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  Cryer's Cross

  Лайза Макманн

  The community of Cryer’s Cross, Montana (population 212) is distraught when high school freshman Tiffany disappears without a trace. Already off-balance due to her OCD, 16-year-old Kendall is freaked out seeing Tiffany’s empty desk in the one-room school house, but somehow life goes on… until Kendall's boyfriend Nico also disappears, and also without a trace. Now the town is in a panic. Alone in her depression and with her OCD at an all-time high, Kendall notices something that connects Nico and Tiffany: they both sat at the same desk. She knows it's crazy, but Kendall finds herself drawn to the desk, dreaming of Nico and wondering if maybe she, too, will disappear…and whether that would be so bad. Then she begins receiving graffiti messages on the desk from someone who can only be Nico. Can he possibly be alive somewhere? Where is he? And how can Kendall help him? The only person who believes her is Jacian, the new guy she finds irritating…and attractive. As Kendall and Jacian grow closer, Kendall digs deeper into Nico's mysterious disappearance only to stumble upon some ugly — and deadly — local history. Kendall is about to find out just how far the townspeople will go to keep their secrets buried.

  For Kennedy

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks:

  To my daughter, Kennedy, for all the incredibly tough challenges she’s endured with her OCD, and for letting me share some of it in hopes that others might understand or find some comfort. I’m really proud of you, kiddo.

  To my son, Kilian, for being one of my first readers, and for his discerning artist’s eye. Also for being the front.

  To my amazing husband, Matt, my biggest supporter, who constantly picks up the slack without complaint when I’m traveling or on deadline, and who reads everything I write, even when it’s rough, and helps me make it better.

  To the White House Boys for telling their story and inspiring part of this one.

  To Kendall Kovalik, for whom the main character is named, and her lovely mom who donated so generously to Project Book Babe to make it happen.

  To Dave Gritter and Lindy Flanigan for your help with all the soccer stuff.

  To June and Karl DeJonge for knowing so much about potato farms in Montana.

  To Deke Snow for carrying my luggage to my room in Rochester and for being generally awesome in all ways.

  To my agent, Michael Bourret, for the encouragement, the thoughtfulness, the never-ending hard work, and the laughs. You are one amazing person. I am so grateful for everything you have done for me.

  To my editor, Jennifer Klonsky, who jumped on my extremely primitive idea for this book before I even knew it was an idea, and to the entire team at Simon Pulse for all you do for me and for my books. You guys are incredible and I love you and appreciate you so much.

  To all the AYT actors I’ve met over the years — you have been such awesome readers and spreaders of the book love. Thanks for telling your friends! And always remember that I am your biggest fan.

  WE

  When it is over, We breathe and ache like old oak, like peeling birch. One of Our lost souls set free.

  We move, a chess piece in the dark room, cast-iron legs a centimeter at a time, crying out in silent carved graffiti. Calling to Our next victim, Our next savior. We carve on Our face:

  Touch me.

  Save my soul.

  ONE

  Everything changes when Tiffany Quinn disappears.

  Of the 212 residents of Cryer’s Cross, Montana, 178 join Sheriff Greenwood in a search that lasts several days from sunup to after dark. School is closed, all the students taking part, searching roads and farms, trudging through pastures of cattle and horses, through sections of newly planted potatoes, barley, wheat. Up to the foothills and back along the woods. They travel in groups of two or three, some nervous, some crying, some resolute. Shouting to the other groups now and then so nobody else goes missingcell phones aren’t much good out here. Cryer’s Cross is a dead spot.

  After five days there is still no trace of Tiffany Quinn. She is gone, impossibly. Impossibly, because to imagine that there has been foul play here in the humble town of Cryer’s Cross is laughable, and to imagine that sweet ninth-grade bookworm running away, going off on her own. . It’s all so impossible.

  But gone she is.

  Still, they search.

  Kendall Fletcher flinches and casts regular glances behind her out of habit. Scared about the younger girl’s disappearance, true, but also unsettled by this shake-up in her schedule. The final week of her junior year canceled — everything left unfinished, open ended. Her whole routine is off.

  She walks the hundreds of acres of her parents’ farm and beyond into the woods, wearily counting her steps through the potatoes and grain fields and trees. Counting, always counting something.

  Her best friend, Nico Cruz, walks next to her.

  Boyfriend, he’d say.

  But boyfriend means commitment, and commitments that she can’t keep tend to make Kendall feel prickly. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s run.”

  She takes off through the field, and Nico follows. They pass an imaginary soccer ball between the rows, occasionally yelling out “Tiffany!” Once, after they cross over to Nico’s family’s land, they see a big brown lump where the barley field meets the gravel road, but it’s not Tiffany. Just a road-killed deer.

  She’s not here. She’s not anywhere.

  They take a break under a tree at the edge of the farm as rain starts to fall. Kendall stares and counts the drops as they hit the gray dirt, faster and faster.

  Nico talks, but Kendall isn’t listening. She needs to get to a hundred drops before she can allow herself to stop.

  Eventually the search ends. Nothing more can be done locally except by professionals now. It’s prime planting season. Farmers have chores, and students do too. Plus jobs, if they work in town or for one of the farmers or ranchers. Life has to go on.

  It’s a long, hot summer full of hard work for Kendall. For everyone. After a month or two, people stop talking about Tiffany Quinn.

  TWO

  In September when school starts again, Kendall arrives as she always does, the first one to the oneroom high school, except for old Mr. Greenwood, the part-time janitor, who retreats to his basement hideout whenever students are around.

  Kendall is tan and not quite freakishly tall. Athletic. Her long brown hair has natural highlights from her driving a tractor and working on the farm all summer.

  There was too much time to think up there on that tractor, since all it takes is a GPS to run it up and down the rows. And when your brain has a glitch and its lap counter is broken, the same thoughts whir around on an endless loop. Tiffany Quinn. Tiffany Quinn. Tiffany Quinn.

  Kendall imagines every possible scenario for Tiffany. Running away. Getting lost. Being abducted.

  Maybe even raped, murdered. Wondering which one really happened, and if they’ll ever know the truth.

  She pictures all of it happening to herself, and it almost makes her cry. Pictures Tiffany screaming for help, begging to live. . Kendall’s eyes blur as she remembers her summer, turning the tractor through the fields and obsessing about such horrible things. It seemed so real, so scary, as if someone were about to jump out of the woods and attack her.

  She knows some of her thoughts are irrational. She knows it and always has known it, even in fifth grade, when she used to layer on clothes — four shirts, three pairs of underwear, shorts under her jeans — anxiously, frantically, crying her eyes out for fear people could see her naked through her clothes.

  What an awful time that was. Fear like that is constant, tiring. But the psychologist over in Bozeman helped. Explained OCD — obsessive-compulsive disorder — and eventually that particular phase of w
orry went away, only to be replaced by other obsessions, other compulsions.

  She’s not crazy. She just can’t stop thinking things when weird ideas get lodged in her head. She also can’t stop glancing behind her — it has become her latest compulsion. This whole thing with Tiffany has set her back some.

  So she’s glad to be back at school, though feeling a little desperate because of how last year ended.

  And anxious to start this year fresh. Anxious to have new thoughts, new assignments bombard her brain, keep her mind occupied with non-scary things. Soccer practice starting up again. New DVD dance routines to learn. New things to keep her busy, body and mind. It’s a relief.

  On this first day she tidies up the classroom in a way that old Mr. Greenwood doesn’t, turning the wastebasket so the dent is in the right place, straightening the markers on the dry-erase board and putting them in color order to match Roy G Biv as closely as possible, opening the curtains just so. Lining up the desks into their proper places in neat quadrants, one quadrant of six desks for each high school grade. Kendall creates aisles separating the quadrants to give the teacher room to walk between them, so she can address each grade individually rather than having all twenty-four desks together. It’s the way

  Kendall likes things.

  Nobody’s ever complained.

  Nobody even knows.

  The desks are ancient and sturdy beasts from the 1950s, recycled by the state from who knows where. It’s a workout moving them all, but Kendall feels better when everything is back to normal. She sees where her old desk ended up, over in the freshman quadrant this year. Now the tenth graders will have an empty seat, unless the rumors are true. There’s a new family in town, according to Nico, though

  Kendall hasn’t seen anyone new around town yet. Kendall hopes they have a sophomore to fill the spot left by Tiffany, to make things in that section neat again. Though Tiffany coming back would be the best thing, of course. But Sheriff Greenwood and the local news anchors say that’s just not likely. Not after all this time has passed.

  Kendall opens the curtains wide enough so that the edges of them hang in line with the sides of the windows. Her irrational fear gets the better of her and she checks the window locks, first struggling to open the windows to make sure the locks are sturdy, then running her forefinger over each lock in the same manner. “All checked and good,” she says. No one is there to hear her, but she has to say it out loud or it doesn’t count.

  When she sees students walking up the yard to the little school, Kendall looks over her handiwork. The door creaks open. Kendall moves to her new desk in the senior quadrant, takes out an antiseptic wipe from her book bag, and cleans her desk quickly before anybody can see and make fun. She’s not a compulsive hand-washer, like some. But she likes to know the germ status of her own personal work space at the beginning of a school year. Doesn’t everybody?

  Nico spies her and comes over. His straight white-blond hair hangs in his eyes. He’s got his father’s

  Spanish name but his mother’s Dutch looks. Nico swishes his hair aside and gives Kendall a half grin.

  Throws his book bag onto the floor and shoves his body into the desk just to the right of Kendall. “These desks aren’t getting any bigger,” he mutters, trying to fit his knees under the metal basin. He leans over and pecks Kendall on the cheek. “Hey. Sorry I was late. You want to go up to Bozeman this Saturday?”

  “What for?”

  “I gotta look at Montana State. Check out the nursing school.”

  The guy behind them snickers. “Nurse Nico.”

  “Shut it, Brandon,” Nico says in a calm voice. He whips his arm back without looking, and it connects with the side of Brandon’s head.

  “Sure,” Kendall says. “I want to check out their theatre and dance program, just in case.”

  Nico flashes a sympathetic smile. “Still no word?”

  “No.” The chances of a rural girl with very little formal training in theatre or dance getting into Juilliard are probably less than zero, but Kendall sees no reason not to start at the top.

  Kendall idly counts bodies as everyone else files in. She subtracts last year’s seniors and Tiffany

  Quinn, and adds the incoming freshmen. Ms. Hinkler explains the seating arrangement to the freshmen, new to this building. She also announces to the noisy room that there will be two new students this year, which is practically unheard of. The rumor of the new family must be true. Cryer’s Cross is, apparently, a boom town.

  “Looks like it’ll be a full house this year,” Kendall murmurs. Twenty-four students. Perfection.

  The two new students enter the room and everyone watches curiously. Ms. Hinkler checks them in and assigns them seats. She directs one of the new students to the senior section. He looks beyond Kendall and frowns.

  “Hey,” Kendall says when he stops at the only empty desk, to the left of hers.

  The guy mutters something, but he doesn’t look at her. He sits down and puts his backpack on the floor under his desk.

  Nico leans over Kendall’s desk. “Hey. I’m Nico. How’s it going?”

  The guy nods, almost imperceptibly, but remains silent.

  Nico raises his eyebrow.

  Kendall laughs. “Okay, then,” she says. “This should be fun.” She studies the new guy. He’s toughlooking and muscular. Medium-brown skin, his hair black and wavy. His clothes aren’t anything special, but they’re clean and neat. His shoes are dusty like everyone else’s. Cryer’s Cross could use some rain.

  The other new student, a sophomore girl, has brown skin too, with a spattering of darker freckles across her nose and cheeks. Black wavy hair. They’re both striking. “Is that your sister?” Kendall asks.

  The new guy closes his eyes, feigning sleep, arms crossed over his chest. Kendall sighs. She turns her attention to her new desk, reading the graffiti. But it’s already familiar — she’s been reading and memorizing desk graffiti for years now. She knows every desk by heart. She can’t help it. It’s one of those OCD things.

  Being Kendall is exhausting.

  Once Ms. Hinkler has all the freshmen students checked in, she introduces them to the rest of the class. Like everyone else, Kendall pretty much knows them all. Some of their parents work on the

  Fletchers’ potato farm. But all eyes are on the transfer students. They are introduced, brother and sister indeed. The girl is Marlena and the guy is Jacián Obregon. Ms. Hinkler stumbles over his name.

  “Not JAY-se-un,” he says, suddenly awake again. “Hah-see-AHN.”

  Ms. Hinkler blushes. “My apologies.” She repeats it the right way. Jacián Obregon. It sounds like a melody. Or a tragedy.

  It’s a boisterous, testosterone-filled day for Kendall, wedged between Nico and Jacián, with stupid

  Brandon directly behind her and two more guys on either side of him — Travis Shank, and Eli Greenwood, who is the son of the sheriff and grandson of the janitor. It’s always been like this. Kendall’s the only girl her age in the entire town. It figures that when they finally get a new kid in her grade, it’s another guy.

  But Nico’s there like always. He’s been her best friend ever since they were babies. He knows about

  Kendall’s OCD, understands it, and it doesn’t bother him at all. Best guy in the world? Kendall thinks so.

  She gives him a wide smile when she passes the syllabus to him.

  At lunch Kendall and Nico trade sandwiches like they’ve done every day since kindergarten, except when Nico brings tuna salad, which Kendall can’t stand. They eat together in the grass, talking about college options and how it’s going to suck to be apart.

  After school Kendall and Nico head to soccer practice out in the field behind the building. Soccer here is coed and all varsity since there aren’t enough high school girls in Cryer’s Cross to make up a girls’ team, and there aren’t enough students who want to play soccer to have a JV team as well. Kendall’s the only girl to stick it out. And she’s better than most of t
he guys.

  As Kendall finishes stretching, Jacián shows up to the field, dressed in Nike soccer apparel like they’re sponsoring him or something. Kendall jogs in place, rubber band between her teeth, and whips her hair into a ponytail as she watches him walk. She can tell he’s an athlete. She says his name to herself so she doesn’t forget how to pronounce it — not a lot of Jaciáns around here.

  A moment later Marlena appears, dressed for practice in less obvious designer sportswear. She sees

  Jacián and runs toward him.

  Kendall stares. “They’re both playing?” she says under her breath to Nico.

  “Looks that way.” Nico grabs a ball from the ball bag and tosses it at the ground in front of Kendall, who captures it with her foot and dribbles automatically away from the others.

  “Well, we definitely have room on the team.” They pass the ball back and forth. Kendall thinks of the four team members they lost to graduation last year.

  “Yeah, there’s too much room, and only one freshman that I know of wants to join us. And this new girl. I suppose Coach will take anybody with a pulse. But we’re still short. How many is that, number girl?”

  “Eight,” Kendall says automatically.

  “Yowch.” He scratches his head. “I hope Coach can recruit a few more, or we’re going to be killing ourselves playing against full teams.”

  Kendall squints and shrugs. “We’re not the only team with low numbers. We can do it with eight. Though it’ll be hell playing Bozeman teams with the full eleven.” She watches the Obregons stretch, waiting to see what they can do. “You know, it might be nice having another girl around,” she says finally. “Jacián, on the other hand. . Well, I guess it won’t make a difference.”

  When Jacián plows into Kendall during a four-on-four practice scrimmage and leaves her with the wind knocked out of her, though, she realizes he actually might make a difference. “Asshole,” she mutters when she gets her wind back. “Coach, hello! That was a foul.” She gets back up and runs to help protect her goal, but it’s too late. Jacián scores against her team.