Chloe’s eyes started to moisten again and she took her hands off the wheel, pressing her palms over her eyes. “Maggie’s mom called my mom. They found her tonight.”
“Chloe!” Sawyer gripped the wheel and pulled the car back into their lane as a big rig horn wailed next to them.
“I hated her, but I can’t believe she—she—”
Chloe sniffed, and Sawyer felt the same lump growing in her throat. “She committed suicide?”
They drove in silence for a beat before Chloe turned off the highway, down a forested off ramp that Sawyer recognized as the one nearest Maggie’s house. They drove down a long, windy street that was bathed in a starlit darkness until the angry slashes of emergency lights gashed the darkness, orange, red, and blue cutting through the Buick’s windshield as they veered to a stop.
“Oh my God,” Sawyer breathed.
The cul de sac was littered with cars—some Sawyer recognized from the student parking lot at Hawthorne, most she didn’t know—and police and emergency vehicles with open doors, officers and paramedics staggered around with notepads or listening to squawking shoulder radios. An officer stepped in front of a shard of yellow headlight, and Sawyer clicked off her seat belt, launching herself out of the car. She barely heard Chloe calling in the background.
“Stephen?”
Officer Stephen Haas stopped in midstride. He smiled when he saw Sawyer, but she could see that the grin held no joy, was wooden, meant to be offered to strangers and mourners in such situations.
“What are you doing here, Sawyer?”
Sawyer’s eyes cut to Maggie’s house ablaze with lights and then back to Stephen. “Maggie was my…” She pressed the word out over her teeth, reminding herself that it had been true, once, “My friend. What happened?”
Stephen swallowed slowly, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he raked a hand through his hair. He dropped his voice and Sawyer stepped closer to him. “There’s nothing official yet, but off the record”—he touched Sawyer kindly on the shoulder, an almost fatherly gesture—“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but your friend Maggie killed herself tonight.”
Sawyer felt the firm fist in her gut, felt all the air go out of her body. “She what?”
Now Stephen’s fatherly touch on her shoulder dipped to her elbow, his fingertips closing tightly around her arm as he led her to a slightly less populated area. He cocked his head when he brought Sawyer to a stop, dug his notepad out of his front shirt pocket.
“Did you know of anyone who was bothering Maggie?” he asked her.
“Bothering Maggie?” Sawyer crossed her arms in front of her chest, suddenly, strangely aware of the chill in the night air. “No one ever bothered Maggie.” She bothered everyone else, she stopped herself from saying.
Stephen closed his little notebook and spread his legs, evening out his weight. “She left a note before”—his eyes flashed, and he went on—“before. She said that she couldn’t take the bullying anymore.”
“Maggie was a bully.”
“She said she was being bullied.”
“What? That’s crazy. I mean, you can even ask Logan—he would know. Maggie practically ran the school.”
There was a heavy metal clanging, and the heartbreaking wail of misery. Stephan looked over his shoulder, and Sawyer’s eyes followed his as the front door of Maggie’s house was pushed open wide and a gurney was pushed out, the unmistakable shape of a body covered in a black vinyl body bag strapped on top. Maggie’s mother, her face screwed up in agony, clawed at the bag, her husband grabbing her shoulders, trying to hold his anguished wife back.
“She obviously didn’t think so,” Stephen said.
Sawyer felt her fingernails digging half moons into her palms well before she realized she was fisting her hands. “Can you tell me—can you tell me how?”
She stopped before she could complete her sentence—can you tell me how Maggie killed herself? Because even though she knew the words, she couldn’t form them, couldn’t let them cross her lips, because teenagers weren’t supposed to die. They weren’t supposed to kill themselves.
The muscle in Stephen’s jaw jumped as he looked Sawyer over hard, obviously wondering what he should tell. “I’m sorry,” he said finally, “I can’t do that.”
He turned to walk away, and Sawyer jumped after him, her hands clawing against the navy blue of his heavy shirt. “Please.” It was half whisper, half gasp. “I need to know.”
Stephen’s eyes trailed down to Sawyer’s fingers and she unleashed them, one by one. “Please,” she whispered.
“Officer Haas!” The stern voice cut through the light-pocked night, and Sawyer whirled. Detective Biggs was striding toward them, his pants pulling up at the ankle as he rushed, showing off his thin, slouched socks, the tufts of black hair poking out of them.