Nice Girls(50)

Later, in private, Madison was fuming.

“Sorry I can’t fuck my way to the top,” she ranted in the car. “It’s not my fault I’m not a lazy, stupid bitch.”

I did my best to comfort her. I had never seen Madison so upset before. But the day was supposed to be hers—we were meant to celebrate her hard work, the hours she’d put in. Instead, Olivia had shat on it in less than a minute. The moment had stuck with her.

“I don’t care about Olivia,” Madison repeated. “I don’t even care about the other girl. The police and the FBI are handling it. They’re supposed to be talking to my dad, not you.”

I swallowed, but I couldn’t think of anything to say.

“What are you trying to prove with this?” she asked.

I leaned against the couch cushion, words spinning in my head.

I imagined Madison standing outside a corporate office building. She might have just left an internship, dressed in a nice skirt, blazer, and heels. To a stranger, she probably looked like she was in the middle of a fierce business deal.

“Look,” said Madison. She sighed, as if our talk had lasted longer than she preferred. “I know you’re bored at home, and I know you’re sad about flunking out of Cornell. But there is no need for you to go around harassing people.”

“I didn’t flunk out,” I blurted loudly. The thought pained me. “I didn’t harass your dad. But if he knows something about a murdered girl, he should be talking about it.”

“You think he’s hiding something?”

I hesitated. I knew how badly the conversation would go. It was inevitable, like a car dashing off the side of a cliff. It was too late to stop.

“I think your dad knows more than he’s letting on,” I murmured.

Through the living room window, I watched a tree branch shifting in the wind.

“I thought you’d changed, Mary,” said Madison, her voice soft. “But you are still so pretentious. It’s disgusting.”

“I’m just trying to help,” I whispered.

“Of course you are, Mary. You’re a saint who does things out of the kindness of her heart.”

I shook my head, but Madison couldn’t see. She kept talking.

“You think you’re so smart and special and misunderstood that you don’t belong back home. You thought Cornell made you better than everyone else. And you thought you were gonna be some chic city girl who everyone was gonna talk about. But what happens? You still end up back home anyway. Now you’re using murders to make yourself feel better?”

“That’s not—”

“Stop with the morality bullshit. Please. You said that Olivia was gonna end up a pregnant white trash bitch. Don’t you remember? Because I do.” Madison paused, the anger seeping into her words. “Don’t pretend you’re any better, Mary. You are as fake and irrelevant as the people back home.”

I shook my head. My face was burning. And I realized my eyes were wet.

Madison and I had wanted more than Liberty Lake—that was what brought us together. We were smart and hardworking and unloved. We were the underdogs. And as the underdogs, we were due for more than the other people in our school, our class, our city.

But how cruel we could be about the others: the boys who we hoped were locked up by high school graduation; the girls who we assumed would get knocked up afterward; the comments I’d make about girls who would one day be dead.

As teenagers, Madison and I were jealous and vindictive. We recognized it, too, that rage and that spite in each other. But we left it unsaid. We never directed it at each other.

But now Madison had said the unspoken. It hurt, as if she’d reached up under my rib cage and throttled my lungs. I heard no lies.

“Don’t talk to my dad again,” Madison said quietly. “All he does is work at the restaurant. He doesn’t get involved in anything outside of it. I thought you knew that.”

I put a hand to my mouth, trying to cover the watery hiccup that was coming out.

“And whatever kind of shit you’re trying to do, stop it.”

There was a click and then silence.





24




“Smile, Mary,” said Jim. “You look so glum.”

He passed by my aisle early in the morning, giving me a thumbs-up. But I only stared back. Jim’s smile quickly disappeared.

“If you feel the urge to upchuck, you go home, okay?” said Jim, half-jokingly. “Whole store keeps getting sick. We don’t want our customers getting puked on, do we?”

“No, we don’t,” I murmured.

The day at Goodhue Groceries was long and mindless—one customer after the other. They each paid too much for their organic peppers and kale and oat milk. I was mechanical. I punched in the proper codes, returned the exact change, and rescanned someone’s entire order because they had forgotten to give me their coupons. At work, I barely existed.

But it was better than the alternative—being trapped at home, alone. The house was too quiet.

When I’d woken up, I could already hear Madison’s voice in my ears. It was like a chain that held me down, yanking at my shoulders and my throat. It left me immobile in bed.

Madison wasn’t wrong about me. Everything that I had tried to bury and forget—it washed over me, drowning me. I hated high school and I liked college, but none of it mattered anymore. They were all in the past.