17 & Gone (15 page)

demanded.

“I’m not going to,” I assured her.

“You’ll stay here until your mom gets

back. And you won’t call anyone, and

you won’t do anything. What’s she doing

out so late anyways?”

“She’s out dancing.”

She scoffed. There was something in

her tone that made me feel very small,

smaller than I even was with her

towering over me. “Oh, I know what

she’s doing. I think I know where she

works. Your mom’s not out
dancing
.”

“She said . . .”

“You know what your mom’s doing

right now? She’s grinding her tits into

some perv’s face.”

I remember how strange a picture that

made for me, with actions and objects I

couldn’t fathom at that age. And I would

think back on this later, when my mom

would tell me about her job at the club,

and then when she quit that job and got

an office job and went back to school,

and I’d wish I had said something to

defend her. But I’d never been able to

stand up to Fiona Burke, not for all the

time I’d known her, and especially not

that night.

Besides, that was when the truck

pulled up. First one man came banging

into the house, and then there were two.

Two men, and Fiona Burke had been

expecting only one. The first was tall,

and bigger than the width of two Fiona

Burkes put together, and the other was

quite short. I came up about to his

mustache. This second surprise man, the

short one, was the one who scared

Fiona.

I was surprised, too. What surprised

me was how much older they were. I

knew Fiona Burke was 17, and I

couldn’t estimate the ages of adults—

they all just seemed old to me—but these

two men weren’t in high school, I was

sure of it. They were far older than that.

When she started carrying her bags

out to the truck I realized the men were

taking Fiona Burke away—she was

voluntarily, assuredly going with them—

but they were also taking more than just

her. The little man was unhooking some

paintings from the wall. And the big man

was dismantling the stereo system.

With them occupied, Fiona returned to

my corner.

“If my mom asks why, tell her I hate

her,” she hissed. “Tell her I hate her

stupid guts, her and Dad both. Tell her

I’m getting a ride to LA and I’ve got a

job waiting for me and how’s she like

that? Tell her I’m never coming back,

not ever.”

I assured her I’d pass all this on to

Mrs. Burke.

But Fiona Burke wasn’t done. She’d

been holding a lot inside, all those years

since the Burkes had made her theirs.

She wanted me to tell her adopted

parents that they should have left her

where she came from, and why’d they

ever think she wanted to live in their

stuffy old house with boring old

strangers? And I think she would have

kept on going if I hadn’t stopped her.

“But
why
?” I asked.

I was the kind of kid who used to ask

that a lot, to any small thing and any

large thing, unwilling to leave anything

unanswered. Maybe not much has

changed since then.

Fiona Burke shook her head and

rolled her eyes. “You’ll understand

when you’re my age,” was all she said.

So dismissive, like I’d never get it; I

was just a kid.

I didn’t understand then—but I do

now.

The little man approached. He’d taken

everything he’d wanted from the house

and entered the dining room with hands

out and empty. Even so, Fiona Burke

flinched at the sight of him, as if she

knew what he was capable of doing with

his bare hands.

He wasn’t saying anything. He was

only looking. He was looking at me.

“What?” Fiona Burke said. She didn’t

stand in front of me or block me with her

body or anything, but she leaned ever so

slightly in my direction to let her shadow

cover me.

“How old is she?” the little man said

to her, as if I didn’t understand the

language.

“Nine,”

I

answered.

A

slight

exaggeration. Fiona Burke probably had

no idea how old I was anyway.

“She’s not going to tell on us,” she

was saying. “She won’t call anyone or

anything. I made her promise.”

“She knows my face,” the little man

said. “She’s looking at me right now.”

“No, she’s not,” Fiona Burke said—

though I was. I’d turned from the crook

in the wall and was peeking up at him.

His mustache made his upper lip appear

to be rotting and his eyes were smaller

than natural in his already small head.

While I was looking at him, he was

looking at me.

“Maybe she should come along,” the

little man said then in an odd voice, like

there were unspoken things below the

surface, murky and confusing things he

couldn’t wait to let out. His voice was

betraying him.

“But what would we do with her?”

Fiona Burke joked.

“Don’t worry,” he said in that voice

again. “I could think up a few things.”

She

caught

something

in

his

expression and made a strange squeaking

sound in her throat. A sound you’d emit

only when alone, behind closed doors,

where no one else could hear it. I heard

it. So did he.

The little man laughed in response.

“She stays here,” Fiona Burke said.

I didn’t know then that she was

speaking up for me. Protecting me. I

didn’t know a lot of things I know now.

The big man had returned, and there

was a new sense of urgency, someone

who’d called, somewhere they had to

be. The little man became distracted by

all of this and it was when his back was

turned that Fiona Burke did what she

did. She had me by the elbow, and then

when I was too slow, she had both my

arms and was dragging me out of the

dining room and down the hall. She

hissed into my ear to stay quiet and then

she shoved me into a hall closet.

It was dark and thick with the heady

scent of what I’d later discover was

wool. The wool was from her parents’

coats, decades’ worth of coats, and there

were pointy objects that were the bony

prongs of her parents’ umbrellas.

She’d jammed the lock from the

outside, or she’d known that the knob

would stick. I don’t know. Either way,

she’d locked me in.

I couldn’t hear much of what

happened outside the wall of coats that

confined me in that dark, small space.

When they were near the front door,

mere steps from the coat closet, I could

hear the little man’s voice—it boomed

bigger than you’d expect from his body

—slithering under the door and through

the layers of wool, causing a cool line of

sweat to trickle anxiously beneath my

pajama shirt and down my spine.

I would not scream to be let out of the

closet, and I was afraid to try the knob

again to see if it would turn. I wouldn’t

make a sound with him so close. Fiona

Burke would come back for me when he

wasn’t looking and undo the lock to set

me free. She’d do that before she went

away in that truck with them. She would.

The little man was asking for me.

“Where’d she go?” he was saying. “I

didn’t scare her away, did I? Call for

her. Tell her I won’t hurt her. Tell her to

come back.”

Fiona Burke refused. She must have

been standing very close to the closet,

but she didn’t open it. We were there

together, one thin slab of wood between

us, like our hands were touching, palm to

palm. I didn’t understand then what he

could have wanted from me. All I knew

is she was determined not to let him find

me.

“She ran,” I heard her say through the

door. “Out into the backyard, stupid kid.

She’ll come back when she gets cold—

she’s only got those pajamas on. Let’s

just go?”

“Oh, yeah? She’s back there?” the

little man said, and he must have made a

move in the direction of the backyard

because his voice got lower with

distance. But then the big man spoke—he

said very few words, but when he spoke

everyone listened—and he was saying

they had to leave.

I kept quiet. My mind was flashing on

Fiona Burke’s eyes, how wild they’d

looked beneath the wings of shellacked

black mascara as she hurried me out of

the dining room. She’d been frightened

of what could happen to me, and that’s

what frightened me.

At some point they left, drove away.

At some point Fiona Burke said good-

bye to the house where she was raised,

turned her back on all of us, and took off.

She didn’t leave a note. In a way, I

guess I was the note.

Only, she’d stuffed me in the coat

closet, and I was too short to reach the

string that would turn the light on—and it

was too dark for me to even see if there

was a string.

I don’t know if I could have saved her

if I’d opened my mouth and told

someone—her parents, the police, my

mom, anyone—about the men she went

with.

But—looking back on it now—I am

sure of one thing. She’d saved me.

—
19
—

SPENDING
the entirety of a night

in a small, dark space ruins all

understanding of time. A minute expands

into an hour’s worth of seconds. Air

rebreathed is made of less and less air

until you feel like you’re choking on

your own spit. The panic sets in and you

think you’ll never get out, that no one can

hear because no one is there, that the hot,

scratchy, heavy walls all around you

will keep you forever, and when you

hear someone yelling your name you

don’t know who it is at first. You don’t

recognize your own mother’s voice; you

can’t imagine that you’re safe now, that

you’ll be let out now, that there aren’t

two strange men and a cruel flame-

haired girl crouching on the other side of

that door waiting to take you away.

—
20
—

I
don’t know how many hours it was

before the shock of light hit me and I

could breathe air. I must have made a

noise inside the coat closet because,

soon, someone was pounding and I was

pounding back and she was pulling and I

was pushing and the door got unstuck

and the light was in my face and she was

there.

My mom enveloped me in her arms,

frantic. The colorful pattern of prancing,

dancing My Little Ponies had sweated

onto my skin, and I’d been desperate

enough to have to empty my bladder

hours before, so I was sticky all over,

smelling of sheep and urine, nearly

blinded at the shock of light.

I chugged a glass of water, choking up

most of it, and then when I found my

voice I told my mom that Fiona Burke

was the one who’d done this to me.

“Where is she?” she asked, seething.

Her hands left me for a moment to ball

into fists.

“Gone,” I said. That’s the only word I

could think to call what had happened to

my 17-year-old neighbor: She was
gone
.

“What do you mean,
gone
?” my mom

said. She sparkled in a flurry of rage. I

didn’t realize at first that she still had on

her work clothes, the kind of outfit she

wore when she danced at the club, and

that those sequins weren’t the scaly,

iridescent texture of her skin.

“Gone,”

I

repeated,

without

embellishment. I meant
gone from the

house
,
gone off somewhere with two

creepy men I don’t know,
but I think,

from the way my mom ran around

searching, she suspected that Fiona