The Good Girls

Chapter 16

AFTER DROPPING UMA OFF, Audrey gripped the steering wheel hard, her vision steady. Instead of turning off toward her house, she took a left up a steep road that wasn't regularly traveled. Unless you were going to the Upper Auradon Correctional Facility—which Audrey was. It was where Audrey was being held. Bail was set at twenty-five thousand dollars, and his parents, two teachers, were still trying to raise that kind of money.

There were all kinds of things she should be doing this evening, like studying for a history exam or updating her Lady Macbeth Facebook page—a project for AP English.

But something inside her had cracked today. It was something she couldn't really explain, a trigger she couldn't put her finger on, but all of a sudden she'd realized, she had to go see Chad in prison. No matter how many newscasts she watched of kids saying how Chad had violently beaten up that kid at his old school, she needed to hear him tell her that. More important, she needed him to tell her that he wasn't guilty, that he hadn't killed Jay.

Her phone buzzed, and she looked down. Hey, I still have your lip gloss, Uma texted. Wanna swing back for it?

Audrey had let Uma borrow the lip gloss in the car, but there was no way she was going back now—or explaining what she was about to do. I'll get it at school, no biggie, she replied. It was weird: She probably could tell the girls that she was visiting Chad. But she wanted to keep this to herself, until she figured it out a little more.

When she pulled into the police complex fifteen minutes later, she was still trying to figure out what she was going to say. Rolling back her shoulders, she walked through a door marked VISITORS and wrote her name down on a clipboard.

After a terrifying check-in and pat-down process, during which Audrey was pretty sure the female officer gave her an extra squeeze or two while no one was looking, she sat in the visitors' room. The concrete floor was mottled and stained by mysterious substances, and the cold metal tables and chairs were bolted to the floor. The air had a sharp tang to it, as if urine and toxic cleaning fluids had melded together to create a new brand of oxygen. Audrey's nose burned. The thought of Chad alone in this place sent a pang through her.

A heavy metal door creaked open at the back of the room, and Audrey reflexively jumped to her feet. A linebacker-sized guard lumbered through first, then stepped to the side, revealing a pale, exhausted, and handcuffed Chad. Audrey's heart leaped into her throat, and she choked back a sob.

Chad raised his head and looked up at her. His gaze was so intense, so desperate, and so sad. He seemed heartbroken. Audrey resisted the urge to run over and wrap her arms around him.

"Chad—" she started.

"I'm sorry," he said at the same time. "Audrey, I'm so sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen. I didn't mean to get you in trouble. I know you didn't do this—any of it." He held his breath, trying to stem the tide of emotion. Audrey suspected he was trying hard not to cry. Chad was the emotional one in their relationship: God, he'd cried during Toy Story 3. That memory made her want to cry, suddenly, but she held it together.

"You didn't do it, right?" she whispered.

Chad shook his head fiercely. "Of course not. I would never—Audrey, I could never kill someone. You know me better than that."

Audrey nodded. "I know. I just needed to hear you say it." She plopped down into the hard seat. "But why did you go over there? Why did you text Jay? And what happened at your old school?"

Chad sat across from her and leaned over the table toward her before continuing. "Well, I'll start with the easiest one. I texted Jay, Don't touch my girlfriend again or I'll kill you because you told me he'd hit on you, and then the police didn't even believe you." He lowered his eyes. "I'm sorry. It was stupid. I just . . . felt so, helpless, you know?"