Dead To You

23. difficult times at chanler high

They didn't find Bridgette that day. The woods were combed through, their muddied lands embedded with tire tracks and footsteps that ultimately wandered back to the clearing without her when the sunlight dimmed and dusk encroached at the horizon, dive teams rippled through the lake and shone their lights at the reeds in their murky depths, and multi-toned lanterns decorated the tables at the makeshift command center for the community search party. As I was about to leave—not because I wanted to, but because my mom was basically forcing me to over text—the owner from Weirdough's arrived with more than a dozen sheet pizzas that he had donated, and I slammed the driver's side door just as I heard a minister bless the food, praying for Bridgette's safe return and comfort for her family.

I ended up carrying around that ham sandwich and drink for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, never even glimpsing Noel in the woods as I searched with Bronwyn and Ethan, and a part of me wondered if maybe he had never been out there at all. The guy from earlier might have been confused, or I didn't even know. Nothing made sense anymore. When I got home, my mom had closed the bookstore already and was waiting in our apartment with pancakes, bacon, and onion rings made with the leftover batter. It was what she made whenever she wanted to make me feel better, and I didn't have the heart to tell her that now I just associated it with their divorce and every moment that lead up to it. The onion rings tasted sweet and like guilt had been poured in with the vanilla.

That night I picked at them as I checked my phone, refreshing the Google search on her name every few minutes until my mom confiscated it again and told me to take a shower. I turned on the water but somehow, it felt like another form of betrayal to wash off the dirt and sweat and tears from my cheeks when she hadn't been found yet. How was I supposed to shampoo my hair and shave my legs and scrub myself down if she couldn't? How was I supposed to eat if she couldn't? Fall asleep if she couldn't? It all felt like such crap to say that you did those things, took care of yourself, so you could help her better tomorrow.

Except, my mother refused to let me skip school the next morning. I had been awake for a few hours already, not even sure if I ever really fell asleep or just dozed a handful of times while rolling around in my bed and staring at my ceiling like the dotted tiles held all the answers they were searching for just outside of town, and as soon as she saw my leggings and loose t-shirt, already reaching for my sneakers, she waggled her finger at me and shook her head.

"You can't miss another day of school," she informed me, pouring a purple smoothie into two glasses and holding one out to me, like school and smoothies even mattered right now. "I know you want to help your friend, honey, but believe it or not, the police can handle it without the assistance of a high school senior."

I tried not to flinch at the word friend as I ignored her smoothie. I still hadn't told her, or anyone actually, that Bridgette and I had gotten into a fight before she disappeared. I wasn't going to hide it from the police, whenever they got back to me, but I didn't know what to do with that guilt if it were out in the open. People might try to make me feel better about it, or realize that if I hadn't chased after Bridgette, she might not have been missing right now, and, honestly, I wasn't sure which sounded worse. But my mother was determined, despite my protests, that I had to go back to school and stop obsessing over this, another word choice that twinged at my chest like a palpitation, and throughout the car ride to Chanler, in which my mother listened to talk radio and tried to tell me that getting back to everyday life is a distraction I needed, I had to resist from throwing it in her face that when Dad's pictures leaked, she quit her job and ran away to Pennsylvania.

Once I made it inside, I felt the heaviness brought down on my shoulders already, a somber weight in the air that stifled the conversations in the hallway, usually loud and boisterous, but that morning everyone was hushed and spoke in low murmurs. Locker doors were even closed gently instead of slamming and footsteps were heavy laden instead of hurriedly squeaking against the tiles.