Lisa McMann - Cryers Cross

Have you seen this girl? Watch the trailer for Cryers Cross, bestselling author Lisa McManns chilling paranormal thriller. (0:47)

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

SIMON PULSE
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Childrens Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
First Simon Pulse hardcover edition February 2011
Copyright 2011 by Lisa McMann
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part in any form.
SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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Designed by Mike Rosamilia
The text of this book was set in Janson Text.
Manufactured in the United States of America
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McMann, Lisa.
Cryers Cross / by Lisa McMann. 1st Simon Pulse hardcover ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Seventeen-year-old Kendall, who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, lives with her parents on a potato farm in a tiny community in Montana, where two teenagers go missing within months of each other, with no explanation.
ISBN 978-1-4169-9481-7 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4169-9483-1 (eBook)
[1. Obsessive-compulsive disorderFiction. 2. SupernaturalFiction.
3. Missing childrenFiction. 4. Interpersonal relationsFiction. 5.
MontanaFiction. 6. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title.
PZ7.M2256Cr 2011 [Fic]dc22 2010015410

For Kennedy

Many thanks:

To my daughter, Kennedy, for all the incredibly tough challenges shes endured with her OCD, and for letting me share some of it in hopes that others might understand or find some comfort. Im really proud of you, kiddo.

To my son, Kilian, for being one of my first readers, and for his discerning artists eye. Also for being the front.

To my amazing husband, Matt, my biggest supporter, who constantly picks up the slack without complaint when Im traveling or on deadline, and who reads everything I write, even when its rough, and helps me make it better.

To the White House Boys for telling their story and inspiring part of this one.

To Kendall Kovalik, for whom the main character is named, and her lovely mom who donated so generously to Project Book Babe to make it happen.

To Dave Gritter and Lindy Flanigan for your help with all the soccer stuff.

To June and Karl DeJonge for knowing so much about potato farms in Montana.

To Deke Snow for carrying my luggage to my room in Rochester and for being generally awesome in all ways.

To my agent, Michael Bourret, for the encouragement, the thoughtfulness, the never-ending hard work, and the laughs. You are one amazing person. I am so grateful for everything you have done for me.

To my editor, Jennifer Klonsky, who jumped on my extremely primitive idea for this book before I even knew it was an idea, and to the entire team at Simon Pulse for all you do for me and for my books. You guys are incredible and I love you and appreciate you so much.

To all the AYT actors Ive met over the yearsyou have been such awesome readers and spreaders of the book love. Thanks for telling your friends! And always remember that I am your biggest fan.

When it is over, We breathe and ache like old oak, like peeling birch. One of Our lost souls set free. We move, a chess piece in the dark room, cast-iron legs a centimeter at a time, crying out in silent carved graffiti. Calling to Our next victim, Our next savior. We carve on Our face:

Touch me.
Save my soul.

Everything changes when Tiffany Quinn disappears.

Of the 212 residents of Cryers Cross, Montana, 178 join Sheriff Greenwood in a search that lasts several days from sunup to after dark. School is closed, all the students taking part, searching roads and farms, trudging through pastures of cattle and horses, through sections of newly planted potatoes, barley, wheat. Up to the foothills and back along the woods. They travel in groups of two or three, some nervous, some crying, some resolute. Shouting to the other groups now and then so nobody else goes missingcell phones arent much good out here. Cryers Cross is a dead spot.

After five days there is still no trace of Tiffany Quinn. She is gone, impossibly. Impossibly, because to imagine that there has been foul play here in the humble town of Cryers Cross is laughable, and to imagine that sweet ninth-grade bookworm running away, going off on her own... Its all so impossible.

But gone she is.

Still, they search.

Kendall Fletcher flinches and casts regular glances behind her out of habit. Scared about the younger girls disappearance, true, but also unsettled by this shake-up in her schedule. The final week of her junior year canceledeverything left unfinished, open ended. Her whole routine is off.

She walks the hundreds of acres of her parents farm and beyond into the woods, wearily counting her steps through the potatoes and grain fields and trees. Counting, always counting something.

Her best friend, Nico Cruz, walks next to her.

Boyfriend, hed say.

But boyfriend means commitment, and commitments that she cant keep tend to make Kendall feel prickly. Come on, she says. Lets run.

She takes off through the field, and Nico follows. They pass an imaginary soccer ball between the rows, occasionally yelling out Tiffany! Once, after they cross over to Nicos familys land, they see a big brown lump where the barley field meets the gravel road, but its not Tiffany. Just a road-killed deer.

Shes not here. Shes not anywhere.

They take a break under a tree at the edge of the farm as rain starts to fall. Kendall stares and counts the drops as they hit the gray dirt, faster and faster.

Nico talks, but Kendall isnt listening. She needs to get to a hundred drops before she can allow herself to stop.

Eventually the search ends. Nothing more can be done locally except by professionals now. Its prime planting season. Farmers have chores, and students do too. Plus jobs, if they work in town or for one of the farmers or ranchers. Life has to go on.

Its a long, hot summer full of hard work for Kendall. For everyone. After a month or two, people stop talking about Tiffany Quinn.

In September when school starts again, Kendall arrives as she always does, the first one to the one-room high school, except for old Mr. Greenwood, the part-time janitor, who retreats to his basement hideout whenever students are around.

Kendall is tan and not quite freakishly tall. Athletic. Her long brown hair has natural highlights from her driving a tractor and working on the farm all summer.

There was too much time to think up there on that tractor, since all it takes is a GPS to run it up and down the rows. And when your brain has a glitch and its lap counter is broken, the same thoughts whir around on an endless loop. Tiffany Quinn. Tiffany Quinn. Tiffany Quinn.