So we have to make sure no one else looks for her.
“You didn’t find her phone?” Duke asks.
“No,” I say, scowling at his drunk ass. “I didn’t find it.”
“We should tell Dad,” Baron says. “He’ll know what to do.”
“No,” I say, holding up a hand. “If we need his help, we’ll tell him then.”
“Okay,” Baron says, looking skeptical. “So, what now?”
“Where’d you put her clothes?”
“Shit,” Duke says. “They’re in my bag.”
“That’s the kind of sloppy shit we can’t do,” I say. That, and letting her drop her phone in the swamp. If they find that, they’ll search the swamp, and they’ll find her.
At least… I think they will.
They’ll have a whole team, dogs and infrared gear and shit that I don’t have. I’ve been in that swamp exactly once before today, and it was night by the time we left, and I was… Not entirely present. I barely remember walking into the swamp. I was in survival mode, like those months after Crystal died that I barely remember, and the ones before that I don’t remember at all. I let the monster take care of me, take care of what needed to be done, of what I couldn’t. I was weak, and he was strong.
Maybe if I put him in control, he can find her. I’ll have to go back again. But I have a good reason. I looked today, my first day home from the hospital, searching until after dark, but with only my phone’s flashlight and a vague memory of being there before, I couldn’t find where we’d left her. I couldn’t find her.
“What are you thinking?” Baron asks, sitting up straight and setting his whiskey on the coffee table. “Burn her clothes?”
“Yes,” I say, stepping into the living room. “She was a Darling. We need to act like it.”
I’ll burn everything that ever reminded me of her, all the random shit she left at my house, my notebooks where I wrote poems about her like some pathetic lovesick dog chasing after a bitch in heat. We should burn the whole fucking town to the ground with all the Darlings in it.
“She’s one of the disowned Darlings’ kids,” Duke says. “They don’t care about her.”
Duke isn’t good with the aftermath, the cleanup, the details. He’s there for the fun and games, but he forgets that after the games, it’s real.
“One of them cared enough to find her,” I say. “Even if the grandfather cut them off, one of them reached out to her.”
“Or he did,” Duke says.
“Well, she’s eighteen, so she’s not a runaway kid,” Baron says, trading his sucker for the whiskey. “And her mom probably won’t call the cops. Right?”
“We need to act like everything’s normal,” I say.
For a minute, we’re frozen in confusion. None of us have the slightest idea how to be normal.
“No skipping practice,” Duke says at last.
“Basketball’s over, dumbass,” Baron says. “No skipping school, though. Now that Royal’s back, we have to act like it was just about him.”
Irritation flares in me, but he’s right. I can’t be the one to go off the deep end over this. Not when it means the twins will go down with me.
I should have fucking left them out of it. What was I thinking? I could have done it myself, slit her throat and dropped her in the river.
But I didn’t want her in the same river where Crystal drowned. That water is sacred. She deserved swamp water.
“I’ll talk to her mom.”
“What?” Duke asks, sitting up straight. “Are you fucking crazy?”
“No,” Baron says, holding up a hand, his eyes on me. “He’s right. That’s what a normal person would do if his ex disappeared from school. Bring back her shit, ask her mom if she’s okay. Act like you think she went back to Faulkner High.”