Chapter 12
Kayleigh was already sitting at the picnic tables when I approached.
Her eyes were glued to her phone as she scrolled numbly.
Post–volleyball practice, she was dressed in bright Lululemon shorts that accentuated how lean she was.
Her red hair was braided and sat like a red rope over her narrow shoulders.
One of her legs was pressed against her chest, showcasing a nasty purple bruise.
“Kayleigh?” I asked tentatively. She looked up at me and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from audibly gasping. On Instagram, she had looked like sunshine personified. But in front of me now, she looked like hell.
Her skin was ashen and the dark circles under eyes were big enough to swim in.
Her lips, perpetually pink and glossed in photos, were cracked and dry.
She looked like she had been up for three days straight, her face twisted in an expression of despair.
I knew the look, knew the fear and grief that had created it.
“Rose?” Kayleigh asked. She looked me up and down, taking me in as I sat across from her.
“Yeah.” I tried to offer a smile. “Hi.”
I was struck by how young she looked. She had to be sixteen or seventeen. Practically a baby, even if she didn’t think so. And now her friend, Hazel, was missing. Something inside my chest lurched painfully.
“You look different from your pictures,” Kayleigh said. Funny that we had been thinking the same thing.
“In a good way or a bad way?” I joked. I wanted to make her more comfortable.
“A good way,” Kayleigh said with a small smile, setting her phone down. “You’re prettier in person. Hazel always said that, but you never know.” She swallowed hard at my sister’s name, and I had to fight the urge to break down. I gripped the bench to keep my hands steady.
“She was always talking about you,” she said, her gaze hardening. “About your life in New York. How cool she thought it was that you’re a writer. She wants to go to college there. I don’t know if you knew that.”
The proverbial knife twisted. From the look Kayleigh was giving me, I figured she knew that Hazel and I were not as close as we could be. It made sense. She was Hazel’s best friend.
“I did know that, actually,” I said.
Kayleigh nodded but didn’t look fully satisfied. “Have you …” Her voice caught. “Have you guys heard anything yet? Anything about where she might be?”
I felt horrible as I shook my head. “Not yet. We’ve been looking. Our family and the police but …” I trailed off. I didn’t have any answers for her.
Kayleigh brought her legs up to her chest, clutching them.
“I … I just really miss her,” she said softly, her lips trembling.
“I know it’s only been a couple days, but it’s been bad.
We’re usually talking all day, you know?
And I know this sounds stupid but this ruined our Snapchat streak. We’ve kept it up for years.”
“It doesn’t sound stupid,” I told her reassuringly. I remembered what it felt like to be their age. The things that mattered then.
“It makes me think …” Kayleigh was tearing up now. “That something’s happened to her. Hazel would never disappear on purpose. Not ever. She would know how worried we’d be. Her dad. Her friends.” She wiped uselessly at her eyes, trying to stop crying. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” I reached out and squeezed her shoulder, trying to be comforting, even though my insides were also twisted in pain. I wanted to join her, to let my tears fall on the picnic table. Her words were only adding to my growing terror.
“Listen, Kayleigh,” I said. “I need to ask you some things about Hazel, and I need you to be honest with me, okay? Even if something comes up that she asked you not to tell anyone. We’ll keep it between us.”
Kayleigh’s face went still, a look of fear crossing her features. “Like what?”
I took a deep breath. “Did Hazel tell you she was reading my book?”
Kayleigh’s eyes widened. I’d take that as a yes. After a couple of seconds she nodded, looking hesitant. She must know our dad had forbidden it.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “I found her copy at the McCulloughs’. I know she was annotating it. And I think it was because she was looking into Alex’s murder. Did she tell you anything about that?”
The color started to drain out of Kayleigh’s face. To the point where I almost felt bad. But she kept her lips tightly closed, committing to the silence.
I gave her a look. “I really need you to be honest.”
Her light eyes flickered. “She made me swear not to tell anyone …” Kayleigh said. “I promised.”
I had to admire her loyalty. How connected she felt to her friend. I was glad that Hazel had someone like that in her corner, but I didn’t have time to coddle her. I needed answers.
“This is important,” I pressed, firmer. “Someone could have found out what she was doing and hurt her.” Kayleigh flinched.
“I don’t know everything, okay?” she said harshly, reigning in my expectations.
“I didn’t think any of this was a good idea.
I tried to talk her out of it. But yeah, you’re right, she was looking into Alex’s murder.
There was all this social media stuff around you and your book.
Everyone was talking about it, always pestering Hazel for information.
She got sick of being in the dark, so she decided to finally give it a read. ”
This is all my fault, the tiny voice in my head snapped. I tried to ignore my immediate sense of regret as Kayleigh kept talking. “After she started looking into everything, she was convinced Will didn’t do it. For weeks it was all she talked about.” I tried to keep my face neutral.
“She told me she was going to see if she could figure it out, amateur sleuth-style. She wanted to solve the case, free Will, and help you write a sequel. Like Serial but with sisters. She was actually obsessed.” Kayleigh rolled her eyes slightly at this.
My guilt increased tenfold. My hopeful, determined, optimistic little sister had started all this to help Will. And to relate to me in the only way she knew how: scheming to prove his innocence.
This is all my fault. This is all my fault.
“Like I said, I really didn’t want to be a part of it,” Kayleigh continued.
“So then she stopped telling me things. But the last thing we talked about was how she was convinced that some guy named Nick might be involved? She told me she’d reached out to some of the Hopely sisters to ask them about it.
I honestly didn’t see much of her the last two weeks, but I know she was still looking. ”
Bingo. I needed to know which Hopelys she’d actually gotten a hold of. I certainly wasn’t going to start cold-calling them to find out.
“Do you know which Hopely sisters she reached out to?” I asked, my jaw set.
“Umm, ya. I think it was Victoria. And Cassandra too.”
I felt my body stiffen. Great. I’d made my peace with the fact that most of Hopelys hated me and always would, but with Cassandra it was different.
She had been my closest friend for fourteen years, but then Alex was killed and this gigantic crack had suddenly formed between us.
A breakup I was sure hurt more than anything I could ever experience with a partner.
But still, it was hard for me to hate her.
I had loved her like a sister for so long.
Even hearing her name caused the wound to reopen with a fresh wave of agony.
How had Hazel reached her? She was the only one of the Hopelys who wasn’t still in Florida.
In fact, she had moved to Manhattan last year.
Suzannah had called me when she’d seen the update on Facebook.
She had a job as an assistant buyer at Macy’s and lived on the Lower West Side.
I panicked at first, terrified I was going to see her around every corner and unsure how I would deal with the renewed heartbreak if and when she ignored me.
But in the year we had both lived in the same city, I hadn’t seen her once.
“That’s all I know,” Kayleigh said, snapping me out of my thoughts. She sat up straighter, looking like she wanted to leave. “Is there anything else?”
Not really. I had my leads. I’d have to get over how I felt about it and reach out to both sisters. I was about to thank Kayleigh and tell her that was it, but then I looked behind her at the school. I debated internally for a minute. Fuck it, I had to ask.
“One more thing,” I said quickly. “Do you have Mr. Myers for English with Hazel?”
Kayleigh looked surprised at my line of questioning. “Uh, yeah. Why?”
“Did Hazel ever say anything about him?”
Kayleigh looked at me suspiciously. “I mean, yeah, he’s our teacher? She talked about him sometimes … his classes, homework. We both did. Why?”
I paused. “Do you guys like him?”
She considered this, chewing her lip. “I mean, he’s a nice teacher, I guess. An easy grader, and he always shows us the movies of the books we read in school. People say the film club is fun, like he’s kind of …”
I braced myself, waiting for the familiar words: Creepy. Sleezy. Gross. A predator.
“ … extra-millennial?” Kayleigh added, with a shrug. “Like he still says things like awesome sauce or struggle bus. And the Star Wars obsession is a bit cringey.”
I felt instant relief. My intuition was right. Bradley had bent the rules with me, but he wasn’t involved with Hazel.
“Got it. Thanks, Kayleigh.”
“So, I can go?” she asked, and I nodded. She got up from the table, a lightness clearly reentering her body.
She had her car keys in hand, heading toward the parking lot, when she turned around to look at me again.
“Hey, Rose?” she asked softly. “Will you let me know if the police find anything … like before they tell everybody else?” She looked scared. A teenage girl who didn’t want to find out her best friend was dead via social media. I ignored the wave of nausea at that idea and nodded.
“Of course.”
“Thanks.” She gave me a small smile. “I hope you find her fast.”
“Me too.”
I waited, watching to make sure she got into her car safely and had driven away before I got up. No one needed another teenage girl missing. The second she had disappeared onto the street, I climbed into my SUV.
My next steps were obvious: I needed to find and talk to Victoria and Cassandra Hopely.