good jump out of me, he moves back again, leaving behind a plastic sandwich bag with a piece of paper inside.
The paper is yellowed with age and red with . . .
Not blood. Please not blood.
“You recognize this?” the cop asks. His name is Detective Otto. He’s introduced himself each time we’ve done this, but I still just think of him as “the cop.”
I look past the red smears, to the words.
Yes, I recognize this paper. And I know exactly where they found it.
“It’s mine,” I tell him. “From when I went to camp a few years ago.”
Actually, it was more like seven years. I’d begged my uncles to let me go, thinking I could spend a week with a bunch of kids who didn’t know me. Of course, the counselors recognized my name and figured everything else out pretty quickly . . . and the gossip trickled down to every kid there. At the end of two weeks, after being caught at the center of the first brawl in Camp Onawanta history, I came home with my official happy camper certificate shoved into my suitcase. It said: Lennie Cash Earned the Following Camp Onawanta Badges: ________. On that line, the camp director had written: I’m sorry but I don’t think Lennie and Camp Onawanta are a good fit. She will not be allowed back next year.
I never showed it to my uncles; I just crumpled it up and shoved it under the ripped lining of the suitcase. Now seeing it again, I feel the old shame and embarrassment fill my throat. I want to grab the paper from the cop and rip it to pieces, but he’s already tucking the plastic-enclosed piece of my past into his manila folder.
“Do you know where we found this?” he asks.
I nod. “In my old suitcase. Dylan borrowed it.”
A few weeks before she disappeared, Dyl had discovered the suitcase at the back of my closet, where it had sat since that disastrous camp experience. She’d declared it “awesomely vintage.” I gifted it to her on the spot.
“Do you know where we found that suitcase?” The cop leans in, his voice hard.
“No.” I whisper the word, suddenly afraid. The red stains. This new urgent, angry tone.
I hadn’t been worried about Dyl before this moment, but maybe that was a mistake. Dylan has always been tough and fearless . . . and reckless. She is exactly the type of person to be stamped with an early expiration date. “Is Dylan in trouble? Did you find her?”
In the moment before he answers, I try to make a deal with God—or whatever it is out there that keeps the world spinning. If Dylan returns in one piece, I’ll destroy my uncles’ distillery and shut down their moonshine-making operation. If I were God, I’d think that was a pretty good deal. My uncles’ moonshine has been the cause of countless troubles and sorrows; seems like nipping it in the bud would save him a whole lot of headaches.
“Yeah, you could say that we found her.” The cop glares at me and too late I figure out he’s one of those people who hates me on principle.
Still, he’s the guy with the answers, so I ask, “She okay?”
“What do you think?” He pulls out another paper from his folder and again slaps it down in front of me.
This is the moment when God laughs at my stupid little deal. When he tells me where I can shove it.
Because this time a photograph lies on the table in front of me. At first I can’t make sense of the image. The purple plaid of Dyl’s favorite flannel shirt mixed with red red red and then feet and her dyed black hair and a hand . . .
My brain actually refuses to understand exactly what I’m seeing until the cop helpfully adds, “Or most of her anyway.”
“Detective!” Mrs. Kneeley, looking as sick as I feel, reaches past him to flip the photo over and hide it from view.
She’s too late, though. Much too late.
’Cause that’s how I find out that my battered old suitcase, patched up with duct tape and kept closed only with the help of an old leather belt, now holds the butchered remains of my best friend.
BAD
FIVE MONTHS LATER
It had been Dylan’s idea to crash Michaela Gordon’s party. She’d spent weeks trying to talk me into it last year. I told her no way, no how, over my dead body.
“Next year then, Lennie,” she’d said. “You’ve got a