The Good Girls (22 page)

CAITLIN SLAMMED HER GYM LOCKER
door shut. She was off school for the week, but there was no way she was abandoning her soccer team. Especially not tonight, when they played Bellevue. It was also their first game with the new freshman recruits.

“Let's go, Caitlin!” Her teammates filed past her, tightening their hair bands and slapping one another with their towels and jerseys. Ursula let out a loud
whoooooop!
and started a call-and-response cheer as the team jogged through the field house door and into the courtyard. She shot Caitlin a smile over her shoulder, and Caitlin smiled back. It was funny—not long ago, Caitlin had suspected Ursula of being her ultimate enemy. Killing Nolan and framing them. Eavesdropping on their awful conversation in film studies and forming some sort of master plan. It seemed so ridiculous now.

Then again, the truth was pretty unthinkable, too.

Her thoughts turned to Julie. Last she'd heard, Julie had been checked into a high-security mental facility about twenty miles away. It was the type of place where she couldn't have visitors for a while, as she would be in round-the-clock, incredibly intense therapy. Caitlin tried to picture what her days were like. At least she was in a cleaner, less-cluttered environment. At least there were no cats. Would she be sad to part with Parker? Had that even
happened
yet? Maybe it was the type of thing that took months, even years.
It's like a death,
Dr. Rose had said. Caitlin felt so sorry for Julie, despite everything. She couldn't imagine having to go through losing Taylor twice.

A whistle blew outside, snapping her back to the present. Caitlin adjusted her shin guards, popped in her mouth guard, and followed the rest of her team. As she crossed the parking lot to the field, she caught sight of her moms on the bleachers and smiled. Things were okay with them again, for the first time in a long, long time. Last night, she'd had a serious heart-to-heart with them, and though they were still upset with her for pranking Nolan—especially because it had been her Oxy—they were on her side again. Caitlin had finally admitted to her moms just how much rage she'd felt toward Nolan, and how much she directly blamed him for Taylor's suicide. She'd told them how she reread Taylor's journal a thousand times in the past six months, trying
to figure out the exact moment when he had decided to go through with it . . . the exact moment when she had missed the most important clue of all.

Her moms had just gazed at her, their eyes spilling over with tears, their mouths squeezed shut to hold back the sobs. Then they had all cried together, and it was like they had finally acknowledged that . . .
thing
. . . the shared pain that was there with them every moment of every day but was too great to even speak of. Just knowing that they were in it together made it hurt a tiny, microscopic bit less.

Caitlin was the last one on the field. She closed her eyes to absorb the cool evening air, the clatter of the crowd, the opposing team's coach calling out warm-up drills, the tooting of air horns. There was only one thing that still wasn't right, that hadn't been put back into place. Jeremy. They hadn't spoken since Nyssa's party. Even
Josh
had called her the next day, apologizing for drunkenly calling her out about signing his cast. “Was that why my brother left?” he'd asked.

“Not really,” Caitlin said. And it was true: Jeremy had left because of
her
feelings,
her
conflict. She didn't want Josh back. And Josh probably didn't want her back, either. She understood that even better after his phone call—but it was nice that they'd come to some kind of peace.

Caitlin pulled off her warm-up jacket and threw it onto the grass behind the bench. She had to focus on the game.
She bent down to tighten a shoelace on her cleat, and suddenly something caught her eye up in the stands. Jeremy was sitting all alone, his face painted in Beacon High maroon and white. He held a giant poster board sign with
GOOOOO, CAITLIN!
handwritten in big, sloping letters.

Caitlin's mouth fell open. Despite the fact that the game was going to start in only a few minutes, she dashed off the field and up the bleacher steps, straight toward him. “Look at you! Oh my god!”

Jeremy smiled sheepishly. “I had to come and support my girl.”

Caitlin felt tears appear in her eyes. “Really?”

“Well, yeah.” He grinned at her, but then his face grew serious. “I thought about what you said, and you were right, Caitlin. I should love you for
exactly
who you are—and that's a soccer player. A girl who goes to parties. A really
hot
girl who plays soccer and goes to parties, by the way.” He touched her arm. “And you know what?” he went on. “I love that girl. Every inch of her.”

Caitlin thought her heart might burst. She broke into a gigantic smile and jumped into Jeremy's arms. She squeezed him as tightly as she could, breathing him in. It felt so good—so right—to be with him, then and there.

Caitlin could have stayed there all night, just holding him, but she needed to get back to her team. Just as she pulled away from Jeremy, she saw Mary Ann running
across the soccer field, headed straight for them. For a millisecond, Caitlin thought her mom was angry about her Jeremy PDA, but as Mary Ann got closer, the look on her face was tense and weird—even worried. It was, Caitlin realized, the same look she'd had when she'd found out Taylor was dead.

Mary Ann reached her side and, winded and panting, grabbed Caitlin by the arm and pulled her away from Jeremy. “What is it?” Caitlin cried. “What's happening?”

Mary Ann caught her breath and locked eyes with her daughter. “It's Julie. She broke out of the mental hospital. She's . . .
gone.
”

FLAT, BRIGHT SUNSHINE ILLUMINATED THE
landscape outside Julie's hotel room window. Palm trees dotted the horizon, and cars glinted on the freeway overpass as the afternoon rush hour swung into full gear. Julie leaned back in the stiff upholstered chair and gazed into the cloudless blue sky. Her whole body—arms and legs, fingers and toes—was relaxed. Her mind was still for the first time in as long as she could remember. The absence of stress, of fear, was beautiful and invigorating.

The last twenty-four hours were a blur. Julie had no idea exactly how far she'd traveled, but it didn't matter. All she needed to know was that she was as far from the secrets and cruelties of Beacon Heights as possible, where no one would find her. She had left them all behind, shaken them all from her trail—even the doctors and nurses at
the facility, even the cops. They were smart, there was no denying that, but she had still executed her plan to perfection. There was no way she was going to stay in a mental institution, for god's sake—there were limits, after all, to how far she'd go for Parker.

Julie felt no remorse for lying to the hospital staff. She did the right thing, telling the doctors and cops and attorneys that she was sick, letting them work themselves into a tizzy over her very rare, very severe case of dissociative identity disorder. After all, escaping a mental hospital was a hell of a lot easier than escaping from prison. How else would she have been able to get away? Lying to them, telling them that Parker was a figment of her imagination, was her only choice. And she had done it for both of them, for herself and for Parker. But Julie knew the truth: Parker was as real as she was. And
Parker
was the one who had committed those crimes. Not her.

It had been Parker, though, even before she'd turned herself into the cops, who'd laid the groundwork for the plan. Julie had found her in the woods when she'd fled from that party, and Parker had taken her shoulders and said, “It's going to be okay. For both of us. I have an idea. We should use Fielder.”

“Fielder?” Julie had frowned. “I thought you hated him.”

And then it was Parker who'd come clean: She'd been seeing Fielder, both as a patient and, sort of, as a friend
(she'd lowered her eyes when she said this, though). She told Julie that she'd really bonded with him, and it seemed that he had a soft spot for her, considering what had happened to his mom. “He'll come and see you in the hospital, I promise,” Parker had said. “And then . . .” She whispered the rest.

Julie had been hesitant, but she'd taken Parker's word. So she'd turned herself in to the cops. Let them cart her off to the hospital, tie her down, sedate her—but they promised, from the start, that they'd try to track down Fielder. Finally, he'd arrived, all flushed and freaked out, his hair flying every which way around his head, and his shirttails hanging out over his pants. He heard her out. She gave him the same spiel about Parker not being real. Fielder had nodded, tears in his eyes. “I want to get better,” Julie had urged. Fielder had placed his hand over hers. “I want that for you, too.”

It was when he'd grabbed his coat that she'd snatched the visitor's pass off his jacket. He didn't catch it at all, smiling at her sadly when he left, promising to return the next week. Twenty minutes later, when she was sure he was gone and the nurse shift had changed—she was still so new that most of the nurses didn't recognize her—Julie changed clothes, pinned the badge on her shirt (luckily, it only said
E. Fielder
, so she could be an Elizabeth, or an Elsa) and walked out of there. Easy as that.

Did she feel bad she'd used Fielder? Not really. He'd stalked Parker, and that still made him a weirdo in Julie's book. And anyway, it had been Parker's idea:
We have to take extreme measures to get free,
she'd whispered to Julie that night in the woods. Fielder would be fine: Guards might suspect him of assisting in her escape at first, but once they talked it out, this wouldn't hurt his career. He'd just look like a dupe.

Julie's stomach growled as she watched the cars slow to a standstill on the off-ramp. She'd need to get some food soon. Traffic inched forward.
So many people,
Julie thought,
stuck in their cars, stuck in their lives, just waiting for someone else to get out of their way. But not me.

It was better this way, Julie knew. There was nothing for them in Beacon Heights anyway—not anymore. She felt a shot of longing for Carson, who had been so good to her, but then she reminded herself that he most certainly thought she was nuts, just like everyone else in town. Just like her own mother, according to the horribly awkward interviews she'd given on CNN, MSNBC,
60 Minutes
. It was better to have a clean break. She should have thought of doing this years ago.

There was a knock on the door, and Julie hopped out of her seat. She skipped across the room, past the two queen beds, past the tiled bathroom, and opened the door slowly. When she saw who stood there on the thick carpet in the hall, she let out a little cry of joy.

“Oh, thank
god
!” Julie exclaimed, shooting forward and wrapping her arms tightly around Parker's thin, hunched, hoodie-clad frame.

Parker stood outside the door, grinning broadly. Julie looked so grateful, as if she'd feared she might never see her again. “Can I come in?”

“You don't need an invitation.” Julie laughed, opening the door wider.

Parker stepped over the threshold, a plastic bag bursting with Chinese takeout boxes dangling from one hand, spilled sauce beginning to pool in a corner of the sack. “Hungry?”

“Starving.” Julie smiled, a smile big and broad and full of sunshine. “Thank god you're okay,” she gushed, holding out her arms and pulling her friend into a hug.

“Oh, please,” Parker scoffed, brushing her off. “I'm a fighter. I'll always be okay, Julie. You know that.”

“I know, but you risked so much.”

Parker shrugged. All she'd done, really, was hide while everything went down with Julie. While Julie turned herself in, while Julie spent those days at the hospital, while Julie narrowly escaped, carefully adhering to Parker's plan. She'd known where to find Julie afterward, traveling far to get here, always in disguise. After all, Julie was the one who'd taken the heat—for everything Parker had done.

And Parker would always be in her debt.

Then she pulled away and looked her friend squarely in the eye. “I'm always going to be fine, you know. As long as I have you.”

Julie beamed. “Same here.”

Then they sat down and divvied up the food. Parker ate and ate and ate, suddenly hungrier than she'd been in years. She felt . . .
alive
again. Revived. Everything about this moment was right. They were alone, but they had each other. In a teeny, tiny way, Parker regretted using Fielder—they really
had
made a connection, she thought. But she couldn't dwell on that. The important thing now was Julie. Finally, they were together, with no one to threaten their bond again. The closest of friends forever.

And Parker and Julie swore to themselves in a singular thought, communicated through that uncanny telepathy they sometimes had, that they would never,
ever
be apart again.

HUGE THANKS TO KATIE MCGEE,
Lanie Davis, Sara Shandler, Les Morgenstein, Josh Bank, Romy Golan, and Kristin Marang for their creative brilliance on this project. Also kudos and hugs to Jen Klonsky, Kari Sutherland, and Alice Jerman at Harper for making the project even better. A big shout-out to Jen Shotz: I couldn't have done it without you.

Also, though this is a work of fiction, I want to emphasize that there is nothing glamorous about laughing at the expense of others, much less what these characters do in the books. Everyone, be good to each other. Kisses!