“Yeah. Sorry I’m calling so late. I mean, is this late?”
“It’s fine. What’s going on?”
“I’m at school. At North Carolina State. My mom just told me about this guy they found back home. Floating in the bay.”
“Uh-huh,” Livia said, wondering how Jessica had gotten wind that Livia was involved with the case.
“Do you know about it?” Jessica asked.
“Do I . . . yeah,” Livia said. “I heard about it.”
“Some fishermen, like, found the guy floating or something. But people are saying maybe he didn’t jump. Maybe he was killed.”
“Okay.”
“So I saw a picture of the guy. The dead guy.”
“What kind of picture?”
“You know, on the news. My mom sent me the article from the paper. She still doesn’t get that all of that stuff is online.”
Livia waited.
“So anyway, I just wanted to tell you because . . . I figured you’d wanna know.”
“Know what, Jessica?”
“The dead guy? Casey? That they pulled out of the bay? He was the guy Nicole was dating that summer. Before she disappeared.”
SUMMER 2016
“Let ’em drool.”
—Nicole Cutty
CHAPTER 5
July 2016
Five Weeks Before the Abduction
They sat on the edge of the pool, feet bathed in the cool water and the high summer sun on their shoulders. Emerson Bay was in the distance, just down the flight of stairs carved into the hillside and which ran down from the pool to the water’s edge. A pontoon and speedboat floated next to the dock, and two umbrella bays were vacant of the Jet Skis they stored. Rachel’s brother and a friend were streaking the bay on the Yamahas, hopping waves made by the wake of powerboats, the screaming engines audible from the poolside patio where the girls sat. It was Friday afternoon and Emerson Bay was busy. Already, there were boats pulling water skiers and tubers, sailboats angled from the wind, and music blaring from pontoons anchored out by Steamboat Eddie’s.
The three of them—Jessica Tanner, Rachel Ryan, and Nicole Cutty—had been friends since freshman year. At first a reluctant friendship, formed when previous friends from middle school splintered off into various factions created by sports or neighborhoods or popularity or the hundreds of other categories that separated high school girls. Jessica, Rachel, and Nicole—along with handfuls of other girls—were left to fend for themselves at the beginning of freshman year. A lesson learned in high school, just as in the wild: There was strength in numbers. These three found one another and stuck together. As the other cliques grew, from the cheer team to the scholars, the chemistry geeks to the beauty queens, Nicole and her friends formed their own inseparable union. Only recently, as summer wound down and college beckoned, had things begun to change.
Rachel’s house sat on the edge of Emerson Bay, along with 987 other homes whose owners were lucky enough and wealthy enough to hold such a piece of prime real estate. Although the homes came in various shapes and sizes, most were elaborate structures with sprawling lawns and rolling greenery that spilled down the hillside to the banks of Emerson Bay. Most had pools and beach access and some sort of motorized water toy, from speedboats and pontoons to Jet Skis and fishing boats.
Rachel’s home was where the three had spent each summer since freshman year, lounging poolside or cruising the lake on Rachel’s ArrowCat. It was where they had become friends. Rachel’s house and the pool and the bay and the summers all held their secrets. The pool house was where Jessica had hooked up with Dave Schneider. The boat garage was where Rachel puked the first time she’d gotten drunk. And on the Ryans’ docked pontoon was where Nicole claimed to have lost her virginity during a party last summer, although the story had changed so many times no one knew the truth any longer.
“What’s up with you lately?” Jessica asked.
“What do you mean?” Nicole said.
“You’ve been MIA. You don’t post anything. You barely return texts. So what’s up with you? I know you’re not hooking up with anyone.”
Nicole smiled and splashed the water with her feet. Shrugged.
“Get. Out! Who?”
“Yeah,” Rachel said, forehead wrinkled. “Who?”
“You guys don’t know him.”
“A Chapel Hill guy?”
“God no! He doesn’t go to school.”
“Doesn’t go to college? How old is he?”
“I don’t know. Like, twenty-five?”
Jessica stared at her. “What the hell, Nicole?”
“What? I’m seventeen. It’s not illegal. Gotta be fifteen or younger.”
“I don’t care if it’s legal. What’s a twenty-five-year-old doing with us?”
“He’s not doing anything with us. Just me.”
“Whatever,” Jessica said. “Does he have a job?”
Another shrug. “I don’t really know. Construction, or something.”
“So what, he holds the stop sign at construction sites?”
“I don’t know what he does.”
“Sounds serious,” Rachel said.
“Screw you guys. I’m so sick of Emerson Bay boys. And high school boys, in general. Totally predictable. Totally boring.”
“When do we get to meet him?”
Nicole made an ugly face. “Great idea. I’ll suffocate him with neediness. Please meet my friends so they can love, love, love you!”
“Tell him to come to Matt’s party next Saturday,” Jessica said, almost a challenge.
“Right. Like he wants to go to a high school party.”
“You’re still going, aren’t you?”
Nicole shrugged again. She could have yawned to get her point across. “Yeah, I guess. The bitches will be there, so I might not stay long.”
“Come on,” Jessica said. “They’re not bitches, they’re just . . .”
“Perfect. Little. Bitches,” Nicole said. “And so fake it makes me want to puke.”
“Megan McDonald? She is always super nice to you.”
“Yeah, in a super-fake way. Like: I’m so much smarter than you and prettier than you and more popular than you, I think I’ll act really nice to you so you don’t feel so sorry for yourself. And if I could find a way to document my charity to you on my résumé, I’d do it because it might get me into a better school.”
Jessica and Rachel laughed at the mimic.
“That’s not Megan at all,” Jessica said.
“If anything,” Rachel said, “she comes off as too nice. So I can see why you think she’s fake. But it’s real. It’s the way she is. And she created the summer retreat, so you can’t make the argument that she’s dumb. Girl’s smart-smart. Like thirty-six-on-her-ACT-smart.”
“Exactly. She created a retreat to help incoming freshman, yet during our freshman year she was the one who was bitchy and cliquey and made people feel like shit.” Nicole stood from the pool and moved to a lounge chair. “She bothers me.”