17 & Gone (11 page)

and hid the pictures from me.

Our cat, Billie—for Billie Holiday—

leaped up on the back of the couch. Her

long gray hair made her appear even

larger than she actually was, and her

green eyes held on me warily. We’d had

her almost as long as Fiona Burke had

been missing.

“Yeah,” I told my mom. “I hadn’t

thought of her in a long time, either.”

She asked a simple question next. She

asked why.

This is how it’s been between me and

my mom since I was a kid: I’d tell her

anything. I’d tell her things before she

asked. I told her the first time I tried a

cigarette, at thirteen, and never again.

And as soon as Jamie and I were getting

close to taking it to the next level, I

confided in my mom and she made me an

appointment at Planned Parenthood.

That’s what happens when it’s only

you and your mom and no one else.

There’s a trust you share that no one can

get close to. My mom had a tattoo on her

left arm of two blackbirds in a knotted

tree; that was the piece she got for her

and me, after I was born. We were in

this tree, together, she liked to say.

Something breathed in the living room

with us, and I was the only one aware.

Was it Abby, whispering through the

hollow spaces in the walls? Was it the

rising voices of the other girls, who I

didn’t know were coming yet, so I didn’t

know to listen for them? Was it Fiona

Burke herself, haunting this property and

reminding me she could still have us

evicted from this house?

All I knew was something—someone?

—didn’t want me to tell my mom why

right now. I felt sure of that, almost as if

I could hear a voice breathing these

commands into my open ear:

Don’t tell her. Don’t tell her about

the dream.

I knew I shouldn’t tell her about

Abby’s Missing poster rescued from the

telephone pole, or about the summer

camp where she’d gone missing. Not

about Luke Castro, either, who I’d now

tracked down and would go visit. And

not about Abby’s grandparents’ address

in Orange Terrace, New Jersey, and

how I’d mapped my path there from our

front door. Not about the pendant I was

now wearing on a long string that hung

under two layers of shirts and felt warm,

oddly warm, against my bare skin.

I was not supposed to tell my mom

any of these things.

I spoke carefully, as if there were

someone keeping tabs on me from the

shadows, making sure.

“I don’t know why,” I said. “I . . . I

just thought of her. Like randomly. For

no reason. And I wondered if Mr. and

Mrs. Burke ever got any word about

what happened. Did they?”

My mom had gotten to her feet by this

point and stood there worrying the

tattoos at her wrists, winding her fingers

around and around them, as if she could

rub off the vines and start over with

fresh skin. This was a nervous habit she

had, when she was finding words for

something difficult.

She drifted to the window, the one

facing the hedge that separated our house

from the Burkes’ next door. The night

was glistening white and as silent as an

unsprung trap. Billie wove herself

through my mom’s legs and tried to look

up and out the window herself, though

she was far too short to reach and a little

too fat lately to go leaping.

Obviously I assumed my mom was

going to tell me that Fiona Burke was

dead. But she only confirmed what I

already knew: Fiona Burke had run

away, and no one had ever heard from

her again.

The Burkes’ house was dark, as if

they were away—and maybe they were,

like the night their daughter took off—

but my mom studied its windows as if

expecting a light in one of them.

“It’s so sad,” she said, turning back to

me. “I still don’t know what to say to

Mr. and Mrs. Burke, now, after all these

years.”

“Me either,” I said.

“I could have helped her,” my mom

kept on. “Fiona. I could’ve done

something. If I’d known.”

I could see how she took it in, what

happened to the girl who’d once lived

next door, knotting it up into her own

little ball of knots she carried around

inside, lifting it out every once in a

while to dwell. She was studying to be a

psychologist at the university where she

worked; it would take her years to get

the degree, as she could only take a

couple night classes a semester with her

tuition reimbursement while she worked

days in an office on campus, but I

believed she’d make it. I believed she’d

get to help people.

Still, I don’t think she could have

helped Fiona Burke.

“You two were close,” my mom said.

“We weren’t close. I hardly knew

her.”

“It wasn’t your fault, you know. Not

by any stretch of the imagination was

that your fault.”

She was thinking about the night Fiona

Burke left, and then I was thinking of it,

and then there it was, that almost-nine-

year-old memory, itchy and oily like

wool.

“I know it’s not my fault,” I said.

Fiona Burke had been babysitting me

the night she ran away, that’s fact. Her

parents didn’t come home that night, so

my mom was the one who found me

after, and she never once blamed me for

not stopping the girl from getting in that

truck, mainly because she didn’t know

about the truck.

Besides, I couldn’t have stopped

Fiona Burke, I told myself. She’d been

watching the road for a good long time.

Once on it, I don’t think there was

anything that could have turned her back

around.

So it was no one’s fault. There was

nothing I could have done.

This is when the idea came to me,

featherlight and drifting through the room

like tufts of Billie’s shedding fur. What

if that’s why all this was happening—

starting with my van breaking down on

the side of the road so I could find that

flyer—was it so I could do something

for someone else? For Abby?

My mom touched her cheek, absently,

as if she knew the exact spot where her

beauty mark could be found, the distinct

circle so black it was almost blue, on the

left side of her cheek, beside her lips.

She put her fingernail to it like it itched.

Her beauty mark wasn’t inked on in a

tattoo parlor; she was born with it.

That’s why it was my favorite piece on

her.

It was then that Billie hissed at no

one, as if someone had entered the room

who only she could see. And then, when

my mom turned her attention back to her

studies, I saw them, the twinned

shimmering outlines in my living room,

though it looked like they didn’t know

they were in my living room, that they

didn’t see me or us or even our furniture,

since they stood in the same space

already occupied by the couch.

My mom looked up because I was

staring. “What?” she said. “Still thinking

of Fiona?”

“No,” I said. My eyes weren’t on

Fiona; they were on the girl beside her.

I now knew for sure that Fiona was

connected to Abby and Abby to her,

somehow. They were reaching out from

wherever they were now, trying to let

me know.

They stood wavering like a two-

headed mirage in the space where the

couch was. Then, when my mom reached

out to turn on the reading lamp, like

shadows do when the light hits, they

disappeared.

—
14
—

THERE
was a witness. The officer

said someone saw Abby Sinclair ride

the bike off the campus of Lady-of-the-

Pines and into the night. He didn’t say

who the witness was. Of course he

didn’t; why would he tell me? But Abby

did.

It was another girl—a kid. She was

one of Abby’s campers in Cabin 3, and

happened to be the only soul who knew

that Abby would sneak off after lights-

out, and who she’d go to meet. This girl

carried around the secret about Abby

and Luke for weeks, first because she

got up to pee in the middle of the night

and caught Abby tiptoeing into the cabin

with a blazing smile on her face that

illuminated her teeth even in the

darkness. And then because Abby

wanted someone to confide in, and she

believed that this girl—with her frizzy

braids and her thick glasses, her lack of

friends and her innocent sense of

devotion—would never betray Abby to

the counselors.

And so, the girl ended up witnessing

more than the last bike ride. Nights

previous, she’d seen Abby slip back in

beneath the mosquito netting with her

eyes full of stars, her lipstick smeared,

and the grass stains riding up the back of

her shirt. The girl wasn’t there herself

when it happened, but she heard it

recounted later, how Abby and Luke

almost did it.
Almost
. This girl was

young enough to wonder, for hours on

end, in vivid-if-anatomically-impossible

detail, during games with balls she was

supposed to be in the outfield to catch,

just what “almost” could even mean.

It wasn’t so much a premonition but

simple curiosity that made her follow

Abby that night. The faint
slap-slap-slap

of Abby’s flip-flops were what had

woken her, as if Abby were being

careless and begging to be caught.

When the cabin’s front door swished

closed and the shadow of her favorite

counselor-in-training sneaked past the

window, she slipped out of her bed and

tiptoed outside. She felt the crunch of

leaves and pebbled dirt beneath her bare

feet and wished she’d thought to bring

shoes. Once she saw Abby make a run

for it past the mess hall, where the

counselors had gathered to be loud and

reckless now that the campers in their

charge were asleep, she knew she’d

have to run, too. And again she longed

for shoes.

Somehow she made it past the

counselors—in

there

laughing

and

popping bottles, not one of them glancing

out the windows to catch Abby or the

girl streaking past—and she caught up to

Abby by the bike shed near the edge of

the road. What did she expect Abby to

do once she saw she had company?

Welcome her with open arms? Let her

ride the handlebars of the borrowed

bicycle and join her on the hill past the

fence with Luke, lying between them and

making a game of searching out

constellations in the sky? Even better,

making it so Abby changed her mind and

didn’t go see Luke at all?

She didn’t exactly know. But she sure

hadn’t expected Abby to get so mad.

Abby snapped at her, called her a

nosy brat, and a few worse names

besides, and told her to get her butt back

to Cabin 3 before she got them both

kicked out. The girl happened to mention

that the bicycles in the bike shed were

for counselors only—she believed in

following rules—and since Abby was

only in training to be a counselor she

wasn’t allowed to ride them, and that

made Abby madder still.

The girl backed away, stung, and then

watched dejectedly as Abby pedaled off

on the old, rusted Schwinn bicycle

toward the main road.

That was how I pictured it.

I could put myself in place of either

girl: the witness, willing her not to go,

or Abby herself, the wind in her hair, the

blur of the road, those last moments of

gorgeous freedom.

—
15
—

WHEN
I pulled up in my van, Luke

Castro was in the garage, the sliding

door raised open so I could see him