17 & Gone (7 page)

to say the words out loud, but something

from the fall down the hill made her

tongue loosen. Because there it was

now, a creature hovering over them in

the night, and she couldn’t unsay it.

I didn’t hear what he said back, and at

first I assumed that my hearing was

going in and out of this memory, but it

wasn’t that I was losing sound and

connection. It was that he didn’t say

anything. She’d told him she loved him

and he didn’t bother to respond. He

silenced her with his mouth instead.

The last time I was kissed, it was

Jamie, who tasted like cinnamon, which

was the way I was used to a boy tasting.

But being kissed by Luke wasn’t what

I was used to. He didn’t use his tongue at

first, and that made Abby want him to.

He teased with his lips, pressing his

mouth to her neck. One side of her neck,

below her ear, then the other. Then down

her neck, down and down to her

collarbone, and lower, to between her

breasts, which is when I realized her

shirt was wide open. Then he brought

his lips up again, climbing, climbing,

and his tongue entered her mouth, finally,

and she tasted him, I tasted him, and he

tasted us. It was sweet, a faint and

faraway sweetness, and it was much

wetter than I expected, so much so, I had

to wipe my mouth off after. So did she.

He wanted more than the kiss, but the

night wasn’t over yet. Up above, at the

top of the hill, was Abby’s borrowed

bicycle. I know this like I knew the grass

was tickling the backs of her thighs

because she had on shorts, but it was too

dark to see if they were the red ones

with the white racing stripes or another

pair of shorts. If this was
the
night or

another night.

And then his mouth left hers and she

had a moment to catch her breath. She

pulled back, dropping her weight to the

soft ground, the grass wet with dew from

the night, and gazed up to the darkened

sky over her head. All those stars: the

very same ones I was seeing almost five

months later.

This was what Abby remembered.

She liked returning to it to keep herself

from thinking of what came after.

—
8
—

JAMIE
was shaking me. He had me

by the shoulders and was calling my

name, his voice cracking, like this had

been going on for a long time. He’d

taken my coat—which had somehow

detached itself from my body—and was

holding it over me, like a blanket. My

skin was slick with chilled sweat

underneath the wool coat, my chest

sticky with it, and my buttons were all

undone, my shirt flapping open. I put the

buttons back together as quickly as I

could and wrangled myself out from

under Jamie’s grip, so I could stand up

by myself.

I was at the bottom of a hill that was

covered in snow. There was no bicycle

at the top, and no Luke Castro.

“Did we just—” I said, motioning at

my mouth, then his mouth. My lips felt

swollen from kissing, wet.

“What? No!” Jamie said, standing up

beside me and trying to help me get my

two arms into my coat. “You were

freaking out. You ran. You started

stripping in the snow, then you fell down

the hill. Don’t you remember?”

I didn’t know what would be

worse . . . if I told him I did, or if I told

him I didn’t.

I was saved by a harsh light in my

face. Not Abby’s memory of a blazing

summer’s day come to distract me, but

an actual light, vivid and aimed straight.

A police officer was waving a

flashlight at Jamie and me. “Those your

two vehicles out by the front gate?” his

voice shot out.

Jamie hesitated. Then he said, “Yeah.

The car’s mine. The van’s hers.”

My hands were cold; that’s what I

was thinking. And my ears. So cold. I

must have lost my hat when rolling down

the hill, and my scarf somewhere, too.

My legs were soaked and streaked in ice

and snow. I had ice in my hair; I had ice

up my nose.

“This is private property,” the officer

said, averting his eyes while I adjusted

my coat and cleaned myself up. “There

are signs up all over the fence.”

Now that he was closer, his light

bright enough to illuminate the whole

area, I tried to make out the name on his

uniform, but I couldn’t. He was a dark

blur, the brim of his hat keeping his eyes

in shadow.

“We were just going,” Jamie said,

taking me by the elbow.

But I was realizing something: the

opportunity here before me. Abby

wouldn’t want me to pass it up. I found

my voice. “Officer . . .” I waited for him

to give his name.

“Heaney,” he said, after a long

moment.

“Officer Heaney, we’re actually here

for a reason”—I felt Jamie tense up

beside me, alert and on guard—“we, I

mean,
I
just wanted to see what was out

here. Since the summer.”

“Uh-huh,” the officer said, putting out

a hand. “ID.”

He made us open our wallets and

show our driver’s licenses. Jamie wore

a deathly stare in his photo, like he’d

been planning to set a pipe bomb in the

DMV. I looked inexplicably sad in mine,

which was strange, as I remember being

pretty happy that day, the day I got my

driver’s license.

Seeing our IDs—that we were both

17, and both local—the officer seemed

satisfied enough, though he still wanted

us off the property. He said he’d

remember us. He’d remember and arrest

us for trespassing next time.

He motioned for us to start walking,

ushering us toward the gated entrance,

where we’d parked.

I found myself lagging so I could keep

pace with the officer, leaving Jamie

alone up ahead, the officer’s flashlight a

white-hot force against his narrow back.

“Officer Heaney,” I said, “were you

around here over the summer? When the

girl went missing?”

With the light on Jamie and not on me,

I could see more of the officer’s face

now, making him less of a uniform and

more of a person. Only, Officer Heaney

was nondescript in the way middle-aged

men often are, with their bloated,

stubbled faces and their shedding heads.

I wouldn’t recognize him out of uniform.

He could be anyone.

I noticed Jamie slow down a little

ahead of us, listening. But I had to ask,

even if Jamie heard me.

“Which girl?” the officer said in a

low voice.

He said it like there could be a great

many girls, a whole jumble of thin,

coltish legs and heads of long, blown-

out hair, and I could select the one I most

wanted from a model casting. He was

only testing me. He knew which girl.

“The girl who stayed here over the

summer,” I said, and then let the name

stumble off my lips for the first time.

“Abby

Sinclair.
Abigail
Sinclair, I

mean. The girl who disappeared.”

The officer was moving us quickly off

the property. As we passed the naked

flagpole, its rope hanging slack and then

flowing upward with the wind, I caught

Jamie glancing back at me. His face had

gone bone-white in the beam of the

flashlight, a piece of understanding

settling there. He now knew why I’d

stopped the van, that I’d planned this and

kept it from him.

The officer had stopped mid-step, as

if trying to decide what he could say, but

when he spoke, it was with recognition

and with authority, like I didn’t have a

legal right to ask for her by name. “Yes,”

he said. “Abigail Sinclair. Why are you

asking about her?”

I didn’t like the way he said her name.

“She’s an”—I was avoiding Jamie’s

gaze—“old friend of mine. I heard she

was up here this summer, and then I

heard what happened, and I thought I’d

come here and look around . . .”

The officer nudged me to walk faster.

We’d passed the compost now and were

coming up close to the front gate. “From

what I understand,” he said, “you’re

looking in the wrong place.”

I shivered from the slap of a cold

breeze. My feet had gone numb, and I

was almost surprised to look down and

see I did still have my boots on, and not

Abby’s flip-flops, because I could have

sworn my bare toes were buried in

snow.

“What do you mean, the wrong

place?”

“The girl ran off. Her family knows

that. Everyone knows that.”

“You’re wrong. She didn’t run away.”

“You sure about that?”

I was, all at once.

We’d reached the chain-link fence out

front. He held it open with an arm out

level with my chest, and there seemed to

be a fraction of a second when he was

keeping me from stepping through the

broken gate.

“ I
know
her,” I said lamely. “I know

she wouldn’t.”

Jamie spoke up, surprising me.

“Didn’t anyone see anything? Where she

went? Who with? Anything?” He gave

me a sidelong glance, assuring me we’d

talk about this later, but for now he’d go

along with it.

“And did you ever search the area?” I

added. “The woods? Did you look for

her bicycle, did you—”

“If you’re only curious and that’s all

this is, I’ll tell you,” the officer said,

looking only at Jamie’s face, I noted, not

mine. He revealed a couple details I

didn’t remember from the Missing

poster, and I drank them in, holding them

close for later.

It was Abby’s grandparents, her legal

guardians, who said she ran away—

that’s what they told camp officials and

the police—and that’s why there was no

urgency to propel anyone to keep

searching.

The

officer

pointed

off

the

campground toward the old highway,

now called Dorsett Road. A witness—

he didn’t share who—had seen Abby

take a right on her bicycle down this

road, and that was the last anyone saw of

her. He shook his head like there was

nothing that could be done. She’d done it

to herself.

Besides, I could sense him thinking,

what was she? She was only a 17-year-

old girl. And 17-year-old girls vanish

all the time.

Soon after this the officer closed the

gate, made sure we got in our separate

vehicles, and then took off. He drove an

unmarked car without any lights on top,

and I wondered if he’d been off-duty

when he noticed our cars parked here.

But as soon as his taillights were

swallowed by the night, Jamie got out of

his car and strode over to my van.

“
What
was that?” he said, taking a

seat on the passenger side. My engine

was idling to get the heat running, and he

cupped his hands to the vent.

And here was another opportunity for

me to tell him. Here—in the quiet night,

minutes after I wore Abby’s body, or she

wore mine, when the two of us together

rolled in a bed of pine needles, in the

arms of the boy she said she loved. Now

that Jamie knew she existed, I could

have told him how connected I felt to

her, this stranger who wasn’t a stranger

to me.

I could have. But all I said was, “I

saw her Missing poster. I looked up this

place. I was . . . curious.”

(I did
not
tell him I had the Missing

poster, folded as many times as a piece

of paper could be folded, in my

backpack, near his feet. I felt Abby in the

trees, and I felt Abby in the air. I felt the

exhale of her breath through the heating

vents, and I felt the inhale in my head.

She didn’t want me to show Jamie, and

what she wanted felt far more important

than what I wanted.)

“So you don’t know her,” Jamie said.