This Is W.A.R. Part 14

Sloane shook her head, as if reading Madge's thoughts. "It was me. I killed Willa."

"What are you talking about Sloane? You weren't even there. I saw ... I saw things. I know what happened to my sister, and it had nothing to do with you."

"But it was me. Those drugs she took? They were my stupid narcolepsy pills. The ones my parents prescribed after I pa.s.sed out and missed curfew. I never took them so I gave them away. I didn't know Rory ..." She shook her head again, her silky black hair flying around her face. "I'm so sorry, I can't believe. I just can't believe this is all my fault." Sloane covered her eyes and began to shake with silent sobs.

Madge watched as Lina wrapped her arms around their friend. But then, as if something clicked, she slowly pulled her body away and took a step back. She patted Sloane on the shoulder instead, her fingers avoiding the bare flesh of her friend's arm. Madge walked over to Sloane and gently pulled her hands away from her face. She took Sloane's hands into her own. "This isn't your fault. I saw James drive the boat away. And I trusted Trip. For some messed up reason, I trusted a Gregory."

Rose twisted the key around her neck. Everyone listened as Madge continued.

"He said he saw her, he said he saw my sister get on that boat." Her voice broke a little when she imagined Willa lying there, blonde hair pooled and sparkling in the moonlight. "But when he came back, she was gone. I don't know why, I don't know how, but they did this. Don't you dare blame yourself."

Then she turned to Lina. "And you. I love you. Even if your taste in women is awful." Lina's eyes filled with tears and she looked down at her hands. "And you know I hate huggers, but for you, I'll make an exception." She wrapped her arms around her friend tightly and kissed her on the cheek.

"And Rose, your mom is awful. She and my stepmother would get along famously, and that is so not a compliment." Madge grabbed Rose's hand and squeezed. "You're one of us now, whether you ..."

A sharp pounding on the front door cut her off. Madge's shaky smile melted. Her words dripped away. This was it. The end. It was all happening exactly the way it did on TV. The police were here to arrest her for her sister's death, and she had no evidence of what really happened. No proof of her innocence. It was just her word against Trip Gregory's and at the Club, what he said would always trump what she said. She swung open the door to find a courier in a neatly pressed uniform with a small box.

"Ms. Ames-Rowan?"

Madge could only nod.

"Please sign here."

She moved the stylus across the machine without even trying to sign her name. "There's no return address," she said nodding toward the mysterious package.

"The sender wishes to remain anonymous." He handed her the box and winked.

It was such a simple gesture, might have even seemed friendly under different circ.u.mstances, but the wink made her want to be sick. There was something bad in that box. Something evil. Maybe even deadly. She reluctantly hurried to the living room and placed it on the coffee table. The girls followed.

"Well?" Rose c.o.c.ked an eyebrow.

"I can't open it." Madge shook her head. "I can't do it."

"Once you open it, you can't close it," Sloane said.

Madge thought for a second how true that really was. How now that they'd started the War none of this could be closed again. Not the way it used to be.

"Enough of this already." Lina grabbed the package and tore it open. When she pulled out a small velvet jewelry box, Madge gasped out loud. She recognized the powder blue. She and Willa had each gotten one the day her dad married Carol. It had contained a tiny gold necklace with a knot that was supposed to symbolize their new family ties or some bulls.h.i.t like that. Madge had told her father that he should have made them golden nooses. He was not amused. But Willa had loved hers. She'd sighed over the pristine corners of the blue box with its white block lettering, and she'd let out a little squeal when she saw the dainty necklace. "I'll never take it off," she'd whispered. And as far as Madge knew, she'd stayed true to her word.

Lina slowly pulled the necklace out of the box. There was a small card attached like a tag.

"Is that ..." Sloane couldn't bring herself to finish.

Madge reached for the slip of paper.

You have twenty-four hours to surrender before I tell the police that I saw you kill Willa. I have the evidence to put you in jail. I saved this for you. Something to remember her by.

Lina examined the clasp. "You guys, this is broken, like someone ..." she took a breath as her eyes filled with tears. "Like someone ripped it off her neck."

Madge turned on her heel and walked upstairs to her room.

"What the h.e.l.l? Where are you going?" Lina yelled up after her.

"I'm getting dressed. We're going to the bank." She threw on a sundress and twisted her hair into a ponytail. She was done with all this cloak-and-dagger bulls.h.i.t. The time for the final battle had arrived. If it had to be public, then it would be. There was nothing left to lose, so there was nothing left to hide.

Chapter 28.

Previous trips to the bank had been carefully orchestrated to avoid calling attention to the fact that four teenage girls were accessing a safety deposit box. But today there wasn't time for theatrics. One girl after the next, they filed into the expansive hall, gathering looks and whispers and skepticism with each step.

Madge slapped the key on the counter in front of the teller.

Eyes followed the girls as the bank manager guided them down the stairs, through the vault and into a private booth. The stark steel box he presented didn't look like much sitting on the laminate counter, but with or without the cash, it was pretty much the most valuable thing Madge owned.

Madge's entire world had come crashing down when her mother was diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer. Like most seven-year-olds, she was a tiny moon who faithfully orbited her mother every day and every night. But suddenly her world was a hospital bed, attached to so many tubes and needles that Madge couldn't recall the before without looking at the pictures that lined the side table like a previous life. And just as suddenly there wasn't even a hospital bed to orbit. Madge was at sea in the vast universe with no one to tether her to reality. The goodbye she'd always imagined evaporated with her mother's wish to be remembered alive and not dead. At seven, Madge had been forced to find her closure in a casket. She whispered goodbye as she knelt in front of it but had no real understanding of what her life would look like now that her mother was inside that box.

After the funeral, Madge spent hours in her mother's closet, digging through jewelry boxes and clothes, desperate to find something that she might have left behind for her only daughter. But there was nothing. Just stuff that vaguely smelled like the woman who was already shifting and fading out of focus. Madge's biggest fear was not knowing if she remembered her mom for who she truly was or if she was reconstructing her from those bedside pictures and home videos. She hated her mother for leaving her, she hated her mother for never saying goodbye, she hated her mother for not being stronger. And then, on her thirteenth birthday, her father placed a small, carefully wrapped package on her bed.

It had taken Madge almost a week to work up the courage to open the present. Truth be told, when she finally did, she was underwhelmed. A tiny safety deposit box key lay tucked in a white velvet box. A note written in her mother's careful script explained that the key would open up safety deposit box number 732 at Hawthorne Lake Savings and Trust. The box had been handed down from mother to daughter in her mother's family for nearly three generations. It was a place for a woman to hide her secrets. A place where she could keep her most valuable thoughts and possessions safe from fathers and husbands. It was the moment Madge was finally able to forgive her mother for abandoning her. Because in a way, she never had.

So it was Madge who pulled her long gold chain off her neck and twisted the key in the tiny lock. It was Madge who gasped first when she opened the box to find it empty except for a single hundred dollar bill and a note scratched on a sheet of notebook paper.

"What the h.e.l.l?" Lina's voice bounced off the marble floors of the booth.

If I managed to get the key, why would I leave the money? Better safe than sorry, girls.

"Now what?" Rose looked like she was going to be sick.

"I could probably get my parents to give us some more money." Sloane twisted her own key thoughtfully.

Lina collapsed into a worn leather club chair. "They've had their fun; we gave it our best shot, I think it's time to call it a day. At least now we can all stop faking it and get on with our lives."

"You're kidding right?" Madge could barely even process Lina's words. "You really think they're just going to leave well enough alone now? That they're not going to do everything in their power to make it look like I killed my sister?" Her chest was tight and her legs went numb. It wouldn't be hard to make her look guilty. She'd been so angry with Willa. She'd said so many awful things. She'd left her on that boat with both Gregorys. Madge's lungs tightened and her chest heaved. No air. There was never enough air. Willa. This was what it must have felt like when she went under. When she couldn't breathe.

"Oh my G.o.d, what's wrong with her? What's happening?" Madge heard Sloane's voice but she couldn't see her. She was too focused on getting air to her lungs to realize that her eyes were squeezed shut.

"I think it's a panic attack. Move back, you guys! She needs to sit down." Rose's voice was insistent.

Arms guided her carefully into a chair and forced her head between her knees. Madge felt the weight of her friends' hands on her shoulders, rubbing her back and holding her hand. They fixed her, pieced most of the broken parts back together. Her lungs opened. This was it. There was no turning back. The money was gone. Madge closed her eyes and let herself swim in the blackness a little longer.

"I know what we can do," she said.

The words were out of her mouth before she could even lift her head from her lap. When she was finally upright and the room settled back into focus, three sets of eyes sized her up.

"You can't be serious. This is over. We've lost everything." Lina's voice was incredulous, her tattooed arms twined together to stave off the chill of the air-conditioned bank.

"Exactly. Listen to yourself. We've lost everything. There's nothing left to lose. They're going to come after me anyway. Now is the time to strike."

"But there's no money." Sloane stared at the empty deposit box.

"We don't need money. We have information." A slow smile twisted Madge's lips. "Does that one guy you're always b.i.t.c.hing about still do web design? Jude What's-his-Face?"

"Uh, yeah, but I don't think it's a good ..."

"Call him." Madge sat straighter, tugging at the key around her neck.

"But are you sure? I mean he's kind of-"

"Call." Madge held out her cell phone to Sloane. Rose and Lina leaned in, softening.

"But we only have a hundred dollars, and I'm sure it costs way more ..." Sloane looked around the walls of the bank desperately searching for some kind of out.

"Call!" This time the voices of all three girls rang out in unison.

Sloane stared at them for a minute and started to giggle. It was so unexpected. So out of place in the stodgy bowels of the bank that Madge felt a laugh bubble up in her throat. Pretty soon they were all at it. A tear-streaming, stomach-aching kind of laughter echoing off the close walls.

"Everything okay in here, ladies?" The bank manager knocked on the door to their tiny room, but none of them could pull themselves together enough to respond.

Madge knew it was hysteria, gallows humor, but it was laughter all the same. Madge couldn't remember the last time it had felt this good.

Chapter 29.

When it came to Sloane, Jude Yang always said yes. Madge reminded herself of this as she paced the attic floors. Sloane occupied her normal seat by the window, forehead meeting the gla.s.s. Lina's legs were pulled to her chest, her cheek resting on a knee. Rose sat ramrod straight in a chair, her crossed leg shaking rhythmically.

When he knocked, everyone stopped. Madge rushed to the door, but Sloane beat her to it, placing a hand on her shoulder. "I'll open it."

Jude was bathed in Yale paraphernalia as usual, his computer bag slung across his body. Madge started talking the second he set foot in the room, taking him through every step of the plan and swearing him to secrecy. He stared at Sloane the whole time, the way he always did, with a mixture of clumsiness and infatuation. Madge knew then that secrecy was a given, that they had this in the bag. She fought back hope, though. Hope was too dangerous. Better to cling to desperation.

"Let's do this," he said simply.

For the next several hours, the girls hovered over the screen as he typed mysterious codes into his computer and asked questions about color, font, and format. Lina emailed Jude the pictures she'd gathered from social sites, or scanned from the pages of the yearbooks and newspapers that were still stacked in the corner. The website began to take shape and chronicled the sordid true story of the Gregory brothers. James naked on the beach. Videos of drug deals. Close-up stills of tiny white pills. They dug up photos from the boys' casino parties, stacks of money, and hordes of alcohol. Violet Garretson's picture was uploaded as well, along with a statement she'd sent Madge in response to an email about her experience with James and her subsequent exile from the Club. But most importantly: Willa. Her picture and their first-hand accounts of what transpired on July Fourth all told Willa's story with unflinching honesty. Their War published on the Internet, for the world to see.

"You sure about this?" Jude shifted in the uncomfortable chair to acknowledge each of the girls. He looked greenish. Madge couldn't blame him. It was a lot to swallow.

Three heads bobbed up and down. Not Madge's. Hers shook.

"Wait, it's missing something." Her lips pursed as she thought. "We need a comments section. A place where girls can tell their own story. For every Willa, there's a Nadia or a Kira. They all deserve to be heard."

Jude nodded. "Easy enough." He typed into the keyboard for a couple of minutes and then turned back around. "Good?"

"Good." The girls echoed.

He hit one key with a final flourish.

As they exited the attic, pushing open the great painting that hid the s.p.a.ce, noon light spilled into the parlor in bright stripes. Jude refused to take the remaining hundred dollars. He said he couldn't "in good conscience," given what he now knew. He flushed when Sloane swept him up in an awkward hug, then he hurried off. Madge wondered if he'd ever come back to the Club again.

Rose steered everyone down one of the winding hallways toward her mother's office, but Madge hung back a step. Her finger trailed the wall, almost as if to anchor herself to it. She knew in a matter of moments, her life would change once again.

No matter how many times she told herself that starting the War wasn't going to bring back her sister, she still saw Willa swimming up to that sandbar. She would grab Madge's hand and apologize for not holding it during the fireworks, for taking so long. Madge would let herself cry then, sobs wracking her thin shoulders at what could have been. But as she stared down the hall at her friends it was as though someone had flipped a switch forcing her to squint through the harsh light of reality. All at once, she knew Willa wasn't coming home. She could wait forever, punish herself, fight, but Willa was gone. She had to let her sister go.

The door to Mrs. McCaan's office was closed, but Rose didn't bother knocking, she just threw it open and stormed right inside.

The office was empty.

"Mom?" The word echoed against the dusty walls. "Okay, we're good." Rose flipped the laptop open and pulled up her mom's email system and selected the mailing list for the entire Club. With trembling fingers she typed in the web address www.thisiswar.com and hit send.

It was done.

Madge was the first one to leave. The girls followed behind, their footsteps silent on the padded carpets that lined the Club's halls. She led them outside, past the pool and then farther onto the beach. As she made her way closer to the edge of the water, she kicked off her shoes-the sand smooth on her feet, the water tickling her toes. The girls did the same. She sat close enough to the water's edge that the tiny waves lapped at her feet. She closed her eyes and tilted her face toward the sun. The heat felt good on Madge's cheeks, but the weight of Lina's head on her shoulder felt even better.

"For Willa," Madge whispered.

"For Willa," Lina echoed.

It didn't take long.

By the time the girls had returned to the Club pool, there were over 100 comments on the site. (The pool was also conspicuously deserted.) All were from girls who had been abused, disenfranchised, or otherwise maligned by the Gregory family. Madge didn't bother going home. She knew it was useless to hide. Instead she dangled her feet into the water and read the comments one by one, trying to guess who they belonged to. The girls sat behind her, sprawled out on various lawn chairs. Sloane snored softly while Rose kept checking her phone, no doubt waiting for the axe to fall from her mother. Lina followed the stories on her phone, reading the particularly scandalous entries out loud for everyone's benefit.

Madge tried to savor what felt like a carefree moment. It wouldn't last. Nothing did.

When she felt a shadow chill her skin, she knew it was over.

"Ms. Ames-Rowan, I'm afraid there's a rather pressing issue we need to address in my office. Immediately. Do you mind?" The Captain's rough hand gripped Madge's bare shoulder. He glanced at the other girls, but there was no question in his eyes, only command. Madge nodded at her friends. The girls stood silently and departed, leaving Madge trapped beneath his calloused fingers. True, she didn't expect them to put up a fight right then and there. She couldn't help but feel abandoned. Then again, maybe she deserved it.

The Captain ushered her toward the ma.s.sive mahogany doors of his office. She had no idea what lay behind them, but it didn't matter anymore. Yes, Madge and her friends had lost the War. But with the birth of the website, Madge hoped the Gregorys couldn't hurt anyone anymore. The Captain pulled the door open and Madge took one hesitant step inside. There, waiting in antique club chairs so old that the leather cracked and peeled around the edges was Trip Gregory, Detective McCaan, Carol, and her father. Madge felt her knees buckle as the Captain closed the doors. But it was the sight of Willa's phone on his desk that finally sent her tumbling to the floor.

Chapter 30.