Throwaway Girls

by Andrea Contos

  “And?”

  “And they asked me where I was the night Madison disappeared.”

  That was my first lie. I barely made it through the first five minutes.

  Jake hands me the vape and rubs his palms down his thighs, like he’s afraid of my answer. “Where were you?”

  Truth: Starting the first phase of my tattoo at a place that doesn’t get hung up on legalities like age restrictions or parental permission. “Out. Madison’s calendar showed I was supposed to meet with her to start our chem project.”

  I was supposed to meet her. And I bailed.

  Not because I had to start my tattoo that night, or even because I wanted to, but because I knew exactly how the night would go if I met up with Madison.

  We’d make it less than thirty minutes before Madison would start to twirl her hair and then say, “So what’s up with you, Caroline?”

  She’d been building up to it for weeks — sharp inhales at the first lull in conversation that I had to cut off before she could call me out on breaking the promise we made to each other when we were fourteen, when we swore we’d never lie to each other. Never hold back the important stuff.

  That night we sat on her balcony, moonlight straining against a wall of silver clouds, and sipped at Dixie cups filled with the vodka we replaced with water after breaking into her parents’ liquor cabinet. We vowed not to sleep until the sun trickled into the sky and scared away the dark.

  We talked about boys and I was just drunk enough to talk about girls, and then I froze, head spinning too fast to run. But then her cold fingertips found mine beneath our shared blanket and I didn’t try to stop the tears that dropped to my cheeks. We spent the night huddled in the corner, until our breath turned white and then disappeared with the dawn.

  She never told anyone, and I tucked her acceptance into my heart and let it convince me my spaces were safe. Then, that night after my game, I told my mom who I was and those spaces collapsed. I never quite found my way back.

  So when I found Willa again, I didn’t tell Madison. This time, I protected my safe space with everything I had, even from the one person who’d never betrayed me.

  I broke my vow to Madison. I lied to her. And Willa left anyway.

  I gave everything, and it still wasn’t enough. I still wasn’t enough.

  Then I didn’t know how to tell Madison I’d pushed her away for someone who left me behind.

  And even now as I sit here in this car, with Jake staring at my temple like he can pull the thoughts from my head, I can’t stop remembering how Madison seemed quieter lately, her smile a watt dimmer.

  And not once did I ask why. Or what was up with her. I did to her what so many others had done to me.

  I walked away.

  Since then, all I’ve done is hand out flyers and wait.

  “What’d you tell the cops?” Jake stares through the windshield to the blur of trees struggling against the wind.

  “That I was sick.” I avoid his gaze when he turns to me, but I can feel the accusation in it like a scrape across my skin. “What difference does it make, Jake? My answer isn’t going to bring her back.”

  I want there to be more conviction in my voice, but my words fall flat and quiet, closer to a question than I’m willing to admit.

  But there is something I can do — I just have to get Jake out of my car to do it.

  My phone buzzes in my cup holder and an email notification from Mr. McCormack lights up the screen. My phone case fogs with the sweaty heat of my hands when I press my thumb to unlock it.

  The screen shifts and I’ve barely read the first word when Jake’s hand darts out to grab my phone. I lunge for him and my fist connects with the side of his head, sending stabs of pain through my knuckles.

  He yells, “Jesus, Caroline! You didn’t need to concuss me with your douche flute.” He rubs the spot on his head that has only the smallest smear of blood.

  “Next time don’t try to steal from me! And I didn’t mean to hit you with it anyway. It was just in my hand.”

  His brows are furrowed. “Why is Mr. McCormack emailing you?”

  I click the locks. “Get out.”

  “No. You shouldn’t be emailing him. Or texting him. Or hanging out in his class after —”

  “Mr. McCormack emails everyone. And I don’t think I asked for your opinion.”

  “You don’t —” He shakes his head, his eyes not betraying his thoughts.

  “What?”

  He shakes his head again, lips pressed so tight they’ve lost all color. “Just … trust me.”

  “Not good enough, Jake. If you know something, tell me, otherwise get out so I can leave.”

  He presses his palms together, fingertips to his lips, then peels his hands apart so he can rake them through his hair. “Preston Ashcroft’s brother is on the new task force for Madison’s case.”

  “Preston Ashcroft is also the biggest gossip in the entire school. Why would anyone tell him anything?”

  “I know, but just … Just listen, okay? Madison had this burner phone she used sometimes to score weed.”

  I raise an eyebrow, but it’s more to cover the guilt weighing heavily on my chest. At some point, it seems Madison started lying too.

  Jake’s face is splotched with red, his jaw clenched so tight I take pity on him and say, “Relax, Jake, I’m not the NCAA coming to drug test you for eligibility.”

  He nods toward my vape. “You wouldn’t exactly be setting the right example.”

  I flip him off and his laughter fills the car before he says, “I don’t smoke, and Madison didn’t much either. You know that. Just for parties and stuff. But that’s not the point. Preston says they found out about the phone because they got a warrant to search Mr. McCormack’s earlier today, and Madison texted him from her burner the night she went missing.”

  I fiddle with the heat so I won’t look as rattled as I feel. “So?”

  Mr. McCormack converses with plenty of his students. He does movie nights and chaperones overnight trips. He’s got an insufferably enthusiastic open-door policy for any student who wants to talk. But he’s always professional, never letting anyone slip past a line. He talks with lots of students, all the time. By email and phone — his St. Francis–supplied cell phone.

  If he was trying to hide something, he’d be smarter than that.

  Whatever the cops are thinking, they’re wrong.

  Jake says, “So he called her after the text. And she answered. And then no one heard from her again.”

  My face flushes hot, blood prickling beneath my skin. “He’s the most popular teacher on campus. Kids call him all the time. He probably gave her the ‘I don’t think about my students like that’ speech.”

  My brain scrambles to predict where this goes next, and I’m about to say Mr. McCormack will just provide an alibi for that night to clear himself. Except, I happen to know who his likeliest alibi would be and I doubt it’s going to work in his favor.

  I take a long hit off my vape, because self-destructive tendencies define me today. “Since when does talking to someone mean you kidnapped them?”

  “It doesn’t. But it makes you a hell of a suspect when you’re the last person to do it before they disappear.”

  The wind gusts, battering my car and sending a funnel of leaves spiraling across the grass, and there’s this pause in time where I wait to hear Madison yell, “Leaf tornado!”

  But there’s only silence.

  I throw the car in reverse. “I have to go.”

  “What did you find in the locker?”

  If I tell him, he’ll insist on coming with me. If I don’t, he could march right into school and tell Preston Ashcroft. Or Headmaster Havens. Or the idiot detectives.

  There is no winning in this situation. “A matchbook. From a bar I know in West Virginia.”r />
  “A matchbook from a bar you know in West Virginia.”

  “That’s what I said, yes.”

  He clicks his seat belt into place. “I’m coming with you, for whatever it is you’re about to do.”

  Whatever I’m about to do.

  I’m going to stop holding candles and start doing what the cops aren’t — find my friend.

  There’s no way Madison spent time at The Wayside. She’s meant for cocktail parties, not dive bars set along the side of the road. She wouldn’t fit in there. People would have noticed, and talked.

  I would’ve heard about it.

  Except the matchbook with her handwriting is real, and I didn’t hear about it, and that means whatever Madison was doing, it was a secret.

  The Wayside is my secret — mine, and then mine and Willa’s — but never Madison’s.

  There’s only one way to find out when that changed.

  And the whole drive to The Wayside, I’ll try to make myself forget it’s a place where Willa’s presence is permanently soaked into the air, where I can close my eyes and still hear her voice.

  If she were here, if she hadn’t run for California, she’d wrap her arms around me, her fingers threading through my hair, and this fog in my head that makes it hard to think straight would vanish. The tremble of panic in my blood would calm. Willa was quiet strength, endless optimism, the girl everyone told their secrets to because they knew they’d be safe with her. That she would understand, free of judgment.

  If she were here, I’d kiss her and the world would be right again.

  Instead, she’s gone and every minute is more wrong.

  I jam the car back into park, toe off my shoes and raise my hips, ignoring Jake’s hard exhale as I slide my damp tights down my thighs. “We’ll go through the service entrance since the media are all out front. Are you allowed to leave or do I have to hide you under a blanket in the trunk?”

  It takes him a moment of stunned silence before he manages, “Why do I feel like you’ve actually done that before. I can leave. Special Senior privileges.”

  Of course. How could I have forgotten the enormous honor of being awarded Special Senior privileges: “seniors with high academic and social standing who’ve demonstrated consistent adherence to St. Francis’s guidelines for personal conduct.” See also: students whose parents hold enough influence.

  I look Jake over, and he’s every bit the Special Senior. And nothing like a Wayside patron. “Do you have anything else to wear?”

  “Not on me.”

  “Give me your tie, and …” I survey him and he frowns. “I don’t know, roll up your sleeves, I guess? Hold on.”

  I run my fingers through his hair, mussing it the best I can, the strands tickling my palms. It’ll have to do. Jake is gonna look like his Uber dropped him on the side of the road when his daddy’s credit card got declined no matter what I do.

  After a quick forage in my landfill of a back seat, I come up with a jean jacket and a pair of black Chuck Taylors to fix my prep-school girl ensemble.

  I loop Jake’s tie around my neck and leave it sloppy. “You’re just trying to get out of our calc test next period, aren’t you?”

  He gives me a crooked smile. “You’re my only competition in that class anyway.”

  I throw the car into reverse, but not before I sneak a glance at Mr. McCormack’s email.

  It reads simply:

  Ms. Lawson,

  I’m requesting an immediate meeting to discuss your attendance and academic performance. Failure to comply will result in a demerit and an official letter to your student record.

  Mr. McCormack

  Chapter Three

  It’s only a ten minute drive until we pass the border from Maryland to West Virginia. Ten minutes past the carefully manicured grounds of St. Francis, where rows of trees fence our world off from the stretch of open fields, insulating us from anything that hasn’t been purposefully curated for our developing minds.

  Not that I’d admit it to Mom, but I actually love St. Francis. The feel of it, the history, the challenge. The nights spent talking, discussing, planning.

  I have yearbooks filled with pictures and shelves lined with trophies, walls covered in awards and certificates. I can’t deny what the school has done for me — even if I wanted to.

  But there are days — were days, even before Willa — when everything felt too close. Too small. When this pressure on my chest told me if I didn’t leave, didn’t remind myself there was a world outside those 689 acres, it would cease to exist.

  I-81 is my gateway to freedom, to a life beyond this place. To the world I created to balance the one given to me.

  It’s twenty minutes from the freeway entrance to Martinsburg, with old farmhouses sitting a leap from the road, rusted railroad tracks that cut through town and quaint little dress and fabric shops lining each side of WV-9.

  I can’t go through Martinsburg without thinking of Willa, even though she’s nearly three thousand miles away.

  I should’ve gone with her.

  I should’ve done what I wanted and left everything but her behind. Instead, in a display of emotion I can’t call to memory without a wave of embarrassment, I begged. Just a few more months. Just let me graduate. I said please more often in that single conversation than in my last twenty.

  I did not cry.

  Maybe things would’ve ended differently if I had. If I could.

  But even as she stood there, tears shimmering in her gorgeous blue eyes, she’d already decided. I have to go. You need to stay here. Those are the words she said more than any others.

  And when I reached for her, she stepped away.

  Even at the lowest part of that conversation, I didn’t think she’d actually follow through. Or that she’d refuse to take my calls. Ignore my emails.

  But then she was gone and her first letter, postmarked from sunny California, hit my mailbox one week later.

  Letters. Pages of memories in her dainty cursive. And never with a return address.

  I’ve been accepted to twelve different colleges across the country and I can’t commit to a single one. I tell everyone I’m planning visits before I decide, but the truth is part of me is waiting for the letter that invites me to join her. And then my decision would already be made.

  But that’s a truth I barely admit to myself.

  Rain fills the pockets of the parking lot where gravel hasn’t, and my car rocks as I splash into a space near The Wayside’s front door. No one paints neat white lines on the asphalt here, but no one needs to. If you have to ask, you don’t belong here.

  The Wayside is set far from the road. High windows. None of it is welcoming to outsiders. It’s not supposed to be.

  It’s barely noon so there isn’t much company, and by the light of day, The Wayside is a place you’d only stop if you had no other choice. Its closest neighbor is the gas station at the corner, the one that ends a series of empty storefronts and overgrown parking lots.

  There’s no neon Open sign in the window or vinyl schedule of hours affixed to the front door. That would require glass, and if there’s one thing The Wayside provides, it’s privacy.

  It’s definitely not a place for a teenage girl. Definitely not a place for a man like Mr. McCormack.

  Jake drums his fingers on the center console and narrows his eyes at the dark brick building. “You come here?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Alone?”

  “Sometimes.”

  The color bleaches from his knuckles where he’s strangling the door handle. “A girl like you shouldn’t come here alone, Caroline.”

  Before I can use my douche flute to knock out his front teeth, he flings open the door and storms toward the entrance.

  I scramble to follow him, yelling, “What the hell does that mean?”
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br />   He sidesteps a wayward beer bottle, then turns and points to it, waiting until I catch up to say, “This.” His arms fling wide in what I can only assume is meant to encompass the entirety of what The Wayside is and everything it stands for. “All of this. You’re too good for a place like this.”

  St. Francis Preparatory Academy claims they’re grooming tomorrow’s leaders, preparing us for the future, but it’s like walking a tightrope — it only works if you don’t look down. Down holds the world outside the reality Jake grew up in. Outside mine, or at least the one Jake and I shared until I fought my way free.

  Down is where you learn life is unfair and it only changes for people who need it the least.

  Down is all Jake’s seeing right now. The trash piled along the two-lane interstate, the graffiti scrawled on the gas station down the street.

  I hold out my hands. The scars on my palms are healed, but the sun is just bright enough for the patches of shinier skin to stand out. “You remember when I missed a week of school freshman year? I wasn’t there for our first debate club competition?”

  He takes a tentative step and his fingers close around my wrists, pulling my palms nearer. “Yeah. Your family went to Cabo.”

  “My parents went to Cabo. I went to camp.” I can’t stop the shudder that works through me from the ground up, and Jake’s fingers tighten.

  I toe the gravel and expose a soggy line of dirt beneath it, shivering against a slice of wind that sends drizzle burrowing beneath my jacket. “Conversion camp.”

  His Adam’s apple bobs and I’m grateful he’s tall enough I don’t have to meet his eyes. “Why?”

  “Do you not understand what conversion camp is, Jake?”

  “Don’t make jokes about this. I meant why would they want to convert you?”

  “Because my mom’s built her entire life around the St. Francis social circle? Because she can’t stop trying to win the approval of my grandma? Who doesn’t give approval to anyone, by the way. But my mom, she’s old-money St. Francis, and she’s, I don’t know, scared. That if I’m not perfect — if I’m not successful and pretty and marry the right guy and say the right things — it means she’s not a perfect mother and everyone will judge her and everything her mom has said about her is true.”