nine
Harper Apple
“It all started when the Dolces showed up,” I say. Colt’s told me this story.
“No,” Dixie says, shaking her head. “On Homecoming night. Which, ironically, is the night I first slept with Colt.” She sniffs and wipes away fresh tears. “Royal was kidnapped. They said it was the Darlings, but here’s the thing. Before Crystal died, she sent a letter to the police—Officer Gunn. He was a friend of the Darlings. I don’t know exactly what it said, but for a while, he was trying to investigate Mr. Dolce because of something she said. Like, maybe they faked the whole thing.”
“Why would they fake a kidnapping?”
“To frame the Darlings,” she says. “They framed them for lots of stuff since then. But anyway, Officer Gunn eventually gave up, I guess. I don’t really believe it, anyway. There’s no way Royal could fake what happened to him. I mean, sure, his dad could have beaten him up and put him in the school basement, but that wasn’t the big thing. Royal didn’t used to be like that. They found him, but it’s like… Did they really?”
“What do you mean?”
“They found someone. Someone in Royal’s body. But he wasn’t the same person after that.”
My heart is pounding hard in my chest. I remember some rich kid going missing my freshman year, but I didn’t attend much school that year, so I missed most of the gossip. Even so, I remember a conversation or two about it on the day or days I was at school during that time. I remember Zephyr saying if he disappeared, the cops wouldn’t be looking. They’d say good riddance and be glad for the decrease in graffiti. We all laughed because he wasn’t wrong, and the truth would be too painful if you didn’t laugh about it.
“Their sister wrote a letter to the police turning her dad in?” I ask, because that’s the part that’s new in all this. I already knew Royal got kidnapped, though I should probably search some local news articles from two years ago to get all the details.
“That was the rumor, anyway,” Dixie says. “And if you’d met Crystal, you’d know it’s the kind of thing she’d do. She always wanted to do the right thing, you know? Even when she didn’t know what that was, she tried.”
“You knew her?”
Dixie laughs quietly. “Yeah. She was my first friend at Willow Heights. My best friend.”
“Wow, I didn’t know,” I say, again overwhelmed by just how much history has gone down in the past two years.
“Yeah,” she says. “If it weren’t for her, I’d never have had the courage to go out for dance or start my blog. She used to blog, too. They found her log-in and stuff when they were searching for her. I still sometimes check, just in case she posted again.” She gives a little self-deprecating laugh.
“You think she’s still alive?”
“No,” she says. “Not really. I mean, if she was alive, she would have contacted her family. She loved them so much. Especially Royal.”
“Everyone talks about her like she was a saint,” I say. “They barely mention the guy.”
“Really?” she asks. “Who were you talking to? Devlin was, like, the darling of Faulkner. The whole town adored him. When he fell, all of Faulkner fell with him. People reminisce about him like he was a god.”
“Like Royal,” I say, remembering Colt saying they used to be like the Dolces.
“Nothing like Royal,” Dixie says, her face darkening. “I mean, yeah, he kept people in line at school. But the Darlings were, like, regular small-town football gods. They got lots of girls and had money. Before I started here, when Devlin was maybe a junior, I remember running into him at a restaurant and my dad honest-to-god asked for his autograph.” She shakes her head. “They were loved. The Dolces are feared.”
“Did anyone ever check if something happened to her because of that letter?”
“Yeah, they investigated the Dolces and the Darlings both,” she says. “Mr. Dolce’s crooked as a dog’s leg, but he loves his kids. He’s a single dad. They’re all he has. And the Darlings loved Devlin, like, a crazy amount. In the end, nobody could believe either of them would sacrifice their kid to get rid of the other kid, so…”
“Just seems weird that she wrote a letter incriminating her dad, and then mysteriously disappeared. If he’s mafia, maybe the mafia got pissed about her snitching.”
As the words leave my mouth, I shiver despite the warm sun. I snitch on the Dolces every fucking week. If they ever found out…
“Actually, I don’t think they got the letter until she’d already disappeared. So, like, it hadn’t gotten out that she’d accused her dad. People still like to pick it apart, and lots of people have theories that they’re still alive, like they’re Tupac or Elvis or something. But in the end, I just accepted it for what it was. A horrible tragedy that took my best friend and tore apart the town.”
“Sounds like it really just tore the Darlings apart.”
“Same thing,” Dixie says with a shrug. “I mean, I’m not saying they’re saints and the Dolces are the devil. The Darlings are a mixed bag. And it’s easy to say Devlin was good and Preston was evil. But everyone’s got their dark side, you know? If anyone knew half the things Colt did to me, they’d say I was crazy to love him. But I knew what he was going through, and I forgave him.”
“You love him?” I ask, feeling even more guilty about that last afternoon I had with him.
“Well, yeah,” she says, like I should have known that. “Since the first moment we met. One day, I always thought he’d love me back. Now, I don’t know.”