Girl Forgotten

by April Henry

Genres: YA Mysteries & Thrillers

Synopsis

Piper Gray starts a true-crime podcast investigating a seventeen-year-old cold case in this thrilling YA murder mystery by New York Times bestselling author April Henry. 

Seventeen years ago, Layla Trello was murdered and her killer was never found. Enter true-crime fan Piper Gray, who is determined to reopen Layla’s case and get some answers. With the help of Jonas—who has a secret of his own—Piper starts a podcast investigating Layla’s murder. But as she digs deeper into the mysteries of the past, Piper begins receiving anonymous threats telling her to back off the investigation, or else. The killer is still out there, and Piper must uncover their identity before they silence her forever.

Release date: March 28, 2023

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 272

Sample

Sunday, August 23

MAYBE AFTER DARK, THIS older section of the cemetery, with its crumbling headstones, would be scary.

But it’s a bright summer day, and right now, the cemetery is an escape. Peaceful, despite the busy road behind me. No little kids tearing around. No one asking me questions. No adults shooting one another looks when they think I won’t see.

My mom would like this place. Which is a stupid thing to think. Like she’ll ever see it.

Lost in memories, I stare at the raw brown earth of the new grave, a shocking contrast to the green surrounding it. A shout penetrates my earbuds. I’ve been listening to Dead, Deader, Deadest, my favorite true-crime podcast.

“Stop! Fred! Stop!”

I hit pause.

“Fred!”

I can’t see the guy who’s yelling, but he sounds frantic.

And barreling down the hill toward me, trailing a leash, is a golden retriever. Only a couple of feet in front of what must be Fred is a terrified squirrel. The two of them are going to run right past me. Hurtle into the busy street.

“Fred! Stop!” the guy yells again, his voice desperate.

I leap, my hand stretching out to grab the purple leash. My phone goes flying. It hits a headstone with a sickening crack.

The dog keeps going, almost jerking my arm out of the socket. Then, as the squirrel disappears under a bush, the dog stops and turns to face me, pink tongue lolling. He looks like he’s enjoying himself.

At least one of us is.

When I pick up my phone, it’s spiderwebbed with cracks. Tears sting my eyes, but on the other side of the hill, the guy is still shouting frantically for his dog.

Pulling Fred behind me, I start back in the direction he came from. After cresting a rise, I see a guy getting to his hands and knees. He’s in the newer section of the cemetery, the one with flat metal plaques instead of headstones. He’s about my age, with blue eyes and dark hair, wearing sweatpants and a rust-colored T-shirt.

“Oh, thank God.” He brings his right knee up to put his foot on the ground. Then he raises his butt high in the air until he looks like he’s trying to dive into the earth. With a groan, he awkwardly tries to pull his stiff left leg under him. But his balance fails him and he slumps back down to his hands and knees.

“You’re hurt!” I start forward. Is it his ankle? His knee?

He raises one hand to keep me back. “I’m fine.” He bites off the words. Fred strains toward him, but I tighten my grasp.

He tries again. Fails again. He’s definitely hurt. Should I call 911?

“Could you help me?” he says reluctantly.

“Of course.”

“If you put out your hands, I can use you to get to my feet.”

“What about your dog?”

“Fred, sit.”

To my surprise, the dog does, looking back and forth between us. I push my arm through the leash’s loop until it’s up to my biceps.

The guy crawls closer. I feel a little self-conscious about the length of my vintage denim skirt, with its deliberately ragged hem. I’m wearing it with a white T-shirt. For a belt, I threaded a red-and-blue scarf through the loops.

“Put one foot forward and bend your knees. Now give me your hands.” He grabs them and I start to pull him up.

“Don’t yank on me!” Red spots of color mark his cheeks.

“Okay, okay!”

“I’m sorry.” His eyes shine with pain or embarrassment or maybe both. “I just need to steady myself on you. Don’t pull and don’t let go.”

“Okay,” I say again, but softer. Whatever’s wrong, it’s clear he can’t bear a stranger witnessing it. I know how it feels to have people gawk at your pain. Stiffening my arms and legs, I make myself a statue. His grip grinds the bones in my hands together. I don’t make a sound, just grit my teeth. He tries to swallow his groan, but I still hear it.

And finally he’s on his feet, close enough that I can feel the heat of his body and smell his faintly spicy scent. He’s about six inches taller than me, with a long nose and an upper lip that’s a perfect cupid’s bow. The skin above it is beaded with sweat.

We step back and drop our hands at the same time.

He doesn’t meet my eye. When he holds out his hand, palm up, it takes me a second to realize he wants Fred’s leash.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes.” A flush creeps down his neck. I hand him the leash.

Without saying anything more, the guy turns and limps away. His left leg is stiff, his gait a bit like Frankenstein’s monster. But at least his leg is still holding him up.

He doesn’t even thank me.

Oh well. He’s not my problem now.

I should go home. Home with quotes around it, I think. Even though my dad and Gretchen say that’s what I should call it.

Tomorrow’s the first day of school, and I won’t know a single person there. Unlike my mom, who stopped going to school when the morning sickness got too bad, Dad graduated high school. He went on to college and then law school.

Gretchen is Dad’s current wife. Well, only wife, since he and Mom were never married. And by the way she presses her lips together whenever she looks at me, I’m guessing Gretchen worries I’m too much like my mom. A wave of loneliness crashes over me.

As I turn back, a spot of color catches my eye. A dozen pink roses wrapped in tissue and tied with a white satin ribbon lie on top of a marker. Next to the roses is an open bottle of Dos Equis.

I come closer to read the name and dates.

Layla Trello. She died seventeen years ago. And when she died, she was just seventeen.

The same age as me.

Sunday, August 23

SO WHAT HAPPENED TO Layla Trello? Cancer? Car accident?

Or—something squeezes my heart—maybe suicide? Was life just too much for her? The last few months have been an emotional roller coaster, so I can almost understand why someone might want to get off a similar ride.

As I start for home, I take out my phone to look her up. I forgot about the broken screen. One bottom corner is milky with cracks. My eyes spark with tears. My mom saved up for weeks to buy this off Craigslist. She’d worried it might be stolen, but the guy still had the original paperwork. He’d gotten a new phone and the old one was worth more on Craigslist than as a trade-in.

Even a year ago, this phone was out of date. Now it’s ancient.

But it’s still a connection to my mom. A connection I have literally broken. Because while I’m able to click out of the Dead, Deader, Deadest podcast, when I try to type Layla Trello into Google I have to jab some letters multiple times before they register.

While I don’t regret grabbing Fred, couldn’t his nameless owner have been a little more appreciative?

After waiting for a gap in traffic, I cross to the shadier side of the street. It’s both cooler and easier to see the screen. At the top of the results are photos. Most are the same school portrait of a girl with dark blue eyes, long dark hair, and a spray of freckles across her nose. She smiles with closed lips. One photo shows her running, a number pinned to her chest. And one is a family portrait of two parents and two girls. Layla is the taller of the two.

Underneath the photos, the first link says, “Layla Trello Obituary on Legacy.com.” Before clicking on it, I skim the links underneath.

“Hitchens Auto Dealerships Honor Layla Trello.”

“Layla Trello—Girls’ Track and Field Results.”

“Layla Trello Memorial Scholarship Fund Established to Benefit…”

It’s the bottom link that catches my eye. “Police Seek Public’s Help in Finding Missing Teen Layla Trello.”

I click.

(AP) Firview, Ore.—Police suspect a missing local teen may have met with foul play.

Firview Police Chief Benjamin Bassett says seventeen-year-old Layla Trello was last seen Friday night at a Halloween party. She left the party around two in the morning, but never arrived home.

Police want to speak to anyone who saw Trello that night.

I keep clicking and reading, clicking and reading, glancing up just enough to keep from tripping.

Nearly two weeks after Layla disappeared, her body was found in the forest six miles from here. She had been murdered. And as far as I can tell, her killer has never been caught.

Sunday, August 23

WHEN I WALK IN the door of the house that still doesn’t feel like home, Gretchen is talking and no one is listening.

“I thought I bought Kleenex.” She’s pawing through the glue sticks, colored markers, folders, and crayons that cover the dining room table.

Gretchen’s got big hands. Big everything. She’s at least as tall as my dad, with broad shoulders. If her kids—Jasper and Sequoia—beg enough, she can carry both of them without effort, even though they’re six and eight.

In the two months I’ve lived here, I’ve heard, more than once, how Gretchen has run the Boston Marathon three times. The first time while pregnant with Sequoia. The next year, pregnant with Jasper, with Sequoia in a stroller. The year after that, pushing a double stroller. It’s not like my dad, Gary, wouldn’t watch them. I think she just likes telling people she did it.

Ignoring Gretchen, Sequoia and Jasper are each holding the strap of a black backpack, pulling like it’s a Thanksgiving turkey wishbone. On the table is a red backpack.

“I said I wanted the black one,” Sequoia whines. She looks a lot like Gretchen.

“Nuh-uh,” Jasper says. He looks more like my dad, with dark curly hair and blue eyes. “Mom said I could have it.”

Sequoia yanks, making Jasper stumble forward. He loses his grip. Sequoia lands on her bottom and starts wailing, even though she now has the prize. Not to be outdone, Jasper’s face scrunches up. But before he begins to cry, Gretchen says, “Stop it, you two! We’ll just get another black backpack, all right?”

She pulls the backpack from Sequoia’s grasp, her brown bobbed hair swinging. Her bangs end exactly at her eyebrows, and the rest is a sharp line that’s even with her chin. Last week she eyed my messy blond bun, held in place with an old chopstick inlaid with pieces of abalone, and suggested she take me to her hairdresser.

I said no.

I’ve said no a lot to her.

Gretchen has never once complained about having to take me in. She doesn’t have to. Her ice-blue eyes say more than words could.

Now those eyes focus on me. “What about you, Piper? Do you have everything you need?”

By high school, all the fun stuff has fallen off the list. No colored pens or folders printed with unicorns. But I have to tell her about my phone sometime. Might as well rip off the Band-Aid.

“Actually, the screen on my phone cracked. Could I borrow some money to get it fixed? I could babysit to pay you back.”

Gretchen sighs. “First of all, you are a member of this family.” She doesn’t say the words with any warmth, but they still make me feel better. Then she adds, “So if you watch your brother and sister, that’s something you do as a contributing family member, not because you expect to be paid for it like a stranger. And of course we’ll pay for the phone. It looks old anyway. We’ll just get you a new one.”

She’s had to introduce me a few times. This is Gary’s daughter, Piper. Her lips will press together, like she’s daring anyone to ask who my mom is or why I’m suddenly living with them. It’s pretty clear her friends have never heard of me.

“I don’t need a new phone.” Sometimes it feels like Gretchen is keeping a running tally in her head, and I don’t want to add to it. “Just getting the screen fixed will be fine.”

While I’m speaking, my dad walks in the door.

“Gary, could you take your daughter to the Apple Store and get her a new phone?” Gretchen says. “Her screen’s cracked.”

Your daughter. So much for being a family.

I interrupt. “I can just get the screen fixed.”

Gretchen is a lawyer, same as my dad. Not like the ones that Kelley McBain talks to on Dead, Deader, Deadest, the kind who deal with murder. Gretchen is a tax attorney and my dad specializes in eminent domain law. He tried to explain it once—something about paying developers to take part of their property to build things like electrical substations—and I almost fell asleep.

Dad holds out his hand. “Let’s see it.”

I hand it over, glad I clicked off the Google search results for Layla Trello.

He winces at the cracks. “This is pretty old. It’s amazing it’s lasted as long as it has. What if we need to get hold of you or you get stranded someplace? You need a reliable phone.”

The Apple Store is crowded, but thanks to his dark suit and ruby-red tie that shout “important businessman,” Dad quickly attracts an employee with gauges the size of quarters. In less than ten minutes, Gauges has sold us a phone, earbuds, and a case, as well as gotten all my data transferred and put my SIM card in the new phone. He offers to recycle my old phone, but I say no.

My dad raises an eyebrow. “Might as well let it go.”

I slip the phone into my pocket. “Maybe later.” Even broken, it’s still a link to my mom.

“Could her having both phones confuse the phone company?” Dad asks.

Gauges shakes his head. “Deactivated and without a SIM card, it can’t make calls. Well, except to 911.” He puts the lid back on the box for the new phone.

My dad holds up one finger. “I think we might need something else.”

“What?” Gauges and I say simultaneously.

Dad turns to me. “You don’t have a computer. You could use a laptop for school and at home.”

The police kept the one I shared with my mom, saying they needed it for evidence.

I lower my voice. “Won’t that cost a lot?”

Dad smiles and shrugs. “It’s an investment in your education.”

He and Gauges confer about memory and chips, and a few minutes later decide on a sleek silver laptop with lots of memory.

“You’re probably going to want a dongle,” Gauges says.

I blink. “What?”

“It lets you connect other things to your computer, like your phone.”

We both look at my dad and he nods. Then Gauges disappears into the back to get everything.

“Thank you,” I say, still stunned. Added all together, my dad has just spent the equivalent of two month’s rent for our old apartment.

“Ready for school tomorrow?” he asks.

A pit opens in my stomach. “Yeah.” I try to sound cheerful.

“I know all this has been hard for you.” His soft tone almost breaks me. Luckily, Gauges appears with a bag.

As we’re leaving, Dad gestures at the stores on the other side of the concourse. “Do you need new clothes for school?”

My plan had been to wear my thrifted mustard-yellow flared jeans and a short-sleeved cowboy shirt with snaps instead of buttons. At home with my mom, my real home, it was something I’d wear to school. But what will kids at North High be wearing?

“You’ve al. . .