17 & Gone (40 page)

happened to them. But the part about you

knowing the girls, talking to them . . .

Lauren, sweetie, you know that’s

not . . .”

“Real,”
I said for her, so she

wouldn’t have to use such a dangerous

word. “Mom, I’m sorry. I know that

now.”

It hurts to know. It mortifies me. But

all of what my mom says is true; the

doctors have made me face it and say it

out loud and admit to everything.

Since that night, I have a court date

coming up because of the fires, and

Jamie does, too, which isn’t fair, but my

lawyer says I can explain everything

when I plead guilty. He expects

community service, since he’ll be

arguing that I was mentally impaired.

And Abby has gone back home to

New Jersey. I’ve watched what I could

about her on the news, as much as they’d

let me, and I recall being hung up on the

fact that she didn’t look the way she did

in my mind. Her face was mostly the

same as the one on the Missing poster,

but her body was different. She was

shorter than I thought, from those visions

of her gliding away on the Schwinn, and

her hands didn’t look the way I

remember her hands looking, and her

hair was curlier and, from the side, there

was an unrecognizable slope to her nose.

Also, when she spoke for the cameras in

an interview my mom saved for me to

watch, I was struck by how her voice

wasn’t the voice I heard in my head. It

was the voice of a stranger.

But she was found, and she was alive.

And the man—whose name wasn’t even

Heaney—was arrested, charged with a

list of crimes my mom wouldn’t read

aloud to me from the newspaper. His

trial is coming up soon.

This is not a part of the story I

invented. Not pieces of my mind come

loose. Not flashes from dreams. People

keep assuring me that Abby was found,

and they have the same response every

time I ask, so I’m choosing to believe

them. It’s not like the rock that still

hasn’t turned back into the pendant, even

when I look at it from all angles, upside

down, sideways, with lights on and

lights off. It’s still a rock I found on the

side of the road.

Also, I have the letter now. It was

waiting for me when I was released. I

think my mom held on to it for a long

time, not sure if she should show me. I’m

glad she did, even though it shoves me

right back into everything whenever I

read it.

Her handwriting slants forward, and

her round letters bubble, making me

think she was a cheerful person, or is

trying to be. She used green pen and a

piece of ruled paper from a notebook

instead of stationery. I’ve let my fingers

run over the ridges on the back of the

paper, feeling where her pen pressed

down, feeling for the words that were

heaviest to write, the worst ones. I like

that she wrote it all down. She could

have e-mailed, and this is so much

better.

Dear Lauren,
she starts.
I keep trying

to write you this, but it’s hard because

I don’t know what to say. The police

told me what you did. My grandma told

me you visited. I know we never met or

anything and this feels really weird,

but I need to say thank you.

She goes on, telling me how hard life

has been since she’s come home, fitting

back in with friends who don’t

understand, who look at her differently

now, and how she tries to forget things,

but she can’t and wonders if she ever

can. I’m not sure how much she knows

about me—she doesn’t say explicitly—

but she seems to be aware that I’ve been

sick and that I was sent away. There’s a

line in her letter about hoping I get to

come home soon and that I feel better.

She signs the letter Abby, not Abigail,

like we’re friends.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to

write her back.

I fold up the letter again and slip it

into the drawer of my nightstand. I’m

looking out the window and I’m thinking

how happy I am she’s alive and then I’m

thinking how I’m still alive myself. Still

intact and in this body and breathing

through these lungs. Still here. Two

twists I wasn’t expecting.

It’s a Thursday now maybe, or it

could be a Friday. I don’t have to go

back to school until next week. My mom

has taken a semester leave, saying she

can’t juggle classes on top of her job and

wanting to be home to take care of me

right now. I joke with her about how she

could have asked for extra credit, since

she can do a home-study of a mental

disorder under her own roof and

hopefully I’m enough to fill a thesis

paper, but she barely cracks a smile.

I shouldn’t be joking about it. She

doesn’t even want me to say the word in

front of her (schizophrenia), though

doesn’t she know how an unsaid word

(schizophrenia) holds more power the

longer it’s kept from touching your

tongue? The fact that it’s unsaid, and that

it could be years before I get an official

diagnosis, makes me wonder about it all

the more. In the night, I tiptoed

downstairs to pore through her college

psychology textbooks, seeing what the

“positive” and “negative” symptoms are

and ticking off how many I’ve had. I also

read about how it doesn’t go away, how

there’s no cure. People who have this

spend their whole lives on antipsychotic

medications to keep the delusions and

the voices away. And even then, the

meds don’t always work. The cocktail

can change often—it’s never the same

mix for everyone. There’s no way to

know.

It’s realizing all this that scares me

more than anything supernatural ever

could. The concept of a ghost, I can

understand; the misfiring synapses of my

brain, I can’t. One is outside and apart

from me and something I could run from,

but the other
is
me. The other is what I

am. So I’ve been thinking on it for all

these months, and I’ve decided.

I just have to play along whenever my

mom’s around.

Now she’s fluffing my pillows. She’s

asking me what I think of couscous for

dinner tonight. I’m not sure if that’s what

we want to eat, but I say it’s fine.

After my mom watches me swallow

today’s dose of meds, she says she’ll go

make dinner in the kitchen now. But she

lingers, at the doorway, blinking her

eyes so they don’t water. She does this

more and more, this staring, like she

can’t believe I exist. It’s how I used to

look at the girls, before I got used to

them.

“You can go,” I tell her. “I’ll just be

in here, reading.” I hold up a novel I’ve

barely started because I can’t pay

attention to books right now beyond page

one. I use my bad arm to lift it, and she

flinches, even though it’s just a few

Band-Aids now, only to keep the scars

covered.

I’ve been wanting to tell her so many

things about how lucky I am to have her,

but I can’t seem to get out the words, so I

haven’t said any of that yet. I only hope

she already knows.

She’s gotten a new tattoo, to

commemorate this, which is a strange

thing to do, but she says it’s a healthy

way to handle trauma. It’s not on her

chest. That’s still clean—I keep

checking. It’s on her arm. So when I see

her walk out of the room, I also catch my

own face staring back at me, like a

stunted anthropomorphic owl perched on

her shoulder. I also always check to

make sure the beauty mark is on the

correct side of her face, so I’m sure the

person wearing my image is really her. It

says something to me, that she’s done

this, tattooed me on her body. It says

she’ll be here for me no matter what, and

I know for a fact that some of the girls

can’t say that about their mothers. Not

all girls can.

If I’d been one of the missing, my

mom would have never given up on me.

Never.

Once she’s gone, I don’t touch the

book. I watch the window for some time.

She’s closed the window again, when

she came up here, but I go over and push

it open once more. I have to leave it

open. The tree I don’t remember, the one

right outside my window, rustles with

the lightest touch of wind. It’s an oak, I

think. It’s older than I am and will still

be here long after me.

There’s a knock on my bedroom door,

even though the door is open. I startle,

thinking thoughts I shouldn’t. When I

look, I see it’s a girl, just a different kind

altogether from what I expected.

She steps in the room, the freshman,

Rain Patel, who lives nearby and has

somehow finagled herself into bringing

me packets of homework for next week,

even though we barely spoke in school.

“Your mom sent me up,” she says.

She gives me a stack of papers and a

new book for AP English, though I’m so

far behind I’m probably not in advanced

placement anymore, and then she bursts

out with some random updates, like how

Deena Douglas got mono and the

wrestling team won some trophy at state.

Then she weaves awkwardly around

my room, not wanting to leave yet, lifting

things off my dresser and setting them

back down. I don’t stop her. But I do

flinch when she finds it and holds it in

her hand, playing with its smooth, round

surface. “What’s this?” she asks.

“Oh, just something. Something I

found.”

“Like on the beach? When my mom

and my dad and my brother and I went to

the shore, I swear I collected, like,

hundreds
of stones like this. Okay,

maybe not hundreds, but you know. I

liked ones in prettier colors, though . . .

white, blue with speckles, pinkish pink.

This one’s just gray.”

In the mirror, for an instant, what

she’s holding in the palm of her hand

goes bright, like it’s no rock. It dances

with a smoky, sultry light. Then it’s dark

again.

“Put that down,” I say.

“It’s special,” Rain says, setting it

back on the dresser. “I can tell. Where’d

you get it?”

It’s so special, I can’t seem to get rid

of it. Maybe I’m supposed to keep it,

give it a permanent place in my life to

commemorate my trauma, like my mom

has hers. Or maybe I’m meant to wear it

until I know for sure it’s over. Then I

can bury it in the yard. Or throw it on the

tracks when a freight train goes past,

though even the wheels of a train

couldn’t crush it. Maybe sometime this

weekend I should drive over to the

bridge and throw it in the Hudson. No

one could get to it then.

“It’s from here,” I say. “From right

here in Pinecliff.”

“Oh,” she says, seeming disappointed.

She glances in the mirror because that’s

where I’ve been staring, and then she

comes closer, sitting on the edge of the

bed.

She whispers it: “Are you seeing them

right now
? Your mom told my mom, so I

know about the,
you
know
.” Her dark

eyes are very wide, the long lashes

creating a dusting of spiderwebs on her

cheeks. I can tell by the way she’s edged

forward, inching along the end of my

bed, that she wants me to say I’m seeing

them. The lost girls.

I shake my head.

“Oh,” Rain says. “Okay.”

Her face falls. I think she’s the only

person who believes that I’ve seen

ghosts. She must think I’m psychic, a

medium for the undead or something,

like the blue woman on the elevator all

those months ago might say we are. For

this, I like Rain a tiny bit more. I look at

her carefully. She’s so young, so open.