Home is in Your Skin
"Real or not real, I am on fire."
vii.
The impact of my boots hitting the gravel of the driveway echoes like a gunshot in the darkness. Rue startles mid-stride, her head jerking back around as she trips over her feet.
"God! Katniss," she says as she blows hair out of her face. She gives me an uncertain smile I make no effort to return.
There is a full minute of silence where she stares at me and I stare right on back, even when her phone buzzes in her pocket. Instead of reaching for it she closes her skinny arms around her chest, her shoulders lifting and tightening as she looks toward the road that leads out of Peeta's cozy neighborhood to the highways beyond. In the distance cars buzz faintly by, their headlights obscured by winding runs of forest tucked around the rows of houses.
"I like your dress," she says as she turns back around. She clears her throat uncertainly. "You know Peeta was really worried you weren't gonna come."
"Sorry. Work ran late."
She shrugs, then shakes her head and laughs.
"It's not a big deal. He always finds something to worry about."
Her phone buzzes again and her smile gets stiff. She clears her throat again.
"You two aren't…"
I stare blankly at her.
"You know."
"No. No. We're not... like that."
I wave my hands in an erratic pattern and wonder if it looks as wooden as I feel. Sure, we kissed. But then Peeta said friends. So ok, we're friends. It doesn't matter. I don't need him. I shouldn't want him. Haven't I learned my lesson yet?
Rue's phone won't stop ringing now, and finally she swallows and tears it out of her pocket with fumbling fingers. I wish I didn't know what was happening. I wish it wasn't happening. Not again, and not to Rue, who is so like what I imagine Prim would have become, if she were still alive.
She doesn't answer it.
"I have to go," she says.
"Don't. Rue-"
She backs up slowly, her head shaking from side to side.
"Wait-!"
She doesn't.
The roads in Estes Park wrap tight around the mountains in perilously twisting ribbons. Until tonight, I haven't dared to go faster than the speed limit. But what else is there to do but chase her? We drive for twenty minutes. Thirty. An hour. I lose her twice, then find her again when her headlights cut back on and slice through the trees. My phone rings three or four times, and each time I'm so shocked I almost swerve into a guardrail. I don't bother to look at who is trying to find me, because I'm pretty sure I already know.
It's well past midnight when Rue veers suddenly to the shoulder of an overlook and her lights cut out. I follow, throwing my emergency brake into gear. It squeals to the kind of shuddering stop I know I should be worried about, but it just doesn't register that I burned through my break pads. The cabin light from Rue's car blares in the thick mountain darkness up ahead, and without a second thought about the singe of burnt rubber in my nostrils, I scramble to her door.
I find Rue with her head tilted forward resting on the top of the steering wheel, her arms wrapped around herself and her fingers digging into her back. I wrench the door open and kneel down next to her.
"FUCK!" she screams and pounds her feet into the floor by the pedals. "GOD DAMN IT!"
And then her little frame is heaving as she sobs. I kneel down next to her and hug her as best as I can. My heart clenches as she grits her teeth and draws a hissing, sharp breath that does nothing at all to steady her.
The funny thing about the darkness on these mountains is that it swallows everything- screams included. Nights here feel endless, like you're floating just below the velveteen surface of a black ocean, and no matter how hard you swim you're still sinking deeper and deeper with each passing moment. It's maddening, to feel that lost. To be so incapable of imagining daybreak even when you're within a breath's distance of it.
I had already left Gale twice before I was ever serious about it. It never stuck. I never expected this to last, and even now that it has, I wonder what it would be like to be back in his bed, our shitty apartment, tucked between the hands that, for better or worse, I knew would always be there. To hold me, or hurt me, or the unspeakable combination of both that left me cold and flinching on the filthy tiles of our shower floor.
And that's when I remember what it was like to believe that no shower could wash the sticky sheen of misery and guilt off my skin. Everything that put me in my car that night comes crashing back to me- the fights, the pain, the misery we shared like a flask of something sharp enough to numb, and hot enough to pretend it would burn us clean.
So that's how I know Rue will keep going back to Marvel. The ugliest truth of all is that a monster is still a monster- even if you love it.
But that doesn't mean it won't swallow you- completely, utterly, helplessly- Because even though you know you can't stay, leaving…
Leaving is hell.
And that's why the first time never sticks. The second doesn't either. But if I can make Rue wait; if I can get her through one more night, then maybe it will make the next one seem that much less impossible. If she's lucky she'll get to take it day by day. Wake up, pick herself out of bed and try to do something with the daylight before it's all gone. If she isn't… Minute to minute. Second by second. What I know now is that these moments are stitches of time. One by one, they stack. They build. And if you can be patient, they weave themselves into a fabric of small victories.
It has been three days where I have eaten at least once a day. Five days of remembering how to love the sun on my skin. A week since I last cried.
I'm not sure it was love I was recovering from. I'm not sure that it wasn't. Maybe it was Gale, in particular, that brought whatever it was out in me. It's horrible and completely unfair to compare them, but it feels nothing at all like what I feel when I'm with Peeta. Nothing at all like the confused stutter my heart makes at his smile, or the complete stillness I feel waking up next to him. Nothing about what I feel for Peeta is like what I felt for Gale, except for the fear that he will take something from me that I could never afford to replace.
"You're going to survive this," I tell her fiercely.
"How?" she chokes. "How can anyone possibly-"
"You do. You just do. Day after day. You just live. And then one day, you're not just living anymore."
I surprise myself with this, because I don't have any way of knowing if it's true. A tiny voice I've ignored until now insists that it is, but I'm still not so sure.
"It won't always be like this," I say. "It's like this now, but-"
I swallow and whatever it was that I was going to say sticks in the back of my throat. I settle for-
"It gets easier."
I don't know how long we stay there on the side of the highway like that. One hour. Maybe two. It's still dark when Rue grows quiet, breathing soft and deep in my arms. I leave her to grab my phone from my car and am unsurprised to find three messages and seventeen missed calls from Peeta.
'Hey- did you guys leave?'
'Katniss is Rue with you?'
'Katniss please answer me'
I chew my thumb and stare at a truck as it rumbles by. It's the first sign of life I've seen so far besides Rue and I, so dawn can't be far away.
'On our way back. We're ok.'
I hesitate before hitting send, watching the cursor blink at the end of my message. The words feel weird, like they've crumbled into their separate, meaningless parts and I can't figure out how to put them all back together again. I wipe my eyes and hit send, then jam my phone into my coat pocket. I don't have time for this shit.
There's no need to inspect my car. The brake pads are shot and I know it. I awkwardly pull Rue out of the driver's seat of her car and help her over to the passengers side, where she immediately gathers her legs underneath her and curls up like a little cat. Before I shut the door, I tug my jacket off and put it over her shoulders. Under the heavy black leather, her eyes flutter but she doesn't stir.
I drive us back in her car with my window cracked. The frigid air stings my tight cheeks and burns my eyes, but it feels good in the way that even the smallest reminder of survival can. Instead of sinking into the seat, I revel in every biting chestful of the mountain air- every inch of chilled skin, every raised hair on my scalp and arms. The cold chases out every other thought in my head until it is quiet, and blessedly still.
"I'm sorry," Peeta says and scratches the front of his head under his cap. "I know he was your friend- I shouldn't have said that."
"It's ok," I say, and swallow. Outside his truck, the sun is just setting and it casts a ochre glaze over the top of the lake. It ripples darkly, and my eyes can't seem to catch when the shift happens. Gold one moment, black the next. I am trying to figure out what it is that stung me so much about what he said and come up empty.
"It's just, from everything I've heard, he sounds like a real piece of work."
I nod and fidget with the tape deck. Next song. This one feels like tired old cardboard. I've worn it thin, much like every song on this album. But it's one of my favorites, and tonight's a night for old favorites.
Peeta sighs.
"Are you mad?"
"No."
And I'm not. Peeta doesn't know that Gale wasn't just my friend. He doesn't know who Gale really was, because if he did, he wouldn't have called him an asshole. For everything, Gale always had a lot of friends. People liked him. Trusted him implicitly. And to be fair, he was an easy guy to trust. He was always there for you. Always.
Peeta might have even liked him. Maybe they'd have been friends.
My finger smashes the eject button.
There's the problem. Me. I haven't said anything that wasn't true to Peeta about Gale. But I never told Peeta his name, or that we dated for years. I just said that we were friends, which, after all, was the truth too. But now- because it's me talking- Peeta thinks the worst of him. What kind of stories is Gale telling about me?
I dive to retrieve the box of tapes and feel my pulse throb in my neck.
"He wasn't all bad," I mumble with my head between my knees and my arm twisting underneath the seat.
"He just-"
I stop. I have no idea what I was going to say.
Instead of finishing my thought, I jam the next tape in and start scanning through the intro. Somehow the idea of Peeta and Gale together isn't meshing well in my head. My stomach twists violently and suddenly I am breathing hard and wiping my hands on my pants, unable to understand anything except that I have made a huge mistake telling Peeta about Gale in the first place.
Bright or dark, Gale was Gale. I know I was never capable of loving him the way he loved me. And I know never deserved it either.
And that's when I look over at Peeta and the look on his face- like something just hit him in the gut- tells me what he's thinking.
That I was in love with Gale, and maybe still am.
"All this time," he starts, then shakes his head and looks away. My heart stops as I watch him swallow the rest of his sentence.
"It isn't like that," I say quickly. "I never-"
"Then what is it like, Katniss?"
I hate the way his voice sounds. Resigned. Tired. As if he halfway expected this. But I don't know how to tell him that even though whatever it was I felt for Gale wasn't anywhere near love, I lived for the high of coming close to it. How do I explain the endless, aching emptiness that swallowed me when my eyes opened in that hospital? Or how it only ever went away when Gale gave me a reason to forget it? If there are words in the English language for this, I don't know them, so I mumble a squalid half-truth I know Peeta doesn't deserve.
"He was my best friend. And then I-"
I leave it hanging like there's more to come, even though I know there's not. I think I was hoping I would say something else that would clear it up- for both of us- but all the words die in my throat. He drives me home in silence. I want to say sorry, but I don't know what I'm apologizing for. It sneaks out of my mouth anyway once we're at my cabin, and I scramble out of his truck before he can tell me that he never wants to see me again.
I spend the night pacing, unable to sleep until the wee hours of morning when I collapse on my bed in a sore lump, wishing my heart would stop beating so loudly.
It shouldn't matter. Peeta would be better off if I just stayed away from him. But the longer I don't hear from him, the worse my head spins, until finally I can't take it and force myself out of the house and into the car. My hands drive me to the Goodwill even though I don't need anything there, but because I have to do something today, I wander inside.
And that's how I stumble on the find of a century, sitting right in front of the jumble of cassettes on the bottom rack of the music section. It's this band Peeta loves. They had one hit that every college indie station played and then they faded into total mediocrity. And right there in front of me is the cassette edition of the only decent album they ever made. Mint condition. Still in plastic. I chew on my lip as I snatch it off the shelf and turn it over in my hands. It'd be a waste of money to buy it. First of all, it's a garbage band. But more importantly, there's no reason to believe Peeta will ever want to see me again and I'll be stuck with a tape I won't want to listen to and couldn't bare to even look at.
I buy it anyway.
By the time I get home, plans to violently abandon my phone somewhere wet and deep are brewing in my head, and I have every intention on following through with them. Especially now that I have this stupid tape, which I'm probably just going to have to throw away anyway. As I stomp up the stairs to my cabin I am so busy fantasizing that I don't realize there is something on my top step until I crush it under my boot.
My stomach twists as I look down.
Wildflowers.
I sit down beside the bruised stems and extricate a slip of paper with familiar cramped writing.
'Tonight?'
I turn it over, but that's all it says. The flowers themselves are mostly fine. The stems are a different story though- they're totally flattened- and even though I rummage through my cabin for an appropriately short mug to put them in, I come up empty handed. I'm about to give up and stick them in a bowl when I remember something my mother did for me once. My cheeks burn as my hands fumble with the stems, but I ignore that as I lay the flowers out on the table.
Hours later, I am wearing a woven wreath of wildflowers as Peeta's truck pulls up. His eyes catch on it as I climb in, and he looks away quickly when I catch him staring. He smiles at the dashboard and rubs the back of his neck.
"Let's go somewhere new," I say, and shove the tape at him.
When I pull up in front of Peeta's house, two men are waiting for me on the curb- Peeta, his face tight and pale, and a cop who looks familiar enough to make my pulse race. I sigh heavily through my nose and resist the urge to slam my forehead into the steering wheel. As I slow to a stop, the cop stands and walks into the center of the road, speaking into a radio attached to his shoulder. Where do I know him from? Was he the one who arrested me? It would be just my fucking luck.
The cop is at Rue's door before I even open mine, scooping her out and carrying her hurriedly inside without a single word to me. This, of course, is horrible because it leaves me alone with the very person who both Rue and I hurt the worst tonight.
Peeta.
And this time, even though I know why I have to apologize, the words don't come. Not because I don't know what to say, but because I don't know where to start. So I stare at Peeta's flushed face and flared nostrils guiltily, my mouth snapping open and shut like the stupidest fish of all time.
"Eight hours, Katniss?! Where were you? Do you have any idea how-"
He shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair as he looks toward the house.
"I'm sorry," I blurt out. "It was wrong to not call you. To leave you waiting like that."
Peeta swallows.
My eyes find my shoes and I shove my hands in the pockets of my dress, which suddenly feels more like a stupid costume.
"They found that missing girl tonight. Madge Undersee. The one who's been gone since December."
My neck cracks as my head jerks up.
"Right after the two of you disappeared to god knows where."
"Where was she?"
Peeta's eyes get hard again.
"They found her in the trunk of her own car."
The ground tilts ominously. I lift my hand to my mouth and close my eyes.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
"We had cops crawling all over town and we still couldn't find you. You could have called, sent one fucking text- anything."
I want to pitch myself into the familiar cradle of Peeta's arms, but I think he'd catch my neck between both hands. And I wouldn't blame him in the least. As a familiar burning pressure builds behind my eyelids, something floats back to the surface of my mind. Without understanding how or why I could possibly know such a thing, I am certain someone hurt Peeta. Someone gave him up and never looked back. He has been hurt like I have, but unlike me, other people were there to catch him before he fell through the cracks, and last night, one of those people went missing.
What would I do if someone took him away from me?
It's too horrible to consider.
"She was going to Marvel," I say.
"Are you kidding me?," he says in disbelief as his arms fall away from his chest and he drops his face into his hands. "Godammit."
"I saw her sneaking out during cake."
"And you knew where she was going? How?"
"How the fuck do you think?"
There. I've really done it now. Peeta pales, and silence falls between us like a guillotine. Why am I always so unfair? None of this is Peeta's fault. It was his birthday for fuck's sake. He breathes in deep through his nose and rubs his face in his hands.
"Tell me what happened."
I ignore the possibility that he is asking about Gale and steam forward with the night's tale- everything from talking to Rue on the porch, to tailing her until she finally gave up. I leave out our conversation on the side of the road. I've already said way too much as far as that is concerned.
"And your car?" he asks.
I gesture vaguely at Rue's car behind me.
"Had to leave it. I need to get it towed to a shop."
Peeta sighs and checks his watch.
"It's still way too early."
I shrug.
"I'll walk back and wait."
He rolls his eyes.
"You can't be serious. Come inside. I'll drive you down later."
I shuffle my feet awkwardly. Inside is the last place I want to be. In the end though, Peeta talks me into it. I trail after him into the kitchen, where the cop is sitting scribbling something down at the table. I pause for a split second in the doorway, but he looks up and it's too late. His eyes catch on my face for a moment too long, and now I know that he has realized he's seen me before too.
And then Peeta all out abandons me with the excuse of needing to talk to his mother, and he uses my name.
The cop's eyes widen. Peeta walks out.
"Katniss Everdeen," he says as he stands. "I'm Detective Thresh Abernathy-Delacroix. We've been looking for you."
The door slams hard enough that the walls rattle. Gale's home.
I should be used to this. It shouldn't scare me this much, but I still flinch anyway. He bursts into our shared room, his face so dark I scramble immediately out of bed. In his hand is a folded sheet of paper, and I know it's the moment he's been dreading.
"Posy?" I whisper.
Gale twists his hands in hair, the letter fluttering helplessly to the ground. Not even a moment later, his fist is flying toward the wall next to him over and over again, silently working his knuckles to a bloody pulp. Each time his hand crashes into the plaster I twitch, silently grateful that his full attention is somewhere else before my reaction makes him angrier.
As soon as it starts it's over. He hunches forward, pressing his fists into his face, collapsing under the weight of his own grief. I throw myself forward to catch him, and he holds onto me like I am the last thing he has in the world. I stroke his hair and try to soothe him while he sobs into my neck, but I know there's nothing in the world that could possibly fix what's happened.
His father put his youngest sister up for adoption.
We sink onto the bed, and in the tangle of limbs, my lips somehow find his. He goes still against me, his face tight with pain. Do you feel it too, Gale? That we've shared too many kisses like this- desperate, pained ones that numb more than they fix? There is never anything but bitter misery on our breath. That's what I feel now- the same numb heaviness that has driven me back into Gale's arms as many times as I've tried to leave. He flips me under him, his arms planted on either side of my head and he smudges a wet trail down my throat, my chest, my stomach, my skin pebbling weakly in his wake.
It's over fast.
Despite Gale's ragged breaths and soft grunts, I hardly even think it counts as sex. It more like I've fulfilled a need, served a purpose. Like an appliance. Afterward he clings to me for a long time, his arms so tight I have trouble filling my lungs completely.
"You have to do it," he says finally. My stomach tightens.
"Gale. No. We talked about this."
He sits up suddenly, pushing me away from him.
"Think about it. All that money. Think about what we could do."
"They'll never let you adopt her. Not when we live here. This is no place for a kid."
"But with the money-"
"We need co-signers for a new lease. And we need real jobs, which we can't get without going to school, which we can't do because we can't afford to quit our shit jobs in the first place. It's not enough money for any of that and you know it."
"Yeah? Maybe not. But it's a damn good start."
"The answer is no."
His eyes turn cold.
"What is the big deal? All you have to do is stand up in that courtroom, tell them what happened to your family and you'll walk out with a cool ten grand. I don't get fucking get it."
"Because I said no!"
Gale rolls off our mattress, pulls a shirt over his head and tugs on his boots and jacket. As he heads for the door, and I sit up hurriedly and clutch the damp sheet around my chest, tucking the mess that used to be my braid behind my ear.
"Where are you going?" I say.
He tugs open the door and spares me a final seething glance.
"You're a fucking coward."
And then he's gone.
Detective Abernathy-Delacroix crosses his arms.
"A woman named Sae Spoonriver filed a missing person report eight months ago. Said one day you just stopped showing up for work. None of your friends knew where you went."
I swallow. Greasy Sae. My boss from the diner. That sweet, wonderful, toothless woman was the only person in the world who realized I was gone, and the only person who cared enough to try to find out what had happened to me. In my mind's eye, I see her calling Finnick, driving slowly down the trash-strewn street where I used to live. I imagine her talking to a motley assortment of ex-roommates in patched, studded jackets who are camped out with forties on the front stoop.
"We interviewed your boyfriend," he says, and my heart thuds heavily."He said he knew nothing about where you might go. Seemed to think you left him."
For a treacherously long time, I don't know what to say. Then-
"Please. If you're going to arrest me, just do it."
His face tightens, and he looks down.
"It's my job to report an incident like this," he says carefully. "It's a waste of police energy and taxpayer's money. Disappearing like that is fraud."
He clears his throat.
"Plain and simple, I don't trust you, Ms. Everdeen. You lied to my brother. You lied to your boss. You lied to me... But that was my baby sister you brought home."
Rue's brother. I suddenly understand that he looks familiar not only because he looks just like Rue and Peeta's mom, but also because he was one of the cops who came to my door all those months ago looking for me. He must not have recognized me then, but he does now. I wonder if my face was close to joining Madge's on bar alleyway walls and coffee shop bulletin boards.
"I never saw you. We never spoke. This never happened."
Then Thresh leans forward, his face a stony mask.
"But after this, I don't owe you."
I swallow and cross my arms over my chest tightly.
"Thank you," I say.
Thresh pushes his chair back and fits his hat over his head.
"While you were out with her… My mom will want to know. What did Rue say to you?" he asks gruffly.
"It was Marvel."
He stares at me for another minute, measuring me carefully. I feel like a bug he's pinned under a bright lamp, all ready for a dissection I never agreed to. Something on his face tells me he knows what Gale did. His clenched jaw, his piercing eyes- It's possible he knows everything about me- even the things my record doesn't show.
"Legally, I don't ever have to tell your ex where you are. That's your business. And I'd never-" He stops, his brow furrowing and his jaw clenching. "Even if I had to tell him, I wouldn't."
He looks back at me, appraising me once again, then steps through the front door and into the rising sun. The screen door snaps shut behind him.
By the time Peeta comes back, I am all alone in the kitchen. He sighs and runs a hand through his hair as his eyes flicker to the front window overlooking the driveway. When he looks back at me, those eyes are softer.
"Katniss. I don't think I thanked you."
"I didn't do anything."
Peeta shakes his head.
"My dad said you'd say that."
"Well it's true."
I watch his adam's apple bob and his eyes catch on the twist of arms wrapped around my chest.
"Just once, I wish I knew what was going through your head."
He smiles sadly.
"You know what I realized? I know next to nothing about you. I don't even know your last name, or where you're from. I don't know what your favorite subject in school was, or if you have any brothers or sisters. All I know is that you would fight someone twice your size to protect someone else, but you run scared at the slightest chance of letting someone in."
"Is any of that really so important?" I say weakly.
Peeta laughs.
"That's the thing about friends, Katniss. They tell each other stuff."
"What if I don't want to be your friend?"
A heavy silence falls between us, and I could swear that my heartbeat is echoing off the polished concrete and tile. Since the moment I met Peeta I have made myself sick with wanting and waiting and dreading. Friends. I hate that word. It's so obvious now that Peeta and I never stood a chance at being friends. Not even if I wasn't so messed up. Not even if Peeta wasn't so good. Not even if we lived in another place, another time, another world.
We were doomed from the start.
I drop my arms and close the distance between us, catching his jaw and cradling it in hands I hope aren't trembling enough that Peeta will notice. Why have I never noticed the dusting of freckles on his nose? Or his eyes- which I thought were so incredibly blue, but are actually ringed with gold?
He tastes like coffee- warm and sweet and strong.
This isn't the first time we've kissed. Not by far. But it is the first time I have abandoned all hope of never wanting more. My legs wobble like a baby deer. I press them together and pretend I don't know what is happening as a familiar fluttering warmth awakens in my chest- a tender, urgent thing that whimpers in shock when one of Peeta's hands finds the small of my back and the other the base of my head, steadying me on my tiptoes as I lean up and into him.
Surely, friends don't kiss like this.
It isn't until later- after Peeta convinces me to eat and take nap- that we call up the tow-truck and he drives me out to my car. I am still sleepy in the golden light of the afternoon, and sleepier still for how much warmer it is than last night. I rest heavily against the back of the seat in Peeta's truck and watch the fiery leaves pass.
I've never been here for autumn. Peeta had told me over and over how beautiful it was, but I don't think I was truly prepared. Bright reds and coppery browns spill across the landscape like overturned jars of paint, dotted by splatters of yellow aspen and a few stubbornly green firs.
"I told you," Peeta says smugly.
I roll my eyes at him, but he was right.
"It's incredible," I say breathlessly.
He drops me off at my car, but not before he makes me promise to text him when I get home- a promise I more than intend to keep after last night. I shoot him one as he's pulling away just to prove it.
"Come over tonight. Bring Blondie."
I am smiling stupidly as the tow truck pulls up, but quickly shove my phone in my pocket. The driver is the same man who fixed my car for free not too long ago, and he isn't shocked to see me on the side of the road now. He shakes his head and whistles as he attaches the hook under my front bumper.
"Not doing too well, is she?" he says. "That's ok. We'll fix her up. Good as new."
While he works, he offers to let me sit in the cab of the air conditioned truck, which I gratefully accept as I wipe a trickle of sweat from my cheek. Inside the truck, I dose again as he works, so I miss it when he climbs inside besides me. I wake up to a sharp, chemical smell and my head bumping against the seat.
"Oh. Sorry. I didn't know you were done," I say.
"Not a problem at all, Miss," he responds. I catch another whiff of the chemical smell, and for a moment, I struggle to place what it is. Something bumps my leg on the floor and I see an open canvas tool bag with duct tape and a few tools, and my eyes trail over to my door.
There's a hole where the handle should be.
I look quickly back to the driver, and all at once it comes together.
I have been so stupid. So incredibly, unforgivably stupid. His hair. Its straw colored- a blonde so flat it looks-
Wrong.
The ground beneath my feet vanishes. I see it all as if a movie is playing in my head: A tow-truck creeping around in the absolute darkness of a mountain-top night. Madge Undersee's beautiful, shocked face. Boxes of hair bleach, duct tape and a gallon of Clorox in a red shopping basket. A car sunk off the marshy shoulder of a less-traveled road. Forgotten. Abandoned. Disposable.
Madge Undersee was never missing. Someone made her disappear.
And I'm next.
