Set You Free

CONTENTS

ONE: SUNDAY

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN: MONDAY

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN: TUESDAY

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN: WEDNESDAY

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT: SUNDAY

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ONE

SUNDAY

Family should always come first.

Right?

I mean, you can fight with your siblings. You can argue with your parents. You can call one another idiots, but if an outsider says one bad word about any member of your family, it’s war.

That’s the way it’s supposed to be.

But how often is this true? How often do we let our family members drift, fall into their own pains and troubles, then disappear completely?

I’d like to say I always stood up for my brother. I’d also like to say that one day I will repay him for how I used to treat him. But I can’t make that promise. I wish I could. But no one knows what the future holds.

And the past is unchangeable. What we have is the present. And this morning my present is painful.

My head aches. My stomach rolls. My mouth feels filled with cotton balls.

And then this: “Lauren, honey. There’s a police officer here who would like to speak with you.”

“Why?” I say to my mother. Disaster videos stream through my muddled mind. Friends in burned-out, smashed-up cars.

“Ben Carter is missing.”

“Two minutes,” I say, swinging my feet out of the bed and cradling my head. “Give me two minutes.”

Ben Carter is my final babysitting charge. I’m seventeen and I’ve been done with babysitting for a few years, but I haven’t let go of Ben.

I was with him yesterday until five o’clock. I mostly only see him on the weekends now, while his mother, Erin, volunteers at the hospital. Erin’s mother was well cared for there before she died last year, and volunteering is Erin’s way to give back, I guess.

And then Ben was home with his family, and I did what I always do on Saturday nights.

I went to a party.

I hung out.

I drank.

If I’m being honest with myself, which rarely happens these days, I’m not even sure I like drinking. I make promises to myself every Saturday afternoon.

Stay home tonight.

Watch a movie.

Catch up with an old friend.

Get some homework done.

Then the phone calls come in, and everyone says this party is going to be the biggest, the best, the most exciting event of the year.

Absolutely not to be missed.

Epic.

I bend easily. It’s a character flaw. But if there’s a choice between going out and seeing what might happen and staying in and knowing what will (nothing), I always take going out.

As I step out the door I make more promises. Go, have fun, talk, dance, drink some water. Tell people you’re the designated driver if you have to.

But once I get to the party, someone will convince me that one drink won’t hurt. One drink is social. One drink is courteous.

So I have one courteous drink.

But one becomes two, becomes three, becomes…

New promises are made the next day. I’m going to fly straight. Get back to my old world, where I was studious, quiet,
unremarkable. I spend hours looking at college brochures and trying to imagine myself sitting in a lecture hall, inhaling ideas. But the next step is not there. The “what happens after college” step. The “what do you want to do with your life” step.

I have no idea.

And that terrifies me.

So I try to get back to studying. I try to be good and hardworking, but as far as I can tell, the world does not want me to be good and hardworking.

It wants me to mix with the right people, say the right things.

Go to the right parties.

Drink.

Last night’s jeans are in a twisty, gross ball on the floor. My favorite sweatshirt is at the end of my bed, now sporting a long green stain and a torn cuff.

I grab my glasses off the side table. The eyeball fairy must have taken pity on me last night, because my eyes aren’t burning from leaving my contacts in.

I go to my closet and pull out the first things I touch: capris and a T-shirt.

I push my hair around without looking in the mirror. I feel like garbage. Smell worse.

Whatever.

Off to talk to Mr. Policeman.

TWO

Or, rather, Ms. Policewoman.

“Detective Carole Evans. Would you care to take a seat?” she asks, pointing at my own couch.

Like she owns the place.

She’s taller than me, with light-blue eyes and too-tweezed eyebrows. No makeup. Her face looks undefined, as if her features have been flung onto a blank canvas and left to their own devices.

She’s wearing a black button-down blouse and tight gray pants. Nike running shoes and a wedding ring. As I’m sitting down, she says, “Would you mind if I asked you what happened to that eye?”

Which is a way of asking, isn’t it.

“What?” I put my hand beneath my glasses.

“Something hit you?”

I go to the mirror. In the bright light it looks as if I’ve recently been crying: there are streaks on my cheeks cutting rivers through a dusting of dirt.

My hands are filthy.

What went on last night?

Right, the bonfire. I close my eyes as visions of the beach at night return like scenes cut from an otherwise all-right movie.

I touch the bruise. It feels like an undercooked steak. There’s a tiny cut to the left of my right eye.

“I can’t believe it got that bad,” I say, turning around. “It was a stupid accident. Last night I opened a car door, and then my friend Stacy said something to me. I turned and said, like,
one minute
or whatever, and when I turned back someone had opened the door a little more, and I smacked right into it.”

“On the top corner?” Detective Evans says.

“Exactly. It didn’t look like anything last night, but it sure does now.”

I sit on the couch and try to change the subject before Detective Evans can conjure any more questions regarding my social life. “I’ll be fine. So what’s happened to Ben?”

Detective Evans pulls out a notebook. “You were with Benjamin Carter yesterday, correct?”

“All day,” I say. “What’s happened?”

“All we know at the moment is that his mother put him to bed last night, and this morning he was gone.”

“Gone?” I say. “Where would he go? He’s five years old.”

“We don’t know, Lauren. That’s why I’m here.”

“Okay,” I say, because what do I know about these things? The Carters live two blocks away, and nothing really bad ever happens in our area. It’s the suburbs! People come here to get away from bad things.

“Have you seen him today?” Detective Evans asks.

I push at my hair, a habit sent down through our
DNA
from mother to daughter for generations. It’s a miracle that we all aren’t bald. “I just woke up,” I say. “I dropped him off yesterday at around five, if that’s any help.”

“How did Benjamin seem yesterday?”

“Normal?” I offer.

“Did he say anything about running away?”

“No,” I say. “He’s never said anything like that.”

“Did he seem sad or upset at all?”

“No.” I realize I’m endlessly shaking my head no and put a stop to it. “We played in the park, had ice cream. He kept talking about these things called Beyblades.”

“You mean the little tops that ram into one another?”

“Yeah, those.”

“What was he saying about them?”

“Just that he wanted a couple of new ones and his mother wouldn’t get them for him. But that happens a lot. He’s five—he wants everything.”

“Was there a particular reason his mother wouldn’t get them for him?”

“Do you mean because they might be violent or dangerous or something?”

“I suppose.”

“No. Like you said, they’re just tops that ram against one another.”

Detective Evans stares at me, and I decide to fill the silence. “They all have different names and abilities. Some are attack and others are defense. So you have to decide what kind of battle you’re having and choose the right top.”

“Did you notice anything at all out of the ordinary with Benjamin?” she asks.

“He was the same old Benny.”

“How about Erin? Did you notice anything different with her?”

“Not that I can think of. She spent the day volunteering at the hospital.”

Detective Evans flips a page in her notebook, then flips it right back again. “Did you happen to see any other members of the Carter family yesterday?”

“Not while I was with Ben, no.”

“But after?”

I glance at my mother, who is sitting on the edge of a chair. She has always given me a certain amount of freedom, and though I normally am good about respecting it, I know I’ve stepped beyond my bounds recently. I mean, if she knew
I was out drinking, she’d lose her mind. But she gets these horrible migraines that sometimes put her out for days. So she mostly doesn’t have a choice but to trust me.

“There was a bonfire last night, and Ben’s stepbrother and stepsister were both there,” I say quickly. My mother doesn’t react to this. I guess she is focused on the fact that Ben is missing.

“Jack Junior and Stephanie.”

“People call him JJ.”

“Did you speak to them at all about Benjamin?”

“I didn’t speak to them about anything,” I say.

“Did you notice when they left the bonfire?”

I adjust my glasses, remembering why I hate wearing them. I can’t leave them alone and am always pushing them back up my nose. “No, there were a lot of people there. I saw JJ and Steph, but that was it. We don’t really hang out.”