Prologue
June
On the last Wednesday of the year, school is canceled. The diner on the corner of Third and Sycamore does not open and the parking lot of the IGA grocery store stays empty. No one is out walking their dogs or cutting the thick, fresh green grass. As Mom and I make our way down Main Street, it feels as though the whole town of Black Falls, New York—and everything in it—has been raptured.
My mother looks tired today. She always looks a little tired, but usually I can find some mischief in her face, a spark. Now her cheeks are pale and her eyes are glassy. Like she’s been raptured too.
She’s been up crying at night. She tries to be quiet, but I can hear the muffled sobs from her room as I curl up in my bed. I don’t cry, but I pile every blanket on top of myself, until I feel sure that there’s enough weight to me that I’m not going to disappear too.
When we finally pull into the parking lot of the Elks Lodge, I see them: the mayor, the principal, the moms and dads and kids and dogs and students and teachers and gas station attendants all milling around.
Someone has set up a table with giant coffee dispensers and powdered donuts. A big, orange handwritten poster perches crookedly on a metal stand next to the doors to the lodge: search party here.
Officer Kelly, the police chief, stands nearby, Styrofoam cup in hand, holding court with a group of younger officers. I see Zack White, Callie’s brother, who has been on the force for only six months, looking handsome and clean-cut in his brand-new uniform. I see Remy’s crew huddled at the edge of the parking lot. I watch them for a few moments, trying to tell them apart. They stand in a triangle, in color-coordinated, pastel jogging pants, oversize fleeces, and sports bras, like Easter-themed Bella Hadids. I study their faces: the sad downturn of Callie’s lips, Liliana’s delicate tears, and Kendall’s blank, distant stare. I wonder. Which Remy did they know?
Two days ago at lunch, Kendall said that Remy had better do it soon, in a voice that sounded sharp as a needle. Now, as I watch her drape an arm over Lili’s shoulders, I think,Do what?
Mom nudges me forward, breaking me out of my thoughts.
“Breathe, Jules,” she reminds me. We walk over to where the crowd is beginning to come together, and she holds my hand, like she used to when I was a kid.
Officer Kelly gives the instructions and then we split into teams. Each team is sent to a different area of Turnpike and the surrounding roads to walk through the woods in long lines.Remy would love this, I think. Her favorite hobby is consuming anything suspenseful and gory—horror movies, thrillers, true-crime podcasts.
“Look at all these stupid, stupid dead girls,” she would always say. “Taking the stairs when they should have gone for the front door.”
Then she would add, “Only a man would write it like this.”
Maybe this is all a joke. A show. Remy loves a twist, a spectacle, an elaborate plan. Maybe tomorrow she’ll show up at school with fake blood trickling out of her ears and laugh at us all.
Mom and I are partnered with the Whites. We are a picture of contrast, Mom and me with our messy ponytails and practical jackets, Callie’s family with their white teeth and clean shoes. The Whites look at us with pity and a little bit of fear. Because we have lost something precious to us. They don’t want to think about what that feels like.
The six of us have been assigned to search the area of woods next to Turnpike Road between Dogwood and Maple. The morning is cool and cloudy, casting the forest in an eerie darkness, as if the sun will not come out without her. As we walk into the forest, the air smells like wet earth, last year’s rotten leaves, this year’s flowers. Life. Death.
This is perfect, I hear Remy saying in my ear. Almost poetic.
She’s right. The chill in the air worms its way into my bones. Everything is quiet except the rustling of leaves under our feet.
Callie walks about ten yards away from me on one side, my mother on the other, and we advance forward in a line, like the officers told us to, scanning the ground at our feet, trying to stay together.
“I can’t stop thinking about her,” Callie says. Her long blond hair is woven into two fishtail braids and she has zipped her fluffy light pink fleece up to her neck. She looks to her left, where her little sister, Marta, only thirteen, is marching somberly forward, AirPods tucked into her ears. “I can’t believe she could be—”
“She’s not,” I say, clenching my jaw.
I don’t say what Remy isn’t.
“How could she have just disappeared?”
I look to the other side of me, where Mom is talking quietly to Callie’s mother, and lower my voice. “If Remy disappeared, it’s because she wanted to,” I say.
Callie nods, straightening her shoulders, like she needed to hear this. I say it again and again inside my head because I need to hear it too. But then a worse thought appears:If Remy wanted to disappear, then she’s never coming back.
I hear a loud cracking sound. A stick, broken underfoot, but it makes me think of bones snapping.
“You have to look carefully,” Officer Kelly said as he stood in front of the people gathered in the parking lot. The top of his lip looked sweaty. “Sometimes it’s the smallest detail that can lead us to a body.
”I trip over something, grabbing on to a branch to catch myself, but it breaks and I fall onto my hands and knees. The ground is wet and muddy. A wave of sorrow, heavy and sickening, washes over me.Remy is not, I think. She isn’t. My hands begin to shake.
“Are you okay?” Callie asks. She leaves her place in the line to crouch next to me. My mom, up ahead now, hasn’t noticed us.
“I’m fine,” I say, looking down to where the water has seeped through at my knees. Without warning, Callie starts to cry.
“I just have a bad feeling,” she says quietly. The wind blows a strand of hair across her cheek.
Isn’t this fun? Remy whispers.
Suddenly, the air is loud with the barking of dogs.It is exactly like the scene in the movie when they find the corpse. Everyone around us abandons their place on the line and starts jogging toward the road, where a cluster of people is starting to form. Callie turns and starts to run after them. I get to my feet but can’t make myself follow. I am not able to face this moment.
I watch from across the street as Zack White pushes his way through the crowd. “Don’t touch anything,” he says, his voice loud and authoritative. He’s got blue rubber gloves on.
It’s not a body, I say to myself. It’s not a body.
I hold my breath.
It’s not.
A body.
It’s a cell phone.
Remy’s phone with its black cat case, the glass on the front shattered.
Excerpted from This Is Not a Dead Girl Story by Kate Sweeney. Copyright © 2024 by Kate Sweeney.
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