I stewed alone in my room for several minutes, but honestly, I was one hair shy of freaking out. Chloe was missing. What if she had gone into ProScoop, but Devin had encountered her before anyone else noticed her? Even as smart as Chloe was, she liked Devin enough that she’d be easy to convince to step outside to talk to him alone. What if she had, and then he’d done something to her? Or… maybe she really hadn’t made it inside, and someone else had grabbed her at the car?
I felt another pang of guilt for not being with her. I’d let her go downtown alone, which was usually safe enough—lots of teens hung out walking the shops after school—but Chloe would not have just walked off and left her stuff behind, and she definitely wouldn’t have walked off and not come home. None of this was like her at all, and I couldn’t help but think that if I’d been there, whatever had happened might have gone differently. The thoughts of all the unknowns had me nearly crawling out of my skin.
I was contemplating climbing out of my own second-story window, so I could get some fresh air in the backyard without having to encounter Collin downstairs, when Lockley’s knock sounded on my bedroom door.
“Aubs? You okay?”
I sighed. “I’m fine.”
“I can hear you pacing through the floor.”
I hadn’t even noticed I was pacing. I stopped. “I’m fine.”
There was a little pause, then Lockley asked, “Can I come in?”
I walked over and opened the door.
Lockley gave me a sweet smile. “Hey. Mind if I come in and sit with you?”
The look on her face, and just her steady Lockley-ness, made tears spring to my eyes.
I quickly turned and wiped them away. “Sure. Yeah, come in.”
Lockley took a seat on the edge of my bed.
When I finally turned to look at her, she patted for me to sit next to her.
I did.
She put her arm around me. “You know I’m here for you, right? That you can talk to me?”
I dropped my hands into my lap. “I know.”
Lockley stared down at her shoes. “Do you remember how close Em and I were?”
I looked up at her. “Of course.” Lockley and her family hadn’t moved into our neighborhood until somewhere around Emery’s start of high school, but Emery and Lockley had become friends within days of meeting, and they’d been nearly inseparable for the next three years. Lockley had spent so much time at our house, she was almost like another sister.
She kicked her shoes off and turned to face me, sitting cross-legged on my bed. “Em and I told each other all our secrets. About boys, about everything. I was sure there wasn’t anything Em didn’t tell me… until the night she died. No one knew why Emery drove to the gulf in the middle of the night, or why she would’ve been at the beach alone so late—not you, or your parents… or me.”
I stared at her. “What are you saying?”
Lockley sighed and glanced off. “I’m saying there must’ve been something she wasn’t telling me. Wasn’t telling any of us. Right? Some reason she did what she did, that we just didn’t know.” She looked back at me. “I’m saying people keep secrets, Aubs. Even from those they love. But whatever happens with Chloe, you can’t blame yourself, if it turns out…”
“If it turns out that she had a whole other life I didn’t know about? That she was, what, selling drugs and had to go into hiding, or had a secret boyfriend and decided to run off with him or something?” For a moment, I allowed the contemplation, but no. Chloe wasn’t like that. “That makes no sense, Lockley. Chloe invited me to go to ProScoop with her. She wasn’t trying to hide anything from me. If anything, it’s my fault that I wasn’t—”
“Stop that right now.” Lockley grabbed my hands. “You will not blame yourself for not being there. Understand? That’s a path to destruction, Aubrey, we both know that—and you do not want to go down it again. I cannot lose you down that spiral again, okay?”
Her stare bored into me for a long minute, then I took a breath.
“You’re right. I know you’re right. I’m sorry.” It wasn’t my fault, whatever was happening or had happened to Chloe—but I still wished I’d been there to help her.
“What are you apologizing for?” Lockley pulled me into a hug, then pulled back and smoothed my hair. “Out there, people are doing everything possible to help Chloe, but in here—I’m here to help you. I know how hard this is, so please, Aubs—whatever you need, just tell me.” She stood. “You hungry? I’ve got coupons for Marco’s.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure I could eat anything.
“Extra pepperoni with mushrooms?”
I smiled at her. She always remembered my favorites, even though I was just her best friend’s kid sister. “Yeah. Thanks.”
“I don’t like mushrooms,” a voice said from the doorway.
I looked up to find Collin watching from the hallway, hovering in the shadows like a creeper.
Ugh, great. How long had he been there?
Lockley rolled her eyes. “Aubrey likes mushrooms, and believe it or not, Collin, some things are not about you.” She grinned at me. “I’ll get the mushrooms. Collin can pick them off.”
“Gross,” Collin muttered, then walked away.
Yet again, I wondered why he had even come. He obviously didn’t want to be here.
Lockley let me ruminate in my room until the pizza arrived, then she insisted I come downstairs to participate in some good, old-fashioned distraction.
“Board games or a movie?” she asked when I made it to the kitchen.
“Movie,” I said, because my mind was way too frazzled to focus on a game.
“Okay. I vote comedy,” she said. “I’ll pick. You grab a slice and sit.” She gestured to my living room.
I was grateful not to have to make the decision, so I obeyed and grabbed a smallish slice of pizza, then plopped down on the couch.
Collin stayed at the kitchen table, grumpily picking mushrooms off his slice of pizza, even though he could barely see the living-room TV from there.
Lockley sat down next to me and found some comedy on our streaming service that I hadn’t seen before, but other than registering that one of the actors looked semi-familiar, I barely even noticed the movie. My mind was elsewhere—mostly on worry for Chloe, but occasionally also on Collin, whose steadily awkward presence was emanating a palpably scowlish energy from the kitchen.
Halfway through the movie, my phone rang, and I leaped up as fast as humanly possible to answer it. It was my parents checking in—-but there was still no news. My parents were staying with Mary until she was settled enough to get some sleep, and then one or both of them would be home.
They told me they loved me and hung up, and I drifted back to the couch, more unsettled than before.
When the first movie ended, Lockley pulled out a box of brownie mix and an insulated pouch of other ingredients from her bag—because she was Lockley—then whipped them together in my kitchen and stuck them in the oven. She put on another movie to watch while we waited for them to bake.
Apparently, Collin liked brownies enough to overcome his dislike for me, because when Lockley brought the tray of brownies into the living room and set them on the coffee table with a stack of napkins, he followed.
He grabbed a napkin and a brownie and settled in the farthest possible seat from me, which happened to be my dad’s favorite recliner.
Lockley peddled more and more brownies at me, which I accepted more readily than the pizza.
Collin ate his one brownie slowly, then sat there in silence, while I stared blankly at the movie only Lockley seemed to be watching. The one time I chanced a glance at Collin, he wasn’t even looking at the TV—he was scowling at his crumpled napkin.
It was close to midnight when my parents finally got home, and Lockley had recently dozed off in movie number three, which Collin and I were both pretending to watch—mostly because I didn’t feel like going upstairs alone.
When I heard my parents’ keys turning in the front lock, I practically ran to the door to meet them.
***
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