17 & Gone (22 page)

have been startled enough to bolt up and

say, “Yes, ma’am?”

Her

second

night

away,

she

abandoned the shed. It was too close,

and now that she’d stayed out a whole

night, she was getting anxious about the

consequences of coming back. Part of

her did want to go home, but when she

stepped nearer to the trash cans, she

heard voices she recognized, from those

kids who lived on her block. She

imagined what they’d throw at her, like

the bottle that one time. Like trash in the

street. Like brightly colored pellets of

candy,

small

and

rock-hard

as

hailstones. When held in hot, grimy fists

they sweated off some of their coating,

so you could see the impact of them on

her clothes as if she’d been out playing

paintball. Orange, brown, blue, green,

red; the darkest spots where she was

hardest hit.

She was about to come out, but she

heard those voices. And she knew that if

she left her hiding place, if she went

home and returned to school, she’d get

worse things thrown at her. Far worse.

And then she’d topple. They could dump

all they wanted on her, the contents of

whole trash cans even, and she’d just lie

there, and let herself be buried, and that

would be the end of Shyann.

That was why she couldn’t ever go

back.

After the first night in the shed, she

spent one night in an old warehouse, and

the night after that in a condemned house

where the padlocks had been ripped

from the doorjamb so anyone or anything

could get in. Her fantasy of spending her

last months before she turned eighteen in

the wilds of a vacant lot, sleeping nights

high up in a thick oak tree where nothing

could bother her—that fantasy fell to

pieces once she’d experienced the cold.

She was constantly shivering, in dark

places where the electric and heat didn’t

work because the city had shut it off. She

tried to keep warm, but the winter nights

were long, longer than she’d expected.

She didn’t know how many nights she’d

be able to last.

The last thing she remembered was

something of a dream. Her eyes were

closing, and the cold had gone deep into

her bones, and she felt like she could

hear the whole city talking about her. But

they weren’t taunting—this time they

were saying nice things. The mayor

would lock them up if they didn’t.

All the girls at school, on camera,

they were going: “Shyann, please come

home, we’re so sorry. We’re saving you

a seat at lunch.” And the guys on her

block, they were going: “We only said

you’re ugly ’cause we want to get with

you, Shyann. Didn’t you know? We

thought you knew.”

Teachers were praising her, coming

up to the microphone one by one. Mr.

Wallace said how wrong he was for

blaming her for the candy dropped under

her desk and giving her detention for

eating in class. Ms. Taylor, who led the

grueling warm-ups in gym, swore on the

spot that Shyann would never have to do

extra sit-ups for being slow with the laps

again. And Ms. Atkins, the nasty English

teacher, publicly announced that she was

taking back all the Fs and awarding

Shyann an A.

Stuff like that. Stuff like her parents

saying all this was too little, too late,

and they’d homeschool her to graduate.

And they’d buy her a car. And she’d find

it when she came home—all shiny and

blue, wrapped in a bow like on

commercials.

She was too cold to move. Too cold

to get up and see if this had all come

true, but she could picture herself doing

it. She could see herself slipping into

that sparkling blue thing—hers, all hers

—and driving far, far away.

—
31
—

I
looked it up to be sure. They still

hadn’t found Shyann’s body—at least,

there was no funeral announcement, no

search party scouring the vacant lots of

the city, paying careful attention to

private hideaways and the climbing

branches of tall trees. They hadn’t found

her, just like with Natalie on that

mountain road two states away. And

with Fiona, down whatever road she

took, wherever she landed aside from

back here with me. None of the girls I

saw in the house had been found.

There were more stories still to be

told. More girls, their voices rising,

their

Missing

flyers

entering

my

collection. My memory expanding now

to hold all of their names.

—
32
—

ISABETH

Isabeth got in the car. Didn’t she know a

girl alone should never get in the strange

car when it pulls up alongside her, when

the man calls out asking if she needs a

ride, when even after she says no, he

keeps tailing her, keeps asking?

She knew.

On any other day, she wouldn’t have

accepted the ride. But what she wanted

her family and friends to know, what she

hoped they’d only understand, had they

been there, was how the rainstorm had

caught her unaware when she was

walking home from school. How the

burst of showers came from out of

nowhere and how, within seconds, she

was soaked. And that’s when the car

pulled up behind her.

At first she ignored him. Then he

pulled the car closer, and she happened

to take a peek and realized—a glimmer

of relief—that it was only someone she

knew. Well, sort of. The man’s face was

familiar; he was from around the

neighborhood. He knew her dad, or was

it her brothers? He worked in a store in

town, or was he a member of her

church? Either way, she’d seen him

before, somewhere.

“Need a ride?” this man, technically

not a stranger, called.

She hesitated.

“Come on, get in out of the rain,” he

said.

Isabeth nodded, and within moments

she was depositing her schoolbooks in

the backseat. She was climbing into the

front seat. She was closing the car door.

Only then did she waver. She hadn’t

done the wrong thing, had she? Did she

really know this man? Should she ask his

name to be sure? Would that be rude?

That would be.
So
rude. She didn’t want

to be rude. That’s what she was thinking

moments before she realized the door

had been locked automatically.

Isabeth had done everything she was

told to do for the past 17 years: She had

studied. She had washed the dishes. She

had kept her legs closed. She had stayed

off the Internet past ten o’clock. She had

joined her family for church every

Sunday. She had eaten her vegetables.

She had, once or twice, helped an old

lady cross a street. She had never once

rolled up the waistband of her school-

uniform skirt to show more leg.

She’d done so many things right, and

one thing wrong. She shouldn’t have

gotten in that car.

Isabeth Valdes: Gone 2010 from

Binghamton, New York. Age 17.

— — —

MADISON

Madison was going to be a model. She’d

been told she should model all her life,

like randomly when she was out

shopping for a cute new outfit at the mall

or sucking on the straw of her iced,

sugar-free, skim-milk chai latte at the

coffee place or just minding her own

business walking down the street. She

figured it was only a matter of time

before someone plucked her from the

great big nothing that was her life and

plastered her face on a billboard and

made her into Something. She figured

heading to New York would only bring

her into Somethingness that much faster.

She met the photographer online, or

talked to him anyway. He said he’d do

her portfolio for free, and he had the

lights set up in his apartment and

everything.

So Madison spent the entire six-hour

ride practicing her posing face in the bus

window. She had an expression she was

trying to perfect, half serious, half sweet,

lips pursed, eyebrows lifted, chin held

high. She knew the photographer would

love her for it.

Madison Waller: Gone 2013 from

Keene, New Hampshire. Age 17.

— — —

EDEN

Eden simply wanted a taco. She was the

one who saw the roadside stand at the

edge of nowhere and begged her friends

to stop. She was the one who raced out

of the car before anyone else did. The

light was falling, and picnic tables were

empty, and all she knew was that the

roadside stand said TACOS and she

needed one, right now. The rickety shack

was covered in hand-painted signs like

that. One said STRAWBERRIES and another

s a i d BLUEBERRIES. And the biggest of

them all said JEWELRY / PIE / WOVEN RUGS

/ CIGARS. Though the place was ready to

close up shop, Eden talked them into

serving her and her friends some tacos

slathered in cheese and sour cream and

pico de gallo and heaps of guac. But by

the time she and her friends were

finished eating, the place was closed and

dark and there was nowhere to use the

bathroom before they got back on the

road, so Eden had to make use of the

weeds.

The last thing Eden’s friends heard

her say before she trampled off into the

darkness beyond the picnic tables was,

“Back in a sec! Gotta pee.”

Eden DeMarco: Gone 2011 from

Fairborn, Ohio. Age 17.

— — —

YOON-MI AND MAURA

Yoon-mi said she knew the minute she

walked into the gymnasium for early

pep-squad practice. She knew as she

stretched and as, across the gym, the last

phys ed class of the day counted off into

teams. She knew as the class spread out

to start dodgeball, getting ever closer to

where they were practicing. And she

knew as she stood up to learn the new

cheer. She knew when she felt the smack

of impact as the ball hit her square in the

face. She knew as she fell backward,

and she knew as she lay there, staring up

at the ridiculously tall ceiling, where

caught in the rafters was a lone silver

balloon from the formal the month

before. She’d gone to that dance with a

boy, even though she secretly liked girls.

What she knew is that something

significant would happen today.

The feeling took shape and grew eyes

and a mouth and a face, turning into this

girl, this fellow junior named Maura.

“I’m so freaking sorry!” Maura was

going. “I didn’t mean to get you in the

face!”

And

there

were

more

people

surrounding them—the gym teacher, the

other juniors in last-period gym, and the

girls on the pep squad, a crowd of heads

and hands—but Yoon-mi focused in on

one of them.

Maura Morris, who’d moved here

from Canada last year.

Her future girlfriend who’d just

clocked her in the face during dodgeball.

Maura, on the other hand, didn’t know

a thing when she walked into PE that

day. Not even when she smacked the

beautiful pep-squad girl in the face with

a speeding dodgeball. Yoon-mi Hyun,

the girl to whom she gave two black

eyes—little did Maura know that, within

a week, she’d become her first

girlfriend.

The mystery wasn’t how they fell in

love—that was quick; that was easy—it

was what happened once they went

public. Their families’ reactions. The

kids at school. When Maura suggested

they could run off together and start a

new life up in Canada, she’d only said it

offhand. A little wishful thinking, a silly

dream. She didn’t expect Yoon-mi to

show up at her house with her bags that

very night and say, “Let’s go.”