Lisa Gardner - Before She Disappeared

“I didn’t tell Angel, not at first. I knew she wouldn’t approve. And she was mad at me. I’d made her sign up for fashion camp and then DommyJ’s breaks were different than ours, and I kept sneaking out to see him. She said I’d abandoned her. I didn’t mean it that way. Just . . . I was the girl making out with the hot guy in the hallway, you know. I’d never been that girl before.”

“How’d you get the fake ID, Marjolie?”

“Dommy got it. I gave him the money on Tuesday. He brought me the ID Thursday. That night we’re at his favorite club, hitting the dance floor with all his friends. He’s got moves. I got moves. He’s buying me shots. Everyone’s happy.” She hesitates, voice dropping low. “I felt like I was flying. Like it was the best night of my life. Like it would never get better than this. Then, DommyJ took me out to his friend’s car.”

She pauses. Her expression goes flat.

“Did he rape you, Marjolie?” I ask the question. Lotham’s jaw has set, his hands fisting.

“Nothing like that. I gave it up. I thought . . . I thought this is what I’d been waiting for. I thought this was the special fucking moment with that special fucking guy.” She laughs now, but it’s a harsh sound. “The next day, at the rec center, I tell Dommy I love him. I tell him, I can’t wait to go out again. Have fake license, will travel, you know. Dommy says I should bring a friend. It’s awkward, him with me, then all the guys. He says . . . He says maybe I could bring Kyra.”

Marjolie’s drop-dead-gorgeous friend. Of course. “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.”

Marjolie doesn’t cry anymore. She is too gutted for tears. She’s right, first love feels like flying higher than the sun. And inevitably leads to the mother of all crash landings.

“I asked Angel instead. I didn’t want to believe . . .” Marjolie glances up at me. “I thought if I brought Angel, that would be good enough.”

“You asked Angelique to come with you club hopping?” Lotham is startled enough to finally ask a question.

“I showed her the ID. What’s the big deal? Even if she didn’t love partying, this is the girl who never stops talking college. She could use her fake license to sneak onto campus, take classes, whatever. It’d be good. I begged her. But she was angry. So then I told her everything. What Dommy and me did, how much I loved him. How much I needed her to do this, because I couldn’t bring Kyra. Obviously. And I couldn’t . . . I didn’t want it to end.”

“What did Angelique say?” Lotham again.

“She didn’t. She just grew quiet. Then she hugged me, like really tight. And I started to cry, because . . . I knew. I just didn’t want to know.”

Marjolie closes her eyes. Takes a big shuddery breath. “Turns out, DommyJ’s a collector. V cards. Like, is even in a competition with his buddies over who has the most. And having gotten mine . . . He broke up with me two days later. Clubbing, dancing, true love. None of it meant a thing.”

“Oh, honey . . .” I say again.

“That’s when things got weird.”

Lotham frowns, gives me a look as he twists back around in the driver’s seat. “Weird how?”

“Next week, bright sunny day, everyone’s sitting outside. Angel walks right up to DommyJ. At first, you can’t really hear them. She’s like whispering furiously, he’s totally blowing her off. Even giving me dirty looks like this is all my fault. Then she suddenly raises her voice. She starts talking, in as loud a voice as possible, that he’s a cheat. That the fake IDs he sells aren’t even worth the plastic they’re printed on.”

She has our full attention now.

“I had showed her mine to convince her to buy her own. But now she’s yelling that fifty bucks is a total rip-off. A mall cop could tell they were fake and DommyJ’s gonna get all his friends arrested. Then, she says, super loud, he owes everyone a refund.”

“A refund?” Lotham presses.

Marjolie nods solemnly. “DommyJ was furious . She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Take her fucking mouth and get out of his fucking way. Which is when that other girl, Libby, Liv—”

“Livia Samdi.”

“Yeah. Totally quiet, like never speaks at all. Everyone knows her older brother got kicked out of the program two years ago for drugs. J.J., something like that.”

“Johnson.”

“Seriously?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“She suddenly joins Angel, yelling at Dommy. Except she knows all this stuff. The fakes DommyJ is dealing don’t have the right hologram, laser printing, I don’t know. All sorts of shit. Basically, she’s also insisting DommyJ has cheated all his friends.

“Now everyone’s listening, and things are getting really intense. I mean, Dommy’s got all his buds there. Who knows how many fakes he sold them.”

“ Do you know how many fake licenses he sold?” Lotham pushes.

Marjolie shakes her head.

“What about others being involved? Some of his friends also selling the IDs?”

“I just know Dommy. And he doesn’t make them. At least, I don’t think he does. He said a friend did. But when we were at the nightclub, all his buddies were using them. It’s not like they’re twenty-one.”

At fifty bucks a pop. Lotham and I exchange another glance. “Do you have your license on you?” I ask.

Marjolie hesitates, as if finally remembering she’s talking to cops. Lotham arches a brow. She relents, digging into her pack until she finds her wallet, then produces the ID. She hands it to Lotham first, who tests the weight of it in his hands, then twists it around in the light. He doesn’t say a word, just passes it to me.

Marjolie has been telling the truth. It’s cheap work. Too thin, blurry photo, not even an attempt at the holograph. In comparison, the fake license Angelique dropped the other day is a masterpiece. Fifty bucks for this? I see Angelique’s point.

“So Angelique and Livia accuse DommyJ of ripping off his friends,” I prod. “In front of everyone.”

“Angel’s trying to get back at him for what he did to me. The other girl, Livia, I don’t know what her deal is. But this stuff, DommyJ, the crowd he hangs with . . . It’s no joke. Angelique shouldn’t have been talking to him like that. Especially in front of others. Dommy gets real serious real fast. He shoves them back. Tells them to shut the fuck up or they’d be sorry.”

“He threatens them?” Lotham, clarifying.

“I guess.”

“And then?”

Marjolie shrugs. “The director guy came out. Mr. Lagudu. Break’s over, everyone back inside. Angel was still shaking, really upset. I knew she’d done it only for me, but I told her to knock it off. She was going to get herself in trouble. And I . . . I was embarrassed. Maybe I hoped DommyJ might still change his mind, take me back. But after that little display . . .” Marjolie exhaled roughly. “Angel and me had some words. Big fight, really. Angel . . . She couldn’t see it. Sometimes she was too smart, too capable. She didn’t understand what it meant to be just a regular girl like me. She didn’t understand that sometimes, her being her, just made me feel bad.”

Marjolie swallows, falls silent. “Things weren’t the same between us after that. She kept sitting with the Livia girl. Sometimes I swore they were whispering about me. I wanted to apologize, make things right. I hurt, too, you know. I’d loved this guy, then he’d gone and done . . . I don’t know. Summer camp really sucked. When it ended and school started again, things settled. Livia was gone and it was the Angel, Kyra, and Marjolie show again. I figured more time would pass, we’d grow close again. Like we used to be. Except then one day, Angel was just gone. And we never got our second chance.”