‘That’s why I’m going to New York City. And the man I marry is not only going to be drop-dead gorgeous, he’s going to treat me right. I’m talking dinners at nice restaurants, nice clothes, any kind of car I want – he’s even going to have his own plane to fly us to our fabulous beach house in the Caribbean. What about you, Mel? What kind of guy are you going to marry? Or is your heart still set on being a nun?’

‘I’m not going to become a nun,’ Mel said and, as if to prove her point, took a long sip.

‘Does that mean you finally gave up the goods to Michael Anka?’

Darby nearly choked on her beer. ‘You’ve been making out with Booger Boy?

‘He stopped that back in the third grade,’ Mel said. ‘He doesn’t, you know, pick it anymore.’

‘Lucky for you,’ Darby said, and Stacey howled with laughter.

‘Come on,’ Mel said. ‘He’s nice.’

‘Of course he’s nice,’ Stacey said. ‘Every guy acts nice in the beginning. Once he gets what he wants from you, he’ll treat you like yesterday’s garbage.’

‘That’s not true,’ Darby said, thinking about her father – Big Red, they used to call him, just like the gum. When her father was alive, he always held open the door for her mother. On Friday nights, her parents would come home from dinner and Big Red would put on one of his Frank Sinatra records and sometimes dance with her mother, check to cheek, as he sang about how those were the days.

‘Trust me, Mel, it’s all an act,’ Stacey said. That’s why you’ve got to stop being so mousy. You keep acting that way, they’ll take advantage of you every time, trust me.’

Then Stacey started in on another one of her lectures about boys and all the sneaky things they did to trick you into giving them what they wanted. Darby rolled her eyes, leaned back against a tree and looked off in the distance at the big, glowing neon cross overlooking Route 1.

As Darby drank her beer, she watched the traffic zipping across both lanes of Route 1 and thought about the people inside those cars, interesting people with interesting lives off to do interesting things in interesting places. How did you become interesting? Was it something you were born with, like your hair color or your height? Or did God decide for you? Maybe God chose who was interesting and who wasn’t, and you just had to learn to live with whatever you were handed.

But the more Darby drank, the stronger and clearer that inner voice of hers grew, the one that told her, with some sense of authority, that she, Darby Alexandra McCormick, was destined for bigger things – maybe not the life of a movie star but something definitely better and a whole lot bigger than her mother’s Palmolive world of cleaning, cooking and cutting coupons. Sheila McCormick’s biggest thrill was the greedy hunt for bargains on the clearance racks.

‘You hear that?’ Stacey whispered.

Snap-snap-snap – the sound of dry twigs and branches being crunched by footsteps.

‘It’s probably a raccoon or something,’ Darby whispered.

‘Not the branches,’ Stacey said. ‘The crying.’

Darby put her beer down and poked her head up over the slope. The sun had gone down a while ago; she saw nothing but the faint outline of tree trunks. The dry, snapping sound grew louder. Was someone really out there?

The snapping and cracking sounds stopped, and then they all heard the woman’s voice, faint but clear:

‘Please let me go, I swear to God I won’t tell anyone what you did.’

Chapter 2

‘Take my purse,’ the woman in the woods said. ‘There’s three hundred dollars in there. I can get you more money, if that’s what you want.’

Darby grabbed Stacey by the arm and pulled her back behind the slope. Melanie huddled up against them.

‘This is probably just a mugging, but he might have a knife, maybe even a gun,’ Darby whispered. ‘She’ll hand over her purse, and then he’ll run away and it will be over. So let’s just keep quiet.’

Both Mel and Stacey nodded.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ the woman said.

As scary as it was, Darby knew she had to look over the slope again. When the police came with their questions, she wanted to be able to recall everything she saw – every word, every sound.

Heart beating faster, she poked her head back over the slope and looked around the dark woods. Blades of grass and dead leaves brushed against the tip of her nose.

The woman started crying. ‘Please. Please don’t.’

The mugger whispered something Darby couldn’t hear. They’re so close, she thought.

Stacey had decided to take a look, too. She moved closer to Darby.

‘What’s going on?’ Stacey whispered.

‘I don’t know,’ Darby said.

A car was heading up Route 86. The headlights formed a pair of eerie white circles that were now sliding and bouncing across the tree trunks and the sloping ground full of rocks, leaves, and downed tree limbs and branches. Darby heard music – Van Halen’s ‘Jump,’ David Lee Roth’s voice growing louder along with the worrisome voice in her head telling her to look away, look away now. God knows she wanted to, but some other part of her brain had taken control, and Darby didn’t look away as the headlights washed over her, David Lee Roth’s booming voice singing to go ahead and jump, and she saw a woman dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt kneeling by a tree, her face a deep, dark red, eyes wide and fingers desperately clawing at the rope tied around her throat.

Stacey jumped to her feet and knocked Darby backward against the dirt. A rock smacked the side of her head hard enough that she saw stars. Darby heard Stacey pushing her way past branches, and when she rolled onto her side, she saw Mel running away.

Next came the dry crack of branches and twigs snapping – the mugger was coming toward them. Darby scrambled to her feet and ran.

*

Darby caught up with Stacey and Mel at the corner of East Dunstable. The closest pay phones were the ones around the corner from Buzzy’s, the town’s popular convenience store, pizzeria and sub shop. They ran the rest of the way without talking.

It seemed to take forever to get there. Sweating and out of breath, Darby picked up the phone to dial 911 when Stacey slammed down the receiver.

‘We can’t call,’ Stacey said.

‘Have you lost your goddamn mind?’ Darby shot back. Behind her fear was a severe and growing anger directed at Stacey. It shouldn’t have come as a shock that Stacey had pushed her aside and run off. Stacey always put herself first – like last month, when the three of them made plans to go to the movies only to have Stacey cancel at the last minute because Christina Patrick called and invited her to some party. Stacey was always doing stuff like that.

‘We were drinking, Darby.’

‘So we won’t tell them.’

‘They’ll smell the beer on our breath – and you can forget about chewing mint gum or brushing your teeth or gargling with mouthwash, because none of that works.’

‘I’ll risk it,’ Darby said, and tried to yank Stacey’s hand away from the receiver.

Stacey wouldn’t let go. ‘The woman’s dead, Darby.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘I saw the same thing you did –’

‘No, you didn’t, Stacey, you couldn’t have seen the same thing I did because you ran away. You pushed me aside, remember?’

‘It was an accident. I swear I didn’t mean –’

‘Right. As usual, Stacey, the only person you care about is yourself.’ Darby ripped Stacey’s hand away and dialed 911.

‘All you’re going to get is punished, Darby. Maybe you won’t get to go down the Cape with Mel, but your father won’t –’ Stacey stopped herself. She was crying now. You don’t know what goes in my house. None of you do.’

The operator came on the line: ‘Nine-one-one, what is the nature of your emergency?’

Darby gave the operator her name and described what had happened. Stacey ran behind one of the Dumpsters. Mel stared down at the hill where they used to go sledding as kids, her fingers touching each of the charms on her bracelet.