Don't Try to Find Me: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

midnight. I’m lying in bed under the $600 quilt we bought from the Sundance catalog because it seemed so charmingly rustic, so fitting for our new old house, and I’m searching Marley’s iPad for clues for the umpteenth time. She’s scrubbed the thing clean, which I suppose is the final confirmation that she left on her own.
    I don’t know her passwords to the different sites (Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter) and my efforts at guessing have come to nothing. In the time I’ve been perusing, I bet some new site has cropped up and all the teenagers have heard the call, like a dog whistle, and migrated. Why didn’t I insist on having Marley’s passwords? Why didn’t we put monitoring software on her computer and phone? We thought it was enough just to be her “friends.”
    Behind our backs, all the parents we’ve had to call, the ones whose children we’ve questioned, they must be talking about us. Saying that something was going on in our home to make Marley leave, or that at a minimum, we’re guilty of negligence. We should have known. It’s always the parents’ fault, especially according to other parents. They’ll judge us, and they may very well be right.
    It’s cold in here. Old farmhouses are drafty places, even with double-pane glass in the windows and in the doors that lead to our balcony. It seems like too much work to use the stone fireplace. I pull the quilt tighter around me and stare at Marley’s Facebook page, at the Betty Boop–type cartoon that she’s got as her main picture.
    What’s public about Marley is innocuous. She mentions things she’s reading or watching or listening to, along with links; occasionally she comments, and responds to comments, about what other people like. Most notable is how impersonal it all is. I can’t tell how she feels about herself or anyone else. Maybe that’s the stuff she keeps private—as in, it can only be viewed by her friends and not her parents. That’s what “private” means these days.
    I can’t get into her e-mail account, though that probably doesn’t matter. She never checks it anyway. No one her age does. It’s all real-time, all instant gratification.
    If I’d been monitoring, I could have caught things like this, sandwiched between the pop culture references:

    Facebook
    JULY 25

    Marley Willits
    Has been losing sleep wondering what the hottest lip gloss is for summer
    Kelly Fontana and 2 others like this.
    Trish Allen bitchy much, M?

    If I’d been monitoring, I could have asked, “Is anything wrong between you and Trish?” They’ve been friends since third grade, and it’s out of character for Marley to take jabs at the queen bee. Or I could have “liked” it myself, shown that I admired her wit and lack of superficiality. She’d have known I cared what she thought. She’s such a talented writer, when she wants to be.
    Her last post was this one, a few weeks back:

    OCTOBER 18

    Marley Willits
    “Tell me you’re with me so far.” Gavin DeGraw, Where You Are
    There were no likes for that, no comments at all. Had all her friends stopped bothering with her? I think of her sitting alone, posting, reaching out, wanting someone to be with her, to tell her they’re with her, sending out this smoke signal, a call-and-response with no response, and I want to cry. I should have seen this on October 18. I could have “liked” it, could have said, “I’m with you, Marley, always.” Marley might have virtually eye-rolled me, but she would have felt the warmth inside her, and it would have risen, like baking bread, and then when I knocked on her door later, she would have said, “Come in,” and we would have talked all night. Or even a half hour would have done, if it was undiluted and honest. Because obviously, every time Marley said school was fine and her new classmates were fine and this town was fine, it was a lie. And the truth is, I was the one who needed this move, the one who orchestrated it, who was willing to