17 & Gone (5 page)

wire glittering in the falling darkness.

“You’re saying I dressed up for

nothing, then?” Jamie tugged at the shirt

collar under his coat, his one good gray

button-down that he might have even

ironed for the night out. But he didn’t

seem mad about it, I could tell.

Jamie and I had gotten together over

the summer (the same summer Abby,

mere miles from us, had been swatting

away gnats and rowing canoes and

singing campfire songs in repetitive

round-robins). It happened fast, between

Jamie and me.

Before I discovered Abby, and soon

the others—before a fundamental piece

of who I am shifted to reveal itself

inside me, like an iceberg rising up to

show its true and monstrous size from

the frigid depths of the sea—I’d been the

girl Jamie fell for. Whoever that was. It

wasn’t so long ago, but she and I were

different people now.

He and I were different, too, but I

don’t want to forget all the good things

about him. Like how he’s fearless when

it comes to braving heights, or breaking

and entering; he once scaled the side of

my house to reach an open window

when I’d locked myself out, balancing

on a flimsy gutter high up over the

backyard, holding on by his fingertips.

There was the way he’d go ahead and do

something with me, simply because I

asked him to. He didn’t need to know

why.

Like right then, in the snow. He was

lifting the lock to take a look. A puff of

his cold breath hung between us, as if

reaching out to touch me, but I was just

out of range. Just.

There I was, watching flurries fall and

catch in his hair, those unruly curls of his

poking out from under his hoodie,

wishing I could tell him about Abby. But

Jamie didn’t believe in things like

ghosts. And how do you tell a sane,

rational person that you’ve had an

encounter with one? That you’ve

connected somehow with a girl whose

face you found on a poster? A girl who

went missing
right here
? How she’s

reaching out to you, you’re sure of it?

How she’s trying to communicate

something, though you can’t quite make

out the message?

I think bringing him with me was my

way of telling him—but no matter what

screamed out in the dark of my head

while we stood there together at the gate,

I guess he couldn’t hear if I didn’t open

my mouth and let it out.

NO TRESPASSING signs hung on the

chain link above us, glowing, practically

nuclear, in the night. Snow dusted the

shoulders of his green army peacoat, the

one from the thrift store that was made

for someone much bigger than him (but

he wore it anyway, because I got it for

him). He was silent for too long; I

thought he’d given up and would say we

should just go to the restaurant. Then his

face lit up.

“So I can’t pick this lock,” he said,

with a small smile. “But the chain? It’s

busted.” With one hard tug, he got the

chain open. The padlock fell into the

snow.

Jamie was trying to meet my eyes, and

I was trying not to let him. “So what is

this place, anyway?” he asked.

“A summer camp, for girls,” I said as

I shoved the gate open into a snowdrift.

“They close it up for winter, but I

wanted to see.”

I didn’t give him the chance to ask

why. I pulled him through to the grounds

of Lady-of-the-Pines, abandoned for

winter, though from the way it looked

that night, expanding into the dark

distance, it could have been abandoned

years ago, before my mom and I moved

to the area, before I was even born.

Jamie and I walked along what I

guessed was the main path inside. He

took my hand. I don’t know what he

thought we were doing there—what my

intentions were, seeing how cold it was.

It was starting then, my need for

distance. I could feel this crawling sense

in my skin whenever he touched me, the

need to put some molecules of air

between us. I could feel the cold sweat

on his palm and something greasy, like

he’d gotten goop on his hands when he

was playing with the lock on the gate.

There was an ultra-awareness of him,

prickling and uncomfortable. Something

so much more important was crowding

out all thoughts of him.

We passed a shed and a white

structure with the words MAIN OFFICE

carved in over the wooden door frame.

We went slowly, my flashlight exploring

anything of interest, no words between

us. Paths split off into the trees, the

levels of snow lower to give hints of

where they started, but not where they

led. The quiet, except for our boots

swishing through the freshly fallen snow,

grew more and more intense.

Jamie startled me when he spoke. “I

thought you said this place was closed.”

He’d found a set of prints, or really a

series of indents over which the day’s

snow had fallen. A small, squat building

made of cinder blocks was to our left,

and to our right a fenced-in square with

a sign noting it as the compost, though

whatever had been in there, rotting into

the soil months before, was now frozen

solid and shrouded in white.

“Probably only an animal,” I said, and

as soon as the words left my mouth, a

rustling could be heard, fast and loose

like someone breaking into a panicked

run. Then we saw it wasn’t someone at

all—it was some
thing
. A fat little

creature trundled out from the darkened

patch of woods, over a fallen branch, to

the edge of the compost, watching us

with two yellow eyes as if waiting for

the right moment to pounce.

“Is that a—” I started. “Oh, please no.

That’s a skunk.”

“It’s a fox,” he said. “I think.” We

backed away slowly, putting distance

between us and it.

This might have been our only

encounter of the night on that vacant

campground if the wind hadn't shifted

and let me know she was close.

“Do you smell that?” I asked. “Like

something’s burning?” It drifted—the

scent of fire—from an unknown source.

Faint and far-off, but familiar enough to

remind me of the dream. Of her. Of how

I felt sure they were tangled up together.

“No, I—” he started, but I didn’t give

him the chance to say more, because I

was moving faster now, searching now,

the smoke-thick veil between my world

and her world loosening enough to let

me slip in.

At some point during this, I let go of

Jamie’s hand.

—
6
—

SHE’D
been here.

Abby Sinclair walked this very path, I

could sense it. She’d spent whole weeks

of her summer in this place before she

was gone. She’d raised the flag on this

pole and counted out change for candy at

that canteen.

The farther in we went, the more it

came clear to me. What she saw here,

what she felt and experienced and

breathed. I sensed, in an abstract sort of

way, Jamie following behind me, but I

didn’t look back after him, I didn’t

explain.

I could feel the sweaty air that hung

thick inside the mosquito netting of the

camp’s cabins. There was a dampness

on my skin, the humidity that clings to

this valley in summer clinging now to my

clothes. I kept hearing flashes of activity

through the trees, remembered noises

echoing at me from the darkness. A

series of splashes in the lake, the clatter

of forks on plates in the mess hall, the

satisfying
thwack
of an archery arrow

into a target’s heart.

We kept walking. It felt like we did so

without a word to each other, but Jamie

could have been saying things and I

could have not been responding to what

he said.

We found the mess hall and the arts-

and-crafts cabin and the sports field. On

a raised hill, we could see the ring

where fires had been built. There was a

large circle of stones, and I imagined the

campers gathering here on the hottest

nights, here where the thick cluster of

pines broke open and the air thinned and

where, overhead, there was a clear view

of the blanket of stars.

Nothing appeared to be burning, and

the scent I thought I’d caught in the

woods had drifted, but still I brushed off

a stone and rested my weight on it,

gazing up. Night had fallen enough by

now that the stars had come out. The

jagged ridge in the distance was only a

fuzzy and faintly shimmering outline, as

if not a part of the mountain at all. I tried

to see this place the way Abby might

have. She was a visitor to this area. Not

from here. Not used to this. Maybe our

sky looked different to her, outside the

suburb she was from. Everything was so

much darker up here, away from stores

and streetlights. And in the dark, out of

view

of

traffic

and

neighbors,

practically anything could happen.

Jamie cleared his throat. He was right

next to me and I’d forgotten. Again.

“What are we . . . are we looking for

something?” he asked.

He was occupying himself by

throwing stones into the woods beside

the fire pit. Sometimes a stone would hit

a tree—I could hear the thump of impact,

or a whistling rustle into a thicket of

branches—but sometimes the stone

found only air.

I stood up. She wanted me to keep

looking.

“We’re exploring,” I said to Jamie.

“We’re just seeing what’s here.”

“Hey, c’mere, hey, Lauren.” He was

grabbing for my arm, or my hip, or some

part of my body, to pull me closer. But

he missed me in the dark, and I made it

past him and away from the fire pit and

headed down the hill. The decline

forced speed on me, and I started

running.

I followed the pathways between the

sleeping cabins and peeked in through

holes in the sagging skins over the

windows: the screens and mosquito nets

that couldn’t be that much help in

keeping back the mosquitoes. The steps

leading up to the cabin doors were

buried in snow. I noted more animal

prints—tracks from deer and raccoons,

claw marks that had to be from birds,

and a larger set that could belong to a

giant owl hiding in the trees. Nothing

human, not until me.

There were only five cabins for

campers to sleep in. It took three visits

with the flashlight to find it.

Cabin 3. Abby’s cabin.

But I didn’t know that at first.

All the furniture had been left inside

the cabins for the off-season, the rows of

beds with their plastic-cased mattresses

stripped of sheets and their yellowed,

lumpy pillows left behind in zipped

pouches for next summer’s girls.

Jamie was the one who helped me

discover Abby’s bed. He’d followed me

in, as he’d been following me around all

the cabins, and he said, “Hey, check out

the walls.”

This was how I discovered that the

girls at Lady-of-the-Pines liked to carve

their names or initials and the dates of

their stay onto the rough-hewn walls

beside their beds. Over the years,

enough girls had done this that there was

a yearbook of sorts, an inmates’ record

on the walls of a prison cell.

I circled the cabin hoping, taking my

time to check the latest set of names