17 & Gone (8 page)

“So you lied.”

“She didn’t run away,” I said. “She

didn’t. She—”

“
How
can you possibly know that,

Lauren?”

I was staring down into my hands. The

light from the dashboard lit them up

enough for me to be able to see the lines

of my palms, and yet when I gazed at

them, there were no lines. My palms

were smooth and unmarked as if I had no

past, and no future. I had a moment of

wondering whose hands were on that

steering wheel, whose body walked out

of the Lady-of-the-Pines Summer Camp

for Girls and climbed into my van.

“I don’t know for sure,” I said. “It’s a

feeling I have, that’s all.”

I couldn’t read his face.

But I’m going to find out
, I thought

but didn’t say. She wouldn’t leave me

alone if I didn’t.

He moved toward me then. I felt his

hand on my chin, and his mouth on my

mouth, and before I knew it I’d pulled

away, putting some needed inches

between us. A hand was out, shoving

into his chest. That was my hand, making

it impossible for him to get any closer.

I watched confusion cross his face,

then something worse that looked a lot

like anger. I’d never shoved him away

from me before; I didn’t even know why

I had.

“Who was that who called you?” I

blurted out randomly. I hadn’t been

bothered by it then, in Cabin 3 when

he’d answered the phone, but in this

moment something told me I should be.

“When?” he asked. He was frozen,

leaning over my seat as if suspended in

midair. My arm was still out, my unlined

hand pressed up hard against his chest as

if I were the one keeping him there,

dangling. And I was.

I watched him move away from my

hand, shrink back and retreat. It felt like

witnessing something die between us, a

stop-animation visual of a rotting and

shriveling thing turning to particles of

gray dust, then the wind lifting that dust

up and away until there was nothing. I

knew I should care. Only a few days

ago, I would have fought it, leaped to

close the distance, said I was sorry. Yet

I did no such thing.

“Who called you? On the phone?” I

repeated. “In the cabin before. Someone

called.”

“Oh, just my manager at work. Telling

me my schedule for next week.” He was

in his own seat by this point, not even

looking at me.

“Really,” I said. “Who did you say it

was?”

“My manager. At work,” he said

again. He waited tables at Casa Lupita, a

Mexican restaurant across the river, and

it was true he never knew his schedule

until the week before. “Next week I’m

on Tuesday night, Thursday night,

Saturday day.”

“Okay,” I said. “Right.”

Something told me not to believe him.

And that something was irrational, and

that something was unexplainable, and

that something had never entered my

mind before this night, and yet it was

there, related to everyone and anyone.

Even the boy I’d lost my virginity to, the

one I’d talked about staying with after

graduation, into college, which was as

far ahead as we’d ever let ourselves

think into the future. Even Jamie. Even

him.

Jamie’s neck snapped around, and

there was a light in his eyes I didn’t

recognize, like I’d struck a match and lit

him up.

“
What
is going on here?” he said.

“I really don’t know,” I answered

honestly. My voice felt so cold.

“But something is,” he said. “With us.

First bailing on the restaurant. Then this

place, this thing with that girl you never

even told me about. Now—whatever the

fuck this is.”

He didn’t wait for me to confirm or

deny it. He slammed the van door, got

back into his own car, and drove off. He

made a left down Dorsett Road and let

the trees steal his taillights and the wind

steal any sound of his engine and the

night steal my chance to fix it, not that I

knew how to, or was even sure I would.

It happened so fast that I sat there

waiting for him to come back, and when

he didn’t I was surprised, and then that

surprise sunk lower and lower until it

turned into a hard, black coal inside me

that harbored three leaden words:
Told.

You. So
.

I didn’t have him when I needed him,

which meant I didn’t need him at all. He

left me alone so I could be free to find

what came next.

Though the truth is, I wasn’t alone.

After he was gone, there was Abby, in

the bench seat behind me as if she’d

witnessed the whole scene and had been

holding her tongue until she was sure she

had me to herself.

Our eyes met in the rearview.

In this instant, a thought planted itself

in my head in a voice I didn’t recognize.

It’s good you got rid of him
, it said.

—
9
—

I
was standing in the middle of the road

where Abby Sinclair went missing.

Jamie had left minutes ago, or an hour

ago; all I knew was that he’d left.

I’d pulled out of the Lady-of-the-Pines

parking lot and turned right, the direction

the police officer said Abby had gone.

I’d driven for a short distance looking

for a hill, and since this was a mountain

road, it wasn’t long before I found one.

I’d decided it could be
the
hill, it had to

be, the one Abby had coasted down on

the bicycle the night she disappeared. I

pulled over, wanting to feel my feet on

the asphalt she’d traveled that July night.

I made myself walk the center of the

road, following the decline, and as I did

I imagined the speed of her bike picking

up, how she stopped having to pedal,

how she began gliding down, faster and

faster, down and down . . . but to what?

As I descended to the bottom of the

hill, the pines rustled, and it sounded

like they were whispering again, spilling

secrets I couldn’t understand. They held

their breath as one, keeping still, when I

got close.

I remembered how, in the rearview

mirror the morning Abby showed me her

story, it came to a stop at the bottom of

the hill. I wanted to see what went on

after the end, when there was no one

watching.

The narrow road was flat here, a

pocket of darkness without streetlights

or the glow of any nearby houses. There

was nothing here. Just the shallow gully

running alongside the stretch of pine

trees on the left side, but nothing to

separate the pines from the road on the

right. Even so, the forest appeared to be

brightly lit—glowing from the recent

snowfall. All was quiet; all was alight.

What did I expect to find?

There wasn’t the ghost of Abby

herself, ready to talk and spread herself

open for the reveal. Not her shimmering

figure, standing in the shallow dip of

snow to my left maybe, a hand lifted and

its fingers slowly curling in to beckon

me closer. Not her bicycle—leaned up

and rusting against the bristly trunk of a

towering pine tree, where the police

were too blind to spot it. Not the man

who grabbed her—if it was a man—or

the car that hit her—if it was a car. Not

an answer in a box with a bow on it, left

there on the asphalt for me to find.

In fact, standing in the middle of the

road told me nothing.

Still, I stepped into the gully, my eyes

searching. I bent down, to inspect closer.

Snow was in the way, and any evidence

left there in summer would be long

washed away or buried, but I kept

looking. As if, somehow, I’d find a spot

and a feeling would come over me and

I’d know.

At some point I happened to turn and

look back up the hill.

My van was parked on the side of the

road where I’d left it, but what startled

me were the bright beams of the

headlights on high, cutting through the

deep gloom.

I’d left the lights on?

I was sure I hadn’t, was sure I’d

turned off the lights and the engine and

then gotten out and started walking, but I

must have forgotten, because who else

would have climbed into the van and

flicked on the headlights?

I felt myself shiver. My van was

black, with windows only in the very

front and the very back. The main cavern

was windowless, which made it seem

like the kind of vehicle a serial killer

would aspire to drive, to make it easier

for transporting a body. I’d never

noticed how ominous the van looked

from the outside, how threatening.

It stared at me from up on top of the

hill, eyes blazing.

And I think this was the first time it

came over me—the reality. I was being

followed. Haunted, by another girl the

same age as me. She needed me to do

something for her, and she wouldn’t

leave me alone until I gave her what she

wanted. Would she?

She knew every little thing I did,

could see me here on the dark road right

now. She could hear my thoughts. She

could feel my heart and how furiously it

was beating. She could feel the panicked

sweat dripping down my spine.

I never felt so alone, or so crowded.

I had to keep looking.

When I turned my attention back to the

bottom of the hill, I saw things in a new

light. It was golden and it was warm,

thick with the heat of summer.

Everything was tinged this color, even

the night sky.

I noticed how the snow had vanished,

so the road and the gully running

alongside it was brown with mud, and

green with protruding weeds. Then I

realized I was on the ground, on the

asphalt, because I’d fallen off the

bicycle, and my hands were pocked with

gravel and my knees were bleeding.

My hair was longer than usual, and I

swept it out of my face so I could see. I

noticed the front fender of the car—

rusted, one headlight gashed in—and I

used it to help myself to stand up. I heard

a door open, and I heard a voice, and I

heard a response come out of my own

body, in a voice that wasn’t mine, saying

I’m okay. That was not me talking, that

was someone else.

I was someone else.

It was over as soon as it had begun,

the light around me turning colder and

more blue. I was wavering on my two

feet, in the middle of the icy back road,

completely alone. There was no car

here, no bicycle, no glimmering specter

of a girl. My raw knees through my jeans

burned, as if I’d really fallen to the

ground as she had, and the palms of my

hands were pricked with bits of snow

and grimy pebbles of tire salt. But these

were my knees again, and my hands, and

my own breath billowing out in visible

wisps from my own lungs into the cold.

That’s when I saw it. There, close by,

was a glow that seemed to hum from the

edge of the road. A light that, once it

caught my attention, turned smaller,

shrinking in on itself until the tiny thing I

was meant to find focused and came

clear. It looked like an oddly colored

rock at first, and then I blinked. And

realized what it was. Someone had

dropped . . . a piece of jewelry on the

side of the road.

I crept closer and lifted it from the

blanket of snow. Impossibly, it had been

perched there, half buried and glistening

in the darkness. This stone pendant on a

broken strand of silver chain.

Once I climbed the hill back up to my

van, I let the pendant drop into my palm

so I could study it under the dome light.

I’d thought it was a rock, but it wasn’t, at

least not the kind of rock or stone that

would be found just lying in the dirt in

the Hudson Valley. Maybe it was a

moonstone, but it wasn’t so much a