Throwaway Girls

by Andrea Contos

  Not that any of that matters. The cops aren’t in the habit of believing anything I say. And I’m not in the habit of trusting them with anything — that may be the first and only thing Chrystal and I agree on.

  Plus I’d have to say how and where I found the lipstick, and I’m not sure I’m ready to give them Chrystal before I have the chance to question her myself.

  And it’s not just me on the line. Jake was there too.

  Aubrey says, “They could test it for fingerprints.”

  So that’s actually a valid point. “They’re probably all rubbed off by now.”

  “Why didn’t you just call the cops when you found it?”

  “Sort of a long story. I don’t really have a great history with cops.”

  We turn a corner and both stop dead.

  Tucked deep into the end of the hall, in the shadows next to the stream of light filtering through the stained-glass doorway, stand Mr. McCormack and Headmaster Havens.

  I can’t hear their words, but I don’t need them to prove what I’m seeing.

  Mr. McCormack stands easily a foot taller, muscled where Havens is flabby, and every fiber in his body screams aggressive intimidation.

  Aubrey sighs, almost like a whimper. She’s far from the only girl with an inappropriate infatuation with Mr. McCormack; she just happens to be really bad at pretending she doesn’t.

  Eavesdropping on your teacher and the headmaster probably fits under some “inappropriate conduct” umbrella in the St. Francis handbook, but I can’t leave now. Especially when I swear Madison’s name floats on the air.

  I could never forgive myself if our conversation in the quad — or any of the things that led to it — gets Mr. McCormack fired. And I don’t want the cops wasting time framing him instead of looking for the real reason Madison is gone.

  I don’t want to be the only hope she has.

  A door midway down the hall swings open, and both men turn toward the sound.

  I jump around the corner and out of sight, and Aubrey knocks me over in her attempt to do the same.

  We both go down in a tangle of body parts and my teeth clack together as my chin bounces off the floor. The weight of Aubrey’s body slams onto mine, shoving my stomach up my throat.

  Her tiny hands wrap around my bicep and pull. “Get up. Get up. Get up!”

  She yanks us both into the next open classroom, and I shove her toward the closest hiding spot — beneath the teacher’s desk — because neither of us want to be in sight if Havens and McCormack decide to investigate.

  We scramble into the tiny space, our legs bent and twisted around each other’s in a square of wood- and Pine-Sol–scented air, and voices drift from beyond the doorway.

  I stop breathing.

  The heat of our bodies pressed into the small space draws a sheen of sweat on my skin, and my pulse jumps against the tendon in my wrist.

  Fabric rustles as Aubrey shifts forward, and then something soft presses against the spot where my chin collided with the floor.

  I startle and my head clunks against the desk, but it must be too quiet to hear because the voices outside the door fade into silence.

  Aubrey whispers, “Sorry,” and offers the Kleenex in her hand that’s stained with blood. “I just didn’t want it to drip.”

  She ducks her head, her shoulders curling inward, and my heart pangs. I knock my knee into hers. “Hey. Thanks. I’m just … I’m not always great with touching people. Or people touching me.”

  “That’s not what Tabitha said.”

  My attempt to stifle my laugh turns it into a snort, which sets off a fit of giggles in Aubrey, and soon we’re both laughing so hard Aubrey’s crying and I would be if I could.

  When I finally catch my breath, I say, “McCormack looked pissed.”

  “He looked hot as hell.”

  “Eww.”

  Her mouth opens and closes, and then she wiggles her phone free, eyes narrowed in concentration as she flips through screens. “Last summer, I’m lying out by the pool, right? Practicing my lines. And I see something out of the corner of my eye. So I look up. You want to know what I see?”

  “Mr. McCormack.”

  “I see the most perfect specimen of man ever. If I hadn’t been so distracted by how he looked pulling himself out of the water, I would’ve gotten video.” She emphasizes every syllable and thrusts her phone a half inch from my face. “Look at him, Caroline.”

  I inch her wrist back while my vision unblurs, and okay, I can see her point. Except, he’s still Mr. McCormack. “Why did you tell him you were worried about me?”

  “He didn’t tell you that.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “Then who says I did?” She slips out of our hiding spot, but her saddle shoes root to the floor instead of running away.

  I duck out too, and say, “I need the lipstick back.”

  When I hold out my hand, she drops the tube without a word, her gaze focused on my gashed chin.

  I pin the Kleenex against it and head for the door before pausing. “Thanks. For, you know …”

  She nods, and I’m almost turned around when she calls my name. “Should I be? Worried?”

  I’d feel a lot better about my plans for the evening if someone knew what they were, just in case I don’t make it back. But I don’t need another person to add to the list of lives I’m ruining.

  I give her my “family picture day” smile — the one my mom made me practice in a mirror until I’d perfected it, just so she’d have a photo to prove we aren’t the mess she knows we are.

  I shake my head. “What’s there to worry about?”

  The Kindness Of Strangers

  Maslow made it all seem so simple.

  A tidy stack of wants and needs, divided into a perfectly segregated pyramid.

  The angles sharp, the lines straight and exact.

  Like people aren’t messy and muddled. As if survival is dependent only on basic needs. Like love and belonging can’t become as basic as food and shelter if you’re denied them long enough.

  I’d never seen love — not up close. The Larrys were about needs. Each serving their purpose. I met each of them wordlessly, my mom’s voice hard against my ear. Be nice. We need …

  We need the car fixed. The fridge replaced. Half the rent for the next month.

  Maslow didn’t count on love becoming so entangled with needs it ceased to exist.

  But there were moments, and men, when I’d see the spark of wanting in her eyes. When the loneliness left her head in her hands, tears soaking the cuffs at her wrists.

  I didn’t comfort her. I’d forgotten how to touch another person, my skin having long since given up hope of nourishment. All my wants and needs had curled themselves deep inside, buried beneath my protective layers.

  Wanting love was a betrayal of needs. The sacrifice too great. The level beyond my reach.

  Those kinds of wants were reserved for the people who never questioned the bottom of that pyramid. The kind who climbed Maslow’s levels until they reached the apex.

  Those were the people who ordered food they’d never eat and signed their credit card receipts without glancing at the totals. They were the strangers who stumbled into the diner where I worked on their way through a town they’d never live in.

  It was only a few weeks after I met Livie when one of those strangers slipped through the double doors and into my section, without even a glance at the sign that asked her to wait to be seated. She dropped her backpack in first, then her camera bag after, the contents tumbling onto the table as the bag unlatched.

  Her hands stumbled over the camera that had to cost more than most of the cars in the lot. The strap alone, with its supple leather and monogrammed cursive M pressed deep into the hide, probably did too.

  She slid into the booth and smoo
thed the plaid of her skirt, tugging the hem to meet her knees.

  She stammered through her drink order. Coke. Diet Coke. No — lemonade. Her blond hair tumbled over her shoulders as she shook her head, her lips drawn tight as she gave her final choice. Water. With lemon.

  The food came easier — she chose the first item her gaze landed on when she flipped open the plastic menu, her manicured nails glossy and pink.

  I hurried back with the water, convinced if I left her alone too long she might run.

  She sucked in a breath, not daring to meet my eyes, her voice skimming a whisper. “Do you —”

  I waited. I wish I could say I did it to give her the space she needed, the time to unburden whatever made her eyes shine with stifled tears. I wish it wasn’t because I needed to see this stranger — this girl with the prep-school emblem stitched to her sweater and the Rolex around her wrist — prove she wanted things. Just like me. At least for a moment.

  She stirred her water, ice clinking against the glass, lemon caught in the swirling tide. “There’s this guy.”

  I tucked my pen inside my order book and angled myself to cut her from the view of the men at the counter. “There usually is.”

  She smiled. “Yeah. It’s just —” She pinned an ice cube to the bottom of her sweating glass, stabbing with her straw. “Do you ever feel invisible?”

  I couldn’t stop the laugh that burst from me. “All the time.”

  “Really?”

  It should’ve been an easy answer, because yes, really. Every time I came home to empty rooms — or full rooms with empty stares. Every time my voice got met with silence. Every time I waited for someone to ask where I’d been, where I was going, whether I was okay.

  Yes, really. All the time.

  Until Livie.

  Until every time she looked at me and I felt seen. Until she took in my every word, attention never wavering, her arms always — always — waiting to draw me in.

  And not once, in all the times Livie reached for me, had I flinched. That protected place deep inside had never recoiled, not even the first time her palm cradled my cheek. Not the first time her lips brushed mine.

  She acted like I mattered.

  She took all my doubts and proved them wrong. I recognized all my fears in her eyes, saw hers reflected back, and together, we burned them to ashes.

  That place I’d kept hidden hadn’t drawn tighter — it had bloomed.

  Never, not once, had I felt invisible in her eyes.

  The girl smiled, until sadness pulled at her mouth. “Maybe not all the time, huh?”

  I cleared my throat, my own smile too big to cage. “Not all the time.”

  She traced circles in the swirls of the table. “If you knew something — or if you thought maybe you knew something — that would ruin what you had, would you tell?”

  The kitchen bell dinged twice, a sure sign I was about to be in trouble for letting food sit too long. “I guess it depends.”

  But even as I said the words, they rang false. I wouldn’t risk what Livie and I had over anything, except something that would hurt her.

  The bell dinged again and I mumbled, “One sec,” before running to grab her food.

  The plate had barely hit the table before she said, “That wasn’t a fair question. Sorry for vomiting all my feels on you.”

  “I wouldn’t tell. Barring mortal danger. But if not, I wouldn’t tell.”

  Her head dropped, and I barely heard her thank-you. And when she walked toward the door ten minutes later — her french fries barely nibbled and the rest untouched, a twenty-five-dollar tip on the ten-dollar tab I’d used my earnings to pay for — I grabbed her into a hug.

  I gave her the chance to live in a world like mine — just for a moment.

  Her body went rigid, then melted into me for a half-breath, before she headed out into the night, to a place where she belonged.

  When Livie walked through those same doors less than an hour later, I hugged her too. Unrestrained and without hesitation. And then I pulled her into the cramped closet that overflowed with cleaning supplies and paper goods, and the staff’s coats and purses, even though it wasn’t close to my break time.

  She smiled at me, that smile she reserved for the best moments between us. “Why are we locked in a closet? Is this some kind of a metaphor?”

  She was so much of what I would never be — confident, self-assured, magnetic. The type of person everyone flocked to the moment she walked into a room. Part of me would never understand how she could look at me like she was the one who’d gotten lucky.

  And it had only been a few weeks. How many times had I watched my mom give every part of herself only to have it thrown back? How many times had I told myself I’d never be her, never follow her path?

  Livie brushed the tear from my cheek, her smile washed away by concern. “Hey, what’s wrong? Did someone —”

  “I love you.” The words burst into the air between us, too late to take back, too late to form any defenses, and Livie blinked.

  Once. Twice.

  Her arms banded around me, momentum crashing us both into the closed door, our laughter filling all the dark corners and muffling the response she whispered against my ear.

  And then her mouth met mine. Not soft. Not gentle. Her hands buried in my hair and mine in hers.

  I’d give days of hunger for every kiss like that. Months of shelter for every moment in her arms.

  I’d give everything to hear her whisper she loved me again.

  If I ever meet Maslow in the afterlife, I’ll tell him he got it all wrong.

  Chapter Eight

  I’m a coward.

  That’s the only explanation for why I have not:

  Asked Mr. McCormack if our conversation got him in trouble.

  Read any of the numerous texts Jake has sent me today.

  Walked into The Wayside and demanded Marcel tell me why he completely abandoned me. Why, after years of being my sanctuary, he ushered me out like he regretted he ever plucked me from the side of that road.

  Right now, that last one is the hardest to ignore. I’ve done an excellent job of ignoring the first two all day. I even crawled out the window after American history rather than face Jake in the hallway.

  It’s not like I can avoid everyone forever, but after the showdown with Havens and Mr. McCormack in the hallway, I can’t stop the reel of worst-case scenarios in my head: That Mr. McCormack will tell me he’s been fired and it’s all my fault. That Jake’s text is going to say Mountain Man went to the cops and there’s an assault charge with my name listed. That Detectives Brisbane and Harper are going to call us into the auditorium and tell us all my worst fears about what happened to Madison are real.

  I don’t know how to deal with any of those possibilities.

  So I choose to ignore, and focus on the goals. Find Madison. Graduate. Leave.

  And I’m not waiting around until the end of the school day when I could be finding Madison now.

  Sunshine barrels though the etched glass door of Olivet Hall, and I’m steps from freedom when Aubrey appears in front of me.

  I pull up short, losing my chance for escape while I attempt to figure out where she came from.

  Before I can ask, she has me spun around and walking back toward the classrooms.

  I stop and say, “I was leaving.”

  Her whole body sighs. “Please?”

  My resolve fractures but I manage to hold firm, until the lights reflect off the shimmer of tears in her eyes.

  This is the girl who nearly cried because she doesn’t want me to develop hypertension. I can’t just leave her standing in the hallway looking all sad. “Please what?”

  “Come see someone with me.” From the way she’s death-gripping the straps of her backpack, I’m not going to like the someone. />
  “Aubrey —”

  “You can’t keep evidence, Caroline. It’s illegal and immoral, and if it keeps Madison from being found, you’ll never forgive yourself and I’ll never forgive you for showing me, and we’ll all hate ourselves and each other and I can’t —” She takes a heaving breath and I hate how right she is about everything — so much that I want to turn and storm out the door on some kind of weird reverse principle.

  But then she stomps her foot and says, “No. I won’t allow it.”

  I duck my head so she won’t see the smile I’m smothering, and so I don’t have to admit I’m laughing when Madison is missing and Willa is gone.

  “Are you laughing at me?”

  I can’t see her arms but I guarantee she’s crossed them over her chest.

  She steps closer, ducking to meet my eyes, and there’s something in the closeness of her, the lack of reservation in her expression, that makes me ache to draw her in. To let her hug me back. To let her be the first person to really touch me since Willa left.

  She whispers, “Please. I know you said you don’t like cops, so I — we — came up with an idea.”

  I step back, the tension snapping taut again. “We who? How much am I going to hate this?”

  She cringes, and as I discover four minutes later, I hate it a lot.

  Aubrey delivers me to a room with Jake and his dad — his dad who is a judge and would probably have opinions on the things I’ve dragged his son into — and the comfort of knowing there’s a Xanax in my backpack is the only thing stopping me from bolting for the door.

  They’re perched on a long table, cell phones tucked into their hands.

  A mirror image. The present and past of St. Francis paving the way for the future.

  Both their heads snap to attention the moment I enter the room.

  Mr. Monaghan’s smile stretches wide as his strides carry him toward me. He extends a hand I shake on instinct, and then he clasps his other over them both, warm and steady. “Great game against St. Matthew’s last week.”