I breathe.
“Jesus,” Becki says and I know it’s not because of the inherent sadness of what I’ve just told her, it’s because of the broken way it came out of my mouth. She steps back a little because that shit is catching, you know, and if she gets it, there’s a 100 percent chance she’ll pass it on to her fetus. “Should you—I mean, can you drive?”
It’s one of the more subtle ways someone has asked me if I’m stupid, but that doesn’t make it any less maddening coming from a woman who can’t even spell the word please. I tuck the envelope back in my pocket, let that speak for me. Mattie used to say it was my stubbornness, not my stutter, that was my worst quality, but one wouldn’t exist without the other. Still. I can afford the risk of pretending Becki’s ignorance is more than I’m willing to fork over for her used-up car. She laughs a little, embarrassed. Says, “What am I talking about? Of course you can…” And again, less convincingly: “Of course you can.”
“Yeah,” I say, because not every word I speak turns itself into pieces. The vocal normalcy relaxes Becki and she quits wasting my time, shows me the car still works by bringing the engine alive. She tells me the spring on the trunk is busted and jokes she’ll let me keep the stick they use to prop it open at no extra charge.
I hmm and uh-huh my way through the transaction until it’s official and then I sit on the hood of my new car and watch them reverse out, turning left onto the highway. I twirl the car key around my finger while the early morning heat slowly envelops me. The bugs find me an affront to their territory and make a feast of my pale white, freckled skin. The dry, dusty smell of road tickles my nostrils, speaking to the part of me that’s ready to go, so I slide off the car and roll my bike into the brush, watching it fall unspectacularly on its side.
May Beth gives me blueberries sometimes, but she also collects expired license plates, displaying them proudly inside the shed behind her double-wide. All different colors and states, sometimes countries. May Beth has so many license plates, I don’t think she’ll miss two. The registration stickers are courtesy of old Mrs. Warner, three trailers down from mine. She’s too frail to drive and doesn’t need them anymore.
I muddy the plates up and wipe my dirty palms on my shorts as I round the car and get in the driver’s side. The seats are soft and low and a cigarette burn marks the space between my legs. I slip the key into the ignition and the motor growls. I push my foot against the gas and the car rolls over the uneven terrain, following the same path out Becki took, until I reach the highway and then I go in the opposite direction.
I lick my lips; the taste of blueberries long since left them but not so long I can’t still imagine their puckered sweetness enough to miss it. May Beth will be so disappointed when she knocks on my door and finds me gone, but I don’t think she’ll be surprised. Last thing she said to me, my face cupped firmly in her hands, was, Whatever you’re thinking, you get it out of that damned foolish head of yours right now. Except it’s not in my head, it’s in my heart, and she’s the same woman who told me if you’re going to follow anything, it might as well be that.
Even if it is a mess.
THE GIRLS
S1E1
WEST McCRAY:
Girls go missing all the time.
My boss, Danny Gilchrist, had been talking for a while about me hosting my own podcast, and when I told him about May Beth’s call, and about Mattie and Sadie, he urged me to look into it. It seemed a little kismet, he thought, that I was in the area when Mattie died. Still, those were the first words out of my mouth: Girls go missing all the time.
Restless teenage girls, reckless teenage girls. Teenage girls and their inevitable drama. Sadie had survived a terrible loss, and with very little effort on my part, I dismissed it. Her. I wanted a story that felt fresh, new and exciting and what about a missing teenage girl was that?
We’ve heard this story before.
Danny immediately reminded me of why I was working for him, and not the other way around.
DANNY GILCHRIST [PHONE]: You owe it to yourself to dig a little deeper. Don’t decide what you don’t have before you know what you do. You’re better than that. Get down there, see what you find.
WEST McCRAY:
I left for Cold Creek the same week.
MAY BETH FOSTER:
It broke Sadie, Mattie’s murder. She was never the same after, and rightfully so, but that the police never found the monster who did it, well. That had to have been the final straw.
WEST McCRAY:
Is that what Sadie said?
MAY BETH FOSTER:
No, but she didn’t have to. You could tell just by lookin’ at her.
WEST McCRAY [STUDIO]: There’s been no justice for Mattie Southern.
It’s impossible for residents of Cold Creek to accept that a crime so heinously and chaotically executed would go unsolved. Television has provided their point of reference; after all, on shows like CSI, they’d catch the murderer within the hour, often working with less than what was discovered in that apple orchard.
Detective George Alfonso of the Abernathy Police Department, who headed the investigation, looks like a movie star past his prime. He’s a six-foot-tall black man in his early sixties with short, graying hair. He expresses dismay over the lack of leads, but given the circumstances, he’s not necessarily surprised there are so few.
DETECTIVE ALFONSO:
We didn’t realize we were dealing with a murder, initially. We got a call about a fire and unfortunately, much of the crime scene was compromised by the fire department’s efforts to put it out.
WEST McCRAY:
The DNA evidence they’ve recovered has been inconclusive and in need of a match. So far, there’s no real suspect pool to pull from.
DETECTIVE ALFONSO:
We’ve filled in the gap between Mattie’s disappearance and death as best we can. As soon as we got the call she was missing, we put out an AMBER Alert. We searched the local area and looked into several POIs—people Mattie had been in contact with in the hours before she vanished. They were cleared. We have a single witness who says they saw Mattie get into a pickup truck the night she went missing. It was the last time anyone ever saw her alive.
WEST McCRAY:
That witness was Norah Stackett, who owns Stackett Groceries, the only grocery store in Cold Creek. Norah is fifty-eight, a white, redheaded mother of three grown children, all of whom she’s employed at her store.
NORAH STACKETT:
I was closing for the night when I saw her. I’d just turned the lights off and there was Mattie Southern at the corner, getting into some pickup. It was dark enough I couldn’t tell if it were blue or black, but I think black. I didn’t get a look at the plate or driver either, but I’ve never seen that truck before and I haven’t seen it since. Bet I’d know it if I saw it again, though. Next day, I hear there’s cops all over Sparkling River and I’ll just say I figured she was dead. I just knew. That’s weird, isn’t it—that I just knew? [LAUGHS] Givin’ myself the creeps.
WEST McCRAY:
The girls lived in Sparkling River Estates. It’s a small park, no more than ten trailers to it, some better kept than others. Cute little lawn ornaments and flower beds adorn one, while a rotting couch surrounded by garbage accents another. There’s no sparkling river nearby, but if you follow the highway out of town, you might come across one.