Page 98 of The Last Time I Lied

“Did you take that out of Dogwood?” I said.

The female trooper ignored the question. “Was Vivian wearing that sweatshirt when you saw her leave the cabin?”

“No.”

“Give it some more thought. Take your time.”

“I don’t need more time. She wasn’t wearing it.”

If I seemed irritable, it was justified. The girls had been missing for more than a day, and everyone was running out of hope. I felt it all throughout camp. It was like a leak in a tub of water, the optimism draining away drop by precious drop. During that time, the arts and crafts building had been taken over by the police, who used it to organize search parties, sign in volunteers, and, in my case, informally interrogate thirteen-year-old girls.

I had spent an hour there the night before, being grilled by a pair of detectives who took turns asking me questions. An exhausting back-and-forth, my neck sore from swiveling between them. I answered most of their questions. When the girls had left. What they were wearing. What Vivian said before departing the cabin. As for what I’d told her as she slipped outside and how I prevented them from getting back in, well, that remained unspoken.

The shame was too great. The guilt was even worse.

Now I was being asked a new round of questions, although the female trooper displayed far more patience than the detectives. In fact, she looked like she wanted to hug me to her oversize chest and tell me that everything would be okay.

“I believe you,” she said.

“Where did you find that sweatshirt?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

I looked to the other side of the room, where the folded sweatshirt was being passed to yet another trooper. He also wore gloves. The skin of his hands shone white beneath the latex as he placed the sweatshirt into a cardboard evidence box. Dread flooded my heart.

“Did any of the girls have secrets they might have shared with you but not with others?” the trooper said.

“I don’t know.”

“But they did have secrets?”

“It’s kind of hard to call something a secret if I don’t know who else they told.”

My teenage bitchiness was intentional. An attempt to wipe thatpitying look off the trooper’s face. I didn’t deserve her pity. Instead, it only made her lean in closer, acting like the cool guidance counselor at school who was always telling us to think of her as a friend and not as an authority figure.

“Most times teenage girls run away, they do so because they’re meeting someone,” she said. “A boyfriend. Or a lover. It’s usually someone others don’t approve of. A forbidden romance. Did any of the girls mention anything like that?”

I wasn’t sure how much I should say, mostly because I didn’t know what was going on.

“The girls ran away? Is that what you think?”

“We don’t know, honey. Maybe. That’s why we need your help. Because sometimes girls run away to meet a boy who ends up hurting them. We don’t want your friends to get hurt. We just want to find them. So if you know anything—anything at all—I’d really appreciate it if you told me.”

I thought ofThe Lovely Bones. The teenager found dead in a field. The creepy neighbor who killed her.

“Vivianwasseeing someone,” I said.

The trooper’s eyes momentarily brightened before she settled back down, forcing herself to keep playing it cool.

“Did she happen to tell you who it was?”

“Do you think he might have done something to her?”

“We won’t know until we talk to him.”

I took that as a yes. Which meant they thought Vivian, Natalie, and Allison were more than lost. They thought they were dead. Murdered. Just three sets of lovely bones on the forest floor.

“Emma,” the trooper said. “If you know his name, you need to tell us.”

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