Lost Girls(30)

She was here and she was not here; she was a ghost who would never leave; she was a teenage girl who would never come home.

Still, the house where she grew up continued to call her to come home, come home, please.

Molly and I stayed longer than we planned. I couldn’t leave. I quickly thumbed a message to Dad, when forty-five minutes turned into an hour and then two as Nicole’s mother told us stories about her lost daughter. The woman needed to grieve and we needed to properly exchange phone numbers and email addresses. Just in case one of us found out anything. We finally parted with hugs and she gave us something, a bag of cookies, I think, and we all mumbled good-bye. It wasn’t until I was hugging her that I realized she was crying and probably had been from that first moment when she told me Nicole was dead.

All the parents of the missing girls were weeping and their tears were creating a lake—just like the one in Swan Lake. The water was getting deeper and deeper, rising around my ankles, lapping against my thighs.

I had a feeling that if I didn’t find answers soon, we were all going to drown.





Chapter Seventeen


Molly yawned and leaned back in the passenger seat, closing her eyes. One hand fiddled with her purse, pulling out her ever-present vial of thyroid medication. She thumbed the lid off and popped a pill into her mouth, swallowing it. I’d never gotten used to watching her take her meds without a glass of water, but that was the way she did it. She was crashing, we both were. Emotionally, physically. The rain was throwing shadows on us, our skin melting in rivulets. We were changing, both of us, turning into different people than we were before. I half-imagined we were going to start sprouting feathers and that we would spend the rest of our teenage years swimming across a lake that continued to grow.

The monsters were winning. Only now, I was afraid I might be one of them.

“That was crazy,” Molly said.

“Yeah. Her name sounds so familiar. I thought I’d remember something, that maybe I’d gone to her house before. But it didn’t look familiar and her mom didn’t recognize me.”

“We’ve still got three names left on the list. One of the girls lives pretty close to my house—”

“Janie wanted to bash my head in and Nicole is dead,” I said. “We’ve already been out later than we should for a school night and I can’t handle any more of this. Not tonight.” On top of that, my head was pounding, a dull ache that began in the back of my skull and radiated out. I could barely keep my eyes focused and I kept rubbing my left arm. I was obviously craving some unknown drug that would make me feel better, and this pain was my penance.

We drove away from Nicole’s house, heading north, back to our own side of the 210. Once I reached Molly’s townhouse, I parked. She stayed in the passenger seat, her door open, no words to say, which was unusual. I think she wanted to say something light like, see you at school tomorrow or try not to punch anyone between now and then, but I could tell by her hesitation that she changed her mind.

I never expected her to say what she did.

“I think you should ask your dad to help with all this, Rach,” she said, staring at the dashboard, one hand stuffed in her pocket, the other tugging up the hood on her jacket. “This is more than the two of us can handle. I mean, honestly, you might have killed that blue-haired witch earlier tonight. Not that she didn’t kinda deserve it, but do you really want to spend the rest of your teenage years behind bars? I don’t think so.” She paused, glancing at me, red curls tumbling out from her hoodie, pale blue eyes searching mine, maybe hoping I’d agree with her. “Your dad’s got lots of military contacts. Does he still hang with that group of ex-vets he toured with in the Middle East?”

“I don’t know.”

“This doesn’t mean I’m giving up,” she continued hurriedly. “I’ll do whatever I can, but you need to remember your dad spent about half his life as a Navy SEAL, saving the world from terrorists. I have a feeling he’d like to catch whoever kidnapped you.” She shuffled in her seat, shifting her book bag from her lap to her shoulder. “Anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”

A door opened in her townhouse, a rectangle of blurry, yellow light. Her mom was waiting.

“Are we still friends?” I asked, before she climbed out. Somehow this was the most important question of all, more than who kidnapped me or who these other girls were.

“We’re not friends, girl. We’re best friends,” she said with a half-grin. “Always and forever. Like you had to ask.”

And then she was gone, the one person I could talk to about all of this. She walked inside her front door, and turned back to smile and wave, feigning a lightness neither one of us felt. Then her front door closed, the light shut off, and I stared into the darkness, my pulse slamming against the back of my skull.

I glanced down at that tattoo on my wrist, ran my fingers over the words “ALWAYS AND FOREVER”. Until now, I’d forgotten that Molly and I used to say that to each other. It had been our little code, our way to prove we would be there for each other, no matter what. Sometime in the past year, I’d told her to get lost and, after that, I’d had these words engraved on my wrist. Maybe I regretted what I’d done, or maybe I’d been trying to remind myself who my real friends were.

I had a feeling it was a little bit of both.