Page 57 of Trapper Road

“Yeah. Down at the Shadow Shack in the woods. You’re coming, aren’t you?” She says it like a challenge.

I’ve never been one to turn away from a challenge. I shrug. “Sure. Doubt there’s anything else to do anyway.”

Willa rolls to her side on the bed, propping her head in her hand. “You should bring Connor too. He’s cute.”

I ignore that. I don’t think of Connor that way and don’t want to start.

Mandy keeps flicking through the clothes in Juliette’s closet, and I remember that part of the reason I’m there is to find out more about the missing girl and what happened the day she disappeared. I fiddle with the hanger in my hands and step farther into the room, taking a better look around.

The bed’s big and comfortable looking, piled with more pillows than any single human being has a need for. Willa hasn’t even noticed that she kicked a few to the ground as she’s made herself comfortable, and while I’m not one who gives a shit about tidiness, it feels a little disrespectful to make a mess. That doesn’t mean I bother picking any of them up, though.

To my right there’s a bookcase stuffed full of all sorts of things. I pause in front of it, letting my eyes skim across the various items. The bottom shelf’s got a couple of textbooks with broken spines. They look like they’ve seen a lot of use, and I wonder if that came from Juliette or if, like me, she always went for the well-used books because they’re cheaper. Somehow, I doubt cost was a big concern, which means she was the kind of girl who studied a lot.

“Was Juliette smart?” I ask.

“Sheissmart,” Mandy says, emphasizing her use of the present tense.

I let my fingers trail over various decorative boxes, opening a few to find the kind of crap that people save because it has some sort of meaning only to them. There are a couple of movie stubs, a polished stone, a silver dollar and two dollar bill. I wonder at having the kind of life where you’d keep a fortune from a cookie thinking it had any kind of chance of coming true.

One of the shelves has half a dozen picture frames, and I study them. They’re all variations on the same thing: Willa, Mandy, and Juliette, posing, even when they’re pretending not to. I tap one of the photos. “Three friends, down to two. Those are some shitty odds.”

Willa sucks in a breath. Clearly, she’s not used to people being blunt about so-called delicate topics.

Mandy just eyes me over her shoulder for a long moment. Then she laughs. “You really don’t give a shit about much, do you?” she asks.

She’s wrong, there’s a lot I give a shit about, but nothing I plan on sharing. I lift a shoulder.

“It’s one of the things I like about you.” Her grin grows wider. “One of the many things.”

I can’t help the effect her words have on me. I’ve had plenty of girls like me over the years, but none like Mandy. None so clearly out of my league in every way. I like the way it makes me feel.

Mandy goes back to sorting through the closet, and Willa resumes scrolling through her phone. I continue my tour of her room, but I know the odds of me finding anything useful are low. Juliette’s room is like an alternate universe. It’s just so full ofstuff. Growing up, we didn’t have extra cash to throw around on crap like this. My bedroom walls were bare, the curtains secondhand from Goodwill — my clothes as well.

Maybe when I was a kid I wanted the kinds of things that crowd Juliette’s shelves, but I learned to stop wanting like that a long time ago.

“So, about this party tonight. You said it was in the woods?” I ask.

Willa makes a vague hum of agreement, saying. “At the Shadow Shack.”

I pick up a notebook from Juliette’s desk and flip through it. It’s math, the equations and numbers written in perfect precise handwriting. “Didn’t y’all go there the day Juliette disappeared?”

“We were bored,” Willa says, sounding equally bored now.

“It was her idea,” Mandy adds. She pulls a hanger from the closet. On it hangs a scrap of a dress. “This one, I think,” she announces.

Without a second thought, Mandy pulls her shirt up over her head and lets it drop onto the floor. Her shorts are next, sliding over her smooth hips to land at a puddle around her feet. She’s left wearing nothing but a white cotton bra and matching panties. There’s nothing special about them, nothing fancy, but there’s something about the simplicity of them that sets my heart racing.

I seen plenty of girls — and guys for that matter — naked, and I have to say that Mandy’s one of the prettiest. I feel like maybe I should look away, give her some privacy, but I can’t. My cheeks start to heat when I drag my eyes up her body to her face and see her staring at me.

I gesture behind me. “You want me to turn around or somethin?”

She smiles real slow. There’s something knowing in her expression, like she knows how flustered she’s making me and she likes it. “S’okay,” she says. “We’re all friends here. Right, Willa?”

Willa’s not even looking. She’s found a fashion magazine and is flipping through it idly on the bed. She hums a response that sounds like agreement.

Mandy nods her chin at me and the dress in my hands. “Your turn,” she says.

When I hesitate, I note a flash of a smirk in her eyes. Oh hell no. No way I’m letting this girl get one over on me. I toss the halter dress on the bed as I toe off my shoes and shimmy out of my shorts and t-shirt.

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