17 & Gone (12 page)

from where I’d parked at the bottom of

the driveway. He was a pair of legs

under the body of a car, so still it

seemed at first the car had fallen and

crushed him.

I knew it was Luke, the guy Abby

liked and maybe could have loved, in the

way I knew that Abby had been to this

house before. I could sense what patches

of lawn she’d walked on, because the

ground was still warm months after,

snow melted through to grass in spots no

larger than a size-eight shoe.

He must have heard my van pull up,

because he wheeled himself out and sat

up, staring down the driveway at me. He

didn’t wave.

From that distance, I wasn’t sure at

first if I recognized him from Abby’s

memory, but I did recognize him from

school. Jamie was right: Luke Castro

had graduated a year ago, and apparently

he hadn’t gone off to college or he was

home on a break, because he was still

here at his parents’ house, the same

address listed in last year’s school

phone book.

Luke glared at my van, his gaze

drilling holes through the windshield. I

wondered who he saw in the driver’s

seat, who he thought I was. I got out and

started walking.

I’m not so tall, and I’m not so short.

I’ve got long fingers, I’ve been told, and

long legs for my height, and, I’ve

noticed, a long nose. I was earringless

and lipstickless, but the pendant was

there around my neck, the round, smoky

stone mounted on the long string and

hidden under all the layers of my clothes

where no one could tell it was hiding

unless they pressed a hand up to my

chest. Then they’d feel its hot, hard

lump.

From where Luke was in the garage,

though, I would have only been a hooded

face outside an unmarked van. I lowered

the hood of the sweatshirt I wore under

my coat—one of Jamie’s hoodies, his

red one; he’d left it in my room weeks

ago and I hadn’t washed it or given it

back—and when Luke saw my face, saw

I was just a girl, his stillness broke.

He lowered a wrench and moved out

of the garage, coming closer. I realized

he didn’t exactly look like he had in

Abby’s memories. For one, his body

was . . . thicker. He probably had thirty

pounds on Jamie. He was also less

glowy than I remembered, the shimmer

of Abby’s gaze noticeably absent,

making him just some guy standing in a

driveway in broad daylight. He was

good-looking in that obvious, overly

symmetrical way I’d never been into,

and I found myself wondering about

Abby then, about what kind of girl she

was if she’d gone all gaga over a guy

like him.

Was
this the same Luke that Abby had

known? I thought back to the declaration

of love carved letter by letter into the

wooden wall against where she rested

her head:

abby sinclair

luke castro

forever

That’s what I’d seen. Luke Castro.

This guy. This guy, here.

My legs walked me over to him.

“Luke? Do you remember me? I’m

Lauren. I’m—”

“Jamie Rossi’s girlfriend,” he said,

stopping me, like that’s how I’d

introduce myself to someone, my identity

in relation to a boy’s. “Yeah, I know

who you are. What’s up? What’d I do

this time?” This last added with a grin,

as if he were happy to be known around

town for doing mischievous things.

“I don’t know,” I said, “what did you

do?”

His smile cracked wide open, my tone

lost on him. Besides, he wasn’t even

looking me in the face. “Hey, I like the

van,” he said. “No windows. Good and

private. Nice.” He wasn’t looking at the

van, either. His eyes were running up

and down my legs. His eyes took their

sweet time finding their way back up to

my face, and when they did the arrogant

look there showed me he didn’t care if I

had a boyfriend. Or who I was. I could

have been any female in skinny jeans

standing in his driveway and he’d

assume he had a shot at tugging them off.

I pulled the coat down and lifted the

hood of the sweatshirt.

That was what my body did and what

my brain thought, but then what Abby

wanted took over. It was having Luke

Castro so close that had brought her out

again. Her breath fogged up my mind.

For a second, as if Abby’s nails were

digging into my skin to keep me from

squealing, I didn’t want to say why I was

there. I wanted to do what she would’ve

done. To be her. To take over from

where she would have landed, had she

made it all the way here on her bike that

July night. To lean in and kiss him and

let him tug off my skinny jeans and see

what his body looked like under those

clothes. It was cold outside, but with

these thoughts in my head, it was warm.

I’d never been with anyone but Jamie,

and there was only the thinnest thread

holding me to him. How easy it would

be to break it.

But I shook my head and wrestled

back control of my mind. “I’m here

because of Abby. I heard you knew her.”

The sound of her name turned his face

an unnatural shade of blank. The kind of

expression someone would have when

trying to hide something.

“Abby Sinclair,” I said, watching his

face carefully. “I heard you guys hung

out this summer.”

Still blank. So blank I thought he’d

deny it. And then I’d have to remind him.

Abby’s memories of Luke, of the

nights she snuck off the campground to

see him before the night in question, are

full of lips pressed in darkness, and the

way his neck smelled, which was musky

from his cologne, and the way the planes

of his face caught the barest patches of

light in the darkness. How he looked

under a streetlight. How he looked in the

beam of the tiniest flashlight, so small it

hung from the ring of his keys. How he

looked under the light of the moon.

“Abby?” I repeated. “Pretty girl?

From New Jersey? Long brown hair?”

He straightened, and a shadow could

be made out, slinking across his eyes

and cheek, cascading down his chin.

“That girl from that camp down the

road?”

“Yeah. Abby. I know you know her.

She told me.”

“You a friend of hers or something?”

I nodded. I was way more than a

friend. He had no idea.

“Well,” he said, shrugging. “Took you

long enough.” He turned his back on me

then and walked up into the garage. I had

no choice but to follow.

Abby was deathly silent as I trudged

up the driveway behind Luke Castro. I

couldn’t see her anywhere in the snow

and I couldn’t feel her behind me.

Was she in the house? Had Abby

Sinclair been hiding here in Pinecliff all

along?

Once in the garage, where it was

warmer because of the space heater, and

darker because the sun didn’t reach, I

tensed, expecting him to open the door

leading into the house and then there, all

cozied up in a winter sweater knitted by

his grandma, would be Abby herself,

alive and well and rolling her eyes at my

intrusion. She would have known my

thoughts all this time, have been listening

in as if over a radio, playing with me,

teasing me, pushing me to see how far

I’d go.

I felt like a fool. I questioned her face

in my rearview, her shadow skirting the

edges of rooms. I questioned all of it,

everything about her, for the first time

since all this started. And then as quick

as the doubt had come, anger replaced it.

My insides flipped and seethed. Oh, it

had been Abby, haunting me ever since I

found her picture on the side of the road.

But not so I could help her. Not so I

could find out what happened. Not

because we were connected, somehow,

through Fiona Burke, who knew me, who

somehow

knew

her.

She

wasn’t

communicating with me because I was

meant to help her, because out of

everyone in the town of Pinecliff, in all

of Dutchess County, in this state, in this

country, in this world, it had to be me.

No. She was fucking with me.

All of this rushed over me, and I lost

sight of if she was a ghost or not a ghost,

a villain or a victim or a messed-up

teenage girl.

“What’s your problem? Don’t you

want this or what?” Luke was asking me.

And him. He’d been a part of it. I

wanted to punch him in his chiseled

nose, break it clean across the middle so

he never recovered and he lost some of

his luster and people called him ugly

sometimes. How would he like that? But

before I could make a fist, I realized

what he meant. There was no door open

into the house. There was no Abby in his

grandma’s hand-knitted sweater leaning

out, laughing at me for trying to save her

when she didn’t need saving.

We were alone in the garage as

before, and he was balancing a blue

Schwinn bicycle, holding it upright by

the handlebars. The frame was doused in

rust, and one of the tires was punctured.

“What’s that?” I said slowly, putting it

together. “That’s not . . .” I eyed the rest

of the garage. My panic soothed when I

heard her breathing. She must have

trailed me so closely, I hadn’t even seen

her shadow.

“Abby’s bicycle,” he said. “Isn’t that

why you’re here?”

“No,” I said. You see, the bicycle in

his hands was blue. Sure, it was a

Schwinn, but I could have sworn, when I

saw it in her memories, that it had been

green. Bright green. Green like the trees

surrounding the road she’d been riding.

Green. “That’s not it.”

“Uh, yeah, it is,” he said, rolling it as

best he could with the flat back tire over

to me so I had to take it. Its metal frame

was very cold, and its seat was gashed

open, spilling yellowed fluff and a

protruding wire spring.

“If it’s her bike, why didn’t you give

it to the police?”

“What do you mean? Why would I?”

“Because she’s
missing
,” I said.

“She ran away,” he said, and

shrugged. “That’s what I heard. Some

girl at that camp told me.”

I couldn’t speak. Why could no one

who knew her see that she hadn’t run

away? How was it that I hadn’t met her

in real life and yet I, of all people,

knew?

“She rode this over that night,” he

said. “Then she had a conniption when

she heard me on the phone—she was

late, I didn’t think she was coming, so I

called some other chick. So what?”

“She . . . She
did
see you that night?” I

wasn’t expecting that. “She rode all the

way here, on her bike? That night? Are

you sure?”

“Yeah, but like I was saying, she

didn’t stay long. She started bawling, the

whole freak show. Then she gets on the

bike to go and runs over something in the

driveway and
this
happens.” He kicked