Bailey’s brother, Ben. My mouth goes dry as his eyes connect with mine. He looks so much like Bailey it’s spooky: freckles dotting his nose, big hazel eyes. I hold up a hand as Ben walks over to Tyrell’s car.
I open the door and climb out. Ben’s eyes are red. “Hey, Kace,” he says. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
I shove my hands in the pockets of my fleece. “It…I just didn’t want to be there.”
Ben’s eyes flick to Tyrell. He gives him a grim nod. Turns back to me. “I hear you. I just got my leave of absence approved so I could come home and be with my parents.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, for a lack of anything better.
“I should have been here. I should have come right home, to help look for her. Now it’s probably too late.”
Tears leak from Ben’s eyes. His shoulders drop. There is something so ugly and painful about seeing a big man crying.
“Sorry.” Ben wipes his eyes with the sleeve of his hoodie. “The whole drive back here, I kept thinking about how I failed her.”
“There’s nothing you could have done,” I say. “And you’re here now.”
“I should have told my parents how reckless she was acting. She was out of control. Bringing your sister to that frat party—”
The insides of my ears go cottony. My sister. Frat party. I must have heard him wrong.
I stare back at Ben. “What?”
Ben sucks teary snot back into his nostrils. “Oh, shit. I thought you knew—”
“Bailey brought Lauren to a frat party?” I can’t control the rage seeping into my voice. I’m so loud that Tyrell looks over. “Was Jade there too?”
Ben nods. “When I saw them I made them go straight home. I should have called my dad—made him come get her.”
I swallow. “When was this?”
“Second, maybe first weekend of October? It was Milwaukee’s homecoming.”
A click, pieces sliding into place in my brain. They took my sister to a frat party while I was away at Madison, visiting schools with Andrew and Ashley.
Tyrell clears his throat. Rests his arm on top of his car. “Kace, you ready to go?”
“Yeah.” I turn back to Ben. Swallow my rage. “Thanks for telling me. About Lauren.”
He nods. “Take care of yourself, okay? And stay in touch.”
It takes all my restraint not to punch Tyrell’s dashboard when I climb back in the car. Ben thinks it’s too late for Bailey, that she’s dead, and for the first time, I hope she is.
Because if she makes it back to Broken Falls alive, I’m not so sure that I won’t kill her myself.
—
I never intended to lie to Bailey and Jade about where I was that weekend. But I hadn’t planned on going to Madison with Ashley and Andrew, either.
It was the night of parent-teacher conferences when I came home from Bailey’s house and saw the brochure for Madison Art Institute on the dining room table.
“Mr. White gave that to me,” Ashley said over my shoulder, beaming with pride. “He thinks you could get in. He even said he’d write your recommendation.”
My lips tingled; I put a hand to my mouth. I knew Mr. White liked my work, but art school?
“I thought we could visit this weekend,” Ashley said, rubbing my shoulder. “We’re already going to be in the area so Andrew can look at Madison. It’ll be fun.”
Instead of excitement, I felt a flutter of panic. I’d turned down going to visit Madison with Bailey over the summer. I could practically hear her response if I told her I was going with Andrew and my stepmom instead. It’s whatever, Kacey.
Before I could say anything to Ashley, my dad wandered into the room, a takeout container of lo mein in hand. Ashley flashed him the brochure, grinning.
“Wouldn’t it be great if Andrew and Kacey both went to school in Madison?” Ashley gushed. “They could keep each other company on the weekends.”
My dad peered at the brochure. “Art school? Huh.”
The pride in me guttered out. He may as well have said circus camp for all the contempt in his voice.
Something flashed in Ashley’s eyes. “What’s wrong with that? She’s talented enough.”
“I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it.” My dad wouldn’t look at me. “It’s just I thought she was thinking something more practical, like culinary school or community college for a year or two.”
Ashley set the brochure down. “Mr. White says having an art degree would give her a leg up in the culinary design world. Anyway, we’re just looking.”
In other words, Please shut the fuck up now. My dad finally looked at me. Forced out a smile. “Whatever you want.”
I wanted to vomit. I tried to tell Ashley I couldn’t take the weekend off, she needed me at the café, but she insisted that I was coming to Madison and we were looking at the Art Institute on Sunday and that was that.
We spent Saturday looking at Madison for Andrew, and the night in a hotel not far from the Art Institute. After dinner, Andrew insisted we play Scrabble in the hotel lobby while Ashley went back to the room. I was feeling bitchy, muttered something about not being in the mood to get my ass kicked.
“What’s really bothering you?” he asked. We were in two armchairs by the hotel bar, watching a woman stir a martini in the middle of an intense argument on her phone. Andrew was trying to make me laugh by filling in the gaps, pretending to be the person on the other end.
“Nothing,” I told him.
“Okay. Sure.” He put his tiles in a pile. “You just thinking about how much you’ll miss me when I go away to college, then?”
I didn’t feel like lying. I’d spent most of my life lying about how I felt so I wouldn’t make other people uncomfortable. I told him everything that had happened with my dad earlier in the week.
“I thought he’d be excited,” I said. “About what Mr. White said.”
“He doesn’t get excited about stuff. That’s just how he is.”
“Not with the Packers,” I answered.
“Yeah, but that’s the Packers.”
When I looked up, Andrew was looking at me, pity in his eyes.
I pulled my knees to my chest. “I’ve never asked him for anything. I don’t expect him to pay for me to go to college.”
“I know you don’t,” Andrew said. “You should let him, though. He kind of owes you.”
The thought brought pressure to my eyeballs. “I don’t want to owe him anything. I already owe your mom so much, for giving me a job. And she’s not even related to me.”
Andrew picked at the beginnings of a hole in the knee of his jeans. “Why do you talk like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re, I don’t know. Not really our family.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I said. “It’s just. I don’t know.”
“No,” Andrew said. “I kind of get it. Before you moved in with us, I felt the same way.”
We were both quiet. We didn’t need to talk about the dad he doesn’t remember, or the strange looks people gave us in public—that guy must be adopted. We just sat there, arranging our Scrabble tiles, knowing that even if the feeling went away when we were tucked back in our beds at home, for that moment, we didn’t have to feel alone.