Page 88 of Missing White Woman

“He said you were insistent they weren’t your drugs, but he had proof,” Billie said.

I rolled my eyes. No such proof existed. Still, I wasn’t gonna get into it. But when I turned around, she was shoving her phone at me. I recognized the photo immediately. I wasn’t in it, but it didn’t matter. I knew it. It was taken that night. The photograph was of a living room with a HAPPY BIRTHDAY sign strung on a wall. People were splayed out on any available seating. I didn’t see myself, but I didn’t expect to. I’d gotten there after all the seats had been claimed and thus been relegated to leaning on the kitchen counter.

I did recognize Adore, though—not the A. Kristine McKinley version of today but the Adore I knew. Loved. The one who was pretty despite the cheap clothes and cheaper makeup. She was leaning over the coffee table, rolling a blunt. Next to her was a baggie of weed. Orange, with pumpkins drawn on it.

I recognized it just as easily as I recognized her.

What in the entire fuck?

“You okay?” Adore was across the room now, too far to see the photo but close enough to see from my face that something was wrong. She turned to Billie. “He’s my ex,” Adore said. “Still mad I broke up with him.”

Billie spoke. “Men.”

They both laughed, but I didn’t join them. There was nothing funny about this situation. “I have to go,” I said, already aiming for the door.

Billie mumbled something behind me—probably goodbye—but I didn’t hear her. Didn’t respond. Just took off.

* * *

I was finally running again, my heart pounding so loud it sounded like a drum solo as my legs took me down the hall, then the escalator. And finally into the inky blackness hovering outside the hotel exit. It was then and only then I stopped, and even that was only because my brain didn’t know where to go next. I couldn’t go back to Little Street. My hotel room was long gone. I sure as hell wasn’t going to Adore’s house just as I sure as hell wasn’t going back in there.

I was trying to figure out what to do, where to go, when Adore came rushing out. “Bree.” She went to grab my arm, but I swatted her away.

I walked up on her—not stopping even when I was just a centimeter away, forcing her to step back. Once. Twice. It took a third step before I spoke. “It was your marijuana.”

I expected her to deny it—even hoped she’d act like I didn’t know what I was talking about. But instead she said just one word.

“Yes.”

I felt myself implode, then was shocked when I looked down to see my body intact. I took inventory. Hands. Legs. Heart. Destroyed but there. She didn’t say anything more. Just watched me. I counted my inhales. The first were too short and so sharp I was surprised I didn’t stab myself. I tried again, but those were too long, as if trying to suck up the entire world. Finally I found one that was just right. And it was only then I spoke. “That orange baggie ruined my life.”

I expected her to apologize. Again I was wrong.

“You’re just gonna stand there?” I said.

“What do you want me to say, Bree?” Her eyes were pleading.

“I’d start with ‘I’m sorry for being such a coward,’” I said. “‘For letting my best friend take the fall for my marijuana.’”

“It fell out of my bag.” She sounded insistent, like that would make it okay.

And she wouldn’t glance at me when she spoke—even though I’d never wanted anything more in my life than for her to look me in the eye. To see what she’d done to me. Instead, she stared to her right, so I took a step in that direction to stay in her eyeline. But she just turned her head left.

“So it was an accident?” My voice was little more than a hiss. “Were the twelve years of radio silence an accident too?”

I was crying again even though I would’ve sworn it was impossible. That I had no water left in my body. “Why?” I said.

“I would’ve lost my scholarship.”

“Yes, you would have. I know because I lost mine.”

“If I didn’t finish school, I would’ve gone back home. Been sleeping in bed next to my mother. I would’ve had nothing. Been nothing.”

Again I nodded because I knew. “You would’ve been stuck.”

“Your mom came to get you. I heard she brought a lawyer.”

“She did,” I said. “Because she didn’t believe me. She still doesn’t.”

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