17 & Gone (25 page)

murdered her.”

“Wait, what do you mean? Did you

see anyone in the woods?”

“No. Of course not. I’m just

assuming.”

It wasn’t something I was going to

assume. Some of the girls I’d seen lately

in the house had met terrible fates before

they walked up to the front door—it

could be told through their eyes and in

the way, sometimes, parts of their bodies

would go all pins and needles like they

hadn’t gotten used to having legs again.

Or the way the smoke would flow

through their guts like a magic trick, a

sad one, without scarves.

It was all in the patches of the stories

we skipped over, the unspoken ends.

Isabeth. Eden. Shyann, even, maybe. I

ached for them.

But wouldn’t I have known if

something like that had happened to

Abby, out of all the girls?

“What was that movie where they put

the girl’s head in a box?” Cass was

saying now. “You know what I’m talking

about, right? That movie? There was this

box, and they look in it and there’s her

head?”

I didn’t know the movie and hoped I

never would. I left Cass quicker than I

meant to, especially after driving all the

way there.

Talking to Abby’s camp counselor

had given me nothing. Worse than

nothing: She’d drawn a detailed enough

image that felt more real than the real

thing. I didn’t want to think anymore

about what she’d said, didn’t want to

picture it.

This visit to the coffee shop was what

propelled me down to New Jersey, but

there was another place I could try in

another part of the state. I had the

address. I still had questions. And

though I didn’t know how to make sense

of it, I couldn’t let myself believe she

was dead.

—
37
—

“SHE
ran off,” Abby’s grandmother

said when I asked her. “That’s it. That’s

the story. You drove yourself all the way

here to hear that.”

Her expression didn’t become pained

as she said these words, though I

expected it would. I found myself

watching her upper lip, the darker hints

of hair growing in there, the way the

hairs moved like little antennae as she

spoke. She was the woman who raised

Abby, her legal guardian. Within

minutes, I could already tell she wasn’t

the kind of grandmother who’d open her

arms to you, who’d remove the cigarette

from her mouth to say sweet things and

offer you a cookie. She’d let me inside

the house, though. At least she’d let me

in.

“And you went to that camp

together?” her grandmother asked for the

third time.

“Yes,” I said. “I was there. She never

said a thing about running away. I know

she had her wallet with her, and her

purse I think, too, but she left all the rest

of her stuff there, you know.”

“We know,” she said. “They shipped

it back to us. Of course we know.”

Her grandmother’s lips drew in on the

butt of her cigarette, ballooning up her

old lungs with the last of the smoke. She

was smoking indoors, windows closed,

slowly killing anyone who came near

her, and as she tapped the ash I could

see the similarity between this plastic-

entombed room and the rooms in the

house where my dream kept taking me. It

was the air. The haze of it. A feathery,

caustic mist of lavender-blue.

“This is a girl who ran away before,”

her grandmother said. “This is a girl

who stole money from her own

poppop’s wallet when he was taking his

afternoon nap in that very chair.” She

was pointing at the sunken armchair I

was sitting in. I imagined it would be

soft to the touch, but I couldn’t tell,

because it was encased in a skintight

layer of clear plastic.

“No,” I said. That didn’t sound like

the Abby I knew.

“Dear,” she said, “the girl you met at

that summer camp wasn’t the same girl

she was at home, with us, you can be

sure.”

I was sensing there were things Abby

hadn’t told me. A grave, troublesome

part of her story she’d completely left

out. When had she run away before?

Why hadn’t she mentioned this? What

more didn’t I know?

Abby’s grandmother’s eyes flicked to

the side table beside the couch, and mine

followed. There was a frame standing

upright, a two-in-one. The frame met in

the center, drawing the two sides

together

and

connecting

them

symbolically.

Almost as if her gaze had given me

permission, I found my hands reaching

for the picture frame. I picked it up.

On the left side of the frame was

Abby; I recognized her immediately. It

was the school portrait, the same one

used for her Missing flyer, but this was

the first time I was seeing it in color.

Her skin had a pink glow she didn’t have

anymore,

and

her

teeth

were

extraordinarily white. Someone must

have said, “Cheese!” to her before

snapping that photo, someone must have

forced her to have a smile that showed

teeth, because as I held the picture close

I could see how wide her lips were

opened, how prominent her teeth were

made to be, like an unseen hand was

holding a hard, cold object to the back of

her neck and telling her to grin or that

would be the end of her.

On the right side of the frame was a

woman with a pigtailed little girl in her

arms. Abby’s mother and young Abby.

Abby hadn’t told me what happened

to her mother, and now I wondered.

Because she wasn’t in this house, was

she? She wasn’t in Abby’s life. She

wasn’t here.

Her grandmother sensed the question.

“I’m sure Abigail told you about

Colleen.”

“A little,” I said.

“Abigail is exactly like her, I should

have guessed. Colleen ran off and

Abigail gets it in her head to do the

same.”

“How old was she, Colleen, her mom,

when she . . . ran off?”

“Old enough to know better. Twenty-

three.”

So she wasn’t one of them, then.

“That’s awful. I mean it must have been,

for Abby.”

“Drugs,” she said, and snipped it

closed. “Miss Woodman. Lauren, may I

call you Lauren? Do you have a

mother?”

It took me a moment to nod. Of course

I had a mother.

“And your mother, she’s still with

you?”

I nodded again.

I expected her to say,
Good for you.

So I could then say, if I dared, how it

didn’t matter: Having a mother couldn’t

stop it, and not having a mother wouldn’t

make a girl go. Having brown hair

wouldn’t make it happen; having black

hair or yellow hair or green-dyed hair or

a shaved head wouldn’t keep a girl here,

in this world, if she was destined to go.

Staying home every day or going out

every night. Taking drugs or not taking

them. Wearing that or wearing this.

Talking to strangers or talking to

nobody. Hooking up with boys or

hooking up with other girls or saving

herself for “the one.” There was no way

to know. If a girl was meant to go, she

just did. I believed that.

Abby’s grandmother stubbed out her

cigarette. “Abby always did want to be

like Colleen. Let’s hope she has fun.”

She breathed out, and the last of her

smoke made its way toward my face. I

coughed. I could see she’d decided what

had happened to Abby a long time ago,

and that was why she wasn’t even

reported missing for more than a month.

But I was there. I was there for a

reason, and maybe it was only to say

this:

“Mrs. Sinclair,” I said, “I have to tell

you. She didn’t run away. Abby. I know

her mother did, but she didn’t.

Something happened to her. She went

missing. You have to keep looking.

Please believe me. Please.”

My face was on fire from letting those

words out, my breath gone heavy and

hard to catch, but all she did was shake

her head. Then she had her hands out for

something, and it took me some moments

to realize she wanted the picture frame I

was holding.

“Give it here,” she said.

Before I did, I looked one last time,

not at young Abby and her lost mother

but at recent Abby. Abby at sixteen,

maybe, in this photo, maybe even just

turned 17. Abby forcing a smile that

showed all her teeth. She was wearing

something around her neck in the photo,

but I got only a glimpse of it showing

through the open collar of her shirt,

before her grandmother was on her feet

and rescuing it from my grasp, then

snapping it closed.

I wasn’t sure, because I had only a

moment to see it, but I thought the

pendant she had on was a swirl of smoke

inside a stone. Round and gray.

“If she sent you here to get any of her

things, let’s stop this right now,” her

grandmother said. “I’m not letting you up

there, in her room.”

“She . . .” I started, beginning to deny

it. But I did want to go up there; I did

want to see her room.

“No,”

her

grandmother

said.

“Absolutely not. I knew you were after

those earrings. She thinks she can send

you here to get them and sell them? No.

Lauren, it’s time for you to go.”

Abby’s grandmother led me to the

door, and only after I stepped through it

did she say to me, “When you see her,

tell her we assume she’s not coming

back. Tell her we won’t wait all those

years like we did for her mother.”

“How long did you wait for her

mother? Did she ever come back?”

“Oh, she came back. She came back in

a box.”

—
38
—

OUT
in the driveway, Abby’s

grandfather was shoveling snow. He had

his back to me, his shoulders hunched

into the work, so I wasn’t sure if he saw

me coming, if he’d overheard our

conversation and the decisive click of

the door closed in my face.

Even so, I was aware of him plunging

his shovel closer and closer to where I

was walking. He was moving down the

imaginary line he’d drawn in the white

powder, straight for me. If he kept it up,

we would soon cross paths.

When we did, the shovel paused in the

ground at my feet and I heard him speak.

“How’s she doing?” he asked, just loud

enough for me to make out, and just quiet

enough so his wife wouldn’t hear.

He kept his back to the house and his

head down, but though he leaned toward

the snow at his feet, his eyes weren’t on

the ground. They were lifted up, to my

face.

“You’ve seen her,” he said—not a

question. “She all right? Doing okay?”

There was no true way to answer this.

She was intact, with both her arms and

legs, and with hair on her head and no

wounds gaping open, none I could see.

But
how
was she doing beyond that?

Whenever I saw her, the expression

on her face was a different one

altogether from the school photo in her

grandmother’s

frame,

the

face

photocopied on the flyer. Not smiling.

Not even pretending to. No hint of teeth.

Instead she wore a faint question mark of

an expression, one waiting to be filled in

by the numbers with paint.

I could sense only echoes from her.

The echo of sadness. The echo of

longing to go home. The echo of craving

a peanut butter sandwich.

Sometimes she showed herself to me,

so why wouldn’t she do the same now,

here, for her grandfather who surely

loved her, and had certainly known her

longer? She could set a whisper sailing

on the wind. She could simply wave

from the window of the van if she were