17 & Gone (36 page)

uncomfortable—and it’s while his mouth

moves that time slows around him and

he doesn’t seem to notice. I’m slow

enough to see through it, and what I can

see is Fiona standing up from the chair

she’s been parked in all afternoon and

walking with purpose over to us. She’s

behind Jamie’s chair now. Now she’s

reaching out her arm and slugging a hand

into Jamie’s open coat pocket.

So slow, and also fast. Too fast. In no

time, Fiona has picked Jamie’s pocket

and rescued my van keys.

I don’t want her to bother me with this

now. She’s easier to deal with when she

stays catatonic in the vinyl chair in the

corner, barely blinking. Yet now she’s

dancing behind Jamie’s back, making a

game of it, and when he whips around to

see what’s got my attention she rises to

her toes and throws them.

She doesn’t know me so well. If she

did, she’d know I can’t catch any objects

pitched straight at me, which is why I

always do so dismally in the forced ball

games during gym. But what she’s done

has surprised me, and in the shock of

realizing she’s tossed my keys over

Jamie’s head, I have this vision of my

good arm shooting out on instinct and my

good hand opening. I can see it like it’s

already been done and happened: the

keys landing there, perfectly timed and

well-aimed. It makes as much sense as if

I’d simply reached out myself and

plucked the keys from Jamie’s gaping

pocket when he wasn’t looking.

I can’t fault her. When Fiona sees an

opportunity, she takes it. Maybe that’s

why she ran off with those two guys all

those years ago. It wasn’t either of them

she wanted to be with—it was that they

had a truck, they had the means to get her

out of there, and so she gambled on it, in

case she never had another chance again.

I don’t mean to get Jamie in trouble,

or leave him stranded, but if this is my

only time to go free, shouldn’t I take it?

Shouldn’t I catch the keys in my open

hand and wait for a moment when no

one’s looking and find my way to the

back stairs I remember taking in the fire

drill? Shouldn’t I follow her lead and

go?

—
58
—

I’M
17 now, I have been since last

month, and I think it must have changed

me like it changed Fiona all those years

ago. It’s made me shrink away from the

people in this world who care about me,

and obsess over people I’ve never met

in real life.

It’s put me in danger, the way it did

her. But it’s also opened my mind, and

my ears, and I don’t think there’s a way

to close either now, after this. I’ve been

changed down through to my bones.

Fiona likes me better this way, I can

tell. We’re the same age now, but, still,

she wants to protect me. She won’t say

so aloud; she doesn’t have to. It’s clear

from how she refuses to leave my side. I

know she doesn’t want the shadow-

fingers in my hair, playing with the

jagged wisps at the back of my neck,

tugging a little, trying to get a good grip.

She doesn’t want the shadow-hands

tightening in a stranglehold around my

throat. She’s broken me out of the psych

ward to
help
me, she says, to keep me

from getting stuck in that house and

ending up lost the way the rest of them

did, the way
she
did, she reminds me.

And I did want out. It’s the only way I

can help the others. And Abby. Abby

especially. Fiona keeps assuring me it’s

not too late.

The plan forms as we drive. Its pieces

click together almost too easily, as if in

her quiet stupor in the corner of the

common room she was devising this

outing all along. There’s something we

need to do; and tonight is the night we

must do it.

There are certain things we agree on,

philosophically: To save myself, we

have to save the others. You can’t have

one and not both.

To save Abby, we must pinpoint her

location first. Fiona assures me we’re

gaining on her; we’re close.

We agree that the lost girls can’t be

left in that house. Whatever kind of

limbo it may be—made of charred wood

and tattered curtains, burned things and

ash—it’s still a place that’s not here and

not there. It’s the in-between, and

whoever’s shown her face there is stuck

in the smoke where no one can find her.

Where no one can know her end.

Isn’t it better for people to know?

Fiona says. And I think of her, wrapped

in mystery, how her parents still don’t

have a clue what became of her. And I

think of Abby Sinclair, her fate

unspoken, and I think of the others, their

gaping stories without any definable

finish. It’s better to know, I decide, than

to never.

Fiona and I agree that the hospital was

not the place for me. We agree I should

be allowed to stop on the road for a

burger and fries, because she might not

be able to eat solid foods, but I still can,

and we agree it was a good thing I only

pretended to swallow my last round of

pills. Fiona says her head feels clearer

already.

We do agree on so much. But there

are other things I sense Fiona wants to

keep to herself until the time comes,

possibly so she won’t scare me off.

Details, mostly. Like not mentioning

exactly where we’re headed. She directs

me on a circular route through snowy

back roads, avoiding fallen trees and

numbered highways.

They’ll be waiting for us, she says.

All the girls will be; we just have to get

ourselves to them. It’s those pills.

Whatever’s in them kept me from

visiting the dream. But it was also the

hospital itself, the walls there that kept

my dream-self from stepping in where it

belonged. That, too, she says.

This has to be done, she says. This is

the only way, she assures me when I ask

if maybe I should look for a pay phone

somewhere and call my mom. We can’t

call Mom yet. I won’t be able to see the

girls otherwise. But I have her, Fiona

says, so it’s okay. I have her, and she’ll

take me to them.

She stretches out in the front

passenger seat of my van beside me, her

legs up on the high dashboard and her

feet pressed against the slope of the

windshield like she might kick it out at

any moment and cover us in glass,

knowing it wouldn’t hurt her, but it

would hurt me. That’s the old Fiona, I

tell myself. She wouldn’t do that to me

now. She might tease, but she wouldn’t

actually kick.

She becomes more animated the

farther we get from the hospital. Her

voice is clear, her eyes bright. And

there’s a cunning curve to her lips

sometimes as she points me down this

road and that road, leading the way.

I keep an eye on her as I drive. It’s

late afternoon and already the light is

falling fast, bringing with it a dark night.

In that low light what I see is my former

babysitter, the neighbor girl who ran off

and left me suffocating in a coat closet

for my own protection, a flash-point

decision that proved to be the right one.

Her flame-dyed hair reveals her natural

dark roots as it did then. The
FU

scrawled on her thigh is now facing me,

right side up.

Everything Fiona has said makes

logical sense to me, until I see the road

she has us driving. Dorsett Road is more

narrow and twisting, coming from this

end, which was closer to the side of the

river where the hospital could be found,

and the hills are all leading downward

instead of up. The entrance to the Lady-

of-the-Pines Summer Camp for Girls has

been piled with snow, as if a snowplow

gathered all the weather from every

corner of Pinecliff and deposited it in

this spot to keep me out.

I’ve slowed, but I haven’t stopped.

“Not here?” I ask.

Yes, here,
she says.
Don’t play dumb.

There’s nowhere to park near the gate,

so I have to leave the van at the edge of

the road, only half hidden in the trees,

and I don’t know how I’ll get back out,

with the way my tires are jammed in.

I shut off the engine. Still, I hesitate.

What?
she says.
You were thinking

we’d find that brick building with the

gate? That we’d drive to some street

and there it’d be? Popped up like a

mushroom from your little dream?

I don’t nod. Then again I don’t
not

nod.

She sighs, showing she’s on her last

nerve, then gazes out at the gate

separating us from the campground.

It’s where this all started,
she says,

waving her arm at it.
This sick,

disgusting

place

where

whatever

happened to her happened. Do you

want to help Abby or not?

I nod. I do.

And the others?

I nod. All of them, I do.

Then we have to do it here. Where

else?

—
59
—

SO
much snow since I last visited. But

not enough to keep us out.

We trudge through it to reach the gate.

There, we discover that the broken chain

on the fence has been replaced with a

much thicker one, along with a more

sturdy lock, a gold one, shiny new and

too solid to get through without a big

hammer. The top of the gate is still

woven with coils of barbed wire, but

Fiona is undeterred. I expect her to hoist

herself up on the chain link and climb

over—because how would the barbed

wire cut through smoke, if that’s what

she’s made of? How would it cut

through a ghost, a memory, an idea? But

she won’t do it. She says we’ll have to

find another way in.

After maneuvering over a snowbank

and circling widely past the first set of

trees, we do find another entrance.

Really, the whole pine forest is an

entrance. We come in through the back

way, past the offices and a maintenance

shed made of gray concrete blocks.

There are prints in the snow leading up

to its door, there are prints to the

compost pile, and there are prints

heading into the darkened woods, but

Fiona waves at me from far up the path.

I’m slow.

Fiona isn’t cold, but I am, and then,

like it’s been left out for me to find, I

discover my own scarf lying in a knot in

the snowy path—I must have dropped it

weeks ago, though I don’t remember

walking this particular path at the edges

of the campground. So how would I have

dropped it here? It doesn’t matter,

because I pick it up and shake off the

snow and wrap it twice around my neck.

And it helps, a little.

It won’t be so cold soon,
Fiona tells

me, making me shiver. I can’t help but

wonder if she means it won’t be so cold

after you die. If it’s warm and snug when

it’s over, and the star-shine glowing

down over you warms your skin. If that’s

what she’s telling me. If that’s really

what’s about to happen tonight.

I follow her along a path and up a hill,

made more difficult by the container of

kerosene we discover and liberate from

under a tarp near the firewood. She

makes me carry the kerosene to the

circle of stones, so we can build

ourselves a fire. It’s what will bring

them out the quickest, she says. A fire,

she says, to smoke out Abby and the rest

of the girls.

A fire, like she was pointing to in the

hospital. Fiona Burke has always

wanted a fire.

I’m following her and doing what she

tells me to do—just like that night when