By accident or on purpose, Cindy and I ended up at Zachary's Elm tree. Tokens blanketed the base of the bark: a dozen scarlet roses, daisies, and a handful of canary yellow carnations.

These additions weren't for Zachary. They belonged to Cindy.

The rain steadily soaked me to the bone. Thick drips rolled down the bridge of my nose. The question that begged an answer burned a hole in my throat.

"I detest roses." Cindy sighed. "Mom says they are a sign of guilt, she much preferred carnations." Cindy selected one of the cut stems and inhaled.

"You kissed Daniel. Did you give no consideration to Laurie? Maybe you remember, but you're ashamed to admit what you did."

Letting the stem fall, she crunched the petals under her foot into pulp.

"For the record, I didn't kiss Daniel, he kissed me. Backed me into a corner and crashed his liquor-laden mouth over mine. I said no, but still ended up the most sexually experienced virgin in the school. Do you believe every rumor? Or are you secretly asking if I caused his actions? Did I parade myself in front of him, a desperate temptress, craving love but lacking moral judgement? You are revolting!"

Hearing her articulate it that way, I realized I might be guilty of accepting every slither of gossip without due thought. Taken it as fact. None of what I'd learned until the day of her death had any foundations in the truth.

I exhaled a breath and forced myself on. "Daniel places Laurie on a pedestal. Why would he risk that?"

"Aren't you forgetting about Emma? What he attempted with me perhaps he is trying with her, if her diary can withstand your judgement."

"You're right, but when did the rumors first surface?"

Cindy shrugged. "One day non-existent, the next, every hushed whisper in the school corridor echoed my name. Then the graffiti in the toilet stalls popped up. I was mortified."

"That quick, overnight your reputation tarnished?"

"Yep, there one day and truant another, just like that." She clicked her fingers.

"Something transpired, changed, any clue what that was? Did the rumors spring up before or after Daniel?"

"Before, after Zachary..."

"After Zachary died?"

She nodded once. There were two people who coveted Zachary, one even more so than the other. Could one of them hold the answer to the question, what changed when Zachary died? And, where did the rumors start?

The confirmation I was seeking was slight in her eyes. If I had blinked, I would have missed it.

"Laurie, my dearest friend," Cindy replied without missing a beat.

"That's where we'll go next."

Laurie resided in the Paradise Heights neighborhood; its landscaped lawns and imported Mediterranean marble paved the divide between us and them. Three houses perched on the hill, Zachary's steel-blue Charger lingered on one driveway as an unlit effigy of everything he symbolized.

Smiling at Cindy, I rapped my knuckles on the thick oak door. The clunk of the heavy bolt-lock sliding on the other side made us both stand to attention. The door opened. I craned my neck a degree to peek around the doorway.

The inside of their house told an opposing tale to the manicured exterior that faced the world. I couldn't spot a single item of furniture.

"Can I help you?" Mrs. Evans voice slurred.

"Is Laurie home, ma'am?"

Mrs. Evans eyed me with caution. "My daughter is at Jacks on a Thursday night."

Beside the only motel in town, sat the derelict parking lot of Jack's Diner. Jack was actually John, a veteran who once bragged he'd flunked culinary school. His honesty wasn't what enticed the patrons, the anonymity of its nineteen-fifties style booths; baskets of cheese-smothered fries; and unlimited coffee was.

The road-side restaurant was infamous for its bumper-stickers and post-cards that camouflaged its windows, the corners of which licked up in age depicting faded California sunsets and palm-lined streets. It enforced the belief that the sun never rose here the same way.

Located a stone's throw from the Heights, but a million miles from its tranquility, I wondered why on earth would Laurie hang in that shit-dump? And what type of parent would have let her?

"Who are you again?" Mrs. Evans asked.

"Nick, I'm a friend from school." I extended a hand, but she didn't shake it.

"Like I said, Laurie isn't here. If it's urgent, take it to Jack's."

Unsteady, her hand slid down the frame of the door, and then she stumbled a step back, slamming it in my face. Not so much as a goodbye or see-ya-later.

When we arrived, the partially lit vendor sign of Jack's blinkered on and off as dusk fell like a canopy over our heads.

When I yanked the door open a bell tinkled. Grilled meat and fried onions cast a smoky haze to descend above us as waitresses hurried back and forth.

Sliding into a cracked leather booth I picked up a laminated menu, scanning over the brim searching for Laurie in a booth of her own. I prayed she wasn't with Daniel, intermittently forgetting that even though Cindy was here, I was alone.

"Well I'll be damned," Cindy muttered, as we simultaneously turned around. Laurie froze mid-stride, a flip-pad and pen tucked into a pocket of her pale yellow uniform.

"Priss got herself a job!" Cindy remarked. "Didn't know she had it in her."

"Why are you here," Laurie whispered, throwing a cursory glance over her shoulder.

"I needed to ask you a question about Cindy." There was no sense beating around the proverbial bush.

"Not here. I can't get caught chatting with customers. I need this job." Her eyes dropped to the floor. "My shift finishes in an hour. I'll meet you in the lot."

We retreated to the lot, and perched on an old timber log left over from the tornado clean up.

"Nick, what do you think will happen to me?"

I didn't have answers. "I am so sorry, Cindy. I can't change what happened to you. If I could, I would in an instant."

She nodded and sniffled.

"It's not true, what happens when you die." She sat up and wiped her nose on her sleeve. "There's no all-consuming peacefulness, no panoramic special edition of your best bits. All I remember is a blinding glorious light and then an arctic cold."

Crickets chattered in the tufts of grass that sprung up around the lot. A few minutes later the lights dimmed inside the diner and Laurie walked out.

I traded glances with Cindy and stood up.

Laurie stopped walking. "What is it you wanted to ask?"

"The rumors in school about Cindy, do you know where they came from?"

"Not a clue. If enough people are saying something, that makes it the truth though, right?"

"Seriously? That's what you believe?"

"Oh, please, she was sexting my brother on the last trip he ever took. Lewd pictures no less. When the police recovered his belongings they'd seen the message - date and time stamped. Cindy sent Zach a nude photo the night he died. She distracted him, and he got hit by that damn tanker! If he'd been paying attention, If she'd kept her porn to herself..."

If was the biggest smallest word. The magnitude it carried could change worlds, reunite families, but without hindsight, it became just a word.

I tried organizing my thoughts, a jumble of unanswered questions. And then it hit me, suddenly so obvious, I can't fathom why it hadn't dawned on me earlier – Emma's picture. Had Daniel asked her to take it? Is this what the soccer team did for amusement?

"First she took Zack, then Daniel. She kissed them both. Just because she's missing, it doesn't change what she was. Cindy brings trouble wherever she goes. Always has, always will. If she's gone, maybe this town's better off without her."

For a moment, all I could do was stare at her, the bitterness in her words echoing through me like a hollow ache. I thought about Cindy's strawberry-blonde hair, the way it caught the sunlight when she laughed, and the quiet moments we'd spent together beneath the vast Texas sky. How could anyone, let alone someone who had once been her best friend, be so cruel?

"Did she really kiss them? Consider that for a second. Was Cindy the girl that did that to her friends? Has Daniel done this before?" I dangled the carrot and stared carefully at her, already aware of the answer.

Laurie's shoulders slumped, she exhaled but her eyes stayed trained at the floor. 'No... Do you think she really could be dead?"

I nodded.

"Oh." Laurie's face fell, and I only felt sorry for her. In the space of a year her brother and best friend had departed this world. Lonely wasn't a word that covered the enormity of emptiness in her.

"I told everyone about the photo," she admitted, her gaze falling to the floor. "I thought it would make me feel better, like I was avenging Zach. But all it did was destroy Cindy's life – and now she's missing. She was my very best friend." Laurie swallowed hard, stifling a sob. After a pause she said, "I made up all of the rumors. I was livid. I still am. I'm not even sure why anymore. I feel rage — all the time."

Her eyes squeezed shut, and tears pooled in the corner of her eyes.

"You had no right to do that! You had no right to play God with her life!" They were friends once but even the strongest bonds can fracture under the weight of secrets and lies.

Maybe not," she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. "But at least I'm still here to face the consequences. Where's Cindy, Nick? Where is she?"

"I don't know." 

"I don't like working here, if that's what you're figuring. We're worse than broke. Since Zack, Daddy doesn't leave the house, and Mom would feel naked without a crushed-ice margarita when the mailman drops another arrears."

After a short silence, she said, "Will you tell people I work here, wear this?" Her hands smoothed down the fabric of her uniform, disgust etched across every part of her face.

"Of course not." With my head and heart on the same page, it was clear Laurie's trembling hands weren't capable of rescinding a life. Whoever the blame sat with for that, it wasn't her. Laurie's only misdemeanor was grieving a sibling the only way she knew how.

As I watched Laurie stroll away to her car, I glanced at Cindy. "Why did you do it?"

Cindy blinked in rapid succession.

"You think I did this to myself?" Even though her words were out her eyes repeated the question on a loop.

"Everybody hurts, Cindy, right? Besides Daniel, your the only one left. You're the wild card."

"No, No, I wouldn't harm myself."

"Can you be certain if you can't remember?"

Stilling, her shoulders tensed. "Do you think I did this to myself? Everyone adored Zachary; he was a living god. Now I'm wondering if I ever meant anything to him? Those photos were private, and now, part of me belongs to her. I never knew Zack even read my text, he might not have done. Laurie never said a word. If she's looking for someone to blame; blame the tanker that ploughed into him. If I did distract him, I'll just be grateful that I won't have to live with that knowledge for long. You once said you wished you'd listened to your intuition, your gut instinct. What is it telling you now?"

Before I could answer, Laurie pivoted around at the last second, and called out across the night air. "What were you doing out on County road the night Cindy went missing?"

"Walking home from the library," I replied.

"Huh..." Laurie's nose scrunched up. "Because I saw you leave the library. I got into an epic argument in the school parking lot with Daniel. You're telling me it took you an hour to get a quarter of a mile up the road? It's a ten minute walk."

The doubt she cast over my truth unsettled me. Am I remembering what happened, or what I want to remember?

The harder I pushed for answers, the further away the truth felt.

No, I clearly remember being at the library, walking home and then running into Daniel.

"I'm telling the truth," I said, more for my benefit, but the mere fact I'd said this caused speculation to dance in her eyes.

She nodded once anyway, and I hoped she was satisfied with my answer.

Laurie bit her lip for a moment and then said, "You better go, Daniel said he'd swing by. Doesn't matter I'd told him not to ever bother again and he's still pissed at you."

Laurie climbed into her car. With the front beams on, she cranked the engine and started the car. We stepped back as she reversed and headed out of the lot.

"Cindy? Do you think there is something I can't remember? Have you considered that I might be the one?"

"Never," she replied. "You're puppy level harmless. There has to be a reason you're the only one that can see me."

Could I have done it? The brain after all is marvelous creature. It tells you stories when you are sleeping; reorganizes events until you can't remember where you stood at Uncle Jimmy's wake, were you on the left, or the right when the casket was lowered into the ground?

"Nick, listen, it's time we go back to the beginning. If you're missing time, maybe a memory will spark for you."

Her words made me sound broken. Ineffectual as a human being. But I knew what she was really saying. We needed break into the school library, and find the answers; prove what evil Daniel had done.