The metal handle of the garage door snaps from my hand and fire lances along the top of my ripped-off nail. Blood wells over my middle finger and a fat droplet free falls to the ground where it splatters onto one of Willa’s letters that’s slipped from my hand.
The ink, the blood, and the puddle the letter’s sitting in reach for each other until blue blurs into pink and another droplet of crimson muddles them both.
I leave a smear of red across the garage handle on the second try, and the door arcs toward the mass of grey clouds as I rescue my letter. A drip of water trickles down my arm and tucks itself into the crook of my elbow.
If it’s cold out, I can’t feel it.
I can’t feel anything.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
By the time I make it to St. Francis, Mabel’s car is missing a side mirror and it’s gained a sizable scrape along the passenger side. It’s possible her/my security deposit will go toward fixing the landscaping damage Jake caused. He rushed out of the house just in time to move his car, which was good, because I was fully prepared to run it over.
On the bright side, if I end up dead or imprisoned my parents will have my entire college fund at their disposal and Mabel’s yard will look as good as new.
For now though, I’m still alive, hunting the clues Madison’s flash drives can’t give me. My mouth waters for the bitter relief of a Xanax, but I need to be awake for this. I need to feel everything, the panic and the pain, or it’ll be too easy to pretend none of this is real.
Jake wasn’t surprised about how many pictures Madison took of him. Not when I showed him Madison’s edited pictures either — the ones she took from the unedited masses.
He knew how much she wanted him even if I didn’t, just like she knew how he felt about me. I can’t stop wondering if he’s seen them before, or others like them.
Madison made a habit of telling stories through her camera lens and maybe those stories are out there somewhere. If they are, I’d bet they’re on missing drive number ten. And if I’m lucky, they’re here too. And what I need is to find every detail of Madison’s story.
This is a long shot, but better than breaking into Madison’s house and searching for her computer. Much better than searching for a drive that could be anywhere, including Mountain Man’s property where I found her lipstick.
My reflection taunts me from the polished floor, bleach and pine filling all the blank spaces where students would be if it weren’t the weekend. It’s a somber sort of quiet, a breath held before the scream.
I didn’t reread Willa’s letters.
Later. I’ll read them later, when the world stops shaking.
I can’t read the words she wrote — my proof that joy exists, my reminder that hope is possible — knowing they’re all a lie.
And they won’t lead me to Madison.
No matter how much we lied to each other, Madison was still the girl who kept my secret when I was too scared to tell it — the girl whose cold fingers reached for mine that night on her balcony. And I’m still the girl who spent lifetimes next to her, cheering for every success, mourning every failure and laughing through every point in between.
We’re the girls whose lives are so entangled there’s hardly an event I can’t remember her in, millions of moments that built our friendship into something unbreakable.
And we’re still the girls who say I love you without hesitation.
I mean it, even now. Even knowing the things Madison did.
For that alone, I’d do anything to have her back.
And after Madison, I owe it to Mr. McCormack to clear his name.
I owe the girl at Higgins Lake too. This time, I need to not forget her.
Sunlight fights its way through the glass doors that punctuate the ends of the hallways, but it’s dark in the middle. Just me and the empty echo of my footsteps.
The door to the yearbook office sits open, cracked to let the hum of computers spill into the hall.
I swing the door wide and Tabitha Zhao’s head pops up from behind a computer monitor across the room.
If I had any doubt as to whether the general school population was aware of the recent chaos of my life, it vanishes with one glance at Tabitha’s face.
She forces her mouth closed and swallows. “People were saying you went missing like Madison.”
“You mean there are people Preston Ashcroft didn’t tell he saw me at a party?”
“No, I think he covered the whole school, but like, maybe you went missing after? Everybody’s paranoid.”
I span my arms wide and shrug. “Here I am. Not missing. Did Madison do any photo editing on these computers?”
“Well, yeah, but —” Her chair screeches against the floor and she circles the desk. She stops just out of lunging distance and fiddles with the bangles on her wrist. “I was a total bitch to you in the bathroom the other day.”
“Yep. So, which computer?”
She rolls her eyes. “Can you just let me apologize?”
“If your apology includes telling me which computer Madison used, then yes.”
She points into the corner. “That one, with the screen facing the wall.”
I’m in the seat so fast it slides across the floor, and the screen has barely blinked to life before Tabitha’s leaning over the back of the monitor, chewing on the inside of her cheek like she does when she’s not confident about what she’s about to do.
Like kiss me.
Or in this instance, say, “Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“I’m in multiple kinds of trouble, so I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone I was here.”
She sighs before swinging around the table and flopping into the seat next to me. “You might as well use my login. As head of the yearbook committee I have total access.”
Humility was never one of Tabitha’s strong suits, and I’m betting Madison didn’t save the pics I’m looking for onto any school-sponsored drive, but I stopped ruling anything out the second Willa’s letters tumbled to my bed.
We search the official yearbook drives and find nothing, despite scrolling through more folders than I have time for.
I have a theory, and I wasn’t planning to test it while Tabitha watched, but every minute I spend here is one less than I can spare. And Willa’s letters are waiting for me, a siren song pulling me under the waves.
Madison is waiting too. I hope.
But I don’t think she meant to save those images to the flash drive in my pocket. I think she meant to save them with the other ones. That there are other ones is also part of my theory.
The six pictures spanned months of time — one was from shortly after the start of the school year. There’s no chance she only took six, especially not when one of them was a pic of my sketch, which never left my backpack.
Also my theory: the school computers have autosave, and possibly a backup. I just need to find the photos Madison saved without realizing she’d saved them.
Sydney said Chrystal wouldn’t have given her phone number to Madison unless she’d found something useful. If Madison documented whatever she was doing with the same level of detail she did me, there has to be something here. Some clue. Some lead to follow.
I throw caution to the thick, dry heat spewing from the ancient school furnace and stop pretending I’m not looking for something sketchy.
Beside me, Tabitha is silent but not quiet. The tension in her screams against my skin.
By the time I find what I’m looking for, the outside security lights coat the windows, turning them into mirrors. When the pictures load onto the screen like rows of headstones, I get to see them twice — at least until Tabitha jumps up and lowers the shades, cutting off the outside world’s view.
She plops back into her chair and huffs out a breath. “Dude.”
Madison m
ay not have constructed an altar to worship Jake at, but these photos are a close second. Colors blur with each flick of my finger as I scan down the screen filled with edited pics, looking for anything that’s not “A Day in the Life of Jake.”
Soon my face starts making an equal appearance.
They’re all me and Jake. Talking, laughing, interacting. Plenty where he’s looking at me and I’m oblivious.
Tabitha snaps her gum and the scent of mint punctuates every word. “So I guess you can’t pretend you don’t know he’s into you anymore, huh?”
“I wasn’t pretending. I just didn’t really notice, I guess.” The words feel like a condemnation, even coming from my own lips. There are so many things I didn’t notice. I outfitted myself with a pair of blinders that saw nothing but graduation, freedom and Willa.
But not all of Willa. Not the part where she lied to be rid of me.
Then the next row loads onto the screen and I gasp so loud Tabitha jumps from her chair.
I don’t want to see what’s in front of me — photographic documentation of my last moments with Willa.
The two of us, framed by beat-up cars as the sun drooped low. The tears streaming down Willa’s face and the look of abject pain on mine.
It looks too real to be a lie.
Tabitha’s hand flutters to my shoulder then backs away. “I swear I didn’t know Mads was, like … stalking you.”
I barely recognize my voice. “What was the point?”
“Maybe she was trying to show Jake you were super into your girlfriend?” All she can offer is a shrug at my look of disbelief, but if there’s a better explanation, I don’t have it.
Her eyes narrow and her teal nail taps against the monitor. “What’s up with the creeper over there?”
The picture blurs and focuses as I zoom in, and the profile of a man centers the screen. He’s not the focus of the picture and he’s partially obscured by both his hat and his hiding spot inside his car. And maybe he’s some random guy who left the restaurant and stuck around to watch two girls fight.
But that’s not what the pressure on my chest says.
Willa loved me. I was the liar in our relationship, not her. From the moment I let her find me, sandwiched between cars in her work parking lot, crying fake tears with a bottle of saline drops tucked into my sleeve. Mabel’s house that I claimed as my own, the parents I claimed never went to college, the shitty laptop I bought at the pawn shop. All the things I designed to erase the gap between us.
But all of it ended the day I went to visit her mom, to talk to her about cooperating with the cops so Willa could go to college like she wanted. The day I found her mom going through her room, all the money Willa fought to earn piled on her bed.
Then Willa came home and found us both, and there was no pretending anymore. But she loved me, even then. Every part of me.
We sat on the bed at Mabel’s house that night, tears shimmering in Willa’s eyes. “You lied to me.”
“Yes.” I wouldn’t defend what I did. Couldn’t defend it. I could only hope she’d understand.
“That’s not okay, Livie.” She paused. “Caroline.”
“It’s not okay. And I’m sorry, and I won’t blame you” — I sucked in a breath, too afraid to let it out — “if you can’t forgive me.”
I waited, until her eyes met mine. “But I’m still Livie, and you’re still Willa.”
That hadn’t changed. It never would. Those were always the most important parts of us both.
She nodded, her voice soft. “I wouldn’t have talked to you, if you were Caroline.”
“I know.”
Seconds ticked by, the world narrowing to the space between us, and she reached for my hand. “Okay.”
And now every bit of doubt I’ve carried since she left doubles down on me, because I should’ve destroyed any part of me that questioned what we had. I should’ve believed in her. In us. Even despite Jake’s revelations about her letters. I should have trusted all the things I was too afraid to believe were true.
My gaze travels over the computer screen to the stop-motion depiction of the end. The part where she told me she had to go, that I should stay, and I told her I couldn’t come with even though she didn’t ask. And then even as I kissed her, one last time, I felt her leaving me.
And I walked away.
Willa’s letters to me were real. If she lied in them, it was because she had to.
And that’s why I can’t breathe. Why Tabitha’s voice is a whisper in a wind tunnel and my vision is rimmed in black.
But I can still see.
I can still see the last two pictures in the sequence. The one that shows the second I left the lot in Mabel’s Buick, when Willa palmed her phone to dial a number that had to be mine, the man’s car door swung open.
And the final one: Willa slipping into the back seat of his car.
Chapter Thirty
My throat burns from the remnants of sickly sweet vomit and every breath threatens to call another wave.
He took her. He took Willa.
That was what Madison knew. The evidence that was enough for Chrystal to hand over her phone number.
Madison knew.
And I was there.
If I’d stayed, if for once I’d fought instead of flown, we would’ve left together.
Instead, I’m stopped in a random parking lot, huddled over Willa’s letters with my hands shaking too badly to hold them, the black ink of her handwriting stark beneath my phone’s flashlight.
If there are clues in these sentences, I can’t find them. There are only laughter and memories, joy and light. That’s how — even if I didn’t know every loop and slant of her handwriting, if I didn’t recognize every mention of things only the two of us shared — I know these letters came from Willa.
Willa was always the light in the darkness.
But it’s the darkness I can’t stop thinking about. Where she is. Whether she’s alive.
Whether I’m too late.
Maybe Willa spent her last moments hoping I’d care enough to look for her.
A scream rips from my lungs and doesn’t fade until they ache from lack of breath.
I haven’t cried since the day I walked out of conversion therapy, and today is the first day I wish I could.
I gather Willa’s letters, smoothing them and pressing them flat to my chest like I can absorb them into my skin.
I replay the words in my head, turning them sideways and upside down, searching out the layers I missed before.
Her pleas for me to move on. Don’t ruin your life, Caroline. Except what if she meant, “Don’t let him end your life.”
Her insistence she had no choice. I had to go — for both of us. Your life will be better without me. Because she didn’t want to draw me into whatever danger she’d found.
Her clues, crafted to lead me here, and to keep me safe. I tried to watch you drive away that last time, but I couldn’t. She couldn’t, because someone stopped her.
Sometimes I think about where it all started. The parking lot where we first officially met, the place we said goodbye.
If you let yourself look, you’ll find plenty of other girls besides me. Not other girls I might love. Other girls who’d gone missing.
And then.
Promise you won’t forget us. Don’t forget to let the light in. Love is forever.
Every one of those syllables has a different meaning now. They tell me she had faith. That she believed I would look for her, that I had the strength to save her — and if not her, whatever girls came after.
They’re no longer words that tell me it’s okay to move on. Sentences that tell me it’s okay to be happy without her.
Now I can see them for what they are. A goodbye.
Let Her Sleep
When I was little, my mom
tacked one of those inspirational posters above my bed. It stuck there for years, until the sticky tack started to crumble and the shiny paper fluttered, facedown, onto my pillow. I crumpled it and shoved it into the trash, but even after it was gone, I still saw the words every time I looked at that blank spot above my metal headboard.
“Let her sleep. For when she wakes, she’ll move mountains.”
I don’t think my mom ever meant for me to move mountains.
No one is born with that kind of strength. You only get it through years of training, a gradual resistance built upward from your foundation.
But I’d patched mine in so many places, fought to hold its pieces together for so long, it felt like it would crumble beneath me.
I shouldn’t have worried.
I should’ve trusted in the parts of me that survived despite her.
I know that now too.
I just wish I’d known it sooner.
I wish I’d ignored every word my mom said when she came back from the police station that day.
When she told me they’d asked every “John” in the building — from officer to detective to the meter maids — and none of them admitted to offering a deal to a young girl in a restaurant parking lot. Still, they took my mom’s testimony just the same. And she gave enough to secure her own deal.
I wish I could’ve let it go.
Instead, I’d wait until Livie was deep asleep, her long, even breathing a whisper across my back. I huddled her laptop beneath the warmth of her comforter, and I hunted the man who hunted me.
I wish I’d never tried, but then again, maybe everything would’ve ended the same.
Maybe John would’ve found me again instead of me finding him, and we still would’ve made the same deal. Maybe I still would’ve tried to end things with Livie. Broke her heart right alongside mine until my willpower nearly failed and I held my phone in hand, a single button from calling her back.
Throwaway Girls Page 23
