Everyone in the small town of Hull knows two things. One: Jill Williams doesn't date, and two: Carson Blue is addicted to drugs.
When Carson decides to clean up his act and apply at Jill's family restaurant, she's less than enthused. Between school...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
WHEN I WAS A KID, I thought getting away from the trailer park would be the key to my eternal happiness. It wasn't. As I drive down the bumpy dirt road, stones pop up from beneath my tires and ting against the windshield. The rain has cleared up. My headlights beam through the night and gleam into the eyes of a raccoon as it scurries away.
Somehow, I always end up back here.
I've had an awful feeling in my gut from the moment I got off the phone with Carson's mom. Maybe it was the quivery tone of her voice, or the erratic way she'd begged me to come, but something tells me she's hiding something. The lights are on in her trailer when I park. As soon as I see Carson's bedroom window is dark, my suspicion heightens. I hurry out of the car anyway and get to the door in seconds. When I bang my fist against the metal, Dorothy whips it open wearing a thin brown housecoat.
"Jillian! Come on in!"
I step inside, and the warm smell of cooking food fills my nostrils. Carson's favorite chili. The crockpot bubbles from the kitchen, but his shoes aren't on the mat by the door.
"I'm so glad you're here." Dorothy's eyes are bugged-out and her pupils are huge in the half-light of the trailer's den.
"I'm sorry"—I slip past her—"but I have to see Carson."
Dorothy rides my ass the whole time I rush through the dark, narrow hall to Carson's room at the end. The door is closed, so I open it and take a brisk step inside, swallowed by his blisteringly familiar smell. The porchlight leaks through the curtains and creates a line through the darkness across the floor, littered with a few articles of Carson's laundry: his favorite red hoodie, a sock with a hole in it, his best jeans without rips in them. His guitar is propped against the bed.
His empty bed.
He isn't here.
My heart wrenches with despair. I can't breathe, can't think, but defeat slams on my shoulders. I don't understand why I'm here if he isn't. Why would Dorothy lie? Or did he just leave? I sit on his unmade bed and try to keep it together. Dorothy sits next to me.
"Was he ever here?" is all I can think to ask.
Dorothy adjusts the band of her housecoat and blinks at me. "Well..."
It's written all over her face: she's a liar. And that sick feeling I had before is starting to make painful sense. Something is wrong with this woman; Carson did say she has issues, but they're issues I know nothing about. I should be patient with her, like Carson is. I take out my phone and squint at the light. Clarissa texted me five minutes ago and said they still haven't found him.
"Dorothy, Carson is missing."
I wait for any flicker of emotion to cross her, but she just stares at me with glossy, unblinking eyes. A tiny smile makes the apples of her cheeks firm and rosy.
"Did you hear me?" I say. "Carson is missing, Dorothy."
That snaps her out of it. A frown darts over her face. "My boy is missing?"
