Fragile

about to say something, but the front door to Britney’s house opened then, and her mother stepped onto the porch. Denise was as petite and pretty as she’d been in high school. Good genes, old money, married rich-twice. It showed. Even in velour sweatpants and bare feet, baggy pink sweatshirt, obviously roused from dozing on the couch, she was a perfect ten.

“What’s going on? What’s wrong?” she asked. She hugged herself against the cold.

“Is Charlene here?” Melody asked, stepping down out of the car.

Denise shook her head. “Not on a school night. Brit has a test first period. She’s sleeping.”

“Can we come in?” asked Maggie, walking up the steps to the porch. “I think we need to talk to Brit. Charlene is missing.” There it was, the word spoken and out there, floating on the air. She regretted it, should have been more vague. She should have said something, anything, else. She couldn’t take it back.

Denise looked stricken, moving back toward the house and pushing the door open. “Of course. Come in.”

It didn’t take long for tensions to build. The three of them-the pretty cheerleader, the sexy burnout too old, too knowing for her age, the geek with gothic leanings-they were all there, these representatives of the perennial high school subcultures, squirming and pink beneath the shells of their adulthoods. Maggie thought that childhood things would be left behind, these silly groupings would fade and become meaningless, but they never were. Not in a town like this. Those teenage girls, each awkward and unsure in her own way, never left The Hollows.

Brit stood sleepy before them now, every bit as beautiful as her mother. Maybe more so. Also with no trace of the high school angst and insecurity Maggie remembered so well. The girls of Ricky’s generation knew their power better, didn’t seem to be casting about as much for approval and validation. Though, of course, Brit had her own set of problems, occasionally throwing up after bingeing, reacting to some terrible pressure she claimed she didn’t really understand herself. I’m not perfect, she’d said to Maggie in a session. That’s what they think, but I am so far from that.

“I have no idea where Char is. I’m sorry.” She huddled in close to her mother, was half-hidden behind her. A protective posture.

“You didn’t hear from her at all tonight?” asked Melody. “She didn’t call to tell you she’d left home?”

Brit shook her head quickly.

“Brit,” her mother urged, nudging her gently with a soft shoulder.

“What?” the girl snapped, moving away from Denise. “I don’t know where she is.” Denise hung her head and moved away, traced a circle on the floor with a perfectly pedicured toe.

Britney and Charlene were unlikely friends. Brit, the athlete scholar, not a cheerleader like her mother but a track star, the fastest girl Hollows High had ever seen, a record breaker, and one of three girls in a heated competition for the valedictorian spot. The girl before Maggie was a textbook overachiever.

And Charlene, the resident gothic queen, singer in Ricky’s band, smart enough in her own right but not inclined to academic achievement, pouring her energy into her music-she sang and wrote lyrics. She was a talented, intelligent girl, artistic and wise beyond her years but not cast from the same mold as Brit. They were as different as two girls could be but had been friends since the third grade.

“This is not the time to be protecting Charlene, Brit,” Maggie said gently. “We know she’s your friend. But this is serious. If you know her plans, or you know where she is, you need to tell us.”

Brit released a sigh, lifted her eyes to the ceiling.

“Please,” said Melody. “I know you guys think you’re grown up, that you know everything. But she’s just a girl. The world is not what you want it to be. It’s an unforgiving and dangerous place. Some consequences are forever.”

Maggie flashed on Sarah’s lean form, a hundred years ago, walking into the tall, black woods, the sky a slate slab above her. From Melody’s pleading tone, Maggie expected to see her tearing. But her face was grim, a stone mask of tension.

“Sometimes home is not a safe place, either,” said Brit, looking pointedly back at the older woman.

Melody blinked and shook her head as though she’d been struck. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Britney narrowed her eyes. “You know.”

The eruption was quick and fierce. Melody moved in to Britney, shouting something unintelligible, her face gone from stone to fire, flushing a hot red. Denise stepped forward to put her body between the two.

“Stay away from her, Melody,” she said firmly. “Stand back.”

When Maggie put her hands on Melody’s arms and pulled her back, Melody began to sob. It started low, then turned to a wail. She doubled over with the force of it. It was a terrible sound, something that frightened Brit, caused her to go white, her face to go slack. The sound connected to a place in Maggie’s center. Denise felt it, too, Maggie could tell. A mother’s fear for her child. Denise moved to Melody and put her arms around the other woman, led her away.

“What was she afraid of at home, Britney?” Maggie asked. They were good with each other; she knew Brit trusted her, knew that Maggie understood and accepted who she was, flaws and all. You’re everything you need to be, she’d told Britney in a session. It’s enough to just be who you are.

Britney looked up at the ceiling, then back at Maggie. “She was afraid of Graham,” she said.

Melody’s wailing grew louder; Denise had taken her to the couch in the sunken living room off the foyer. Calm down, Mel. It’s okay. We’ll find her. We’ll find her.

“How so?” Maggie asked. She was trying to be the measured and even one; but the stress of the situation was starting to get to her, too. “Did he hit her?”

Maggie remembered the shadow under Char’s eye a few weeks back. She’d asked the girl about it, but Char had laughed it off. Hit her head on the faucet in the tub when she bent down to pick up a dropped bar of soap. Silly. Stupid, she’d said. It didn’t ring true, but Maggie hadn’t pushed. Charlene didn’t present like an abused kid. Maggie knew Melody wasn’t a perfect mother, and Graham Olstead wasn’t anyone’s idea of an ideal stepfather. But what did an ideal parent look like? She wasn’t arrogant enough to think she knew.

Britney shook her head, seemed to measure her words. “He was inappropriate with her. Crude. Suggestive. She thought it was only a matter of time.”

“Until what?”

“Until, you know, he hit on her or something. Tried to touch her.”

Maggie looked back at Melody, not far from where they stood. If she heard Britney, she didn’t make any protestations. She had her head in her hands, was rocking slightly back and forth.

“But he’d never touched her before?”

Brit shook her head. “He said things to her-like, told her that she looked good, in a dirty way. Or he’d come into her room wrapped in a towel after his shower. Things like that. That’s what she told me.”

Maggie was aware suddenly of a terrible tension in her shoulders, a clenching in her stomach. She realized that Melody had never answered the question she’d asked on leaving the car.

“The stepfather thing is not always cool, you know, Dr. Cooper.” Britney had lowered her voice to a whisper and leaned in close to Maggie. Brit was remembering her own stepfather, Maggie knew, Denise’s second, very rich husband. There’d never been any hint of abuse, just a sense Brit had that he didn’t want her around, that she was a nuisance in his marriage to her mother. But Denise had divorced him years ago, never married again. I have money; I don’t need a husband, Maggie remembered her saying. I just want to be myself for the first time in my life.

“Was she here tonight, Britney? I need you to be honest with me now. Have you heard from her?”

Denise had joined them again. “No one’s going to be mad. Okay, Brit?”

Britney looked at her mother. Denise’s beauty was maturing-fine lines and a softening around the jaw didn’t diminish her prettiness; Britney was blossoming-her face narrowing, losing its childish fullness, her prettiness becoming something more luminous. Maggie could see their closeness as Denise snaked an arm around Brit’s middle and the girl rested her head on her mother’s shoulder.

“I got a Facebook message from her earlier,” she said finally, pulling away from her mother. “I’ll show you.”

They walked through the house, Britney and Denise leading the way to the computer room, Maggie and Melody close behind. The long hallway was a photo shrine to Britney-the little blond cherub morphing into a fairy princess, at Disney, in Paris, climbing on a jungle gym, on her grandfather’s shoulders at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade-the privileged life of an adored child.