17 & Gone (38 page)

And if we destroy this place, this last

place

Abby

stayed

before

she

disappeared, will we set her free?

Maybe we will. Maybe doing this will

set us all free. Even me.

First go the cabins closest to the hill.

We set fire to the empty beds. Next is the

camp office, a small building with a

wraparound porch, and we run a line of

kerosene all around the porch, from end

to end. The canteen is a tiny outhouse of

a structure and we leave a fire at one

corner, like a bird’s nest. The canoes go

up as if they were doused already and

were just waiting to be set alight.

Smoke is in the air the way it always

is in the dream; it smells just the same.

But then something’s not the same.

Something’s off, and calling to me

through the smoke. A voice. And not a

voice in my head or a whisper at my ear

or the girls with the torches at my back.

This is an actual voice shouting out

into the actual night. Someone is on the

campground with me.

I’m afraid it’s a delusion, that my

mind has shattered and scattered all over

the snow. And when he reaches me and

he’s been running and the panic colors

his face and he says, “Lauren! Are you

okay? Lauren?” it takes me a long

moment to realize he’s not a ghost or an

escaped piece of a dream. He’s Jamie.

Jamie’s been here with me once

before, so I should have guessed he’d

know where to find me.

He’s shouting. At me. “Did you do

this? What did you do?”

He means the fires. When I glance

back behind him I expect to see a tidal

wave of fire, the coiling, curling lip

edged with girls holding torches as tall

as their arms will lift, so if they reach

high enough they could catch the night on

fire. They could destroy the whole

world they’ve been stolen from. They

could end everything.

But there are only the fires in the

places where I set them myself, and

there is a trail of kerosene in the snow

that no one’s dropped a match to light.

The fires are burning, and letting off

black puffs of smoke, but they’re not

near as large as I thought they would be.

The girls are nowhere to be seen.

“Why’d you do this?” he says quietly,

taking one wide step closer to me.

And I take the next step, to close the

gap. “I had to,” I say, the words thick in

my throat, forcing me to choke them out.

Also the smoke, coughing from it.

Making it difficult to speak. “She . . .

They . . .”

He holds me, and I have his arms

around me again. I know what I should

do is shove him into the pines and tell

him to start running.
Get away from me,

Jamie. I’m burning. Get away before I

burn you, too.

But there’s the way his body feels

pressed to mine. The way his fingers

brush away my tears when I didn’t even

know I was making any tears and the

way his mouth says the things that calm

the blazing fury in my head and there’s

everything we used to have between us,

not dead and trampled in the snow, but

here, somehow still among the living.

I have his voice in my ear, and it’s not

a phantom, not a demon, not a

hallucination. His voice that I lock on to

so it’s all I’m hearing.

“It’s okay,” is what he’s saying.

“Look at me. Lauren, look at me.

They’re not real. They’re not real.
I’m

real. I’m right here.”

—
61
—

WE
break apart when we notice a

flicker of movement down the hill.

There’s a figure in the distance who I

think at first must be Fiona herself, come

out to lure me away from Jamie and back

together with her and only her, the way it

was when this night started. But the

figure is in dark colors and appears

much larger than Fiona ever was, even

in my memories.

It’s a man. And I’m afraid I know who

it is.

“You called the cops on me!” I hiss at

Jamie, horrified, but he appears just as

shocked as I am, pulling me off the

pathway and into a thicket of trees.

“I didn’t, I swear,” he says, close up

against my ear. “Quiet.”

“But you called my mom.” I whisper

it as if I can worm my way into his head

for the answer, the way I have with the

girls. I watch his face as he stares down

the hill.

“Yeah,” he admits, “of course I called

her.”

“So she must have called
them
,” I say,

indicating the man at the bottom of the

hill. “The cops.”

The dark-clad figure’s movements

against the white snow are impossible to

miss. The man looks up, toward the fires

—he doesn’t seem to see us hiding in the

trees. Witnessing the fires blazing

appears to make him move even faster.

But not toward them. Toward something

else.

He’s headed for the maintenance shed,

along the path where I found my fallen

scarf. My stomach sinks when I realize:

the footprints in the snow, not an

animal’s, a man’s. The one who called

himself Officer Heaney. Is that what he

said,
Officer
Heaney, or did I mistake

him for something he wasn’t? Did I

assume?

Jamie echoes what’s coursing through

my mind. “You think that’s the same

guy?”

I nod.

“I’ve been thinking. About him. That

night. I’m not sure he was an officer . . .

A security guard, maybe. But police?”

“My mom said he wasn’t,” I say.

Whatever his name is, whoever he is,

we watch him struggling with the locks

on the door of the maintenance shed.

Pushing the door open, disappearing

inside.

“You saw that, too?” I say quietly to

Jamie, wanting to be absolutely sure. My

eyes can’t be trusted. I’m not positive if

any part of me can be trusted from now

on.

Jamie only nods, watching. He stays

very, very silent. His body straightens

and I swear he goes cold, colder than the

snow we’re knee-deep in right now.

Near us, the fires continue to burn. But

if we walk the path down and out of the

campground, we’d have to pass the

maintenance shed. I know now that the

man isn’t a police officer, and I feel very

sure that we don’t want him to see us.

He comes out carrying some things in

his arms—papers? A bag, or some kind

of blanket? We’re not close enough to

see what—and then he turns fast, down a

side path and into the trees, which I

guess is another way to get on and off the

campground that I didn’t know about.

He’s gone, just like that. He came here

only to take some things from that shed,

and he left with the fires still burning.

Jamie’s focus is all on me now,

saying we have to go. We have to call

911 about the fires, and we have to get

me out of here, and he’s torn, I can tell,

not sure what to do first. I’m reeking

with kerosene, my face surely blackened

by fire smoke and ash—I can tell when I

cough and wipe my mouth and a streak

of soot comes off on my sleeve. But

when we reach the bottom of the hill,

when we get to the turn that will take us

to the camp exit, where my van and

whatever car Jamie used to get himself

here is parked, I stop and ground my feet

in. The door to the maintenance shed is

no longer locked. In fact, it hangs partly

open, as if there’s nothing in there to

hide.

Of course I have to see.

Jamie doesn’t understand; he’s still

pulling me away, saying we need to get

out of there, I’ll be caught, they’ll know I

did this, I’ll be arrested for arson, and

more things I can’t hear. The fires are

burning. And yet I won’t budge.

I feel sure I’m going to find someone

inside that shed.

I imagine her: Abby Sinclair, in the

flesh. I imagine with so much of me that I

even begin to think I can hear her voice.

That she’s in there. That I’ve brought her

to life. That now she’s calling out—for

help, from me.

Fiona Burke was right: Setting the

fires has led me to her, the real girl she

is apart from her Missing poster. It’s

happened as Fiona told me it would.

Even Jamie should be able to see.

But now the image before me flickers,

and it’s not the dreamscape that comes

back to me this time. It’s the questions.

In a rush I think about what the doctor

said. Those nurses at the hospital, the

ones who couldn’t remember my name,

who gave me the pills in the little paper

cup. Does this mean they’re right about

me?

This girl shouting for my help, she’s a

voice in my head—that’s what they’d

tell me. They’d tell me Fiona Burke is a

figment of my imagination, one grown

from a traumatic night in my past and

turned real. They’d tell me all the girls

are visions I’ve brought to life from the

Missing notices I found online and on

bulletin boards and in the post office.

Those girls may indeed be real, but my

dreams that star them, my conversations

among them, the memories of theirs I’ve

walked through, all of that, every detail

and flash of color and cough of smoke,

every ounce, is a delusion I’ve

concocted. Isn’t that what the doctor

would tell me? These girls don’t know I

exist. They don’t know I’ve claimed

them and made them a part of my life,

sleeping with their photocopied faces

under my mattress every night. That this

is my psychosis.

That I was—and continue to be—

making this all up.

But then I have to answer the

questions with more questions: What if

that voice calling for help
is
real?

What if I’ve found Abby Sinclair,

who went missing from this place

months ago and who’s been kept here, a

prisoner, all this time? What if I made

everything up except for this?

All I have to do is push open that door

to find out.

And if there’s no one inside, if there’s

no body attached to the voice that’s

screaming and I turn around and I feel

my throat and I discover it’s my own

voice, my delusion, my dream come to

violent life, I’ll admit I’m wrong.

I’ll be what they say I am, and I’ll

disown all I’ve seen. I’ll swallow the

pills for the rest of my natural-born life.

—
62
—

WHEN
the door opens to silence—

and darkness; and no girl, alive or not

alive; no girl at all—I think I’ve lost

everything. Most of all, my mind.

Because I was wrong. Everything

about me is wrong.

Maybe that’s why I’m not able to see

the shine of it for some time. But when I

do—when it catches the light somehow,

when it flashes, brighter than the fire

outside and brighter than all the snow—

my breath goes with it.

It fell, I guess, on the ground, when he

was carrying out whatever he had in his

arms. It fell facedown, splayed open on

the concrete.

I am holding it in my hands when I

hear the sirens. When the fire truck

comes and the police after that. I am

holding it in my hands.

It’s made of plastic; it’s purple,

gaudy,

and

shiny,

with

glitter

sandwiched between the translucent

decorative sleeves. Its pockets are

stuffed full, so the single snap doesn’t

work to keep it closed. And inside there

are pictures of her and her friends, and a

mass of loose change that spills out all

over my boots, nickels mostly, and

there’s an ID card from a Catholic

school in New Jersey, and ticket stubs

and clothing tags and little scrawled

notes for things she may have wanted to

remember and a dollop of chewed gum

making some of the contents stick