17 & Gone (2 page)

without realizing. Without seeing her

there.

She came visible seconds after my

engine gave out, as if a fog had been

lifted from off the steep slope of our

railroad

town

that

mid-December

morning.

Abby

Sinclair.

There

at

the

intersection. I’m not saying she was

there in the flesh with her thumb out and

her hair wild in the wind and her bare

knees purpled from cold—it didn’t start

out that way. The first time I saw Abby,

it was only a picture: the class

photograph reproduced on her Missing

poster.

When the light turned green and traffic

started moving, I wasn’t moving with it.

I was arrested by the flyer across the

road, that weathered, black-and-white

image of Abby, with the single bold

word

above

her

forehead

that

pronounced her MISSING.

I remember being dimly aware of the

cars behind my van honking and

swerving around me, some drivers

flipping me off as they blasted past. I

remember that I couldn’t move. The van,

because the engine wouldn’t start, and

my body, because my joints had locked.

The green light dangling overhead had

cycled through again to yellow—

blinking, blinking—then red. I knew this

only from the colors dancing on the

steering wheel, which I held in two

fisted hands, so my knuckles that had

been green, then yellow, were now red

again.

Ahead of me, where the old highway

halted in a fork, a stretch of pine trees

braced themselves against the biting

wind. The pines were weighted down by

weeks’ worth of snow, but they still

moved beneath it, unable to keep still.

The slope of ground between them and

the road was white and pristine, not a

footprint to mar it. Centered within all of

this was the telephone pole and, hung

there as if displayed on the bare walls of

a gallery, the missing girl’s face.

I left my van door swinging open,

keys in the ignition, backpack on the

front seat, and abandoned it to run across

the intersection toward the stretch of

pines. A pickup truck skidded; a horn

shrieked. A car almost met me with its

tires, but I moved out of the way before I

could feel the bumper’s touch. I was

vaguely aware of a big, yellow vehicle

stopping short behind me—the school

bus, the one I rode before I got my

license and saved up to buy the old van

—but by then I’d made it to the pole.

I trampled through the snow to get

close. The flyer was old, the date she

was last seen long passed. Her

photocopied picture had been duplicated

too many times for much detail to show

through the ink on ink, so with all those

layers smudging away her face, and with

the snow spatter and the fade, she could

have been anybody really, any girl.

By that I mean she could have been

someone who had nothing to do with me.

Someone I’d leave attached to the pole

on that cold day, someone I’d never

think of again in this lifetime.

But I knew she wasn’t just any girl. I

had a glimmering pull of recognition,

burning me through and through, so I

couldn’t even sense the cold. I’d never

felt anything like it before. All I knew is

I was meant to find her.

The flyer had only facts. She was 17

—like I was; I’d just turned 17 the week

before. She’d gone missing from some

summer camp I’d never heard of—

though it was around here, in the

Pinecliff area, near this place that

overlooked the frigid, gray Hudson

River from the steep hill on which our

town was built. The commuter train that

ran alongside the river stopped here

nearly every hour during the day, and

crept past at night. The summer camp

had to be close.

I tore the page from the pole, ripping

it loose from where it was stuck fast

with packing tape that had been wound

and wound around the pole to keep her

from falling face-first into the snow, or

from getting carried away on a gust of

exhaust and escaping into the traffic

leading to the New York State Thruway.

It was the clear tape covering the details

on the flyer that had kept it from

disintegrating for all these months. It

was also the tape, so much of it, that

made it almost impossible to tear her

free.

When I crossed the intersection again

—more horns honking—and reached my

van, I saw that some Good Samaritan (or

a creeper disguising himself as a Good

Samaritan) had stopped his own car on

the shoulder to offer help. There was

some tinkering with the engine, mention

of a possibly busted fan belt, and a

plume of gray smoke that spat itself into

the man’s face and then lifted up into the

bone-white air overhead, a blot of hate

on the sky that already threatened more

snow. There was a tow I couldn’t afford,

and an hour waiting on a greasy folding

chair in the back of the garage because it

was too cold to wait outside. It wasn’t

until they fixed my van and I was headed

in late to school that I had a moment

alone to take a closer look at the flyer.

I didn’t tell Jamie or Deena, or

anyone. There wasn’t anyone I wanted to

tell. This discovery was mine, and I

wanted to hold it close.

My heart had an irregular beat that I

can almost hear again now, like an extra

thump was thrown in to make me think

there were two hearts in the van,

thumping.

There were—but I wasn’t aware at

first. This was before I knew she

followed me.

—
2
—

I ’ D
parked in the senior parking lot

even though I wasn’t a senior, cut the

engine, and was sitting there holding it.

The flyer. The paper was the same

temperature as my fingers—cold—so I

couldn’t feel either.

I tried to flatten the paper against the

steering wheel, smoothing the tears and

wrinkles from her face as best I could to

study what they said about her.

“Endangered Runaway” they called

her. A sliver of fear entered me when I

saw they said she was in danger, but

now I know that everyone under eighteen

who goes missing is called endangered.

On Missing posters, if you’re not an

“Endangered

Runaway,”

you’re

“Endangered Missing,” but you’re

always in danger—it’s never a “She’s

Probably Doing Okay, But We Have to

Check Since It’s the Law” missing girl.

Besides, Abby
was
in danger. I felt it.

I pored over her flyer again, learning

her hometown, her hair color, her eye

color, her weight and height. I learned

that she was gone before she was

reported missing, and I didn’t understand

why. I learned of her pierced nose. I

didn’t learn about her habit of writing

the name of the boy she liked on the

inside of her elbow, then spitting on it

and rubbing at it till it was clean. That

information wasn’t on the flyer, and this

was before she told me.

I would have pocketed the piece of

paper and gone into the school building,

and maybe all of what happened next

would have been different, but that’s

when I saw the light.

My Dodge van had one of those

cigarette

lighters

built

into

the

dashboard, a knob beside the stereo that

you press in to heat. It glows orange, and

then when it’s ready to use, it pops back

out. I’d had the van a couple months, but

I’d never used the lighter.

Now the knob was pressed in. An orb

of fire-orange was blazing from the

dashboard as if someone had reached

out an arm to light a cigarette. A

phantom cigarette and a phantom arm,

because I was alone in the van. I was

alone.

I told myself I must’ve knocked the

lighter when I parked. Or the mechanic

who’d fixed the engine got it stuck. It’s

been lit up, I assured myself; it’s been on

the whole time.

I looked out at the quiet parking lot, a

white expanse beneath the rising ridge

above the school. Nothing stirred.

This was when something streaked

past outside: a fast-moving blur, as if

someone were sprinting the length of the

school property. Someone wearing red.

My temples hammered, and I screwed

my eyes shut. I lost my grip on the flyer

and felt it fall to the floor. There were

stars clouding my vision, stars that

became one star, until then,
there
: the

sparkling cubic zirconia in her left

nostril.

She was visible in the van’s rearview

mirror when I opened my eyes. Bright

and searing like a sunspot, until my eyes

adjusted, or her heat dimmed enough so I

could see her clearly.

She’d taken the middle bench seat, the

collapsible one I hadn’t bothered to

collapse all week, as if I’d known to

expect her company. This seat was just

behind mine, but I didn’t turn around. I

could say that I didn’t want to make any

sudden movements, that I was trying not

to scare her away, but truth is I couldn’t.

My body wouldn’t move for me at all.

Her reflection in the rearview showed

her face at eye level. Her shoulders

hunched. Her two bare knees folded to

her chin, purplish blooms of bruises on

her shins like she’d crawled across the

icy asphalt lot, slithering between

parked cars, to reach my black van.

This was Abigail Sinclair from the

Missing flyer. I could smell her, harsh

and hot like a tuft of hair burning.

She uncrossed her arms and lowered

her knees, and I noticed that her T-shirt

had the name of the summer camp and a

picture to go with it: a veiled lady lifted

up above a trio of pine trees, as if in the

midst of being taken herself. The shirt

was covered in grime and streaked with

mud,

so

the

words COUNSELOR-IN-

TRAINING could barely be made out

above her heart. Below the shirt, I saw

she had on a pair of shorts. Red ones,

with thin white racer stripes. She had

been on the home team in Color War that

day—I found that out later.

She was letting me see what she was

wearing on the night she disappeared,

but I knew, even then, that this wasn’t

about what a girl was wearing when she

found herself gone. Nothing she could

have worn on that night would have

made a difference. Not these shorts or

another pair that were longer or less red.

Not a bathing suit. Not a bear costume.

Not a short skirt. Not a burqa.

There was so much more to her story I

didn’t know.

“Abigail?” I said. It came out in a

whisper.

Without a word or warning, my vision

shifted. I was soon seeing through some

layers of smoke and coughed-up haze

into what she herself saw the night she

went missing. This seeing was more like

knowing. I didn’t have to question it—in

the way that I can be sure, without

needing to check first, that there are five

fingers on my hand.

What I came to know was this:

She didn’t like it when people called

her Abigail. So I wouldn’t, not anymore.

And she did ride away on that bike,

though it was green, not blue as had been

reported. What I saw of her—what she

willed me to see—was a moving image

spooling out in the frame of my rearview

mirror, a home movie projected in an

empty theater for me and only me.

There she was, riding a bright green

bicycle into a sea of darkness. That was

her, coasting on a gust of wind and

letting her long hair untangle and fly. It

was a rusty old bike, one she borrowed