17 & Gone (31 page)

Burke’s arm reached out and smacked

the silvery butterfly knife from the new

girl’s hand. It went sailing and landed

with a
thunk
, spinning on the blackened

wooden floor far across the room where

no one could grab for it.

It doesn’t matter,
Fiona Burke said to

Trina Glatt, as if they were the only two

lost girls in the room.
You know it

doesn’t matter, don’t you?

It matters,
Trina growled.
Give it

back.

You can’t have that here,
Fiona

Burke said.
None of us can have any of

the things we had.

It happened as we heard her say those

words.

One of the girls, Eden, crept over with

curiosity to retrieve the butterfly knife—

though it wasn’t clear who she planned

to give it to, between Fiona and Trina,

or if she meant to keep it for herself—

but before her fingers got close enough,

Fiona Burke had her foot in the fray,

stomping down on the knife to keep it

from being rescued. Trina got in the mix,

lunging forward to kick away Fiona

Burke’s spindly leg. But when she did

so, there was no knife beneath Fiona’s

foot. There was the blackened floor, and

the dusted ash from the fire in relief

against the shape of Fiona’s foot. But no

knife.

Fiona Burke wanted to teach the girls

a lesson.

You couldn’t hold on to what you

loved—unless you were Yoon-mi or

Maura, who loved who they brought

here.

You couldn’t have a keepsake in this

burning house. All you could have were

the clothes on your back, and even those

were illusion because they were the last

things you remembered wearing. (When

she said this, I caught a flash of them, of

all of us, ghostly gray and naked in the

smoky night. Then it passed. It passed,

and I looked down and my dream-self

was still wearing pajamas.)

Fiona Burke continued with her

lesson. All the girls couldn’t help but

listen. She knew more than anyone, and

this was the first time she’d shared this

information.

It didn’t matter what you had before,

or who you were before, or what you

did in the moments leading up to being

here. If you fought or if you let go and

watched it happen. If you were the one

who turned down the dark road on your

own, or if someone led you there.

Because you could be pissed off, you

could stab everyone in sight with your

boyfriend’s stolen butterfly knife, and

yet you could still end up here.

You could come here quiet, and you

could come swinging punches. You

could come and sleep for a week. You

could come here and try to leave, but

you couldn’t make it back down the

stairs and out that door. You could come

here and wonder what happened. You

could come with questions. Or with that

night’s homework half done. You could

come here the day you turn 17, and you

could come here on any day before

you’re 17 no longer. You could come

here any one of those 365 days.

You just couldn’t come here after your

eighteenth birthday. Not one girl ever

has.

That’s what Fiona Burke told us.

Then she said one last thing. Being

here meant you couldn’t be out there

anymore. She counted us all on her

fingers and then settled her eyes on me.

Strangely. Being here meant you were

dead—or soon would be. Didn’t we—

you,
me
—get that yet?

—
47
—

TRINA’S
knife. I had it. Outside.

Here, now, in my hand.

Or a knife almost identical to it, one

with the silvery coating and the blade

that tucked to hide inside itself but that

could snap out quick when needed.

Because you never know when you

might need it.

The butterfly knife was there in the

bathroom medicine chest when I’d

opened it in the night. It was late, closing

in on morning, and the dream had woken

me up. I couldn’t get back to sleep and

was looking for nail clippers, which

was random enough, but in their place on

the bottom shelf was this knife. I’d

patted it at first, to be sure. Removed it

from the medicine chest and studied it in

my palm. Closed the cabinet and looked

into the mirror at myself and what I had

in my hand:

Yes, a knife. So much heavier than the

nail clippers. Larger. And with so much

more possibility.

I couldn’t deny that a pair of ordinary

nail clippers had somehow transformed

themselves into Trina Glatt’s most

treasured possession, the one she was

banned from keeping inside the house.

The one I’d last seen under Fiona

Burke’s foot.

The blade slid out and begged me to

extend a fingertip to touch it. Just to feel.

Only to see how sharp it really was.

And it
was
sharp.

But then the knife slipped and time

slowed and I could see what was about

to happen.

How my fingers would lose their

grasp on it. How the knife would flip in

the air, blade side aimed down. How my

arm would be in the way. How the

impossibly sharp blade of the knife

would land, perpendicular to my arm,

slicing my wrist, and how it wouldn’t

hurt at first, not until I saw the blood.

Then I was feeling so much. This rush

of pain, all at once, radiating out from

that one line below my wrist and

coursing through me, pulsing in places

the blade of the knife hadn’t even

touched.

It shouldn’t have been bleeding so

much—it was one little slice. I rinsed it

in cold water until it numbed some. I

lifted my arm over my head because I

heard somewhere that if you get a cut

that won’t stop bleeding you should hold

it high over your head. Gravity will pull

the blood down to your feet and if you

hold it up there long enough, it’ll slow

the bleeding.

But, this time, gravity didn’t make it

stop.

Blood came pooling down my arm,

dripping all over the white sink.

The mirror showed me a gruesome

image of myself, the way the girls might

have seen it, if they were there watching.

I must have been making noise, or else

my mom must have woken from her own

sleep and needed to visit our shared

bathroom at just the exact moment I

needed her. Which at first felt like some

far-off answer to some unspoken plea

buried inside me. And then it flipped and

felt like the exact opposite.

Because next thing, my mom was

bursting in and there I was, dropping my

arm and hiding it behind my back,

forgetting there was a pool of blood in

the sink.

Don’t let her think—
Fiona Burke’s

commanding, distinctive voice started to

say inside my left ear, but that was

drowned out by my mom’s shrieking.

Before she wrestled the arm out from

behind my back, and before the blood

started coursing out quicker than before

and running in thick rivulets to the tiled

bathroom floor, before her eyes alighted

on the knife and the mess of the sink and

then shifted fast to me, growing wide,

and wider still, I think I knew what she

was thinking. And so I knew just what

she’d say:

“Lauren! Honey, what— Oh my God,

baby. What did you do to yourself?”

It wasn’t possible to be a girl with a

bloody arm and a dirty knife in my

mom’s world without having done a sick

and twisted thing to myself. To her, this

scene she stumbled on starring me and

the butterfly knife in the upstairs

bathroom could mean only one thing.

She’d read all about this. She’d gone

over the case studies in her textbooks

and written papers about adolescent

depression and done all that research to

get an A on the last one, and she was

hunting for signs she must have missed.

I would have argued it. I would have

explained, even if I couldn’t tell her

about the missing girl this knife belonged

to.

But when I looked down into the sink,

I saw the blood-smeared nail clippers.

That’s the thing: They really were only

nail clippers. And then I saw the shards

all over the bathroom, on the sink and

the floor and the shelf and even the top

of the toilet and the bathtub. The sharp,

bloody pieces of glass that reminded me

of Natalie Montesano, who still wore

bits of broken windshield in her face.

Oh.

Oh no. The mirror. It had been

shattered. It was beginning to look like

I’d broken the mirror and sliced myself

up with it.
Did I?

One glance at my arm told me I did.

Realizing this, there was a growing

sense of heat building up the length of

my body from the floor. My skin went

feverish with it; my gaze went red. I was

all red, inside and outside and

everywhere.

My mom was in shock, and so she

didn’t stop me when I reached out and

did what I needed to do next. I pulled

open her nightshirt, bursting the buttons,

to expose her chest. I had to see the

secret tattoo, the new art she’d had

permanently etched onto her body

without telling me first. And I didn’t

know for sure what I expected to find

there: my own Missing poster, done up

in crimson Gothic lettering with my

measurements and my eye color for the

world to see? Or instead, a My Little

Pony, a shriek of hot pink like a stove

burn? A cartoon heart, the exact size and

shape of the true heart my mom carried

inside?

It wasn’t any of those things, my

mom’s new tattoo. That was what

startled me. It wasn’t a tattoo at all.

It was skin. Her bare skin. Blank as a

porcelain sink before all my blood

messed it up.

She pulled herself away from me,

closed her ripped shirt, and then came

for me again, arms out, wanting to hug

me, I think, or wanting to stop me from

doing much worse than I’d already done.

The heat in my head.

How it buzzed, centering in on my

brain like I was about to lose my own

signal.

An

infestation

of

wasps

expanding up the walls of my mind and

burrowing into all my corners where I

hadn’t lived enough years to keep any

thoughts yet. They dislodged pieces of

me. Like how one time I was stung by a

wasp in the backyard and my mom

cradled me in her arms like she was

doing now and pressed a package of

frozen peas to the sting, and the peas

really did make the pain ease away and

now whenever I eat frozen vegetables I

feel a sense of deep comfort, of love,

because it reminds me of her. But why

was I thinking of the frozen peas at that

moment? And how come there was so

much blood? And why couldn’t I feel my

—

So dizzy.

Needed to sit down.

When my mom started shaking me,

saying, “Stay awake, baby, stay awake,”

the lost girls chose to remain silent and

refused to come out.

They kept silent as the room went

black.

And I guess they keep silent now, too,

because of what came after. Because

they’re afraid. Because we all are.

—
48
—

WHAT
do you do with a girl who’s

slit her own wrist with the shards of a

mirror? Who’s done it vertical, like she

knew what she was doing, and had every

intention to die? What do you do with a

girl who hears voices whispering

secrets in her ears? Who believes she’s

chased by shadows? Who has an

unnatural, unexplainable connection to a

host of missing girls?

Ask my mother. I know what she’ll

say because I woke up with the blue