Four-Letter Word

by Christa Desir

  Rage burned inside of me. “You’re that insecure? You want everyone to like you that much? Even a girl who is ruining all our lives?”

  “It’s not like that,” Eve said, brushing away the tears and looking to Holly, who’d stepped back from her. Holly, who glared at Eve as if she didn’t even know her.

  “It’s exactly like that,” I snapped. And for a moment I saw in Eve everything I’d been feeling the entire year: the desperation to keep her as a friend, the need to be important to someone, the insecurity of thinking I wasn’t enough. And a whole new perspective clicked into place. Eve was climbing rungs. She’d upgraded from me to Holly, and now was upgrading from Holly to Chloe Donnelly. As if it would somehow be able to buy her a sense of place in the long run.

  The truth about the loneliness of girls hit me like a truck. How much we were all willing to give up just to mean something to someone. Me with Eve, Eve with Holly, girls with guys, all of us in one way or another with Chloe Donnelly. And then when we thought someone actually cared about us, it turned out it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. I glanced at Mateo. Was he a way for me to feel necessary? Maybe it was more than that. Maybe he was the way for me to find that on my own.

  Aiden sighed, all the palpable defeat pouring off everyone reflected in the sound. But then he squared his shoulders and said, “We need to look for her. Let’s split up. Guys will take South and East Campus, girls take from the library and the academic buildings to North Campus. Everyone keep your phones on. We’ll circle back here in thirty minutes to see if she’s shown.”

  “We should blow this off,” Cam said.

  But Aiden shook his head. “No. We gotta find her and make sure she’s okay. It’s the right thing to do.”

  “She’s probably at some campus party, ruining the lives of college students,” Cam mumbled.

  Josh snorted. “Probably. But Aid’s right. We need to find her and deal with all of this.”

  We all mumbled an agreement. Nan and Pops were expecting me home soon. But I couldn’t bail. Mateo skimmed his fingers along mine as he passed me on the way to East Campus. A little tingle fizzed up my arm, and I felt the same happiness I’d had in Herrick. As if all this dumb stuff was just a detour we needed to take in order for me to be me and for the two of us to be us.

  “I’ll talk to you later,” he whispered. “We’ll work it out.”

  I nodded and hoped he believed in me, in us. “I’ll help you get around her. You’re not on your own,” I whispered back. But the starkness in his face hadn’t completely gone away. And for a second I thought of the Mothers of the Disappeared. Then I recalled what I’d done in Herrick Chapel, how exhilarating it was, but also how dangerous. What if I got pregnant? I shook my head. We’d used a condom. I wasn’t going to get pregnant. Mateo and I would be fine. This would all be better tomorrow, when the game was over, Chloe Donnelly was stewing over her defeat, and Mateo and I could figure out our future.

  I followed behind Eve and Holly, scanning everywhere for Chloe Donnelly’s light-purple dress.

  “I can’t believe she no-showed,” Holly complained, pulling her hair up into a makeshift knot. “It’s like she knows we’re done with all her crap and is refusing to let the game end because she’s so obsessed with it. Whatever. I don’t care. Even if the guys lose for cheating, we’re not playing again.”

  I snorted. “That’s ironic, considering you could have ended the game last week.”

  She glared at me. “I told you why I couldn’t.”

  “Nothing’s changed. She still knows your secret.”

  “It’s different now. Because all seven of us know what she’s about. And we’re not letting her get away with it. It’ll be our word against hers.” She gave Eve a pointed look, and Eve nodded, repentant.

  I wasn’t sure how different it really was. But none of it mattered anymore. I couldn’t believe I’d ever thought of any of these girls as my real friends. All the secrets and lies were exhausting. Who would care if Holly’s dad was in prison? It didn’t have anything to do with her. And Eve was being stupid about the Ritalin and stupid to think Chloe Donnelly was a friend worth keeping. Mateo was the one I needed to protect. He was the reason to shut Chloe Donnelly down.

  I continued to scan the area, but while I did, I imagined my plans for the next day. First, I’d talk to my parents, tell them I wanted to stay in Grinnell, ask them to come home instead of extending their Spirit Corps assignment. I could be brave and ask for that. Then I’d call Melissa and meet up with her and Seth. Maybe Mateo would want to come too. I’d get to hang out with a real friend and it’d be easy and fun, even if the two of us were the biggest outcasts in school.

  “Oh my God.” Eve stopped suddenly and I bumped into her.

  “What?”

  “Look.” She pointed to a bench in front of one of the academic buildings. I leaned forward and peered into the dark where her finger was directed. Then I saw it, a blue-green scarf—Chloe Donnelly’s scarf. It was crumpled on the bench and covered in what looked like dark paint but what all of us must have realized was blood.

  I pulled my phone from my pocket with trembling hands and said, “Text the guys to get over here. I’m calling nine-one-one.”

  * * *

  The guys showed up a few minutes before the police did, and in those few minutes the weight of what I’d done was written all over Mateo’s face. Mateo’s beautiful and now panicked face.

  “I can’t stay,” he whispered, pulling me away from where everyone else was arguing over what the hell had happened.

  “What? Why?”

  “I can’t get involved with the police. Not with my status. You know I can’t. It’s too dangerous. I have to skip.”

  “Oh God, Mateo. I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I just saw her scarf and the blood and I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “Chloe,” he said, kissing my forehead. “It’s okay. You did the right thing, but I can’t risk this. My family . . .”

  Of course he couldn’t risk it. I knew that. But the thought of him leaving me pierced through me. I wanted to cling to him and ask him to stay, beg him. I released a long breath. I needed to pull myself together, think of him first, what he needed.

  So I nodded, tears brimming. “I know. Of course you can’t risk it. Will you stay in Grinnell? Lie low around here?”

  He looked broken and trapped. Stupid, stupid, stupid Chloe Donnelly. She ruined everything. Though even as I thought it, I felt terrible. Something might have happened to her. God, what was wrong with me? I was a self-absorbed brat.

  “I don’t know if I can stay. I need to talk to my parents. I have to disappear for a while until they find Chloe.”

  Neither of us said what we were both thinking—the only way he’d be able to come back was if they found her and she was fine. An open missing persons case that Mateo was even peripherally involved with would close the door on him ever returning.

  “They’ll find her. We’ll find her. She might’ve cut herself and left the scarf there. She’s probably at home getting herself patched up. She just doesn’t have her phone so she can’t tell us.”

  But the explanation felt flimsy, especially since I’d seen her an hour before. Why would she leave her scarf? What could have happened to her that created so much blood but wasn’t really bad?

  Mateo kissed me again and whispered, “I love you.”

  My heart slammed in my chest, and then shattered.

  He kissed me again, so soft and heartbreakingly perfect. “I’ll reach out as soon as I can. But the less you know about where I am, the better.”

  “I love you too,” I choked out, tears falling hard and fast now.

  He tucked my hair back, squeezing the nape of my neck, and said, “Bye.” Then he took off in the opposite direction of the street, back through campus. I watched until he was too far and too hidden by the shadows for me to see him any longer.

  “Where the hell is Mateo going?” Cam said when I rejoined them, mopping my f
ace with my sleeve.

  “He’s looking for Chloe,” I said, though it was a stupid lie. No one could really believe it.

  “The cops are here. See? He should let them handle this.” Cam pointed to where two police cars rolled up along the street.

  Four officers got out of the cars and approached, not rushing, but even the fact that there were four officers meant they took my 911 call seriously.

  “I’m Officer Martin. We received a call about a missing girl. Which of you called? What are we looking at?” the first officer said, an extremely thin, slightly older guy with sharp eyes and short white hair.

  “I called. Our friend disappeared,” I said. “We found her scarf there.” I pointed.

  The one female officer walked over to the bench with the scarf on it but didn’t touch it. “Looks like blood,” she called out. “We’ll need to bag it.”

  The first guy signaled to the two other male officers, and they went back to their car. They got in and started talking to someone on the radio, though I couldn’t make out what they were saying with the windows rolled up. Officer Martin pulled out a pen and small pad of paper, almost casual, like there wasn’t a missing girl he should be searching for. Then he said, “All right, let’s hear what happened. Why don’t you start by telling me what you were doing here tonight.”

  27

  We ended up at the Grinnell police station, which was only a few blocks from the campus, but they still shoved the six of us in the backseat of the two cars and drove us over. We shuffled out of the cars, all quiet and sober-scared. On our way in, we walked past three statue-plaques that I’d never looked at up close and couldn’t make out in the dark, and then we were ushered into the station itself.

  We had to sit in the seats in the front until our parents—or in my case, grandparents—showed up so we could be interviewed individually. We were the only civilians in the station and even though there was a low hum of activity, I could see this place wasn’t really hopping during the night shift.

  I’d hoped we could have been out looking for Chloe Donnelly, but apparently it didn’t work that way. As soon as we’d started talking to Officer Martin all at once at the place we’d found the scarf, he’d decided it was too much and we needed to be interviewed. Which meant pulling Nan out of bed at almost midnight and having her show up to the station “without her face on,” clucking at the officer in charge of the desk.

  When he placated her and said they were interviewing all of us one at a time and I’d be next, she sat back down and asked, “What were you doing, Chloe? You told us you were at Melissa’s.”

  “I lied,” I said. I had no energy for spinning anything. I was out of sorts about Chloe Donnelly, wondering if this was all part of her plan. And selfishly, I was devastated at the loss of Mateo. I kept glancing at my phone, checking for texts, but it was silent.

  On the seats across from us sat Cam and Aiden and their parents. They barely said hello to my grandparents, dropping their usual friendliness to focus on the twins. Their mom’s big voice echoed in the mostly empty space, interrupting everyone’s conversations with the same questions over and over again, though she mostly only directed those at Aiden. “What do you know about this girl? Does this have anything to do with the envelope we received?” she asked for the third time, and for the third time Aiden shrugged and said nothing.

  Cam leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “We don’t know anything. She’s new at school. We don’t know where she is or what’s happened to her. We’ve barely even spoken to her.”

  I noticed Cam didn’t address the envelope question, but I didn’t know if it was because he didn’t know about it or if he was trying to protect Aiden in front of all the other people in the room. It was almost too easy how Cam lied and it made me suspicious of him, especially remembering the way he’d called Chloe Donnelly a cunt. But truthfully, I was suspicious of everyone, except Mateo, who’d been with me most of the night and who had a lot to lose if the police started sniffing around.

  Thinking about Mateo made my throat get choked up all over again, so when one of the criminal investigation officers ushered a stone-faced Holly and her mom out and asked me and Nan and Pops to follow him into the interview room, I couldn’t do anything but nod and shuffle behind. We passed a nearly hysterical Eve on our way in, and I ignored the glare her mom was giving me as if I was somehow responsible for all that had happened. Her mom had mostly only ever tolerated me—me not being a joiner in the myriad Booster activities available at our school—but there was no doubt in my mind that I’d never be invited over again for Rice Krispies Treats or whatever else she was baking.

  Pops had been quiet since I’d first seen them at the door of the police department. He hadn’t even said hello when he saw me, just hugged me unbearably long and said, “Oh, doll. I’m sorry.” I didn’t even know what he was apologizing for.

  The criminal investigation officer introduced himself as Officer Kay, a chubby guy with thinning hair and almost no chin, and pointed out two seats at the table. Nan sat next to me and Pops took a chair on the side by the door.

  “We’re not at the point of issuing an Amber Alert because we don’t have any witnesses who saw the girl being abducted, but we’re still questioning students at the college. When was the last time you saw Chloe Donnelly?”

  I swallowed past my thick tongue and said, “Um, right around ten o’clock, when the game was still going on.”

  “The game. Gestapo, right?”

  “Gestapo?” Nan said. “What’s that?”

  “Um, it’s sort of like capture the flag,” I explained.

  Nan tsked beside me but amazingly didn’t say anything beyond a quickly muttered, “Movie at Melissa’s, my fanny.”

  “And you’ve been playing Gestapo for a few weeks?” Officer Kay asked.

  “Yeah. Chloe introduced us to it. I wasn’t going to play it after tonight, though.”

  Officer Kay scratched the stubble on his chin with his pen. “Yeah, that’s what you all seem to be saying. Interesting. Do you know where Chloe lives?”

  “No, I’ve never been to her house. I know her dad’s a lawyer in Des Moines and her mom’s a prof at U of I.”

  “Yeah, well, the thing is, we’re having a hard time verifying all of that.”

  I looked down, the sensation of duplicity I’d first started feeling when I’d talked to Melissa and Seth even more prominent now. Though it seemed less like a 21 Jump Street sting and more like something else, darker and creepier.

  “That doesn’t seem to surprise you much,” Officer Kay said.

  I swallowed and met his gaze. “I ran into a couple of friends tonight who made me wonder if she wasn’t telling the whole truth about who she was. And when I saw her earlier, she seemed out of sorts. I’m not sure any of us knows her that well.”

  “Was?” he asked, barely looking up as his pen scratched along the yellow-lined legal pad in front of him.

  “Excuse me?”

  The pen stopped. “You said who she was as if she’s no longer with us. Do you have reason to believe Chloe Donnelly is dead?”

  “Honestly, Officer Kay,” Nan said, her voice steely and sure. “She’s seventeen. It’s clear she doesn’t know anything. Where are these questions going?”

  Kay ignored Nan and said, “Chloe? You were the last one to see her. Do you have reason to believe Chloe Donnelly is dead?”

  Did I? I didn’t know. The scarf and the blood and the reasons why any one of the people playing that game would want her gone permanently, did those things all mean she’d been killed? “No,” I said. “I don’t know why I said was. Maybe because there seemed like a lot of blood on the scarf? She left me at Herrick Chapel. I don’t know where she went after that.”

  I was digging myself into a bigger hole and I hadn’t even done anything wrong. But the entire place made me nervous. When we were little, I’d visited the police station with my Girl Scout troop and imagined the police were all heroes, but now I was terri
fied.

  “We’re trying to find out exactly who Chloe Donnelly is and where she might’ve gone. Unfortunately, your friends explained she didn’t have a cell on her.”

  “No,” I confirmed. “She used mine earlier tonight.”

  His brows went up. “Did she call anyone?”

  My cheeks burned hot. “No. She was reading my texts.”

  He nodded. “You have the phone with you?”

  “Um, yeah.” I pulled it out of my pocket and reluctantly handed it over to him once he’d donned rubber gloves. He pulled a plastic bag from his desk and dropped the phone in.

  “We’ll get it back to you as soon as possible. If she touched it, we might be able to get a fingerprint from the case. We’ll grab your prints before you leave so we can rule those out.”

  I forced myself to choke down a protest. How could Mateo reach me if the cops had my phone? I didn’t want to make them suspicious, but at the same time I couldn’t be without it. Mateo needed a lifeline.

  “If you’re just looking for prints, can I have my SIM card?” I blurted.

  Officer Kay studied me. “You sure she didn’t use your phone to call or text anyone?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I’m sure. You can check my call records if you want.”

  Oh God. Would he see Mateo’s name? I was so not smooth with all of this. And I hated that I felt cagey and guilty because I wanted to protect Mateo.

  “Nah,” he said. “Let’s see if we can find out who this girl is first. You don’t need to pull your SIM card. It really won’t take long for us to see if we can get a print. I’ll call the guys in now.”

  He made a call and two officers came in and took the phone. “It should be a few minutes. Why don’t you tell me about your conversation with Chloe.”

  “I don’t really know what to say. She knew we all wanted to be done with the game. She was angry and said we were cheating. She read my texts and knew. . . .” I didn’t want to mention what she’d said about Mateo and deflowering.