Throwaway Girls

by Andrea Contos

  He stops in front of me, and his voice dips low enough it feels conspiratorial even though everyone can hear. “You’re just a kid, so there’s a lot of things going on that you don’t understand. But if you’re telling me Landon McCormack has never made any passes at you, never taken you anywhere, never done anything but normal student-teacher stuff, then I have to say, I don’t believe you, Caroline.”

  I wait. For the next tick of the clock, the next muffled sob from behind Brisbane’s back. I wait for whatever’s on the folded square of paper Brisbane pulled from his pocket.

  He flips it over, calloused fingers grazing the sharp edge of the paper. “If what you say is true, then I can’t for the life of me figure out how he would’ve come to have this.”

  And then I’m staring at a color photocopy of the fake license Mr. McCormack took from me that night at The Wayside.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I’m stupidly convinced if I keep moving, everything that just happened can’t catch up with me.

  Except it’s not me my words are going to convict, it’s Mr. McCormack.

  I should’ve seen Brisbane coming. Harper too. Should’ve known they weren’t sitting in my living room at eleven o’clock at night because they thought Mr. McCormack and I were standing too close that day in the quad.

  But then Brisbane hit me with that bullshit with my license. I managed to squeak out an explanation: that Mr. McCormack caught me with it at school, except Brisbane trampled all over that with, “Why would your teacher have your fake license in his apartment, Caroline?”

  I should’ve shrugged. A casual “How the hell should I know?” But I couldn’t think past the knowledge that Mr. McCormack took my license home — that once again, he’s in trouble because of me — and beyond that, the cops had searched his apartment.

  I might’ve done an awful job of lying, but I don’t know that the truth would’ve helped. I doubt Mr. McCormack would be any better off if I’d marched into the room and told everyone he watched my girlfriend fondle me in a bar we weren’t legally allowed to be in.

  Plus, Marcel would be in more trouble than he’s already in, and I would destroy the careful construction I need Mom to believe in until three days after graduation.

  But the most terrifying part of all of this is that I was right. The cops think Mr. McCormack took Madison. And they’re so busy building that case they’re not looking at other possibilities. They’re not looking for Madison’s real kidnapper.

  And that means if Madison is going to come home alive, I’m the one who has to find her.

  I don't expect to find her here — outside Aubrey's dorm room — but I need to sleep. Preferably someplace other than my car.

  Crickets chirp from their hiding spots, nestled deep into grass that’s only begun to emerge from the frost. The Xanax I took when I was far enough from home to pull over and rummage through the corners of my bag is still bitter on my tongue.

  The crew of news vans barely registered as I passed them, throwing an extra twenty bucks to my favorite security guard, who sometimes “doesn’t notice” when I come and go at the wrong hours.

  My body is liquid silk as I conquer the sidewalk to the safety of Aubrey’s dorm, where maybe she’ll let me crash.

  I scan the Administrator ID I swiped from Headmaster Havens’s desk when Mrs. Elvan used his office for her “I’m worried about you, Caroline” meeting. My heart rate barely accelerates even though it’s possible — but not likely given the chaos of Havens’s office — he discovered it was missing and disabled it.

  The light turns green and the lock thunks over, buzzing until I yank open the door and slip through. The dorms are quiet. No one’s allowed to be up this late. Not even the students with late light permissions.

  I hug the wall, scanning for movement or a flash of light. If I run into a dorm head or dorm parent, there is no way to talk my way out of suspension. The number of demerits I’m earning right now might fast-track me to expulsion.

  No student shall enter housing in which they do not reside without permission from a resident faculty member or Dean of Students.

  No student may cross campus alone after dark.

  No student shall leave their room after lights out.

  No student shall “borrow” Admin ID badges that grant them access to campus buildings for the purposes of hiding from police and parents after wordlessly storming from their home despite four separate voices yelling said student’s name.

  I console myself with the knowledge that at least tonight I’m not breaking the Students may not enter dormitory halls of the opposite sex rule.

  I have done one hell of a job of bookending this day.

  My skin prickles the entire stretch of the common room, where the furniture sits cloaked in shadows, and triangles of light from the wall of windows dissect the empty space.

  It’s the type of silence that feels like a sound. The communal breathing of a hundred students snuggled beneath warm blankets and the gentle glow of night-lights.

  I don’t dare use the elevator, so I slink up each step, and at the third floor I have to pause to rest my head against the cool metal railing. It’s not just the Xanax. It’s everything.

  This isn’t fair to Aubrey — showing up on her doorstep. But she and Jake are the only ones who know even a hint of what’s going on, and everyone will be ravenous for rumors about Mr. McCormack. The least I can do is limit the people I infect with my knowledge.

  I ease down the hallway on the fourth floor and smother a yawn with my hand while the gentle swirls of jewel-toned wallpaper float by.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket, and when I steal a glance, my dad’s name lights the screen. I decline it.

  Aubrey’s room is tucked into a corner — no neighbors on the left side. It’s a prime spot her highly respected surgeon of a mom secured for her two years before she was even eligible to live on this floor. Right now I wouldn’t care if Aubrey’s mom had to kick a penguin to get her this room. I’m just grateful there’s one fewer potential witness for when I try to wake Aubrey up.

  I puddle onto the floor and press my cheek to the musty carpet that tickles my nose. My lips brush over the base of the door when I whisper her name.

  I’m risking lip splinters, but options are limited.

  I try again and fabric rustles, then a creak of mattress.

  Another whisper brings her to the door, then blue-painted toes press into the tile that peeks through the crack at the floor.

  I whisper, “Down here!”

  Warm breath snakes beneath the door as she says, “What are you doing?” in a way that makes each word seem like its own sentence.

  “Waiting for you to open the door.”

  “Oh.” The lock clicks over and a rush of vanilla air blasts over me. Aubrey grabs the handle on my backpack and hauls me upright before shoving me into the room.

  She taps one tiny foot against the floor. “I know you’re ‘too cool for the dorms’ and all, but do you know how much trouble I could get in for this?”

  “Yes, and I’m sorry.” I’m not too cool for the dorms. I got yanked out of them the second I told my mom I was bi. No Special Senior privileges for me.

  I let my backpack sink into her pink shag rug and kick off my tennis shoes. I can’t wear tennis shoes to school and I can’t wear my ripped-up jeans either, and all my clean uniforms are at home where I can’t return. Not that it matters — I can’t go to school either. Brisbane and Harper will probably be waiting at every one of my classes, and climbing out the windows only works if you’re on the ground floor.

  My phone vibrates again — voice mail this time — and I scan the transcription for key words. Dad is “concerned for my well-being” and hopes that “some time away will help me re-center and find my balance.” There’s mention of the importance of eating and sleeping well, but I have all the info I need:
They’re not calling out the search parties for me. For now.

  Really, they’re just pretending it’s unusual for me to be gone. That I haven’t been telling them I’m sleeping over at friends’ houses for years. Because we’re studying late. Because the commute is just too long some days. Because of any reason they’ll accept, honestly. But at least this way, if the cops look into it, it’ll look like they care.

  I drop into Aubrey’s couch and my body goes limp. “How much do you want to know?”

  Her messy bun flops to the side and she lowers onto the couch next to me, legs twisting crisscross applesauce. “Will I go to jail if I know?”

  “What? No. I don’t think so.” I’m too tired to think right. “I’ve done some stuff that may be illegal. You know what? Never mind.”

  Aubrey’s eyes go so wide the deep brown is completely rimmed in white, and then she smacks her hands on her knees before jumping back up. “Not okay, Caroline.”

  She’s wearing a T-shirt — and no bra, which I force my gaze to skim past — with a fuzzy alpaca that says, “Save the drama for your llama,” and pink gingham pants that gather in rumpled layers where another several inches of height should be. Her lips are pursed, hands on her hips, totally pissed off and yet utterly adorable.

  She points her finger at me, but her lips are already twitching into a curve. “Don’t you smile at me. I am mad.”

  I raise my brows because if I try to talk, I’m going to laugh, and she lets out an exasperated sigh. “You look like hell. I’m guessing you need a place to sleep, so you can stay here, but dorm check is early. Like, seven thirty, so we have to sneak you out before then.”

  “Thanks, Aubrey.” I’m not smiling anymore because I’m too busy rubbing my eyes against the tears that won’t fall.

  “Caroline?” Her voice breaks and trembles. “Did something happen? With Madison?”

  I meet her eyes and they tell me what she’s really asking. Is Madison dead? Did they find her body? “Nothing like that. But she’s still missing, and I’m the only one who can find her.”

  “That’s ridiculous. It’s not healthy to put that kind of pressure —”

  “It’s not ridiculous. It’s the truth.” I want to tell her why. Lay out my arguments so she’ll understand. Or maybe, so she’ll tell me I’m wrong. But this isn’t Aubrey’s burden to carry. “Let me think about it while you’re at school tomorrow, and I’ll figure out what’s okay for you to know.”

  “While I’m at school tomorrow?”

  I wish I had stupider people surrounding me. “The cops were at my house tonight and I left without answering their questions.”

  Her jaw unhinges in a display of shock I suspect she normally reserves for the stage.

  She sucks in a breath to unleash a barrage of questions but I hold up my hand. “Tomorrow.”

  I’ve got one shoulder sunk into her couch, my head inches from glorious sleep, when a jasmine-scented pillow smacks my face.

  She peels it back and tosses it onto the bed. “Don’t be stupid. You’re too tall to sleep on a love seat, and it’s a full-size bed, so you don’t even have to touch me. But I don’t know where those clothes have been so take them off.”

  She giggles at the way my jaw drops and yanks a pair of pajamas from her drawer. “They’ll probably fit you better than me anyway.”

  I barely manage another thank-you and she climbs into bed and turns toward the wall so I can change where I’m standing.

  When I slip in next to her, the hollow between the mattress and comforter is still warm from her sleeping body, and softness snuggles around me and fills all the empty places.

  The bed shifts as she turns, her eyes dark in the barely there light. “Where’d you go this year, Caroline?”

  “I’ve been here.” It’s a weak protest, because she’s more right than I am.

  “I know, but … you were gone a lot too. You’d come to practice and games but never anything after and — you didn’t see our fall show.”

  The way her voice thickens is all the proof I need that me missing her show is what she’s really talking about, and the weight of it crushes against my chest. I can’t even puzzle out how she remembers I wasn’t there. “I was dating someone.”

  “Oh.”

  It’s not an understanding “Oh,” it’s a judgmental one. “I just didn’t take you for the type that ditches her friends when she gets a … girlfriend? Boyfriend?”

  I roll my eyes. “Girlfriend. And I didn’t just ditch my friends. And she wasn’t just some random girl.”

  “Was it …” she whispers, “Tabitha?”

  “Seriously? No.”

  “Well, you said earlier —”

  “That I randomly hooked up with her, not that we were dating. Have you ever known Tabitha to date anyone?”

  “You mean aside from the yearbook?”

  My snicker morphs into a snort, and then Aubrey’s laughing so hard the bed shakes. “See? Tabitha doesn’t need me. She’s already found true love.”

  “So, not Tabitha.”

  “Definitely not Tabitha.”

  “So this mystery girl … the love of your life at seventeen?” Her voice barely drifts across the chasm between our pillows.

  My laughter fades and my legs draw closer to my chest at the dismissiveness in her tone. In spite of the Xanax, my voice is sharper than she deserves. “She’s the only reason I’m alive. Is that good enough for you?”

  She’s the only thing that proved there was goodness even in the face of everything ugly. She taught me how to survive without losing the best parts of myself.

  Ironic that those lessons were the thing I clung to most when she walked away.

  It takes a second, while Aubrey raises and dismisses my possible meanings, finally settling on the right one. With Aubrey, every thought telegraphs. “Oh, Caroline.”

  “Don’t. Oh Jesus, don’t cry.” When she smooshes her face into the pillow to wipe away her tears, I say, “It was a bad time in my life, but I’m good now, or at least much better. Really.”

  She plucks at the end of a rogue thread in the comforter, twirling it around fingernails she’s somehow painted with little tragedy and comedy faces. “You guys broke up? That’s why you’ve been sad?”

  I roll onto my back and hug the covers to my chin, my eyes skipping across the glow-in-the-dark solar system on the ceiling. “She left me.”

  I add, “She said she wished I could come with her,” a little too fast and a little too defensively, because actually what she said was that she wished I could come with her, if things were different. “But it’s not like I could’ve left high school.”

  My reasoning was sound. It’s still sound. Even if my instincts said what we had was worth it all.

  But then she was gone and I was wrong about everything, and every letter from Willa puts her voice back in my head, draws out memories I thought I’d buried. Every private joke and shared secret I’m forced to see in her looped handwriting is an argument for why I chose wrong.

  But then, she chose too.

  “Caroline?” Even once I’ve turned to look at her, Aubrey hesitates. “I’m the one who told Mr. McCormack I was worried about you.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m glad you stayed. Not just in school, but … you know, around.”

  “Me too.” I smile at her and she smiles back, twice as big, but as both our eyes fall shut and sleep drifts in like a slow fog, I’m not sure I’m glad at all.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I roll onto my back, cushioned by Aubrey’s shag rug, and tap her glitter pen against my chin. Sunlight streams through her floral curtain, so glaring I have to squint while I scrounge my head for any facts I might be missing. The current list is already so terrible I’m not sure I can add any more. That it’s scribbled in my notebook in purple glitter makes it worse, li
ke I’m celebrating when there’s not a damn thing on the page to celebrate.

  The absolute clusterfuck I’ve gotten myself into is broken down in facts and sub-facts, plans and conclusions. Except all my plans are terrible and my conclusions are even worse.

  The cops will be waiting for me at school, so I can’t go back until Madison is found, which means I have four days until expulsion.

  I need to talk to Mr. McCormack, but I have no idea how, and my plan to use Headmaster Havens’s wife as messenger is likely to go horribly wrong.

  At least two girls are missing, and if I’m going to find out the connection between them, I’m going to have to research them both. The plan for that is especially awful, and Aubrey will hate it even more than me.

  Mountain Man is still out there, and I have questions for both him and Marcel, but I don’t want to see either of them right now, for very different reasons.

  All of this sums up to one very short conclusion: I’m screwed.

  Voices rise and drop beyond the door. Laughter. Plans to meet later to go to the library to study, not to research missing girls. It’s like there’s another world on the other side of that door. I’m so desperate to belong to it my heart aches.

  Three months. I am three months from being able to take what I’ve worked for and make it mine.

  But even that barely registers, because even though I’m almost there, the finish line hasn’t just moved, it’s been lined with landmines that could destroy Mr. McCormack’s career and cost at least two girls their lives.

  If they still have them.

  One of them is my best friend.

  And I’m lying facedown on the fucking floor.

  The pen launches from my hand and cracks against the door just as it swings open and a wide-eyed Aubrey fills the frame. She stares at me long enough for me to feel like a complete douchebag for throwing her pen and slumping around on her rug.

  She slowly eases the door shut behind her, then lowers herself to my level. “Did we have a bad day?”