CHAPTER FIFTEEN

When Bridget and Val leave the café, I ask Rob to watch the front counter so I can lock myself in the bathroom.

She was only friends with you to get to Andrew.

I lower the toilet seat and sit, hugging my knees to my chest. Bridget is wrong; Bailey and I are friends because I sat next to her that first day in local history. She asked me to be her partner because I was there. We’re friends because of fate, not because of Andrew.

Fucking Andrew. I’m not stupid; I know that every girl in our grade has been in love with him at some point. But I’d always assumed that Jade and Bailey were immune to his charms. Jade is constantly making fun of him, calling him McSketch, pointing out how he wears basket shorts even in the freezing cold. He’s so weird. Bailey would even sometimes join in.

But then a flash of a memory comes on strong, like a migraine.

Meg Constanzo.

Meg is one of the girls that other girls like to hate—she plays a sport every season. Her wardrobe is entirely J. Crew and her ponytail is unnaturally bouncy. But when she smiles at you, it’s impossible to hate her, because she just looks like she really means it.

Bailey hated her anyway. We were hanging out in the parking lot after school last spring, waiting for Jade to finish uploading her photographs to the Mac in Mr. White’s room. Bailey and I leaned against the chain link separating us from the fields, soaking up the last bit of sun before her four p.m. shift at Friendly Drugs.

The gym doors opened at the side of the building, and the lacrosse girls jogged past us. Meg was at their helm, already a captain even though she was only a junior. She smiled and waved at us. Hey, guys. That was the entire transaction.

When the lacrosse girls were gone, Bailey said, “God, I fucking hate her.”

I watched them run onto the field, sticks held high, their laughter echoing up to the parking lot. “Meg? Why? She’s nice.”

“It’s so fake,” Bailey said. “No one is that nice.”

It took months for Andrew to open up to me about what happened the previous fall, why he missed so much soccer practice and got kicked off the team.

“I was dating this girl for like six months,” he’d said, over teaching me how to play Risk. “When she broke up with me, she wouldn’t tell me why. And I guess I sort of just shut down.”

Color had crept into his cheeks when he said it, like I would judge him for something. Judge him for the pills I’d seen Ashley pick up for him from Friendly Drugs.

But I understood; after a particularly bad fight with my mom, I wouldn’t want to leave my room for days. My bed was my only comfort from the feeling that started with being unable to face one person and ended with being unable to face the world.

Andrew told me the girl’s name with a shrug. Meg Constanzo. From what I knew about her, she was exactly the type of girl that it made sense for Andrew to date.

But I didn’t put the pieces together that day in the parking lot when Meg said hey to Bailey and me. God, I fucking hate her. I’d written it off as Bailey feeling bitchy for no reason. A flash of a moment, so quick you could blink and miss it.

Now I’m left wondering: what else have I missed?

Moments after Bridget and Val leave, my phone buzzes in my back pocket with a text from Jade: what did bitch 1 and bitch 2 want??

I swallow, shaking off the eerie feeling of being watched. Jade works at Tim’s Taqueria down the street; no doubt she saw Val’s Camry parked outside the café when she arrived at work for her eleven-thirty shift.

I can’t shake Bridget’s words from my head. Could it be true that Bailey was only using me to get to Andrew? Jade’s not stupid; she must have known how Bailey felt about Andrew. Jade was the best friend, and I was the extra friend. There are things you tell your best friend that you don’t tell the extra one.

I wonder if they did it on purpose: not telling me that Bailey was into my brother.

I delete the text from Jade and head back to the sink, praying that she won’t come over here when she realizes I saw the message and chose not to respond. Jade’s boss, the eponymous Tim, is a hardass and only lets her have short breaks.

The thought is comforting. I don’t want to see Jade right now. I don’t know how to make what we have work; not only do we not know how we fit together when we don’t have Bailey as our connective tissue, but Jade is suspicious of me.

I need time to figure out how to handle her. Get her back on my side. And I’m not going to do that by entertaining rumors over coffee with the two girls Bailey hated more than anyone.

I’m washing dishes when the bell over the front door tinkles. I crane my neck to look over the counter in time to see the two men coming in. One white, one black. Both in work pants and heavy parkas. From the highway snow removal company, maybe.

I’ve never seen them in here before, but then again, Pete’s Dinette is closed today so all of the workers could join the search for Bailey. These men are probably regulars there; they stare at the menu over my head, puzzled by words like organic and seven-grain before settling on two coffees and a stack of buttered toast.

I yell for Rob to throw the toast in before I start on the coffees. The men take the table closest to the counter—the one covered in sugar left from an overzealous toddler this morning. I was so distracted by Val and Bridget I forgot to clean it up.

One of the men—the white guy—leans back in his chair so vigorously it groans. “You see any of the searchers on your way up?”

I keep one eye on them as I start a fresh pot of coffee.

“Nah, I heard most of ’em got sent to Pleasant Plains,” the black guy replies.

“Makes sense. Seems like if she were in Broken Falls, someone would’ve found her by now. They asked everyone with land to search it good.”

My hand trembles around the handle of the pot. I think about interrupting—You sure you want that coffee black?—just to get closer and hear their conversation better.

The white guy takes a napkin from the holder in the center of the table and tears at one of the corners. “You hear? Jim Grosso was the only one who wouldn’t consent to a voluntary search of his property.”

I freeze. The black guy whistles. “He’s got that big shed and everything.”

“Isn’t his boy involved with the Hammond girl somehow? At least, that’s what people are saying.”

The bell in the kitchen dings; Rob passes me a plate of buttered toast. My back turned to the men, I keep one hand on the coffeepot, cursing the crescendo of the gurgle the fresh drip makes. I step away from the machine so I can hear the men better.

“I heard Sheriff Bill’s got his eye on one of the girl’s friends,” one of the men says.

I whip around, forgetting my hand on the coffeepot. It slips from my grasp and shatters on the floor. Hot coffee continues to pour out of the machine, splashing the thighs of my jeans. I ignore the way the wet spots are scalding my legs and react stupidly, trying to pick up the pieces of the shattered glass from the pot.

“Whoa, whoa!” Rob runs out of the kitchen, brandishing a rag. “Don’t touch.”

But it’s too late—there’s a slice down my thumb, like a paper cut, but deeper. The men are staring at me; I can feel it. Rob wraps the rag around my finger, and I swear he can hear my heart trying to leap out of my chest.

“Can you get them two black coffees?” I choke out. Then I make a run for the kitchen.

I hear Rob apologize to the men as I stick my finger under cold water in the back sink. Sheriff Bill’s got his eye on one of the girl’s friends. They were talking about me, and they hadn’t even realized it.

Cold sweat springs to my face. I stand over the sink, watching my blood circle the bottom of the sink, staining bits of egg stuck in the drain. People think I did this. People actually think I could have killed Bailey.

And why wouldn’t they? I’m the outsider who waltzed into Broken Falls a year ago with no explanation. Russ Markham’s bastard child, the girl with purple hair and a sketchy past. The media is saying Bailey knew her attacker; everyone knows no one from Broken Falls is capable of murder.

But there is one other person. Someone who actually had a reason to want to hurt Bailey. And for whatever reason, the police believe the bullshit alibi his dad gave him.

I don’t. And I need something, anything to prove that Cliff Grosso is the one who is hiding the truth about that night.

When Rob comes back into the kitchen, he pushes his bandana up his forehead and takes my finger gently. “There’s Band-Aids in Ashley’s office. Go get one and I’ll watch the front.”

“I’ve got to go,” I blurt. “I’ll be gone an hour, max. You can handle things on your own until then, right?”

“Kiddo, I handle this place on my own all the time.” Rob blinks at me with bloodshot, pot-addled eyes. “What’s going on?”

“There’s just something important I need to do.”

Rob glances at the closed door to Ashley’s office, where she usually is. Fielding calls from distributors. Working on our paychecks and schedules. “Maybe I should call Ash.”

“Please. Don’t do that. She doesn’t have her phone with her, anyway. The volunteers aren’t allowed to carry them because people might take pictures or whatever.”

Rob just looks at me.

“An hour.” I hold my hands up. “I swear.”

Rob rubs his stubbly chin. Sighs. “Okay. I’m calling you if you’re not back by then.”

I’m sitting in Andrew’s car, engine running. My phone is ice-cold in my injured hand as I look up the number for Grosso’s butcher shop.

Someone picks up on the second ring. The voice is raspy, male. “ ’Lo?”

“Is this Jim?” I ask.

“Speaking. What can I do you for?”

Hanging up would be too suspicious. “I’d like to place an order. A big one.”

Jim Grosso sighs. “Hold for me a minute, okay?”

I keep my voice even, chipper. “Sure thing.”

When the line clicks, I end the call. I turn on the radio and wait five minutes before I call Grosso’s Hunting and Game. I immediately get a gruff male voice on the phone that sounds like Cliff.

I hang up.

I breathe hot air into my gloves and start the wipers on Andrew’s car. They whisk away the fattening snowflakes landing on the windshield. If the snow keeps up, they’ll have to end the search early. Panic needles me; I shake my head. I have to do this.

I punch a vague address into my phone GPS—Cypress Circle—because I don’t know Cliff’s exact address. The directions lead me down the same back roads Jade and I took the other morning.

When I arrive, the Grossos’ cabin is dark; no smoke billows from the chimney this time. I park far from the house, midway between their property and the nearest neighbor. What the hell am I doing? With shaky hands, I pull the beanie I left on Andrew’s passenger seat over my ears and step out of the car.

I keep toward the edge of the Grossos’ property, hoping the trees and falling snow will obscure me from any prying eyes. The snow packed on the driveway crunches under my feet, despite my efforts to make my footsteps delicate. I glance in the garage; there’s a snowblower, an ATV, but no Jeep Wrangler papered with NRA bumper stickers. Just like I thought, Cliff isn’t home.

Snowflakes catch on my eyelashes as I creep around the side of the house. Footprints. The Grossos will come home and see my footprints. It’s too late now. I hope it snows harder to cover my tracks and keep plugging away toward the shed.

I freeze. There’s a rustling in the woods, the snapping of twigs. I crane my neck to see better; a fawn stares back at me, a statue except for its jaw working a mouthful of deer feed. I slowly show my hands and it stops chewing. In a flash of brown, it jolts away into the woods.

Overhead, a woodpecker pauses from its tapping. I let out the breath I was holding and continue up to the shed, breathing in through my nose. There’s no rotten smell this time, no stink of blood. The frost paralyzes my nasal cavity, but I can detect pine needles and rust.

I’m brushing my hand over the padlock as a voice sounds around the other side of the shed.

“Don’t move or you’re dead. I mean it.”

All the blood in my body drains to my toes as I see Cliff Grosso coming at me, a crossbow on his shoulder, the tip of the arrow pointed at my heart.