So I lied to Jade and Bailey and told them Ashley caught me sneaking back in one night. Said I had to cut back, couldn’t go out with them every weekend. It didn’t stop them from trying to pull me out into the night.
But the night doesn’t like to give up its secrets. And if Bailey disappeared into it, there might be no telling what happened to her.
—
Kevin “Sully” Sullivan lives in a McMansion on Prairie Circle. His mom is always traveling for business, and his brother goes to college in Canada, so Sully is generally left to do as he pleases, which equals instant popularity.
Personally, I think Sully’s a creep. He’s a squat guy, constantly trying to make up for his size with his easy access to booze. He’s always hovering around the girls at his parties like a gnat, snapping pictures for some weird personal collection.
My toes clench in my boots as we pull into the Sullivans’ driveway next to a sad-looking beer keg turned on its side.
The Prairie Circle McMansions all have two-car garages. Both of the doors are open and Sully’s Ford Escape is on display. Jade parks behind it and we climb out and ascend the long cobblestone walkway.
When we reach the front door, Jade cups her eyes and peers through the glass. She rings the bell. One, two, three times, and then she tries the handle. The door creaks open. No one locks their doors in Broken Falls—something that’s always creeped me out.
Sully’s house is trashed: there are red Solo cups at our feet and a trash can overflowing with empty liquor bottles by the door, as if whoever was bringing it outside lost the will at the last moment. The contents of what looks like an entire bag of Doritos are crushed into the rug in the living room adjacent to the entryway. We stand in the foyer, listening for signs of life. Then: the rustling of cans, coming from the basement.
“I knew he was home.” Jade starts down the stairway leading off the foyer. I pause to shake the snow from my boots before I follow—there’s no reason not to be polite.
Sully is bent over the wreckage of what looks like it was once a table for mixing drinks, a Santa’s sack of a trash bag in his hands. He looks up and sees Jade and me. “What are you guys doing here?”
“Someone wasn’t answering his phone,” Jade snaps.
Sully pats his back pocket. “Oh. I have no idea where that is.”
Jade’s jaw twitches. “So you haven’t heard from Bay this morning?”
“No. Why?”
“She never made it home last night,” I say.
Sully’s eyes flick to me, like he’s just noticing I’m here. “Shit. Well, I don’t know where she is.” Sully nods to Jade. “You didn’t leave with her?”
“She said she couldn’t because she had to go straight home. Remember, Tyrell gave me a ride when the party was over?”
Sully blinks. There are freckles on his eyelids.
“You said bye to us!” Jade makes a sound of disgust.
“To be honest, I was blitzed out of my mind,” Sully says. “I don’t even remember Bay leaving.”
“Well, someone must have been outside when she left,” I say. “Maybe they talked to her.”
Jade pulls out her phone and dials. Moments later, a beer pong cup starts rattling against the table. Sully hurries over to it and fishes his phone out. “How’d that get in there?”
“Are you not understanding what’s going on here?” Jade snaps. “Bay is missing, and she was last seen here.”
Sully’s eyes go wide, swiveling to take in the remains of last night’s debauchery. “No one called the cops, right?”
I think of the beer keg still out in the driveway. I snatch the phone from Sully’s hand. I open up his picture folder. He may have been too drunk to remember Bailey leaving, but there’s a chance he caught it on camera if he was outside around the keg.
I flip through, looking for exterior shots of the house. There’s a photo of some junior girl, illuminated by the flash of the camera, being held up in a keg stand on the driveway. I zoom in, noticing a spot of blue at the edge of the screen.
Bailey’s Honda Civic. Bailey, one hand on the driver’s-side door handle.
She’s not alone. Someone the size of a linebacker is grabbing her shoulder. He’s got a shaved head.
“Jade,” I say.
Jade yanks the phone from my hand and zooms in on the picture. The color drains from her face as she turns to Sully.
“Call Cliff Grosso right now.”
Sully balks. “I don’t have his number.”
“Then what was he doing at your party?”
“He came with Bridget. I didn’t invite him.”
Jade’s ears go red. “Then call Bridget!”
I cross the basement as Sully fumbles with his phone, Jade towering over him like an angry mother. I run a finger over the surface of the beer pong table—the same one Jade and Bailey were smiling over just last night. Bailey wasn’t looking at the camera. She even looked distracted, maybe.
But Bailey wouldn’t leave a party just because she saw Cliff. It wouldn’t be the first time she ran into him; Broken Falls is a small town, and after losing his scholarship, Cliff stuck around to work at his uncle’s hunting shop. Bailey had to have known Cliff would show up to Sully’s party; she’s always calling Cliff the loser former quarterback who has nothing better to do than hang around high school parties with his high school girlfriend.
“No answer.” Sully shrugs. “Everyone is probably still sleeping.”
Jade runs her hands down her face. “God, you are so useless. Try Val.”
Val Diamond, Bridget’s right-hand woman. I come up next to Jade as Sully dutifully makes the call. “Do you think that’s why she left? She saw Cliff?”
“She would have told me,” Jade says. “I would have left with her.”
“Maybe she didn’t want to kill your vibe or whatever.”
Jade rolls her eyes. “If you’d been here, you’d know there was no vibe to kill. The party sucked.”
The words hang in the air between us: if you’d been here. So casual, like it’s the most natural thing in the world that I wasn’t there. That they left me out. I swallow to clear away the lump in my throat. “Well, if you guys hadn’t ditched me, I would have been here.”
“Ditch you?” Jade’s eyes flash. “Bay texted you asking what time we should pick you up and you never responded.”
My head turns to a fishbowl. No, Bailey definitely hadn’t texted me. I slide my phone out of my pocket and show Jade my conversation with Bailey.
Jade gnaws the inside of her cheek and looks up at me. “That’s just what she told me. I mean, maybe her text to you didn’t go through.”
I doubt it. I don’t say it, even though I know Jade is already thinking it. Neither of us wants to say out loud what’s becoming painfully obvious.
Bailey lied to both of us last night.
—
We leave Sully’s house with Cliff Grosso’s phone number, extracted from a reluctant Val Diamond. I’ve never had a problem with Val, but there’s all sorts of shit between her and Bailey that I never got the full story on. All I know is they used to be best friends, and Val dropped Bailey in eighth grade when Val made dance team and girls like Bridget Gibson started paying attention to her.