CHAPTER SEVEN

I have two new emails when we get home from Pleasant Plains: one is from the school, informing us of “two separate yet unrelated incidents in the Broken Falls community.” The first: the burst pipe in the high school from the blizzard, and an assurance that crews are working around the clock to get the building “up and operational so school can resume as normal.” The second issue is Bailey.

We are deeply concerned by the situation regarding one of our seniors. When normal school days resume, our guidance counselors will be available to students to help process any difficult emotions. Anyone with information regarding Bailey Hammond’s whereabouts is encouraged to call the Broken Falls Sheriff’s Department. This is a very serious matter and all emails with tips sent to this address will be forwarded to the police.

I haven’t even gotten the chance to strip my sweaty socks off when the doorbell rings.

“I’ll get it,” I shout.

The deputy from yesterday—Ellie Knepper—is standing on the front steps. I unhitch the lock latch and open the door.

“Hi there. Is your mom home?” She removes her gloves and breathes into her bare hands.

“Stepmom,” I say, but Ashley is already in the foyer.

“Good afternoon, ma’am. I’m Deputy Ellie Knepper.”

Ashley steps forward, tentative, and shakes Ellie’s hand. “Ashley Markham.”

“Oh, I know. I see you around the café when I come in for my cinnamon latte fix.”

Ashley puts two fingers to the pendant on her neck. A small smile. “Really? Most of the force is loyal to Pete’s Dinette.”

“Yup. Personally, I find Pete’s food so greasy it’ll give you an ulcer. Could I trouble you for a cup of coffee now, actually?” Ellie shifts, looking uncomfortable. Like asking for a cup of coffee is part of a script.

It makes me dread what the next scene is going to be.

Ashley smiles. “Sure. I have regular and dark roast,” she says.

“Dark sounds great.” Ellie breathes into her hands again and invites herself into the dining room. I guess I am supposed to follow.

Ellie plops onto one of the chairs and unzips her parka while Ashley fusses around in the kitchen. I sit across from Ellie, happy she’s here but irritated it took her so long. “So you’re taking this seriously now?” I press. “It’s already been almost forty-eight hours.”

Ellie’s mouth forms a tight, chastised smile. I wonder if this is her punishment for dismissing Jade and me yesterday: trekking out in the cold to interview a bunch of high school brats.

From the kitchen, I hear the single-cup coffeemaker gurgle and spit into a mug. Officer Knepper gets out a small yellow legal pad and uncaps a pen.

Ashley comes up behind me and nudges me, hands me a steaming mug of coffee. I hand it to Ellie, who holds it up to her nose. Inhales and smiles like I’ve given her liquid gold. “Oh. This is great.”

“Do you have people out there looking for Bailey?” I blurt. I balance my heels on the rung of the stool and hug my arms around my middle. “I mean, if you’re here, who’s supposed to find her?”

“The snow’s making it tough to do a ground search.” Ellie taps her pen against the legal pad. “But don’t worry. We’re doing everything we can to find Bailey.”

Ashley sets a carton of milk and a bottle of vanilla creamer in front of Ellie. “I didn’t know which you’d like.”

“Milk is fine. Do you know what I could really use, though?” Ellie gives Ashley a placating smile. “A recent yearbook from Broken Falls High.”

Ashley’s forehead forms a V. “I think my son has his upstairs. I’ll go get it.”

“That would be so helpful. I’ve been searching for one all day.”

I study the curve of Ellie’s lips around the rim of her mug as Ashley hurries out of the kitchen. What are the chances she’s been looking for a yearbook all day and couldn’t find a single one?

“What do you need a yearbook for?” I ask once Ashley’s out of earshot.

Ellie sets her mug down and huddles it with both hands. “There are a lot of names being thrown around right now. I’m better with faces.”

She’s probing my face right now, searching my eyes with her beady brown ones. “So you’ve been friends with Bailey since you moved here?”

I nod. “Pretty much, yeah.”

“How does she get along with her family?”

“Fine, I guess. What do you care about her family? Shouldn’t you be asking about Cliff Grosso?”

Ellie taps her pen to her chin. “Bear with me. I’ve got to cover all the bases. Even the boring ones. How about Bailey and her parents?”

“They’re fine, I guess.”

“What about her mom, in particular?”

“What do you mean?” I pick at the hangnail cornering my thumb. Realize that’s gross. Stop.

“Did they get along?” Ellie asks. “When I was your age, my mom and I used to fight like cats and dogs.”

For as long as I’ve known her, Bailey liked to bitch about her mom—not like how it is with me and my mom, which would be like saying Israel and Palestine don’t “get along”—but she and Cathy argue about curfew, and Bailey’s B average in school. Typical teenage girl stuff.

I shrug. “They argue every now and then, I guess.”

“What about?”

“Usual stuff. Stupid mother-daughter stuff.”

“And her older brother?”

“Is at college.” I have to take a deep breath. Stop myself from reaching across the table and shaking Ellie by her collar. “Again, why are you focusing on her family when she was last seen with a guy who hated her?”

Knepper looks at me for a long beat. Blinks those short, dark lashes. “So that’s why you and Jade Becker went to the Grossos’ house, right? Whose idea was that?”

“We both decided, I guess. Did you see the picture on Kevin Sullivan’s phone? It was definitely Cliff. That’s why we went there—he was the last person who saw her before she left.”

Ellie blows on her coffee. “We’re working on interviewing everyone who was at the party. Big task. Apparently it was quite the rager.”

She must sense my eyes flicking downward. “You weren’t at the party, huh?”

I shake my head.

“Why not?”

For some reason, I don’t want to see Ellie Knepper feeling sorry for me. Or maybe I’m just too embarrassed to admit it: My friends ditched me. “I was tired from work. And I heard about the storm—I don’t know, I just didn’t feel like going out.”

“Responsible kid.”

I can’t tell if Ellie is being sarcastic. She seems too pure, too incapable of sarcasm. Guilt digs at my ribs. I should have been at that party.

“What about Cliff Grosso?” I blurt. “How can he explain her phone being on his property?”

Ellie taps her pen against her pad. “I can’t comment on that. It’s an active investigation.” In other words, she’s not telling me shit about Cliff. “When exactly was the last time you spoke to Bailey?” she asks.

“She stopped by the café Saturday before she went to work.”

“Did she seem upset? Agitated?”

I’ve become mute. I can’t tell Knepper that Bailey was probably pissed at me without telling her why: that we were trespassing, and for the stupidest reason ever—to perform a séance in the local haunted barn. And while we were at it we were almost crushed by the roof. Oh, and that my little sister tagged along and almost got us caught with her screaming.

If Ellie knows that Lauren was with us, she might tell Ashley and my dad. They’ll know that I’m the reason my sister isn’t eating or sleeping.

My throat feels tight. “Maybe she was a little weird. I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know.”

Knepper leans closer to me. “I know you’re worried, but anything you can tell us, anything Bailey said or did that didn’t feel right, it might help.”

A flicker of a memory—lounging in the passenger seat of Bailey’s car with a passion-tea lemonade, parked outside the Starbucks in Pleasant Plains, after we’d finished our road trip project last year.

I would just get on the highway and go.

“She hated it here,” I say. “She told me if she could, she’d just leave.”

Ellie Knepper stares at me. “Okay. That’s helpful.”

I feel like there’s a bomb timer ticking down to go off in my brain. I must be staring, because Knepper writes it down on her pad. “I won’t keep you much longer. But I have to ask…the three of you. Sounds like from everyone we talked to, you’re inseparable.”

I swallow. “Yeah. We do everything together.”

“Did you girls ever fight?” Ellie bats those lashes. I wonder if it’s her nervous tic. My toes clench.

“No,” I say. “Never. We weren’t like that.”

Ellie nods, her hand on the mug of coffee she’s taken a total of two sips from. “Well, you’ve been very helpful, Kacey. I’ll be in touch.”

“Wait.” I think of Ashley upstairs, rooting around in Andrew’s room for his yearbook. “The yearbook.”

Ellie looks at me curiously. “Oh, that’s okay. Next time we talk.”

She stands up and she’s already to the front door when I glance at her coffee, barely touched, and I feel sick. I feel tricked. She just wanted Ashley out of the way so she could talk to me alone.

Did you girls ever fight?

I hadn’t lied, exactly. The answer is just too complicated for Ellie Knepper to understand.

Bailey could be moody, prone to snap at Jade and me if she was hungry or bored. Her cruelty was always like a spanking, though; she had a way of making me feel like she was doing it for my own good. Quit being such a baby. People are gonna think you’re uptight.

She did get mad at me once. It was the night of Lauren’s dance recital at Sun Prairie High School. Andrew, Ashley, and I had met her backstage with a bouquet of rainbow carnations. Lauren’s eyes—wide and doll-like from false eyelashes—flicked between the three of us. “Where’s Daddy?”

The lilt to her voice said she’d noticed the empty seat in our row during her first dance number.

“He got stuck at work. He’s coming to both shows tomorrow.” Ashley planted a kiss on her forehead; Lauren wiggled away, her eyes on the group of girls to our right. I recognized Keelie March. Caught the words diner and get a ride from Emma.

“Hey, you did awesome, Monkey,” Andrew said, his voice loud enough to drown out Keelie and her peons. They’d wanted Lauren to hear about their plans, the ones she was excluded from. I stuck my hands in the pockets of my cardigan, afraid of how I wanted to walk over and use them to shake Emma Michaels. Don’t you see they’re using you?

Lauren peeled the stick-on rhinestone from the corner of her eye, one of the ones I’d helped her apply backstage during intermission. They were a part of her tap costume: a navy velour sailor’s outfit and matching hat that she was mortified of because a boy she liked would be in the audience, the younger brother of one of the senior girls.

“Can we please just get out of here?” she’d said, and by the time we’d made it to the car she was crying silently.

Andrew cleared his throat. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m starving.”

He looked over at me. “I could go for ice cream,” I said, playing along.

“You three go.” Ashley’s mouth formed a sad little smile, like she understood that being seen getting ice cream with her mom after the recital was worse than being left out of the diner trip. “I’m exhausted.”

Once we were inside Culver’s, sundaes ordered, Lauren had brightened a bit. She told us how one of the kindergartners from the ballet class she cotaught had wet her tutu right before her dance number, even though Lauren had asked them three times whether anyone had to go pee before going onstage.

We were laughing so hard I didn’t notice that Bailey and Jade were standing at the edge of our table until Andrew said, “Hey, what are you guys doing here?”

Bailey smirked at me and said low enough that only I could hear: “Way to text us back.”

I patted my cardigan pocket, where I’d forgotten I’d tucked my phone. “My phone was on silent.”

The morning came rushing back to me: Bailey, stopping in for her egg whites and latte, asking me what I was doing tonight. When I’d told her I had to go to Lauren’s recital, she said, So text us after.

“So what are you guys doing?” I asked, hoping my panic hadn’t crept into my voice. It’s not a big deal; you didn’t say you would hang out with them.

“Just chilling,” Bailey said. “We got hungry.”

“I’m getting onion rings,” Jade said. “You guys want anything?”

Andrew swirled his spoon through the syrup on his sundae. “Nah, we’re good.”

Bailey gave me a little wave over her shoulder as she followed Jade to the counter. Andrew’s voice was low in my ear: “What was that about?”

“I don’t know.” I didn’t say what was niggling at me: had they followed us here?

Neither of them brought that night up ever again, but now, I can feel the way Bailey looked at me like a pit in my stomach. The same way Ellie Knepper looked at me when I told her that I never fought with my friends.

It feels like I’d failed a test I hadn’t even known about.

I call Jade as soon as I’m closed in my room. She picks up on the first ring. “Have you heard anything?”

“No. But that cop—the woman from yesterday—she just left my house.” I glance out my window at the driveway, watching snow fall on the rectangle of pavement where Ellie Knepper had parked her cruiser.

“I talked to her today too.” Jade’s voice is ragged. “They’re supposed to make a statement on the news about it tonight. Announce she’s officially a missing person and tell people there’s gonna be a vigil. Did you hear about Cliff?”

My stomach drops to my toes. “No. What happened?”

“Apparently someone heard him and Bridget get into a huge fight at Sully’s party. Bridge confronted him after someone saw Cliff outside talking to Bailey by her car.” Jade’s voice goes warbly. “Cliff left the party alone, all pissed off.”

My head is cottony. I think of the deer blood in Cliff’s backyard. In Cliff’s mind, Bailey had cost him his scholarship, and now probably his girlfriend too. Could he really have hated Bailey enough to get rid of her, though?

“I hate myself so much,” Jade whispers. “I was upstairs smoking a stupid joint while all of this was going down. If I hadn’t listened to her, made sure she got home okay—”

“There’s no way you could have known.” I think of Ellie Knepper’s reluctance to talk about Cliff. The way she seemed to be grasping at something bigger. I pull at a loose thread of yarn in the blanket draped over my bed. “Hey—did you tell the cop what we did Friday night?”

“No. She didn’t ask.”

I glance at my bedroom door. “I need you to do something,” I whisper. “If the police ask about the barn, don’t say Lauren was there with us. If Ashley knew, she’d flip out.”

“Hold up.” There’s rustling on Jade’s end, then the sound of a door closing. “Why would they ask about what we did Friday night?”

“I don’t know, if they’re trying to retrace all of Bailey’s movements—Jade, promise me. It’s one thing if I snuck out, but if I brought my sister—”

“Jeez, okay, slow down. So we just don’t say we were ever there at all. I mean, technically we were trespassing, and we could get in trouble for the roof. If they ask what we did Friday night, we just say we drove around like we always do.”

A slick of sweat comes to my hands. Lying to Ashley is one thing, but lying to the police is another. It’s a dangerous road to go down.

“Hey, I gotta go,” Jade says darkly before I can answer. “Bay is about to make her TV debut.”