There’s another long stretch of silence.

“Mr. Mitchell?” I say. “Are you still there?”

“Still here.” He clears his throat. “As far as I’m concerned, Abigail, you can talk to Kaycee in hell.”

Chapter Nine

The house I rented is tucked behind a beauty salon in town, not far from where I once babysat as a girl. When I was a kid, the town was basically Main Street, which was also Route 205, and the three official streets that bisected it: First, Second, and Maple. Other than that, it was all nameless county roads that everyone called by the people and businesses that lived there—the Simmons’ Farm Road, the Dump Route. Since Optimal arrived, however, the town has been spreading steadily, sweating new housing clusters and tackle stores and stop signs. The single real estate agent I could dig up told me glibly that Barrens was in the middle of a housing boom—as proof, she could find me only two places for rent, and the other was a converted shed at the back of a slaughterhouse.

As I get out of the car, the loud sound of crickets is broken by a kid laughing. Across the street, outside another nearly identical two-bedroom, a young girl hula-hoops in the driveway. Long-haired, pretty, giggling.

In the hiss of the wind I think I hear a whispered voice and turn around. A blond girl is just locking up the salon and for a second, I imagine that Kaycee Mitchell has come back after all, or that she never really left. She must feel me staring because she turns and glares, hitching her bag a little closer.

But Kaycee, I realize, has left her fingerprint on everything in Barrens; by disappearing, she ensured that she would never leave. She is a slick on the telephone poles once molting with flyers begging for information on her return. She is a shadow on the football stadium bleachers, where she once sat to watch Brent play, sucking on a Newport while Misha and Cora shimmied on the sidelines in their cheerleader costumes. She is in the reservoir and the sky, she wanders the halls at Barrens High, I bet, her face mascara streaked, holding a tissue soaked with blood.

Of all of them, Kaycee was the only one who ever showed me pity. Sometimes, she even showed me kindness. Almost as if brief flares of the past, of our friendship, would sometimes burst again into her memory.

But she could be cruel, too. I remember when she collapsed out of her chair at the desk next to mine, she nearly bit off my hand when I tried to help her. Not metaphorically: she actually almost snapped down on my fingers, like a dog.

And then there was Chestnut, and the collar she’d left in my locker. One of her last gestures. Twisted, cruel, incomprehensible.

Almost as bad as killing him in the first place.

—

The hula-hoop slips from the little girl’s waist, and the noise of it startles me back to the present. She hops out to recover it with her arm, spinning it back up to her elbow.