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to Olivia.
    At least she’s easy to locate. Olivia’s mom has been tagging pictures of her and Nicolette since they were in seventh grade.
    Nicolette cheers in a group photo with blue-and-gold pom-poms.
    Olivia takes a red ribbon at a science fair in Columbus.
    Nicolette cheers some more.
    All these albums of Nicolette and Olivia and this Disney-princess–looking girl named Jody rocking prom dresses ought to be captioned Typical Teen Girls . I get how people always say, “He was a nice neighbor. He liked gardening,” about guys who turn out to have dungeons in their cellars. But there’s nothing about Nicolette that screams “heading to death row.”
    Also, if Esteban Mendes is nothing to her like Don says, someone should tell Mendes. Because he shows up at a lot of track meets and fund-raiser car washes, where he can be seen draping a towel over Nicolette’s body to cover her smaller-than-small bikini. He looks intense—not a shocker for Karl Yeager’s accountant.
    There’s no bimbo mom in sight. You have to figure that, practically speaking, Nicolette is Esteban’s daughter. Judging from all the church bake sales he’s attended with her (Olivia’s dad, Mr. Pastor, is a pastor), Don’s idea that Mendes would be fine with his kid lying dead on the altar won’t fly.
    I wonder if anybody else is coming on here like me, pretending to be “Nicky,” looking for hints of her location. For all I know, her log-in info is carved into the bathroom wall at Yucca Valley Correctional.
    When I can’t stand looking at her anymore, I google Connie Marino.
    On a video from a Detroit local news station, her mother’s voice cracks as she begs anyone who knows where Connie is to bring her back. Seeing her like that—not knowing that Connie is never coming back, and that this crazy, normal-looking Nicolette did it—by the second time through, anticipating the moment when she covers her face with her hands, I’m choked up.
    • • •
    What the fuck, Nicolette, WHY?

13
Cat
    Luna keeps knocking on my door, inviting me up to her manager’s apartment to watch TV. She keeps calling me “girlfriend.” As in, “Want to watch Game of Thrones with me, girlfriend?”
    Her girlfriend with no ID.
    I want a girlfriend so bad, I’m afraid I’m going to tell her something. That I’ll accept her offer of Long Island Iced Tea—which she calls Longhorn Iced Tea—and then I’ll get all buzzed and talkative and self-destructive.
    I sit there on Luna’s couch, my tongue stuck between my teeth, biting down to remind myself to avoid anything with vodka in it. Reminding myself to shut up and work on getting her to let me do her makeup.
    “It’s been a month,” Luna says. “Does this guy even know you’re in Galkey?”
    I shake my head, which at this point has red hair. That, plus thick drawn-on eyebrows and big square glasses constitute my entire disguise.
    Luna sighs. “Your a-hole sounds more like the kind of guy’s gonna look for you at a biker bar. You really think he’s going to track you down if you ride over to the college and hang out with kids your own age Saturday night?”
    Set me loose at a college on Saturday night?
    It’s like offering a crack addict her own little pipe.
    You know it’s bad for you. You know it’s the worst thing for you. But scared as you are of life beyond the walls of the Bluebonnet, you kind of don’t care.
    I know it’s this kind of thinking that got me into the backseat of a Chevy Camaro with the worst guy in the world for me.
    I know Luna’s theory that the bogeyman isn’t going to find me if I head out into the warm Texas night is total BS.
    But I want to believe her.
    She pats me on the arm. A hand on my skin.
    I would have kissed Connor, my second-to-last poor-choice ex, right then, even though he’s 90 percent slime, just to feel his 10 percent human arms around me. I’m starting to relate to those baby monkeys in honors psychology who shrivelup and die because they only have