“That’s not going to happen.” But all I feel is a wash of anxiety, imagining Ashley’s reaction if she finds out I’m responsible for Lauren’s freak-outs.
That’s what I should really be worried about—getting sent away from the Markhams for my bad behavior. But when I close my eyes, I see the halls of juvie as Crazy Missy described them. Girls going after each other like animals for misplaced glances.
I see Detective Burke, and the way he looked at me: like he’d found the missing piece of a puzzle.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Thursday morning brings no news. The volunteer search is tomorrow; tonight we will assemble the hundred cardboard boxes on the dining room table and fill them with sandwiches and chips for the volunteers.
I wanted to sign up for the search, but all volunteers had to be eighteen or older and pass a background check. Jade called me last night, in the throes of a fit.
“I’m going to be eighteen in two weeks,” she moaned. “I feel so useless I could puke.”
While my father is still sleeping, I write a note that I’m going to Jade’s and leave it on the kitchen counter, even though before she left for the café, Ashley told us to stay home.
I begged her to let me work so I wouldn’t have to sit around the house all day, but she insisted I stay home and get a head start on all the reading my teachers have been assigning via email while the burst pipe and damage to the classrooms are being fixed.
I can’t sit around all day waiting for news about Bailey’s case. But I’m not really going to Jade’s, either.
It’s too cold to walk, but I don’t want Andrew to know where I’m going. Somewhere between the Chloe thing and Lauren’s creepy warning, I decided not to tell him about the séance in the barn, or the roof collapsing, or the blood smear.
I don’t know what I want to hear right now, but I don’t want Andrew telling me it’s impossible for there to be a connection between Bailey’s disappearance and everything else that happened on Sparrow Kill.
The bus to Pleasant Plains stops a quarter mile from Sparrow Road. When I get to the station, I am the only one there. A poster with Bailey’s face on it stares back at me. We didn’t hang this one on Monday.
Monday feels like a lifetime ago. In a few days it will be Monday again, and school will reopen. Will everyone be talking about the burst pipe—will Bailey be old news, since she’ll have been missing for over a week? I can picture her face, screwed up at the idea of everyone carrying on as normal when we don’t even know if she’s alive or dead.
The steel bench at the station may as well be an ice block. I opt to stand until the bus pulls up to the curb.
I unfold the dollar bills in my glove and hand them to the driver. Frost puffs out of his mouth from the door being open. “How are ya?”
I nod an okay and take the seat five back from him, in case he’s feeling chatty. There is only one other person on the bus; a homeless man I’ve seen outside the Tex Mex in Pleasant Plains.
Lauren asked, last year, why he would be on the streets in the cold when there’s a homeless shelter not far away. I think of leaving the warm bed in my mother’s apartment for the parking lot of the 7-Eleven in Rochester.
There’s no easy way to tell a kid that sometimes the outside is safer than the inside.
—
Enchantment Crystals actually has a customer. I hang by the bookshelves while the creepy woman from Monday rings up a bearded guy, chatting him up about how the book he’s buying really is the definitive guide on how to use chakras. I thumb through a book about maledictions and curses as the guy leaves, toting a brown bag with purple tissue paper sticking out.
There was something about the way the woman was looking at Bailey’s Missing poster the other day—it almost looked like she recognized her. It’s a long shot, I know. But if there was a chance she was here, I want to know why.
“Shopping for you or someone else?” The woman is watching me. She said the same thing last time I was here, but her voice is less expectant this time. Less saleswoman-y.
I can’t find my words. The woman’s face softens.
“Where’s your friend?” she asks.
Gone, I think, before realizing she’s talking about Jade. “She doesn’t know I’m here.”
“I’ve been following your other friend’s case,” the woman says. “The missing girl. It’s very sad.”
I don’t know what to say. Thank you doesn’t sound appropriate. “Did she—Bailey—did she look familiar to you?”
The woman steps out from behind the counter. She’s wearing a paisley skirt that skims the floor. “Her hair. It’s gorgeous. I remember seeing a girl with hair like that in here. Made me look twice.”
My heartbeat quickens. “When was this? What did she want?”
“I don’t know,” the woman says. “I had to do a reading in the back room. When I returned, she was gone.”
Something in me deflates. I don’t know what I was expecting to hear—that Bailey had gotten her fortune read? That this woman somehow holds the key to finding out what happened to her?
“I’m Amber,” the woman says, nodding to the book of curses still in my hands. “Makes a good gag gift, but not much else.”
I expected her to have a more exotic name, like Rhiannon or Raquel. I replace the book on the shelf. “Why do you sell this stuff if you don’t believe in it?”
Amber smiles. Her purple lipstick bleeds over one corner of her mouth. I want to wipe it away. “I have to stock things that people want, even if I don’t personally subscribe to that set of beliefs.”
“But you really believe you can contact the dead?”
The pressure in my head reaches a crescendo; I sneeze.
“How about I put on some tea,” Amber says, “and we can chat?”
—
We’re in Amber’s back room, where she does her readings. The tea smells like strawberries and I watched her make it, but I still don’t touch it when she puts the mug in front of me. The woman gives me the creeps—I saw her flip the sign on the door to BE BACK IN FIFTEEN MINUTES before she led me into the reading room.
I’m telling her about last Friday night in the Leeds Barn.
“I know the roof must have collapsed from the wind…but at the very moment as we were holding a séance? It was creepy.” I wedge my hands between my thighs.
Amber nods. Doesn’t look at me like I’m batshit. “The energy in that barn—there are probably many spirits waiting to come through, after what happened there.”
I lick my lips. “I know this sounds so stupid—but is it possible my friend Bailey went missing because of what we did? The séance.”
“You had a strong brown aura around you the other day.” Amber refills her tea. Glances at me over the handle of the pot. “Brown can mean deception.”
“So you’re saying I’m lying about all this?”
“Not necessarily. It could mean someone is deceiving you. Someone you know is responsible for her disappearance.”