Courtney stared past me and up the block where Greg, Reilly, and Jake were coming down the sidewalk. Greg’s and Jake’s hands were jammed into the pockets of their jeans. All three of them had grim expressions on their faces.
A little while later, there were six of us at two tables pushed together, huddled over our coffees.
“This is unreal,” Jake muttered. “I mean, stuff like this doesn’t happen around here.”
“You know, the night Lucy disappeared,” said Greg, “there were some guys I’d never seen before. I heard later that they were from FCC. And there was at least one guy at the kegger last night who I’d never seen before. Maybe—”
“Oh my God!” Reilly gasped, sweeping her chestnut hair out of her face. “I know who you mean! I talked to him!”
We stared at her.
“Last night. At the kegger. I can’t believe I didn’t put it together until now.” Reilly pressed her hand to her chest as if to keep from hyperventilating.
“What did you talk about?” I asked.
“I don’t know, just stuff,” Reilly said, although from the distant look in her eyes you could see that even as she answered, she was still searching her memory. “I’d had a couple of beers and I talked to a lot of people. I’m trying to remember.”
“Was he from FCC?” Greg asked.
“I don’t think he said,” Reilly answered. “I mean, he definitely wasn’t from our school. I sort of assumed he was from some school nearby.”
“What kind of stuff did you talk about?” Courtney asked.
“Well, he wanted to know who was who—”
“And that didn’t seem weird to you?” Jen interrupted.
“Not at the time. I mean, he didn’t know anyone so he was asking, that’s all. Just making conversation. It’s seemed pretty natural.”
“And you’re sure he never said where he was from?” I asked.
Reilly stared at her coffee. “If he did, I don’t remember.…” She looked up as if she’d just remembered something. “He wanted to know who the most popular kids were.”
For a moment, all of us exchanged shocked looks. “Oh … my … God!” Jen muttered.
I flipped open my phone and called the police.
It wasn’t long before a dark green sedan pulled up and Detective Payne got out and came toward us.
“Do you know what happened to Adam?” Jen asked.
“I think it’s best if I ask the questions,” Detective Payne replied patiently. He turned to me. “Madison, you said you have a friend who might have some important information?”
I introduced him to Reilly.
“You spoke to this person?” Detective Payne asked her.
Reilly nodded uncomfortably.
“Remember what he looked like?”
“Sort of. It was kind of dark.”
Detective Payne glanced around at the rest of us and then focused again on Reilly. “Would you mind coming down to the station? I’d like to ask you some more questions, and maybe you could give us a description.”
Reilly gave me a nervous glance, but I nodded back reassuringly. She turned to the detective. “Should I, like, tell my parents?”
“Certainly,” said Detective Payne.
While Reilly called her mom, I asked Detective Payne if we could speak in private for a moment. We walked a dozen yards down the sidewalk.
“Thanks for calling me,” he said in a low voice. “This could be helpful.”
“I was thinking about the note,” I replied. “It said that my friends and I were in danger. Adam is one of my closest friends.”
Detective Payne nodded. I didn’t have to spell out the rest for him: It didn’t sound like a joke anymore. It didn’t sound like someone just wanted to play with my head. It sounded like whoever wrote that note knew in advance that something was going to happen to Adam.
Reilly came toward us and handed the phone to Detective Payne, who assured Mrs. Bloom that this was perfectly normal and her daughter wasn’t in any trouble. I went back to the table and watched as Detective Payne escorted Reilly to his car and held the door for her.
“I don’t believe it,” Jen said for the twentieth time.
“It’s pretty obvious that detective thinks this mystery guy is involved somehow,” said Jake.
“Like how?” Jen asked.
“Who knows?” said Jake. “It’s a little weird that first the guy would do something to Lucy and then come back for Adam.”
“I’d say it’s more than just a
I listened with only half an ear. Whoever had left that note had known that Lucy, Adam, and I were friends. That didn’t sound like something some “mystery guy” could have figured out just by talking to kids at a party or a kegger. It seemed a lot more likely that the note had been written by someone who knew us. I was wondering about that when, halfway down the block, a familiar-looking purple car went around the corner. It was Tyler, who’d told Dave he’d be away this weekend.
The rest of us stayed at Starbucks and talked. Cell phones rang as friends called to find out where people were, and gradually the group sitting at the tables on the sidewalk swelled to more than a dozen. It was something I couldn’t remember us ever doing before. We often got together at school, sports events, and parties, but never on a Sunday afternoon outside Starbucks. I wondered if people felt there was safety in numbers. I also wondered what was going on with Tyler. The fact that he was still around and hadn’t gone away strengthened the “hot date” theory, but with no way of truly knowing, I forced myself to stop thinking about it.
A little while later, Reilly returned and told us how, at the police station, they’d asked her some questions, but that she’d spent most of the time with an artist at a computer trying to come up with a face that matched the “mystery guy” from the kegger.
We sat and talked a little longer. By now it was late afternoon and the sun had gone below a building and cast a shadow over us. The sidewalk began to feel chilly.
“So what about tonight?” Jake asked Courtney. There’d been talk on Friday that since there was no school on Monday, some people might gather at her house Sunday night for what was termed more of a get-together than a party. But that idea had been floated before Adam had disappeared.
“Does anybody really still feel like it?” Courtney asked.
“It beats hanging around at home,” said Greg, and others nodded in agreement.
Courtney gave me a curious look.
“I might stop by,” I said. “But first I have to muck out Val’s stall, and I’m supposed to have dinner with my folks.” Then I had another thought. “One other thing, guys? Whoever goes out tonight, try to stay in pairs—like a buddy system, okay?”
It had not been my intention to remind everyone of the frightening circumstances surrounding our lives at that moment, but that’s the way it felt. People started to drift away.
“Give me a ride home?” Something about the easy way Courtney asked made me think that she wanted to make up. We got into my car and she said, “So you still want to know why I went with Adam?”
“Only if you want to tell me.”
Courtney looked out the window. “Maybe you were right. Maybe it was because Adam was Lucy’s boyfriend. So being with him … and knowing he wanted to be with me? Even when he was with
I was glad that she’d decided to tell me—but sorry, too. One reason I’d become friends with Courtney was because she had that wild and unpredictable streak—the opposite of me, Ms. Predictably Unwild. Her lack of
