Poor Little Dead Girls by Lizzie Friend

talk about it. One day she was here, and the next it was just … nothing. Most of the girls still haven’t really made sense of it.”
    “Made sense of what? Did she quit the team or something? Transfer?”
    Jessica looked up from her lap and met Sadie’s gaze. “Sadie, Anna didn’t leave. She’s dead.”
    Sadie opened her mouth to respond, but nothing came out. She looked down at her hands and swallowed. “I’m really sorry, Jess. I honestly had no idea.” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh god. And I was in the locker room blabbering on about her in front of everyone.” She covered her face with both hands. “I’m such an idiot.”
    “It’s okay. You just didn’t know.” Jessica looked back down to the grass and picked a little white flower. She twirled the stem between her finger and thumb, then started pulling the petals off in bunches. “I just don’t know why no one told you.” She looked up again. “You never saw it on the news last year? It was a pretty big deal until they found her.”
    Sadie shook her head. “I guess I just missed it.”
    Jessica’s eyes strayed across the quad, and Sadie watched as they landed on the bench she had noticed the first day. The bouquet of calla lilies was gone, but there was a bunch of white roses in its place.
    Sadie frowned. “Hey, what do you mean before they found her?”
    Jessica looked at the naked stem in her hand and tossed it back onto the grass. “At first, she just disappeared. It was March, so lacrosse season was about to start, and we were together all the time. We spent every afternoon at practice and most nights watching film or going over our plays. We ate every meal as a team. Then one night she went to bed, and when her roommate woke up Anna was gone. We thought maybe she had gone out for an early run or something, but then she didn’t show up for breakfast, or class, or practice, or anything. We called her cell phone over and over again, but it always just rang and rang.”
    “Wow,” Sadie murmured. Jessica was looking straight ahead, her eyes glassy and unfocused.
    “They searched for weeks. First on campus, then at Graff. They spent two weeks just walking through the woods with a huge group of volunteers. Coach canceled practice so we could help. It was the worst feeling ever. Like, you were looking and you wanted to find something, but at the same time, you knew if you did it would mean the worst news in the world. They brought in dogs to search the woods, and then even the Coast Guard to check the water. Her parents hired people to investigate, but no one could find anything. It was like she just vanished.”
    She stopped, and her eyes were shiny with tears.
    “They never found her?”
    Jessica rubbed a hand over her eyes, smearing her mascara. “They looked and looked, and they never found anything. Not even a fucking shoe or her wallet or anything. They started thinking maybe she ran away, or was kidnapped or something. Then the cops started showing up less often, then not at all, and eventually it stopped being in the news every day. Then one day it was just … over. Some deep-sea fisherman found her body way offshore.”
    “Oh, god,” Sadie whispered.
    Jessica looked up, and they locked eyes. “They couldn’t even tell what happened. Her body had been in the water too long.” She shook her head and looked back out over the quad. She nodded toward the bench. “That was her favorite spot on campus. She liked to read there, even in the winter.”
    “Jess, I’m so sorry. I should never have brought it up.”
    Jessica sniffed and straightened up. She wiped her tears away with one hand and smoothed her ponytail with the other. She looked at Sadie and smiled weakly. “It’s okay. I try not to think about it too much anymore, but whenever I do it’s still really hard.”
    She took a deep breath. “Anna was really fun — you would have liked her. You guys even kinda look alike. She was tall, too.” Her eyes welled up