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stars Macy stuck up there. “Is Mina there?” I ask. “She was supposed

to call.”

“I know,” Trev says. “She asked me to call and tell you she’ll talk to

you on Tuesday. She’s all distracted. Mom and I are meeting this new

boyfriend of hers.”

Cold shock spears through me. I sit straight up, so fast that my

back fl ares painfully in protest. “Boyfriend?”

T E S S S H A R P E

167

“Didn’t she tell you? Of course she didn’t. Mina and her secrets.”

Trev’s words are full of fondness. “He’s that blond one who follows her

around like a puppy. Kyle.”

“Kyle Miller,” I croak. I think I’m going to be sick. I almost drop

the phone, but force myself to keep listening.

She never said anything. This entire time, all these months, I’d

been thinking . . .

Oh God. This is Jason Kemp all over again. But it’s so much worse

this time.

“Yeah, that’s it. Is he still a good guy? Or am I gonna have to scare

him off ?”

“Um . . .” What do I say? He’s a man-whore. The biggest asshole in

the world. A chronic cheater. . . any wild lie to get him away from her.

“Soph?”

“He . . . he’s okay, I guess,” I stutter. “Kind of a jock. He’s always

had a crush on her. I guess she’s decided to fi nally give him a chance.”

Macy knocks on my open door, peering in. She taps her watch,

and I nod to show I’m fi nishing up. “I have to go,” I blurt out. My eyes

burn. Any second I’ll start crying, and I’m desperate to hang up before

he catches on. “Trev . . . does she seem happy?”

“Yeah,” he says, unaware what that one word does to me.

“Good, that’s—good. Anyway, I should go. Thanks for calling.”

“I’ll call again,” he says. “And I’ll see you when you get home.”

“Of course.”

I never want to go home now. I want to stay here forever. Hide

from what’s waiting. I’m so angry and hurt, the memory of her touch

still fresh on my skin aft er all this time. I don’t even know what to do.

I put my phone away and sit on my bed.

I want to use.

The thought slips through me, tantalizing, kissing across my

168

F A R F R O M Y O U

body. It beckons me.
Just one more time. It’d feel so good, it’d make

you forget, it’d make it better.
And I want to so badly.

Three months. One week. One day.

I can’t.

I won’t.

But, oh, do I want to.

37

NOW (JUNE)

“Are you really gonna make me stay in the car?” Kyle asks

as we drive down the dirt road leading to Rachel’s house. I

park behind her mud-spattered Chevy and get out, trying

to ignore how my legs are still shaking.

“No,” I say reluctantly. “Come on.”

He follows me up the porch steps, and I knock hard on

the door. The impatience that I’ve kept at bay leaps to life

again.

What has she found?

Rachel doesn’t answer, but I hear the rumble of an engine

in the distance, so Kyle and I walk around the house to the

back fi eld. The dogs are lying on the deck, panting in the

heat. Rachel’s riding an ancient mower, cutting swathes of

long, summer-bleached grass in the yard. She waves when

she spots us, cutting the engine and hopping off, walking

toward us.

“Who’s this?” she asks when she gets close to the porch.

“Kyle.”

Rachel raises an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

“I think he’s on our side now,” I say.

“That’s right,” Kyle says. “Hi.” He holds his hand out to

170

F A R F R O M Y O U

her, and she takes it, frowning.

“You’re gonna have to fi ll me in later, Sophie,” she says.

“Will do,” I say, trying to conceal my impatience. “Now

what did you fi nd out?”

Rachel wipes at her forehead, sweat beading at her tem-

ples. “Come inside. I’ve got it all set up. It’s better if you

see it.”

She leads us into her living room, where she’s got a lap-

top sitting on the wagon-wheel coffee table. She clicks and

taps for a few seconds, then fl ips the switch of the projec-

tor she’s got rigged next to it. On the wall opposite us, her

desktop appears.

“I’ve got to say, your girl? She was thorough.” Rachel

clicks on a fi le labeled
TL
, and my eyes widen as the fi rst

thing I see is:
September 28: Jackie Dennings disappears while

jogging on Clear Creek Road (approx. 6PM). Mother calls police

when she doesn’t return by dinner (approx. 8PM). Police recover

pink sweater at the side of Clear Creek Road (approx. 9PM).

I scan the rest of the page.

It’s a time line.

My chest is tight with triumph. I’d been right. Mina

chasing after a story got her killed.

“What is this?” Kyle asks.

“They’re Mina’s notes,” I say as Rachel clicks on the

arrow, revealing another date on Mina’s time line:
September

30: Matthew Clarke (Jackie’s boyfriend) is brought in for ques-

tioning.
“This is the real reason we were out at Booker’s

Point. Rachel, are all the fi les on the drive about Jackie

Dennings?”

T E S S S H A R P E

171

“Yeah.” Rachel minimizes the time line and brings up

more fi les, newspaper articles this time, their headlines blar-

ing
Community
Searches for Missing Girl
;
Six Weeks, No Sign of

Local Girl
; and
Two Years Later, Dennings’s Disappearance Still

a Mystery
.

“Fuck,” Kyle says.

“What?” I ask.

“Last year, Mina asked me to get my brother to give

her Amy Dennings’s phone number. Tanner and Amy are

friends.”

“Jackie’s little sister?” I ask.

Kyle nods. “You remember when Jackie disappeared?

We’d just started freshman year. There were all those vigils.”

“Trev was upset,” I say. “He and Jackie were in the same

class.”

I look at the article Rachel’s projector beams onto the

wall. Jackie Dennings’s face smiles at me, her straight blond

hair brushing her shoulders, blue eyes full of warmth.

What had Mina found that made her chase after this so

recklessly?

“What else do the notes say?” I ask Rachel.

“Jackie Dennings has been missing for almost three

years,” Rachel says. “They never found any trace of her. No

sightings. She’s just . . .
gone
. I don’t mean to sound all dire

or anything, but she’s almost defi nitely dead. And Mina

thought so, too.” Rachel taps on the keyboard for a few sec-

onds, and the newspaper articles disappear, replaced with

a map of the county. There’s a big circle drawn around the

northwest corner, and when I look closer, I see that right at

172

F A R F R O M Y O U

the center of the circle is Clear Creek Road, where Jackie

disappeared.

“Was she looking for places where Jackie’s body might

be?” I ask, feeling sick to my stomach.

“Well, yeah,” Rachel says. “I mean, I don’t know if she

was going off in the woods with a shovel, but she mapped

it out. Estimated how far whoever took Jackie would be able

to get before the police put up road blocks. Mina’s theory

was that Jackie got abducted on Clear Creek Road and then

taken to a second location, killed there, and dumped.”

“West of town, he had half the Trinities to choose from.”

I shake my head.

“And the lake’s only ten miles away,” Rachel says. “The

ideal place to dump a body. No one’s gonna be fi nding it.”

“So you’re saying that whoever took and probably killed

Jackie Dennings three years ago killed Mina, too?” Kyle

asks.

“Well, if she was meeting someone for a story, it was

most certainly
this
story,” Rachel says. “And she was inter-

viewing people connected to the case. There are three audio

fi les of her interviewing Jackie’s family members and the

boyfriend. That’s probably why she wanted Amy’s number

from you, Kyle. Amy’s interview is on the thumb drive.”

My breath catches in my throat and something twists

inside me, a weird mix of dread and wonder. “There’s . . .

her voice . . . It’s Mina talking?” I ask.

Rachel reaches over and squeezes my hand. “Do you

want me to play them?”

A sickening heat fl oods me, half want, half protest.

T E S S S H A R P E

173

I’m not ready.

“No,” I say quickly. “No. Please. Don’t.”

There’s an exhalation of breath behind me, a relieved

sigh from Kyle.

“She had a lot of material,” Rachel says. “I swear she

saved every article ever written about Jackie. And her sus-

pect list is so detailed—she was good at this.”

“Too good,” I say. “She got too close. She was gonna fi g-

ure it out. And he stopped her so she wouldn’t tell.”

“There’s one thing,” Rachel says. “I think the killer tried

to warn her. Tried to get her to back off.”

“What?” Kyle and I say at the same time.

“Seriously, look.” Rachel brings forward Mina’s time

line again, paging forward. “The time line’s huge; it spans

years. The most recent entry is December, just a few months

before Mina was killed. Look at what it says.”

December 5: Warning note received. Sender’s been tipped off

(Accidentally? On purpose?)

December 20: Note #2 received. Going to lie low for a while.

Just to be safe.

I’m paralyzed for a moment with anger, consumed by it.

Why did she have to be so secretive all the time? She

should’ve known better. Should’ve known she wasn’t invul-

nerable. I hate her for being so reckless. For not bothering to

think about all of us, left in her wake.

“That’s what the killer meant,” I whisper. “That night.

He said ‘I warned you’ before he shot her.”

“She was getting threatening notes and she didn’t tell

us?” Kyle looks bewildered. “She would’ve told the police,”

174

F A R F R O M Y O U

he adds, but he sounds uncertain, because deep down he

knows he’s wrong. He’s trying to hide, to forget, what she

was really like. How she’d existed half in this world and

half in her own, and how when she’d break the rules, it’d

be so beautiful to be a part of it that you’d play along, fol-

low her anywhere, just to bask in her glow. “Or Trev?” he

suggests, when Rachel and I say nothing. “Maybe she told

Trev?”

“If she had told Trev she was being threatened, trust me,

we wouldn’t even be having this discussion,” I say. “She’d

be alive right now. Because Trev would’ve locked her in her

room and called the cops. That’s why she didn’t tell him.

That’s why she didn’t tell anyone.”

Kyle looks out the window at nothing as Rachel bites

her lip, her gaze fl itting back and forth between the two

of us.

“She wouldn’t have gone out there that night if she

thought she was meeting the person who sent those notes,

though,” Kyle says, breaking the uncomfortable lull. This

time, there’s no uncertainty in his voice.

“Are you sure about that?” Rachel asks, and she’s look-

ing more at me than Kyle.

I almost shrug, but Kyle beats me to it. “No,” he says

fi rmly. “Not with Sophie there. If she thought it would be

dangerous, she would’ve come up with an excuse to leave

Sophie at home.”

“She didn’t treat me—”

“You don’t know how much she worried about you

relapsing— she always talked to me about it. She wouldn’t

have put you in danger.”

T E S S S H A R P E

175

Heat crawls along my cheeks, and the silence goes on

too long, until Rachel clears her throat.

“So that means it was someone she didn’t suspect,” I say.

“It means more than that,” Kyle says. “It means it was

someone she trusted.”

Kyle’s right, of course. It makes me sick that she just

walked into it. That the killer gained her trust, manipulated

her into meeting him out there, and she’d gone, because she

had that hunger to
know
.

“There aren’t any scans or photos of the warning notes

she got?” I ask.

Rachel shakes her head. “No. She would’ve kept them,

though, right?”

“Defi nitely,” I say.

“But the police searched her room,” Kyle says.