All the Missing Girls(73)

* * *



WE HAD TO EXIT through the front door near the bar entrance. I kept my head down to the traffic. I followed Tyler to his truck around back, rested my head against the window as we drove.

We were silent on the ride home. He pulled into my driveway and I hesitated with my fingers on the handle, staring out the window. “Will you be okay here?” he asked.

The house. Skinny and tilted and waiting for me. Beyond that, the Carter property and the search for a missing girl. I left the car, but he lowered the passenger window. “Nic?” he said.

I took a second to look back as I walked away. He’d lost every girl he was with whenever I came home, and the ghost of me followed him everywhere in this town. Not sure why he did it—if he really thought this time would be any different. That this time I’d stay. I was breaking him over and over, every time I left, and this was something I could put an end to. A gift. A debt I owed him for everything I’d lost him.

I couldn’t come back after all. The distance only increases.

“I can’t see you anymore,” I said.

“Sure, okay,” like he didn’t believe me.

“Tyler, I’m asking you. Please. I can’t see you anymore.”

Silence as he gripped the wheel tighter.

“I’m ruining your life, Tyler. Can’t you see that?”

His silence and his stare followed me across the yard, up the porch steps, until the front door latched shut behind me.

I supposed, when he looked closely, he could see that I was.



* * *



THE HOUSE FELT DIFFERENT. Unsafe, unknown, too many possibilities existing all at once. Too many voices whispered back at me from the walls. The garage through the living room windows, so unassuming in the sunlight, and beyond, the woods stretching infinitely into the distance.

No, I would not be okay here.

I drove to the church and went down to the basement, where Officer Fraize was organizing about one tenth as many people as the day before. He gave me a map with a section bordered in orange highlighter, and he directed me toward two kids with jet-black hair picking through yesterday’s donated baked goods.

“Hi,” I said to the girl’s back.

She turned and spoke around a piece of pound cake. “Hi,” she said. She was a little older than I’d thought—younger than I was but not quite a kid anymore. “You with us?”

Us being her and a guy about the same age, two days of scruff on an otherwise unremarkable face. Siblings, I guessed from the hair color.

“Looks like it,” I said.

“I’m Britt,” she said. “This is Seth.” She looked down at the map, and I saw her roots were plain brown, several shades lighter than the rest of her hair. Maybe not siblings. “They have us following the river, looks like. Should be easy enough.”

“Let’s park at CVS,” Seth said. “I need some Advil or something.” He winced for impact.

“Hangover,” Britt whispered, feeding him a piece of cake with her fingers.



* * *



I FOLLOWED SETH’S PICKUP and waited for him to come out of the store. Besides the Advil or something, he also got some candy, and the crinkling wrappers accompanied us as we crossed the street and entered the woods. He chewed loudly until we picked up a curve of the river, and then all I could hear was the water trickling along.

I hugged the edge, keeping my gaze on the water, looking for objects that might be hidden underneath. The water wasn’t deep, and I could see the rocks and roots below, even in the shade. We reached a clearing, the sunlight bright, my eyes narrowing in response, and the glare of the sun reflected off the surface too sharply, blurring my vision.

“You okay?” Britt had her fingers curled in my sleeve just as I felt my balance start to lean.

“Yeah,” I said. “Checking to see if maybe she fell in.”

Britt pulled me farther from the edge. “Careful,” she said. “I heard they’ll get men in the water eventually, but if she’s in there”—she pointed down the bank—“it’s not like it matters how fast we find her.”

Seth unwrapped another candy, shoved the wrapper in the pocket of his pants. “She’d think that was fitting, I bet,” he said. “Very Ophelia. Very art. Very significant.”

“You were friends with her?” I asked.

The girl nodded. “Yeah, I guess. Except not really. I mean, we were, kind of, before she became Art School Annaleise.”

“What was she before?”

“Just like the rest of us,” she said. Britt picked a slightly worn path a little farther from the river, guiding me along with her.

“I always thought she was quiet,” I said.

“Annaleise? I guess. But also not. She was loud with her art. Like, she did the murals for our school play, and she hid all these tiny sick details in them. We didn’t notice until after. It was like a tribute to everyone she hated at school.” Seth laughed, but Britt wasn’t smiling. “It was so subtle—enough to deny. And for us to point it out meant admitting to something, you know? She walked the halls with this obnoxious smile all the time, like she was getting away with something and we all knew it. She had a meanness in her.”

We all do. Corinne had shown us that.