Page 16 of Games We Play (Thistle Cove 2)

Body Found. No Suspects.

The details are all the same; Jacqueline was last seen at the library, she left at closing, alone, and started walking the two blocks home. Somewhere in those two blocks she went missing.

The police, including McMichael, interviewed the library staff, neighbors, friends from school. No one provided any information helpful to the case. As far as I can tell, there were no suspects.

“Anything?” I ask, more convinced than ever that Kenley is chasing imaginary rabbits.

She holds up a yearbook, it’s a photo I’ve seen a dozen times now in the newspaper. Jaqueline’s class picture, taken three months before she died. “She’s pretty,” Kenley says. “Not like Regina Waller hot, but pretty enough, don’t you think?”

I look at the girl with long dark hair and clear eyes, coated with a thick ring of eyeliner. Six piercings are in her ear. Her hair lacks that certain perfection of teenage girls my age who can watch YouTube videos to get it exactly right, but yeah, I can see it. “Yeah, she’s cute. A little goth?”

“Since she was a junior, I had to do a lot of digging.” The seniors have a list of activities by their names in the appendix, which makes it easier to find. “But I found her picture on the debate team, and she was Student Government secretary for her class.”

Kenley has tagged the pages with her photos and flips to each one. These pictures allow a bit more of a glimpse into her personality. It’s 1991, pre-grunge, but it was on its way. Jacqueline has on a band T-shirt, The Cure, baggy jeans and black combat boots on her feet. In the black and white photos, her heavy black eyeliner stands out even more.

“So she was smart and alternative.” I shake my head. “Not exactly the type to hang out with the football players.”

“No,” Kenley agrees. “They definitely have a type.”

She flips quickly to a different activity page: cheerleading. Monica Chandler and Regina Waller smile for a photo with long, tanned legs and bright smiles.

“I guess I’m not sure what you’re looking for?” I ask, rubbing my eyes. A quick glance at the clock tells me we should have been at float building an hour ago.

“Just who she was…what she was interested in, who she was friends with…” she flips back to a photo of her leaning against the gym wall, arms crossed. She looks intimidating. Zero vulnerability, not like the girl you’d expect to go missing. She flips back and forth between Jaqueline’s photo and the one of the cheerleaders. “You and I both know in a town this size, being in different groups doesn’t mean t

heir lives didn’t cross.”

She’s thinking about her and Rose, and if you went back and looked at yearbook of the past few years no one would know they’d ever meant anything to one another.

“Using the yearbook and newspaper is hard because we’re stuck reading someone else’s words, or an image caught in a split second of time. We don’t have the wide angle, the view of everything else going on outside the lens,” I say, closing out the tabs. “We need to go.”

She nods, staring at the book for a few minutes longer. I’d hoped that maybe if I humored her she’d scratch the Nancy Drew itch and walk away. Sitting next to her with her pad filled with scrawls of information and sticky notes marking important pages, that’s not what happened.

Kenley’s gone down the rabbit hole of Jacqueline’s murder—which means I’m following down right after her; I just hope she comes out of the other side unscathed.

12

Kenley

All of this is still on my mind when I’m at float building. We’re surrounded by buckets and bins and baskets of rolled tissue paper. Thousands of little balls. It’s not enough. A few kids from Yearbook are here, Bryant and Sadie; they tell me they’ve started digging through the archives.

“Leave anything you find on my desk, okay?” I say, tossing another ball of tissue into the pile.

Usually I do this with Alice. We talk and gossip and hang out in our own corner, but Alice and I aren’t doing things like this anymore. I’m not surprised she’s not here—further evidence I was holding that relationship together. Finn is on the flat bed of the trailer, shaping and forming the Viking body out of chicken wire. Once it’s finished they’ll coat it in glue and newspaper. Ozzy and Ezra left a few minutes after we arrived, heading back out for some supplies. A car rolls into driveway and I hope that it’s them, because I’d much rather sit with them, but it’s not. It’s a silver SUV—Monica Chandler. She opens up the back door and pulls out a large box.

“A little help?” she calls.

I hop up and head over to the car.

“Oh, Kenley,” she says, giving me a smile. “Please take this over to the food table.”

I take the box from her and peek inside. It’s two rectangular tins of food. I can’t see what it is, but I can smell it—Mexican.

“Is there anything else?” I ask.

“One more box of paper supplies. Thank you.”

I grab the box, and carry it over to the table, helping her arrange the space. I know I shouldn’t say anything, that I’m opening an inappropriate can of worms, but I can’t stop myself.

---