Chapter Twenty-Three #2
“Something about her changed. She lost weight, her eyes looked sunken and hollow, like she was getting super depressed or something. She was being fucking strange, and she was acting like something terrible had happened.”
“Terrible? Like what?”
“Like what? I don’t fucking know! Obviously! Or else she wouldn’t be missing right now, would she?”
Ugh. I force down the power that’s been building inside me this whole time. I want to wrap her beautiful blond hair around my fist and slam her perfect face into the table, but I can’t because that would be crazy, and also I need her stupid help.
“And Lucas, he was being super evasive about everything, too.”
“Wait, I’m sorry, what about Lucas?” My heart is pounding in my eardrums. What the hell does Lucas have to do with any of this?
Even as I wonder it, I know it’s ridiculous. Lucas is totally arrogant and stubborn and sometimes a little bit of a himbo, but he’d never disappear a girl.
“Fiona and Lucas weren’t dating or anything, but they were close. Hanging out a lot. One day they were besties, and the next, she was avoiding him like the plague. I tried to ask about what happened between them, but then she started avoiding me, too.”
“Huh,” I say, because anything more than that and I’ll start screaming, and maybe I’ll never stop. I write Lucas’s name on my paper and underline it three times.
“Have you ever asked Lucas about what happened?”
She rolls her eyes. “Obviously, but he swears he didn’t even see her in the days leading up to her disappearance.”
“That’s odd.”
“Duh. But I don’t have a reason not to believe him.
He seemed really concerned about her, too, so we made a plan to confront her.
Two days later, she was gone. Like, poof, gone without a trace.
I felt insane. Her side of the dorm room was empty, her social media was deleted.
It was like I wouldn’t even be able to prove she ever existed if it weren’t for the pictures I took of her myself.
Sometimes it feels like she was just a figment of my imagination. ”
For the first time I look at Missy openly, without judgment. Rancid personality and disgustingly beautiful face aside, there’s something familiar in the determination in her eyes, the tired, gray shadows beneath them, the untamed flyaways around her hairline.
The pearlescent scars that crawl up her forearms like Jacob’s ladder.
Broken, the voice whispers, and I nod. Yeah, me too.
“Okay,” I say finally, shaking off the intrusion in my mind. “Anything else you’ve been able to uncover since she went missing?”
She tucks her hair behind her ears before folding her arms over the table and leaning forward. She lowers her voice, a level of respect shining in her eyes that wasn’t there prior to this conversation.
“So at the end of last year, I was in the old headmaster’s office for a disciplinary meeting.” She holds her hands up. “Don’t even ask.”
I sit back, the static finally dying down as a wry smile pulls at my lips.
“He had this cabinet with all the student files in it. When he stepped out to speak to someone in the hallway, I got up and tried to open it, but it was locked.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Do you think there’s information about her disappearance in her student file?”
“I’m not sure, but I’m also not sure where else we might find more information about her…” She stares at her perfectly manicured French tips.
I don’t even consider telling her about the blog. It feels too specific, too important. Like if I show her, then I’ll be giving too much of myself away. For some reason, it feels sacred. Private. The space where Fiona’s and my story overlap.
“I was in Headmaster Matsoukas’s office…
again… after the pep rally, and the cabinet was still there.
Mocking me.” She shakes her head before placing it into her hands.
“It’s not like they swap out all the important files when a new headmaster takes over.
” She shrugs. “I know it’s crazy, but something tells me they know more about what happened than they’re letting on.
And maybe the answers are right there under our noses. ”
“What about the police?” There are rumors that the police didn’t really do much, but I’m interested to see what Missy’s interpretation of their job was.
“Those fucking pigs?!” Missy’s hazel eyes turn molten. “They’re useless. That’s one of the reasons I wonder about the school. Because Headmaster Matsoukas’s cousin is a deputy sheriff.”
Oh yeah. There’s a distant knowledge unlocked somewhere in my brain.
It’s times like these where I realize that so much of what I know about the boys’ lives had been condensed to those three months every summer.
For my entire life, Alastair’s always been the good half of the Matsoukas brothers.
But I’d always had my questions about what went on once I left Earnest for the offseason.
“We need that file,” I say without thinking.
“I’m sorry?”
“I—We should break into his office, see if there are any clues inside the cabinet. I’ve recently gotten pretty good with bobby pins and a lock.”