We argued a little on that point, but in the end I won out. After an hour of baloney, we got everything straight. “Here’s your schedule card. I hope you like it at Harris. I think you’ll find that even out here in the sticks, we still have wonderful academics.”
“Thanks, Mr. Beakman.”
I wandered the halls for a while, in no hurry to get to class. I felt like everyone I passed was looking at me, but that was probably just my imagination. Missing posters were plastered all over the school. I found one by the lunchroom with black Sharpie x-ing out the eyes and the words RIP BITCHES written underneath. I managed to take a quick cell phone picture of it, since I was all alone in the hall for the moment.
My first class, an English elective on Shakespeare, was already over. I went to my second class, a 101-level art elective. Kayla was also in that class. The professor signed my registration card, gave me the course syllabus, and made me promise to come by his office after two o’clock to go over what I’d missed. I enthusiastically agreed and sat down.
“What took so long?” Kayla asked, glopping some paint onto her canvas.
“My new adviser had to get my life story,” I whispered.
“Cool. I have one more class and we can go get lunch at the student union, if you’re free.”
“Cool,” I echoed, sketching out a melting iPad on a boulder. I thought about Kayla’s name being on the list. I had to wait a while to bring it up, after I had gained her trust. I had to find out why Joe Styles would sign up to go to a support meeting for a girl he’d probably wanted dead in the first place.
I didn’t have a class after my art class, so I got to jot down some notes before meeting Kayla for lunch. I found my way to the library and sat down in the back corner of the room and decided to make the most of it. I hunched over a notebook, making lists of all the things I saw that I thought might be relevant. People walked by, whispering, but no one seemed to notice or care that I was there.
Lunch was another story. The student union building contained four floors of offices used by the various clubs and groups. The first floor consisted of a huge bookstore, an open cafeteria-style eating area, and a coffee place. You had your choice of pizza, burgers, sandwiches, or Chinese. The center of the room was filled with round tables that stretched all the way to the far back wall. The coffee shop also carried fresh-baked doughnuts. I saw this in my future as I waited to pay for a ham-and-cheese panini. Old habits die hard. If loving coffee and doughnuts is wrong, I don’t want to be right, even if it is a stereotype.
Kayla and her friends were obviously well-known on campus. That made sense, since most of these people had gone to high school and grammar school together. Everyone was divided into their little groups. Bearded hipsters and artsy students near the front, hockey and basketball players near the back, which was right behind where we sat. Next to the athletes’ tables were the burnout tables where all the cool druggies sat. And it was there that I first laid my eyes on Joe Styles.
He sauntered over, munching on an apple. I recognized him from his mug shot. His long brown hair was pulled back from his gray eyes into a man bun. Tall and on the lean side, he had the kind of build where you could see the muscles in his tattooed arm work every time he picked something up. He had on a pair of faded Levi’s and a vintage Ramones T-shirt. A black earbud trailed over each shoulder, the cord snaking its way down to the iPhone in his left hand.
“Hey Kayla, Maddie; who’s your friend?” He plunked himself down next to me and slid his arm around the back of my chair.
“Joe, this is Shea Anderson. She just moved here from Buffalo,” Kayla said in a disgusted voice, as if he smelled particularly repulsive that day.
“Shea Anderson? You sound like a French restaurant.”
“Good one,” I joked. “I’ve never heard that before.”
Maddie choked back a laugh. He glanced over at her. “It’s about time we had some girls around here who actually dress like girls.”
“Screw you, Joe,” Kayla shot back at him.
“Misogynistic much?” Jenna asked, and Maddie snorted so hard she put her hand over her mouth to cover it.
I don’t think he knew what the word meant, so he turned to Kayla. “Don’t worry, I didn’t forget that night. Ever tell Skyler about it?” he asked, winking at her as he got up. “’Bye now.” He waved his apple at me as he went back over to his table, sitting down with his friends.
Kayla was scorching mad. I thought she was going to go over and throat-punch him. “I’m sorry,” she fumed. “I just really, really hate him. Joe’s going here to get his GED supposedly, but he just hangs out in the student union and sells pot and pills.” I had forgotten they had an adult education program on campus. As I looked around, I began to notice more and more older students I had mistaken for faculty.
“He thinks he’s such a stud,” Maddie agreed, picking at her salad. “I don’t know what Skyler ever saw in him. He was nothing but a dick to her the whole time they were going out.”
“You know Skyler,” Kayla said. “She only likes guys she can fight with.”
“Who’s Skyler?” I asked, nibbling at my little square of cafeteria panini.
“Skyler Santana,” Jenna said, looking up from her nails. She was peeling the gel polish off in big blue strips and dropping them on the floor. “She was a friend of ours. She was one of those girls who disappeared in December.”
“They were all our friends,” Maddie corrected.
“Those girls on the posters? Does anyone know what happened to them?”
Kayla shook her head. “They just vanished.” She started digging around in her purse and came out with her phone. She swiped it open and started showing me picture after picture of her and the missing girls. Them in a bathroom making faces into a mirror. Them at a party. Them with red plastic cups, smiling into the camera while a drunk-looking boy photobombed them from behind.
“Wow,” I said, softly taking the phone from her hand to get a better look. “All of you hung around with them?”
“Olivia Stansfield was my cousin—is my cousin,” Kayla corrected herself. I could tell she was getting upset, so I tried to change the subject.
“Then Nick must be your cousin too.”
“You know Nick?”
“I met him yesterday at the café in town with my uncle. We were having lunch, and he came in. He sat with us and had a cup of coffee.”
“I love Nick; he’s like a brother to me. He’s really taking care of my aunt and uncle.”
I handed back her phone. She put it down on the table faceup, with a picture of her and Skyler making a duck face across the screen still showing.
“Nick Stansfield is legit the hottest guy this town has ever produced,” Maddie gushed. The other girls nodded in agreement. Maddie, whose pierced nose and pink-streaked hair fascinated me for some reason, opened up his Instagram account and showed everyone the latest picture he’d posted. It was of him and his sister sitting in a restaurant somewhere. Nick still had the menu in his hands as Olivia rested her head on his shoulder, smiling into the camera.
Jenna looked over at me. “I have to go to the bathroom. Come with me, Shea?” I could tell by the tone of her voice that something was up. She got up and I followed her. The bathroom was all the way across the student union. As we were walking, Jenna leaned in and told me, “Olivia and Kayla were like, best friends. I mean, they were cousins and all, but they hung around every day. She doesn’t like to talk about it. Me, her, Maddie, Skyler, and Emma were all best friends.”