But I freeze when Mr. McCormack’s eyes narrow on what’s in my hand.
He says, “I’d like to speak to you for a moment.”
I was wrong about the whole “not a single living soul at St. Francis knows about The Wayside” thing. There is one person.
Jake edges closer to me, his spine straightened to full height. “Caroline and I were in the middle of something.”
Mr. McCormack raises an eyebrow and puts on his teacher voice. “Mr. Monaghan, I’m fairly certain ‘loitering in the hallway’ appears on neither of your schedules for third period. You’re dismissed.”
I need Jake to stay so I don’t have to have talk to Mr. McCormack, but if Mr. McCormack is going to force the issue, I don’t want Jake around for whatever he’s going to say.
I’d pray for divine intervention, but the smarter bet is to walk away and hope they’ll both be so busy staring each other down they won’t notice I’m gone.
But my escape route collapses under the clip of familiar footsteps that draw closer with every second. When I turn, Detective Brisbane flashes me a shiny badge and says, “Are you Caroline Lawson?” even though he knows I am.
Mr. McCormack’s voice sounds over my shoulder, cutting through the empty hallway. “Ms. Lawson is a student on her way to class. And a minor.”
Except I wasn’t on my way to class, and sometimes the devil you don’t know is the lesser threat.
I step toward the detectives. “What is it you need from me?”
Detective Brisbane rocks on his heels. “Ms. Lawson. We’d like to speak to you about the disappearance of Madison Bentley.”
Chapter Two
Well, that went well.
St. Francis doesn’t offer a ton of criminal justice classes, but I’d bet lying in a missing persons investigation is grounds for prosecution.
I didn’t lie about anything that mattered, just about the things that would stop me from figuring out exactly what Madison was doing at The Wayside, and who the number in the matchbook belongs to.
I’ve tried to call it, three times. Not a single answer. Generic voice mail.
This entire morning has been a stream of questions without a single answer.
Rain batters my windshield, cocooning me in the safety of my car as I let my head thud onto the steering wheel.
My breath escapes slowly, almost a sigh, and I force my knotted shoulders to relax. Heat blasts from the vents, drying my clothes much too slowly. My tattoo throbs, but since my ibuprofen is in my backpack, which is inside the school I can’t go back into because I’m not that much of an idiot, I take another hit from my vape.
I should go to class. I should’ve gone yesterday too. My sporadic attendance and generally sucky homework performance since Willa left means I’m handing over valedictorian and I can’t even bring myself to care.
I should go back inside.
Though that could mean running into Mr. McCormack again. Questioning me about my school performance will just be his warm-up. Then he’ll ask about the matchbook from The Wayside.
That’s where things get tricky.
I don’t know why he stood up for me years ago when everyone else looked the other way. Or why he didn’t tell my parents right away when he found me, with my girlfriend, in a bar. I’ll owe him for both those things forever.
But he’s still my teacher, and I’m walking the finest of lines, with no way to tell when I might step a fraction too far. And if he tells my parents what he saw that night, I may never get to leave the house again.
For my own good, of course. And I can’t figure out why Madison was at The Wayside if I’m confined to my bedroom.
So. That’s settled.
I slam my finger into the start button and the engine fires to life, fogging the glass within seconds, and I take one last hit.
My passenger door flies open and my scream gets tangled in my lungs. I cough out mist and all the air in my body until my eyes water, while Jake Monaghan mumbles apologies for jumping into my car without warning or invitation.
I blink the tears from my vision and glare at him. “So … what the fuck?”
“Sorry. It was raining.” When I stare at him, he adds, “I wanted to talk to you, and I would’ve knocked and waited, but —”
“It was raining.”
“Yeah.” He pauses. “I can’t be in there anymore. Everyone’s crying or gossiping.”
He nods toward the vape. “How often do you use that thing?”
“Not often enough for this day.”
This, too, is the detectives’ fault. It was like they knew I was headed toward the nearest exit after our “interview,” because they hand-delivered me to my next class, which gave gossip time to spread and Jake time to track me down. And now he’s in my car asking questions while I’m supposed to be leaving.
I try to mask the impatience in my voice. “Why do you want to talk to me?”
“What did those detectives ask you about?”
“Shit that’s none of your business.”
“C’mon, Caroline, my dad’s a judge and …” He holds out his hand until I drop the vape into it. “She was my friend too. I want to help, not just hold a fucking candle, you know?”
“Flameless candle. In broad daylight.”
“Yeah, what the hell was that about?”
His look of genuine confusion is enough to put me over the edge, and all the stress of the last few hours comes out in the form of highly inappropriate laughter. “It was supposed to be last night, remember? But it rained so it got moved to this morning.”
Mom moved it because she couldn’t bear a low turnout for her event, and she couldn’t get canopies set up in time.
“The logical thing to do would’ve been to nix the candles, but my parents got into a huge fight over them. My dad wanted locally sourced, organic beeswax — if you’re going to save the girl, you might as well save the bees too, I guess — and my mom disagreed because I don’t think she knows how to do anything else. And then everything fell apart because we had to move it to the new field since it’s farthest from the entrance and therefore inaccessible to lurking media.”
It takes Jake several tries before he finally forms words. “So, she went out and bought a thousand flameless candles on some sort of principle?”
I shrug, because I’m not sure I have the words to fully explain why my mom does the things she does, or if I even understand enough to explain them.