Because even though it was only ever just one of my father’s stories, I cou
ld use a wish or two.
But as hard as I listen, I can’t hear that moment any more now than I could when I was six, and when I close my eyes, I see the missing poster—Riley’s missing poster—and my head fills with questions. The date on the poster—the date Riley vanished—was March 19. Three months ago.
I rest my forehead against the window as the bus slows for the turnoff into Montgomery Falls. I can see my reflection in the glass—chubby cheeks, frizzy red hair, a nose that turns up just a little at the end—but this close, my face becomes just a collection of shapes and colors.
I tell myself that anything could have happened in three months. Three months ago, my life was completely different, and it’s definitely more than enough time for Riley to have turned up. He’s probably fine. If he wasn’t, Aunt Jet would have called. It doesn’t matter how strained things are between her and Dad or how scattered she can be. It doesn’t even matter that it’s been years since Riley’s name has crossed my lips. If Riley had been missing for any real amount of time, Jet would have called.
People put up posters and forget about them all the time. It’s just an old, forgotten poster.
The bus passes a strip mall and a succession of fast-food places and then rumbles across the river—a wide blue ribbon that winds through the lowland between two ridges of rolling green hills. The whole thing looks like a postcard. Even the rusting, abandoned train bridge and the ruins of the old textile mill—a jumble of bricks just visible in the distance—look picturesque. If you don’t know any better.
Two red lights and three turns later, we pull into the bus station—although calling anything so tiny a “station” might be giving it too much credit. Three other people disembark and are quickly scooped up by waiting friends and family. There are hugs and greetings. Suitcases tossed into the backs of waiting cars.
The driver pulls my duffel bag out from the luggage compartment and hands it over. I take it as I scan the parking lot. No rust-pimpled Buick and no Aunt Jet. I linger next to the bus for a moment, uncertain, and then head for a patch of shade next to the station.
I know Dad called Jet two nights ago to remind her—among other things—what time the bus would get in, but I overhear a passerby say that it’s 5:45 p.m. The bus isn’t early; it’s fifteen minutes late.
You Were Never Here Page 1
