I rest my forehead against the window as the bus slows for the turnoff into Montgomery Falls. I can see my reflection in the glass—chubby cheeks, frizzy red hair, a nose that turns up just a little at the end—but this close, my face becomes just a collection of shapes and colors.
I tell myself that anything could have happened in three months. Three months ago, my life was completely different, and it’s definitely more than enough time for Riley to have turned up. He’s probably fine. If he wasn’t, Aunt Jet would have called. It doesn’t matter how strained things are between her and Dad or how scattered she can be. It doesn’t even matter that it’s been years since Riley’s name has crossed my lips. If Riley had been missing for any real amount of time, Jet would have called.
People put up posters and forget about them all the time. It’s just an old, forgotten poster.
The bus passes a strip mall and a succession of fast-food places and then rumbles across the river—a wide blue ribbon that winds through the lowland between two ridges of rolling green hills. The whole thing looks like a postcard. Even the rusting, abandoned train bridge and the ruins of the old textile mill—a jumble of bricks just visible in the distance—look picturesque. If you don’t know any better.
Two red lights and three turns later, we pull into the bus station—although calling anything so tiny a “station” might be giving it too much credit. Three other people disembark and are quickly scooped up by waiting friends and family. There are hugs and greetings. Suitcases tossed into the backs of waiting cars.
The driver pulls my duffel bag out from the luggage compartment and hands it over. I take it as I scan the parking lot. No rust-pimpled Buick and no Aunt Jet. I linger next to the bus for a moment, uncertain, and then head for a patch of shade next to the station.
I know Dad called Jet two nights ago to remind her—among other things—what time the bus would get in, but I overhear a passerby say that it’s 5:45 p.m. The bus isn’t early; it’s fifteen minutes late.
If Dad hadn’t confiscated my phone, I could call Jet, but my phone—at least what’s left of it—along with my laptop, is currently locked in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet in his study. Right where they’ve been for the past two weeks.
Supposedly, this is not a punishment.
Supposedly, this is for my own good.
Supposedly, ignorance is bliss and a little space will be healthy. That’s what my father claimed the night I’d gotten upset enough to throw my iPhone across the room—something that would have gone completely unnoticed if my aim had been just a little bit better. Pro tip: If you’re going to throw an iPhone, make sure you don’t accidentally throw it at your closed bedroom window. And if you are stupid enough to throw it at your closed bedroom window, don’t tell your father the reason.
A woman with a too-tight perm and thick glasses appears in the station doorway. “You waiting for someone, sweetheart?”
“My aunt.”
“Have you tried calling her?”
I shrug. “Can’t find my phone.”
“Do you want to call her? There’s a pay phone inside, but you can use the phone in the office.” As she speaks, I notice a missing poster taped next to the door—identical to the one I had seen at the border.
My stomach twists. Sure, a poster at the border could easily be forgotten, but if Riley had been found, wouldn’t they have taken down the posters around town?
I open my mouth to ask, but the woman is summoned back inside before I get the chance.
Ten minutes later—ten long minutes of trying not to stare at the poster, of trying not to think of what it might mean while reminding myself that Riley Fraser isn’t someone I’m supposed to care about—I have to accept that Aunt Jet isn’t coming.
I could take the woman up on her offer of the phone, but it’s not like my bags are that heavy, and the house isn’t all that far.
I adjust my backpack and my grip on my duffel bag and start walking.
It’s been five years since my last visit to Montgomery Falls, and as I make my way through the small downtown core, I try to catalog the differences between present and past. There are more empty storefronts than I remember, but the art store is still here, as are the town’s two bookstores—one Catholic and one not. The record store is dark and has a For Rent sign in its window. That hurts: the record store was one of the few things I was actually looking forward to. Lacey claims I’m a nostalgia nerd, and maybe she’s right because I love old things. Especially if they’re music related. Bands, posters, records—my room is filled with flea market and thrift store finds. Once, Lacey caught me smelling one of her father’s albums—he has a seriously impressive collection—and called me a “vinyl sniffer,” like it was something perverse.
I guess there won’t be any vinyl sniffing in my near future. It’s like I’ve literally gone to the place where music died.
At least the movie theater is still open—though it has just two screens. One is playing a horror flick, the other a romantic comedy. A girl sits in the glass booth at the front of the building, chin resting in her hands.
My steps falter in front of another missing poster. Rain and wind have torn the paper and left Riley’s face smudged, but it’s a word scrawled in red marker that makes me stop.
Cocksucker.
The letter s snakes around a rough drawing of something that is clearly supposed to be a part of the male anatomy.
I spot another poster, yards off. Even at a distance, I can make out strokes of red.
Something takes hold, and before I completely realize what I’m doing, I reach out and yank the first poster down. Maybe it’s lingering childhood loyalty—a few last dregs that haven’t, for some inexplicable reason, completely faded. Maybe it’s just that I hate the way the word is scrawled: ugly red letters that make it clear that whoever wrote it was stupid enough to think it was something bad. Maybe it’s simply that I’ve had so many insults of every kind thrown my way over the past few months. Whatever the reason, I crumple up the poster and shove it into my bag.
When I glance up, the girl in the ticket booth is staring at me.
I walk away, cheeks burning.
I know I don’t owe Riley Fraser anything—not after the last things he said to me—but I still rip down the other poster.
“Wait!”
I keep walking.
“Hey!” A hand falls on my shoulder, forcing me to turn.
I’m short, but the girl from the theater is pint-sized. Up close, she looks like she stepped out of some gothy comic book. Her long dark hair is pulled into two pigtails, black liner sweeps over her eyelids in wings, and a thin velvet ribbon has been looped around her neck and tied into a sloppy bow. Her pink uniform is adorned with buttons that look innocuous on first glance but say things like M Is for Monster or have pictures of Bela Lugosi or creepy girls climbing out of wells.
Loser, says a voice in the back of my head—a voice that sounds a lot like Lacey. Or, at least, the way Lacey has started to sound over the past year.
Having successfully stopped me, the girl seems weirdly at a loss for words. She rocks back on her heels and swallows before finally saying, “They’ll just do it again. The poster in your bag? The one in your hand? More will go up, and someone else will come along and write on them.”