I don’t know if she expects that to make me feel better. Still, my mind is on Bailey and the fact that she hasn’t come home.
“Did you hear anything from Mrs. Hammond?” I kick off my slippers and crawl back into the cocoon I made for myself with my comforter and sheets, pulling them taut over my body. It’s so cold.
“The Diamonds printed thousands of flyers with Bailey’s picture in their shop last night. Free of charge,” Ashley says. “Val has been getting the word out online to get volunteers to help hang them everywhere.”
“I’ll bet Jade is having a stroke over that. Bailey and Val don’t even talk anymore.”
Ashley watches me. Opens her mouth, and closes it.
“What?” I ask.
“I just…remember being a teenage girl. All the secrets. Things I told my friends that I would never, ever tell my folks.”
I’m quiet, because I realize what she’s getting at. She thinks I’m hiding something. Something Bailey might have told me that could help find her.
“Are you sure Bailey didn’t say anything to you?”
A flicker of a memory lights up my brain. We’d worked together on the local history project: “Design and budget a road trip of Wisconsin’s landmarks!” We were pricing out gas and tolls when Bailey dropped her pen and said, Sometimes I wish I could just get on the freeway and fucking drive.
But I don’t tell Ashley that. It might give her hope that Bailey is okay. And hope is the most dangerous thing you can give someone.
—
I brush my teeth and park myself in front of the living room TV. The local news channel is dominated by the storm; however, a search for her name on my phone reveals that Cathy and Ed Hammond have managed to get Bailey’s picture onto the website for the Broken Falls Register.
Eighteen-year-old girl missing from Broken Falls since late Saturday night
The picture Ed and Cathy chose is an odd one. Instead of one of her million selfies or her school photo, they picked the one of Bailey lounging in an Adirondack chair in our backyard. Taken at the birthday barbecue we held for Lauren.
Bailey’s rosebud mouth forms a smile, teeth hidden. She hates her bottom row of teeth. Bailey thinks she’s hideous, a troll, but I’ve always wished I looked more like her. Creamy skin, like she slathers it with milk and honey. A smattering of gold freckles on her nose to match her strawberry-blond hair. There’s just something naturally wholesome about her looks.
I am the opposite. People stare at me and I feel like I did something wrong. No matter how I style my hair or what I wear, I seem like the type of girl who’d get caught shoplifting eyeliner at Walmart.
I think of the conversation I had with Andrew that day on Sparrow Hill: It’s not like the whole world looks for every person who disappears.
A surprising thought roots in my brain: At least if Bailey’s really gone, she’s the type of girl the whole world will look for.
—
By early afternoon, all the roads are plowed, the downed lines from the storm intact, partially thanks to Jade’s dad, who worked overtime to get them up again.
Jade and I are in the backseat of my stepbrother’s Mazda. I let Tyrell, Andrew’s best friend, sit up front with him; we’re going to Pleasant Plains to hang Bailey’s Missing posters. A box full of them is wedged between Jade and me, and the reason for Jade’s scowl—DIAMOND’S PRINTING CO.—is stamped on the side.
When we picked up the posters from the Diamonds’ printing shop, Val’s mother said she and Bridget were already organizing a candlelight vigil. Jade’s eyes practically crossed.
“They just want to help,” I say to Jade now.
“Wolves in sheep’s clothing, Kace.” Jade’s head pricks up, like a dog that’s heard a whistle. She smacks the back of Tyrell’s headrest. “What did you just say to him?”
Tyrell’s shoulders hike up. He runs a hand over his dark, smooth head, but he doesn’t turn around. “Nothing.”
“Bullshit. If you can say it to him, you can say it to us.”
Tyrell sighs and turns so he’s facing us. “People are saying that Bay may have killed herself.”
I see Andrew’s knuckles go white around the steering wheel. I’m the only one in this car who knows that he didn’t really miss a week of school and soccer practice his sophomore year because he had strep throat; he was hospitalized because he was so depressed he couldn’t get out of bed.
“Who’s saying that?” I demand. “That’s a shitty rumor to start.”
“I don’t know. People,” Tyrell says.
Jade’s eyes flash. No doubt Tyrell means Val and Bridget. “Well, people don’t know shit and should shut their stupid mouths. Bay wasn’t depressed.”
We spend the rest of the ride to Pleasant Plains in silence. Andrew parks in a municipal lot. As we climb out and he locks the car, I catch him cracking his knuckles. His nervous tic.
I put a hand on his shoulder and squeeze. Tyrell and Jade are on the other side of the car, out of earshot. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” Andrew shrugs me off. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Andrew’s dismissal stings; is he really that upset by the rumor about Bailey, or is he pissed at me for last night, for not telling him where we really went Friday?
“It might be faster if we split up,” Tyrell says.
“Sure,” I say, a lump sitting in my throat. “Divide and conquer.”
Tyrell suggests he and Andrew take the businesses west of the main intersection while Jade and I move east. My morning coffee sloshes like acid in my stomach as Jade and I break off from the guys and wait to cross the street.
Bailey’s dad reminded us to always ask before we hang a poster in the window of a business. People from Pleasant Plains, in my experience, have not earned their name. They’re rougher than the people from Broken Falls, more business-oriented. More likely to kick you out of their sports bar for being rowdy.
In a few hours, when it gets dark, Main Street will be bustling with families out for dinner, hurrying past the homeless man stationed outside the dollar store. Twentysomethings who had too many margaritas at Tex Mex, looking for a fight. It’s the type of town people from Broken Falls call “sketchy.”
—
Jade and I came here together alone, once, to go to the art supply shop our teacher, Mr. White, was always talking about. You will die and go to heaven when you step through the door, he’d warned us. Jade and I decided to go one day over the summer when Bailey was working. Jade spent half an hour in the paint aisle while I looked at the colored pencils and a rainbow spectrum of polymer clays, indeed feeling like I’d found heaven.
When Bailey discovered we went somewhere without her, she didn’t text either of us for two days. Then, out of nowhere, she was bugging us to go to the flea market, as if nothing had ever happened.