17 & Gone (6 page)

marking each metal-framed bed, which

were arranged in two long rows against

the walls.

I had a feeling I’d find her,

somewhere, and then I did. Abby hadn’t

just carved her name into the wooden

wall behind the bed she slept in. She

didn’t bother to note the year she spent

here the way the other girls had. What

she’d carved was a clue:

abby sinclair

luke castro

forever

Jamie said it before I did. “Weird.

Remember that Luke Castro kid from

school? What a douche.”

I knew who he meant—some guy

who’d graduated a year or two ago. He

played on some sports team, or hung

around with the guys who did. I didn’t

really remember.

“Maybe it’s the same Luke Castro,” I

said, and even as the words came out of

my mouth I knew it had to be the same

Luke—this carving of his name together

forever with Abby’s told me so.

I don’t think Jamie noticed how I

lingered at this particular bed over all

the others, how my finger reached out to

trace the shape of the lopsided heart

Abby had carved into the soft, splintery

wood near where she rested her head

each night. He had no idea I was trying

to picture how she’d carved it, and with

what. I was looking back into memories

I didn’t own, wanting in.

I heard him down at the other end of

the cabin, talking to himself—or, no,

someone must have called his cell,

because he was talking to someone on

the phone. His back was to me and his

voice was low, like he didn’t want me to

know who it was.

It was then, with no one looking, that

it began.

I stood up. I walked on legs that didn’t

feel like mine toward the back of the

cabin, where there was a line of empty

cubbies and a dark bathroom. I kept

going, toward the bathroom. I couldn’t

hear Jamie on the phone anymore. My

ears picked up on something else: a

rhythmi c
slap-slap-slap
coming from

floor level. Startled, I stopped. The

slapping sound stopped. I started

walking again, and the sound picked up

as before.

It was coming from my own feet, the

noise of my own footsteps traveling the

floor into the tiled room that held the

showers. I could almost imagine that I

didn’t have on my combat boots and was

wearing summer flip-flops instead. Flip-

flops like the one Abby had on in my

van.

As I stood in the shower room I

realized I wasn’t cold anymore. It was

so far from cold, it was stifling, and I

needed to undo the buttons on my wool

coat to let my neck breathe. I opened my

coat all the way. I shrugged off my thick

scarf and let it drop.

There was a single window in the

shower room, so small only an arm

could fit through, but I went to it and

shoved it open for some air. It revealed

a view of the woods behind the cabin,

but not the snow-covered tree branches I

expected, not the heavy-loaded pines

and the blanket of white gleaming in the

winter darkness. What I saw was green.

The impossible green of summer.

I turned away fast and slid down the

tiled wall—warm with humidity against

my back—until I was sitting on the

shower floor, beside the drain.

“I’m in here,” I said aloud, letting the

words echo and find their way to

whoever was also there, listening.

I became aware of her breathing, as if

she’d sidled up the tiled wall beside me,

her bare, bug-bitten shoulder millimeters

from mine.

Her story rose up in me, fully formed

and practically kicking.

The summer she stayed here, Abby

did sleep in that bed in Cabin 3, where

I’d found her name and Luke’s name.

She did have the bunk pushed closest to

the farthest wall and below the last of

the windows. She slept curled into a

ball. The pillow in the plastic pouch still

on the bed was the pillow she’d hug

between her knees.

I would soon know more and more.

Like how when Abby left camp late that

July, no new girl came to claim her bed.

Though Cabin 3 was minus one

counselor-in-training with Abby gone,

they had to make do; it was too late to

fill her spot. The girls at camp were

simply told she’d quit. The counselor in

charge of Cabin 3 removed Abby’s

clothes in their neatly rolled stacks from

her cubby and packed them into the

paisley suitcase stowed under her bed to

return to her family, who didn’t seem

surprised she’d run away. None of the

counselors wanted to tell the kids that

she’d run off into the night with only the

clothes from Color War on her back.

That she’d left no note to say why. No

explanation.

Even so, the girls in Cabin 3

suspected more. They avoided uttering

her name and stayed away from the

things she’d touched. No one took

advantage of the extra cubby or used the

tropical shampoo she’d left behind in the

communal bathroom. Abby’s bed was in

a prime location, more private than the

beds in the middle, yet no one wanted to

sleep there after she had, as if it had

been cursed.

The only way I knew I’d gotten up and

started walking was the
slap-slap-slap

that followed me as I went.

The bed was just as I’d left it, but on

the mildewed pillow trapped inside the

plastic case was something I hadn’t

noticed before. My hand reached out and

unzipped the pouch. My fingers plucked

it from the stained surface of the pillow

and drew it out. It dangled before me.

A single strand of hair.

From Abby’s head.

I knew this fact like I knew all the

other things I knew. Besides, the piece

of hair couldn’t be mine—due to its light

brown color and the spring to its

spiraling curl. My own hair was dyed

black and coarsely straight.

Something made me sniff it, some

disgusting level of curiosity. I knew

what it would smell like even before I

lifted it to my nose, the faint but acrid

hint of smoke as if this piece of hair had

been held over a lighter and set ablaze.

Everything connected to Abby seemed to

smell like that.

I left Cabin 3, and with the
slap-slap-

slap
of the flip-flops on my bare feet I

wandered out again to the campground,

feeling the hot summer sun on my

shoulders. I lifted my hair and tied it in a

knot. The sky was bright blue and dotted

with fluffy, drifting clouds. The sounds

of girls shrieking, splashing carried over

from the lake in the near distance.

There were traces of her everywhere.

Abby peed in these woods. She trampled

these flowers. Here she scratched at a

mosquito bite. Here she scratched at the

same mosquito bite until she bled.

The spot on the campground where

she first saw him was hidden from view

by pine trees, but I found it from the way

the branches grew sparser there and how

the ground gave way, as if I’d seen it in

pictures. Or, more, as if she were

handing over this memory so it didn’t

have to be hers any longer. So now it

could be mine.

He was on his motorbike, which you

could hear way out in the trees, a sawing

sound that made it seem like the whole

forest was under siege. None of the girls

in Abby’s group out picking wildflowers

knew what the noise was, or where it

was coming from, until there he

appeared atop that speeding, screaming

machine. He sailed over a hump of tree

roots and skidded to a solid stop in the

clearing, front tire braking inches from a

girl’s toes.

“This is private property,” one girl

said. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“I live here,” Luke Castro said. As he

said it, I remembered. Luke Castro from

school
did
live somewhere around here

—I was pretty sure.

The glare from the sun, or from her

memory, made it so I had a hard time

looking directly at his face, but it was

him, the same guy from school.

He was checking out Abby in her

camp-issue tank top. Out of all the girls

there, he eyed her and only her—

because she was older than the others,

because she’d gathered up the most

flowers, or simply because she had on

the tightest shirt.

“I live down the hill, that way,” he

said.

He gestured out into the trees, though

none of the girls knew where that could

be, or what direction. Was it toward

Pinecliff or away from Pinecliff? Near

the train tracks or far from them? The

counselors hadn’t taught the girls how to

judge direction by the sun or to use a

compass yet, and Abby should have

figured out how to make this a teaching

moment. But she couldn’t care less.

Abby had come here to train to be a

camp counselor. On her application,

she’d written that she loved kids. She

didn’t actually love kids; she’d wanted

an excuse to get away from Jersey for

the summer. She had no idea how much

she’d
hate
kids after just the first week,

after all the yelling through megaphones;

eating slop, or trying to; burning through

her arm muscles rowing those canoes.

Right then she wished the girls would

just wander off into the woods and

entertain themselves with twigs and

pinecones or something so she could

have a moment alone with this stranger

here.

But the girls were telling Luke to get

off camp property, and he did, with one

last glance at Abby.

These girls couldn’t know what was

communicated in that glance and in

Abby’s. The
Hey
, the
Hey yourself
. The

What’s up with all the weeds?
The
Oh

my God, don’t even ask
. The
What’re

you doing with these losers anyway?

T h e
No freaking clue, I’m sooooo

bored
. The
Yeah?
, the
Yeah
. The
Then

maybe you should come out later and

hang with me
.

Luke Castro rode off, his motor

buzzing in the trees all around them like

he could come crashing back and run

them over at any moment, crushing toes

this time, leaving carnage. But he didn’t

come back, not that day.

All Abby remembers is how she said,

under her breath, “Who was
that
?” And

how she had no idea she’d find out soon

enough. She’d find out.

—
7
—

SHE
wanted to show me another

memory of hers before I left the

campground that night, something more

about Luke.

That was Abby’s giggle scattering in

the air like pine needles. We were

rolling. It was too dark to see, and I’d

lost track of my flashlight, but I could

feel the warm grass through my shirt, the

mud and leaves leaking through my

clothes. The ground had given way to

some kind of hill, and the decline went

on until it stopped at a soft bottom,

where another body dropped next to us,

as if this other person had gone rolling

down the hill, too. Even though I felt

connected to her—she and I, me and

Abby—I was also aware that there were

just two bodies at the bottom of that hill:

the boy, who was Luke, and the girl,

who was Abby. I was only watching.

She took his hand then—it felt like I,

too, took his hand—and she held it tight.

She spit out pine needles and smoothed

the leaves from her hair, even though it

was too dark for him to see her hair, and

she said—she said it and my mouth

echoed the shape of it: “Oh my God, I

totally love you, Luke.”

It had just come out. She didn’t mean