Page 40 of That's Not My Name

“And she got out of the car. I asked her to let me drive her home, and she said she wasn’t my problem anymore, that she’d walk home. Then she accused me of looking for any excuse to end things and said I probably had some other girl lined up already and stormed off.”

“Do youhave another girl?”

“Of course not!”

She rubs her temple. “But you let her walk off.”

I nod. “I was so mad. Not only about the fight, but that she’d think I’d cheat on her. I sat there in the parking lot for a while, crying and squeezing the life out of the steering wheel. I tried to call her three or four times, but she didn’t answer her phone, so I drove home. I called again from here and checked her Snapchat location to see if she got home okay. It said she was by that convenience store up the road from the river for a long, long time, and then it disappeared. I didn’t sleep, worrying about her. I tossed and turned and thought about everything: how we started, what we’ve been through. I realized I was being a coward. I wanted to fix it. But by then it was too late. In the morning when I called her house to check on her, her dad told me she wasn’t in her bed.”

“Oh my god.” Autumn sets her phone down on the bed beside her. “That’s why she called you a monster. That’s why she was crying?”

“Yes.”

“She walked off alone in the middle of the night. You didn’t hurt her.”

I stare at her.

“You know what I mean,” she says, rolling her eyes. “You didn’t physically hurt her.”

“No. Not that your dad will listen, not with that voicemail validating his version of events.”

She at least has the decency to look a little ashamed. “I’m sorry. When he told me the case was no longer a missing person’s investigation, I couldn’t sit on it anymore.”

“Why did you sit on it at all? If you thought I hurt her, why not give him the voicemail the day she went missing? Why did you wait?”

She throws up her hands. “Because her voicemail said she couldn’t handle it anymore. Everyone was saying she ran away, and I really hoped she did. I hated you for whatever you did to make her so upset, but I didn’t want to believe you were actually violent. She was supposed to waltz through the door with some unbelievable story, get grounded again, and that would be that. But then…”

“She didn’t come home.”

“Exactly. I held out hope, but a week passed. Then two. Then three. The voicemail felt like it would catch my phone on fire. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. But I’ve known you my whole life and contrary to what you might believe, I didn’t want to believe you had anything to do with her disappearance. Plus, turning over the voicemail felt like admitting she wasn’t coming home, and I…didn’t do it. But then you got super combative, and angry, and distant, and my dad thought you were holding something back. I don’t know. When he sat me down and said missing teens rarely come home alive after this much time has passed, I couldn’t justify keeping it to myself anymore.”

I want to hate her for not talking to me about all of this, but I can’t. She was in an impossible situation with evidence she didn’t know what to do with.

And I hate that she sat alone with it for so long.

“Thank you,” I say quietly. “For the benefit of the doubt. I appreciate it, even if it ran out.”

She stands and paces from the window to the closet, running frantic fingers through her red tangles. “Shit. I really thought…I really thought you knew more than you were saying. Where the fuck is she, Drew?” She turns toward me, and tears fall down her face. “What happened to Lola?”

My chest tightens. “I have no idea. Everything I know is on the back of that board, but it’s really fucking hard when I’m the only one looking for her. Everyone either assumes she ran away or I killed her.”

Autumn flinches. “If she ran away, she would have reached out by now. At least to me.”

“I know. And if she didn’t run away, and I didn’t hurt her, then someone took her. Someone who’s keeping her from calling home.”

Autumn’s gaze goes unfocused, and I can tell she’s imagining the worst. She swallows hard and shakes away whatever nightmare she conjured. “Okay. How can I help?”

I sit up. “What?”

“I mean it. Tell me what to do. How do we find her and get my dad off your back at the same time?”

I don’t know what to say to that. I hang ineffectual posters. I’m not exactly a shining example of next steps.

The window slides up and we both jump in surprise. Max’s ruffled head pokes through and he grins from ear to ear. “Hey!” he says, climbing into the room.

I stand. “Sure, come on in. Join the party.”

Max moves the whiteboard to the floor and sits in my desk chair. “What’s up? Your dad said you needed a ride to school tomorrow. Cops finally took the Trooper?”

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