“Well.” I bite my bottom lip. “So…yes. Malachi and I got married last year. But prior to that… actually, for quite a number ofyearsprior to that… we had become pretty…estrangedfrom each other.”
“Oh no.” I can practically see her knitting her light brown brows like she used to. “As in you broke up?”
“We did. Something happened. It was… I mean, it was all just…hard.”
“I can imagine.” There’s an audible frown in her voice. “Do you want to talk about it? I obviously missed all that.”
“Yeah… actually…” I swallow as my stomach turns with nerves again. “That was kind of why I finally reached out to you. I saw an email from you from years ago that I never replied to, and I wanted to ask you about it.”
Elise inhales sharply. “Ohhh…Yes, I know exactly the email. And I honestly don’t blame you for not replying. The entire ordeal was…” She pauses for a span of seconds. “It was awful. I know much more so for you, but it honestly messed me up for a long time. I completely understood your reasoning for totally going off the grid after that. I withdrew a bit after it, too. I never went to another party again.”
Going off the grid?
I can feel my eyelids stretch wide, and calling Elise wasdefinitelya good idea.
“Isla? Are you still there, sweetie?”
“Oh.” I blink. “Yes. Sorry.” I pause as I sift through my words, because how do I explain my bizarre—to use Officer Miller’s words—mental condition? “So… here’s the thing. I’ve been considering therapy over, you know,all of thatbecause I actually don’t remember it very well. And I was wondering—”
“Oh, that’s not really surprising at all,” Elise says easily. “I remember the doctors saying that drug can cause a little memory lapse as it’s leaving your system. They said you might be fuzzy for a day or so afterward.”
“Right,” I say quickly. “So… if it’s not too unpleasant… I was wondering if you could tell me what you remember.”
She draws in a deep breath and exhales loudly. “Well… I mean, we went to that party. And the only reason we were there in the first place is because I was trying to talk to that boy I was crushing on.” Shetsks. “It was so stupid, Isla, and I kind of hate myself for leaving you alone the way I did. I feel like it’s partially my fault, what happened to you. I should’ve been looking out for you. Parties can be so dangerous, especially for girls.”
“It’s really okay, Elise. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Well, I know. I just wish I’d done all of it differently.” She sighs again. “Anyway, I found you, and called 9-1-1, and we went to the hospital. It was all a blur even then. I sat with you while the police talked to you. You were so out of it even after you woke up. So then, you were finally discharged, and I asked you if you wanted me to take you to your parents’ house, but you were too upset to explain it to them yet. You were so shaken that I tried to distract you from everything by helping you call to file the insurance claim for your phone—you know… because whoever did it stole your phone and took money from you. I thought doing something practical might help you take your mind off the trauma of it all. So, we did that, and I had brought you back to your dorm, and you wereexhausted. It really wasn’t a good time to try to rehash all of it with your parents yet, so I helped you get into bed, and the plan was for you to get some rest, and then I was going to take you to your parents’ house the next day. But then you were just gone.”
I blink rapidly as I don’t entirely digest the last sentence. “Gone where?”
“From your dorm,” she clarifies. “I went by your dorm the next morning so I could drive you to your parents’ house, but you’d already left. You’d packed a bunch of your clothes and things, and it was obvious that you had decided to just go home by yourself. I obviously couldn’t call you and ask, so I emailed you. I tried looking up the address to go by and see how you were, but it’s unlisted. I didn’t hear from you after that, and then a few weeks later, I heard from someone in one of your classes that you’d withdrawn from school completely.”
The line goes silent as Elise’s words seem to run dry, and my mind is suddenly a hurricane of ricocheting thoughts.
Ididn’tgo back to my parents’ house.
According to what they told me, I hadn’t seen them since a number of weeks before the incident at the party, and didn’t see them again until they picked me up in Mexico.
That means my disappearance from my dorm was actually my disappearancein generalthat ultimately landed me in a cold, hard jail cell in the middle of nowhere.
Something about all of this simultaneously doesn’t add up, but also adds upcompletely.
Where the hell had I gone?
Andwhy the helldidn’t I call Malachi in the middle of all of this?
Oh, right. Because I hadno phone.
But Malachi got the messagesaftermy phone had been stolen, which was clearly a cruel prank. The pieces of shit who drugged me and attacked me sent those messages to him, sotheywere the ones who had my—
A memory of the day my parents brought me home hurls itself against my frontal lobes, and my heart does a sudden, arrhythmic tap dance.
Mamá said I had been calling and sending messages tothem.
“You sent a message saying you were going away with a girlfriend for a long weekend,” her voice from years ago.“We tried to reach you about Thanksgiving plans. Your phone was turned off. We called the Sterlings to see if Malachi had heard from you. They told us you broke up. It stunned us, and that is when we knew something was wrong. Your phone was still turned off, and we left many messages. We said we were going to call the police if you didn’t call us soon. Then you called. You said everything was fine, but that you had decided to leave school. You sounded like a shell of yourself. You were cold and disconnected. You didn’t call again, but you sent us messages. Very hateful messages. You demanded money. You insisted that your father owed you your inheritance.”
I calledthem.I sent messages tothem.
