Lost Girls(25)

“These two girls, Alexis and Lacy, live too far away. One is down in Irvine. There’s no way we’d make it there and back in rush hour, not if we want to get home by dinner,” Molly said. “Same thing for Lacy in Compton. We should focus on the other three. Wait.” She looked up at me. “Did you want to call these girls or see them face-to-face?”

“Face-to-face. It might help me remember.”

“Why don’t we head over to Janie’s house, she’s in Pasadena.”

“Good idea,” I said, glad we weren’t heading to Nicole’s house first. I had a feeling I’d find some key piece of information at Nicole’s and, whatever it was, it wouldn’t be good. It might be that Big Trigger my therapist kept talking about. Maybe meeting another girl first would help.

I’d already preprogramed all the addresses into my GPS, so we set off on our journey. My palms were sweating and I had to keep wiping them on my jeans while I drove. We avoided the freeway—rush hour combined with rain had turned the 210 into a tangled snarl—so we zipped down one side street and over another, instead. Twenty minutes passed with us listening to Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream while the windshield wipers thwacked back and forth.

“There it is.” Molly finally pointed a chubby finger toward a small cottage on the left. I slowed my car, pulled alongside the curb, and we both sat there, staring at the house.

“Do you want to come with me?” I asked.

“Does the Pope like Easter bunnies?”

I gave her a look. Decoding her bizarre phrases was sometimes more work than it was worth. I bolted from the car, one hand shielding my head from the rain that had gotten more serious in the past ten minutes, Molly following behind me. She tried and failed to miss the ankle-deep water that gushed down the gutter on the other side of the street.

“Eww!” she said, shaking one of her feet. Apparently water had gone down inside her boot. Now there was a squishy sound with every step she took.

We raced up the sidewalk, then huddled on the cottage porch beneath a short roof overhang, me knocking on the door, rain falling all around us. To our right, lacy curtains parted and I thought I saw someone peek out through a smudged window, but by the time I turned to look, they were gone. The curtains remained parted a few inches. All I could see inside was darkness.

A snap of thunder kaboomed overhead.

My heart felt like a fist, hammering against my chest, knuckles bruising my ribs, and my breath came in short puffs. This was exactly where I had wanted to be, standing on the doorstep of one of those girls on my list, but now that I was here, a new emotion wrapped itself around me like an anaconda. The closest thing I’d ever felt was when I’d grabbed Lauren and tried to force her to tell me more.

It was like the thrill of doing something illegal and getting away with it. It made my stomach queasy.

I was just about to knock again when the door flew open and a girl my age stood in front of us, her hair dyed blue, the same bright shade as her eyes. For an instant she reminded me of Katy Perry…if Katy was strung out on heroin. She held something behind her back and I couldn’t stop glancing down at her right hand, wondering what she was hiding and why.

“Bitch, what you doing at my house?” she demanded.

I sputtered, taken off guard, fighting a dark part of me that struggled to rise to the surface. “I—did—are—” None of what I said made sense, so Molly jumped in.

“Are you Janie Deluca?” she asked.

“What if I am?” The girl took a step out the door, revealing a baseball bat in her hand. “You’re breaking the rules and if you come any closer, I’ll kill you. Both of you!”

I shoved Molly behind me. She missed the step and almost fell to the ground with a loud curse. Nobody was going to hurt Molly, not now, not ever. My gaze focused on that bat, on the fingers that held it tight.

“Get out of here ’fore I break your head open!” the girl yelled.

I tossed my car keys back toward Molly. “Get in the car and stay there,” I told her. Then I focused on the blue-haired girl. “Put down the bat.” My words came out like a warning, my voice surprisingly calm. “I only want to ask you a few questions. There’s no reason to act like I’m here to start a fight—”

She lifted her chin. “You’re gonna get kicked out for doin’ this. I got the right to protect my own turf—”

Kicked out. The same cryptic phrase Lauren had used earlier. But I didn’t have time to contemplate the similarities or to wonder why this girl was on guard. Janie had seen me hesitate. Hesitation got people killed.

Before she could say anything else and before I could make a more rational decision, I slammed a lightning-quick fist to her jaw, my knuckles connecting with her flesh and bone. She blinked, her eyes rolled up, and she staggered backward, her grip on that bat loosening. I kicked it out of her hand and sent it flying back into the darkness of her house.

It was like watching a bizarre video of myself—every part of me acted on raw instinct, like this was how I handled every difficult situation. Except it wasn’t. The last time I remembered being in a fight had been in ninth grade and I’d failed miserably, spending the rest of the day in the school nurse’s office.

“I only wanted to talk to you,” I said, although the tone in my voice said something else. I was daring her to hit me, to take this one step further. Some part of me wanted her to lift her arms and step back out that door toward me.