Page 2 of We Are All Guilty Here

Madison waited until she’d reached the bleachers to wipe her nose with the back of her hand. She looked at the time on her phone again. The panic flooded back in. Cheyenne was officially thirty-one minutes late. Had Madison gotten something wrong? Were they supposed to meet at the house?

She shook her head, because that wasn’t right. She hadn’t gotten anything wrong. They had gone over the plan dozens of times, even walked the route with a stopwatch, then taken their bikes because it felt safer to cut across the backroads instead of going through downtown where some busybody could spot Cheyenne and screw up her alibi.

Madison couldn’t wait to tell Cheyenne about lying straight to Emmy’s face. They weren’t meeting at the SnoBall stand. They were going to meet under the oak tree, then ride their bikes back to Cheyenne’s house, then they were going to borrow Cheyenne’s dad’s car and boost some of his scotch, then they were going to go joyriding around town while all the stupid people watched the fireworks. She had thought about it so many times that it felt like it had already happened: Mr. Baker’s brand-new Jetta zooming over a hundred miles an hour down the stretch past Main Street, Madison sticking up from the sunroof, arms wide, the air whipping her hair around while Rihanna blasted through the speakers.

Two months. That was what Madison really needed to think about. The plan was going to work. They were really going toget away from here. It was actually going to happen. All they had to do was hold on until September. They were going to hitch a ride to Atlanta and stay in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton and get VIP tickets to Music Midtown and meet some older guys who could get them into clubs and they’d probably end up married to football players and living in mansions.

That was Cheyenne’s prediction, at least, and just like when they were in middle school, she was bringing Madison along for the ride. Which was great for Madison. She had never been popular, never fit in, always been too nerdy or too weird. Then Cheyenne’s dad had moved the family to Clifton to take a job at the factory, and Madison’s life had changed completely. Before then, she’d never been in trouble, never attracted attention, never talked back, never worn make-up, never even been kissed by a boy.

She might as well have been dead.

Only Cheyenne had been able to bring her to life. She knew how to have fun and, despite what Emmy Old Lady Bun was blabbing on about, how to get away with it. Cheyenne had shown Madison how to purse her lips, turn on her little girl voice, pretend like she was stupid so that men felt like they were big, strong protectors, and then they gave you whatever you wanted.

That was Cheyenne’s secret trick—to go after men.

The boys closer to their own age were freaks and idiots. They didn’t know what they wanted or how to get it. Men were different. They listened to you. They paid attention to what you wanted, bought you things, made you feel special, told you that you were pretty all the time, were grateful when you showed up, never complained if you were late or in a bad mood. Cheyenne said even the sex was better, but Madison wasn’t so sure about that. She’d never had actual sex, only done some hand stuff, but it was mostly boring and sticky and not as exciting as Cheyenne made it out to be.

“Come on, Shy,” Madison whispered. “Where the hell are you?”

Someone jostled up against her. A bunch of kids in wet bathing suits were heading toward the food tables. She looked up into the sky. The light had dimmed like someone had turned down the sun, and suddenly, it was dusk. Smoke wafted off the grills where hot dogs and hamburgers had been cooked for the crowd.The church ladies were setting out cupcakes with sparklers and packing away gooey potato salad and green bean casserole. Madison walked to the front of the bleachers and looked out at the sea of people that stretched from here to the lake, searching for Cheyenne’s dark, spiky hair.

All she saw was ancient Sheriff Gerald Clifton taking up too much space on a bunch of blankets his wife had spread out at the crack of dawn so they’d have the best seats in the house. Right in the middle of the field. Not too close to the lake, not too far from the Porta Potties. Everybody was coming up to the sheriff like he was royalty, which was maybe true since the entire county had been named after his great-great—however many greats—grandfather. Emmy was one of his deputies. His wife taught at the middle school. His son taught at the high school. His brother ran the factory. His 200-year-old sister played the organ at the Second Baptist. There were tons of Cliftons all over the county, cousins and great-uncles and too many aunts. Madison’s dad joked that everybody who wasn’t a Clifton either worked for the Cliftons or had been arrested by the Cliftons.

A sudden, dark thought made Madison feel sick to her stomach.

Maybe Emmy’s stupid forest/trees lecture had been about something specific.

Maybe Cheyenne had been arrested. Maybe they were holding her in jail.

Madison frantically went back over the crowd, spotting Emmy talking to her husband. It looked more like she was yelling. Emmy was jabbing her finger at Jonah’s chest as if she wanted to stab him. There was a second cop around here somewhere. Madison spun in a circle, desperate to find the other deputy. She heaved a sigh when she spotted Brett Temple standing near the long line to the Porta Potties. Even she could tell he wasn’t doing much of a good job. He was playing with his wide-brimmed hat instead of watching out for problems. Madison could see a slash of bright red across the back of his neck where he’d gotten sunburned.

She let out another slow breath to try to calm herself. She studied the mass of people again, this time for Cheyenne. Still no sign, but Hannah popped up from the crowd like a prairiedog. She was scoping out the group of kids eating cupcakes, probably searching for Madison so they could take a perfect family photo she could post on Facebook.

Madison felt her lips twist into a smirk as she hid behind old Mr. Singh from the hardware store. Hannah was wearing a striped halter top that was soaked through with sweat. Her nipples stuck out like pencil erasers, which would’ve been hilarious to Cheyenne because Hannah was always saying Cheyenne showed off too much of her body.

She looked down at her phone. Thirty-nine minutes late. This was taking way too long. Cheyenne had said the plan wasn’t dangerous, but the truth was it was very dangerous. You didn’t mess with people and expect them to just take it. Especially the kind of people they’d been messing with.

Without thinking, Madison searched out Emmy again. She wasn’t hard to miss in her shit-brown uniform. The fight with Jonah was over. Emmy was walking up the hill toward the bleachers. Her head was down. The wide brim of her hat hid her face. Her fists were clenched. People were staring at her, whispering about the fight with Jonah.

That was how things worked in North Falls, everybody up in your business. There wasn’t a person within spitting distance who didn’t know the entire story of Emmy’s life, from being born to being stuck with her sad-sack older brother to representing the school at the state spelling bee to going to college to getting married to her middle school sweetheart to giving birth to a son to taking the job at the sheriff’s office to really believing her loser husband was going to be a famous musician one day when everybody knew he spent most of his time smoking weed on their couch in the house Emmy paid for.

Cheyenne always said that Emmy was too pretty to waste her looks on being a cop, but the thing was, she was good at her job. She wasn’t like her father, who would call your parents at work if he saw you somewhere he thought you shouldn’t be. Or Brett Temple, who took a real kind of pleasure in being a dick. Emmy had caught Madison smoking a cigarette once and told her to put it out, and that was that. She hadn’t ratted her out to Hannah or dropped by her dad’s shop for a talk, whichwould’ve been easy because it was right across the street from the sheriff’s station.

Which meant that Emmy could be trusted.

Madison clutched her hands together as she waited for Emmy to reach her at the top of the hill. She tried to think of a story in her head. Something like the truth, but not exactly the truth. Something that would get them out of trouble, because she thought that maybe, probably, they were in a lot of trouble. Or at least Cheyenne was, because she could be late to a lot of things, but there was no way she would be late to this. They had practiced. They had planned for all contingencies. The only explanation was that something bad had happened.

Emmy looked up just as Madison was about to open her mouth.

“Not now.” Emmy’s tone was clipped. She had tears in her eyes. Her nose was red, but not from the sun.

Madison had no choice but to step out of her way. She trailed Emmy behind the bleachers, watched her cut in line to one of the Porta Potties, then go inside and shut the door.

“Shit,” Madison mumbled.

Now what?

She could see Deputy Temple still playing with his hat. He was the last person she would ask for help. He wasn’t just a dick. He was mean as hell.

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