The Summer She Went Missing by Chelsea Ichaso

Author:Chelsea Ichaso [Ichaso, Chelsea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

19

Once we’re sufficiently exhausted and sunburnt, the four of us stop in town for a late-afternoon milkshake at Carlson’s. Our siblings go ahead while Dylan and I drop by the gift shop on the corner under the pretense of purchasing sunscreen.

Aimlessly, we wander the aisles, recapping the facts of the case.

“If Madison Blake was at that party,” Dylan says, pretending to inspect a bag of chips, “why did the missing posters say she’d disappeared earlier?”

“Because her mother reported her missing, remember? Delilah Blake didn’t exactly keep close tabs on her daughter. And between all the cons, Britta probably hadn’t seen her around much either.”

“It sounds like that night was when everything fell apart for Audrey,” Dylan says. “So what does it mean?”

“It means Audrey could’ve had something to do with Madison’s disappearance. According to Solomon, Audrey had spent an entire year thinking up a way to exact her revenge. So the first night she gets to Clearwater Ridge, who just happens to show up at the party?”

“Madison. But Solomon said that Audrey was working on finding Madison with her source later on last summer.”

“Of course she told him that. If she’d already done something to Madison—something too horrible to confide in anyone, even Hannah—then she had to pretend she was still searching for her, just like Solomon was.”

“And this source?” Dylan asks. “If it was the burner phone guy, why didn’t Audrey ask him what to do about Madison until August?”

I nod. “I’ve been stuck on that too. My only thought is that this guy might not have been involved in whatever Audrey did to Madison. His job may have been helping her clean it up and get away.”

“He could’ve been both,” Dylan says. “4477 could’ve been there with Audrey at the party. Then maybe they switched to burner phones.”

“What if 4477 is the reason Madison’s mother and Britta went silent on the whole disappearance thing? That text message could’ve meant: What do we do to make the cops stop looking for her?”

“Well, if Audrey put the burner phone guy on that job, I’d say it worked.” We reach the sunscreen aisle, and I cringe at the $22 price tag. “Small-town shops are the worst.”

“I’ll get it,” Dylan says, reaching for the bottle.

“No, that’s not—” I dodge his reach, knocking a stick of deodorant off the shelf behind me. Wincing, I duck my head. “You realize I don’t actually need sunscreen, right?”

“Honestly, I’d forgotten.” He stoops to pick up the deodorant.

I tilt my head. “I’ve become one of those humans who tells untruths with relative ease.”

“You mean a liar.”

I gesture at the deodorant. “You should probably get that instead.”

Dylan smirks and puts it back on the shelf. “The lies may be improving, but the jokes…” He rocks a hand in a so-so gesture, and I stomp on his sandaled foot, eliciting a yelp.

We exit the shop with our heads down, avoiding the owner’s malicious gaze. Out in the beating sun, we stick to the cobblestone beneath the shops’ overhangs.

“Hey!” Brent Haywood waves us down from the other side of the road, then crosses over to join us.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.