17 & Gone (14 page)

the door when I put the bicycle in and

I’d left it open too long when I was

checking my phone and reading Jamie’s

text messages (six since that morning).

I’d let them in. They knew I was looking

for Abby—they’d heard everything I’d

said.

This chain restaurant, this parking lot,

was the nearest turnoff I’d seen. I’d

barreled through the lot and I’d come to

a stop and I’d opened the driver’s side

door and I’d leaped out, and it took

much deep breathing and many minutes

before I could open the two back doors

at the tail end of the van. When I did I

could hardly look, but I had to look,

because I had to know—

All I’d found was Abby’s borrowed

bicycle inside.

I’d gotten myself all worked up over

nothing.

Now I was sitting on the sidewalk, out

under the cold, winter-white sky. I

couldn’t get back in the van just yet.

I was looking down at my knees,

caked with ice and snow and with the

salt kernels thrown out in winter so

people wouldn’t slip and fall in the ice

and snow, and that was how I realized I

must have fallen. I lifted my hands and

saw that my palms, too, were caked with

the mixture, pockmarked and dented

from impact, discolored, almost grayed.

“Hey, you,” I heard.

This voice was coming from behind

me, to my left. I ignored it, of course,

like I’d been ignoring Fiona Burke since

we’d left the police station.

“Hey.” The voice again. This was a

girl’s voice, I realized, the voice of a

very young girl. “Hey. I’m talking to

you.” A clean, white toe nudged the

scuffed steel toe of my combat boot.

“Are you sick? Do you need me to get

my mom?”

From the size of her tiny feet in those

puffy white boots I knew she was far too

young to even be a part of this. When I

craned my neck to look up into her face,

I saw I was right: This girl was nine or

ten maybe, eleven at most. She was dry

and clean and safe. She had years to go.

Years and years.

The girl had many barrettes all over

her head and just looking at them made

my own head feel heavy. The weight of

all those barrettes, if they were plated in

steel like the kicking toes of my boots,

that’s what knowing all the things I knew

felt like.

“I’m fine,” I managed to answer her,

finally.

“You threw up all over the sidewalk,”

the girl said, holding her nose.

I looked behind me, to my right. “Oh. I

guess I did.”

“Do you have germs?” she said. She

took a step back. She moved comically

slow in a white snowsuit decorated with

little coiled demons awash in fire that I

realized, upon blinking, were only

goldfish.

Orange

goldfish

were

decorating her snowsuit, not demons.

“Do you?” she said again. “Have

germs?”

“I might,” I admitted.

“Gross,” the girl said, wrinkling her

nose. But she didn’t move. She didn’t

seem to care if she caught my sickness.

I noticed that my van beside the curb

was still idling; I’d left the engine on.

The back doors were also open,

showing the dark cavern inside. It

seemed much larger than it should be,

like a tunnel that didn’t want you to see

its end.

“Could you do me a favor?” I asked

the girl. “Could you look inside there?”

“What?”

“My van. Could you look inside the

van and tell me what you see?”

She started shrinking away from me.

She must have had that special assembly

in school about bad strangers wanting to

snatch kids in their dirty, scary vans.

I had the terrifying feeling then that

she’d be smart to play it safe and run,

but she only hopped over to the van and

peeked into the back. “Cool! A bike,”

she said.

“Anything else? Nothing else in there

besides the bike?”

“No,” she said. She looked back at me

like I was a wacko. Still, she didn’t run.

I began to worry for her. Where were

her parents?

If she stayed with me for much longer,

she really would catch it. She’d catch it

off me and carry it around with her

through elementary school and middle

school and into high school. She’d carry

it down the field during soccer matches,

up to the top of the Empire State

Building when she visited on a class

trip, down hallways and in the pockets

of her tightest jeans, and then her

birthday would come, and she’d

celebrate with friends, they’d have a

party, and she’d fling herself around the

room dancing, not having any idea of

what’s to come. She’d be 17, and by

then she wouldn’t remember any of this.

She won’t know what meeting me will

have done to her.

I stood up all of a sudden and grabbed

the handles of the back doors, closing up

the van. “Go back inside,” I told the girl.

Didn’t she hear me?

“Go,” I snapped, louder this time.

“Get away from me. I mean it. Get out of

here. Now.
Go
.”

She leaped back as if I’d smacked

her. Her face twisted like she was about

to cry, but before she let me see, she

whipped around and started running.

She was racing away, away from the

gray, salted sidewalk, and away from

me, into the warm and cheerful interior

of the local Friendly’s. Her mom was

probably in there, her dad and siblings,

too, and maybe a trademark Happy

Ending Sundae would help her forget

about this, and me.

I watched to be sure. When she was

safely inside, I realized it was snowing.

Snow falling on the roof of my van and

on the pavement and in my hair and on

my eyelashes and on my outstretched

limbs. Fluffy white flakes of snow

covering me just like they’d cover a

dead body.

—
18
—

FIONA
Bur ke
did
run away—there

was never any question.

After she’d finished packing and

making up her face, her bags strewn

around the foyer and her lashes

protruding from her eyelids in gnarled

spikes, Fiona Burke made a phone call.

Her voice softened as she spoke, turning

simpler, slower, like she’d regressed to

my age, or was mocking me by

pretending so.

She kept assuring the man on the

phone that everything was cool. She said

yes
a lot, like she wanted to agree with

every single thing he said. She got very

silent at one point and it sounded like the

person on the other end was yelling at

her. She stuttered, and said she was

sorry, and after a while the yelling

stopped and they were just talking and

making plans for the night.

I felt her looking at me, where I was

in the dining room in my My Little Pony

pajamas, and then I heard her speak

about me for the first time.

“The thing is,” she told the man, “it’s

like . . . someone’s gonna be here when

you get to the house. Like, I’m not

alone.”

I held my tongue. While she talked,

for a reason I didn’t understand, she was

making me stand in the corner, face

mashed into the crook of the wall. If I

opened my eyes from this position, all I

could make out was her mother’s dining-

room wallpaper: a pattern of yellow

blooms marching north in one mindless,

orderly flock. They blurred to butter

close-up. I couldn’t see her as she

spoke, but I could hear everything she

said.

“No! Not my parents. I told you my

dad’s navy buddy had a fucking heart

attack and they’re in Baltimore for the

fucking funeral. It’s not them. It’s . . . the

kid who lives next door. I’m sort of

watching her since her mom sort of had

no one else to ask. But I’ll just leave her

here. I’m still going with you.”

There was some arguing then. About

me. About what I’d see and who I’d tell.

But then Fiona Burke hung up the

phone and held still. Something in her

face told me she didn’t want to go where

she promised she’d go. That man had

been yelling at her, and she wanted to

stay right here.

I thought she was about to say she’d

changed her mind. Maybe she’d pull me

out of the corner and she’d grab my hand

and say we had to get out of the house

before he got here—whoever he was—

and I’d take her to hide in my bedroom

next door. This was back when my mom

let me have the pup tent in my room, set

up at all times for carpet-camping, and

Fiona Burke and I would crawl in there

and close the flap and I’d show her

where I hid the leftover Halloween

candy.

Maybe Fiona Burke spent a second

thinking something like that, too. About

running away from running away. But it

was too late to change her mind. She’d

set too much of it in motion.

Soon she was prancing over to me in

the corner of the dining room, crouching

so her wet-glossed lips had my ear.

“What am I going to do with you?”

she said, singsong. “He didn’t like it that

you were here, Lauren. He didn’t like it

at all.”

“Who’s he?”

She ignored that. “And really, you’re

not supposed to be here. My stupid

parents said yes to your stupid mom

without asking me first, and I couldn’t

get out of it. This wasn’t the plan.”

I told her that I was sorry, deeply, as

if I’d betrayed her.

Her hand whipped out and she shoved

something hard and cold to the back of

my neck, moving it up until it was

wedged against the base of my skull.

“Do you think I’d hurt you?” she said in

a strange, helium voice. Her breathing

quickened, and mine rushed to catch up.

I didn’t answer, so she gave more

pressure to the back of my neck,

wedging in harder. I imagined the muzzle

of a gun; I’d seen one in person at a

friend’s house once, and so that’s what I

pictured. His dad kept it in a box on a

high shelf in the bedroom, and my friend

had found a way to reach it by balancing

on the dresser. But we hadn’t taken it out

of the box to see if it was loaded, and

we hadn’t played at killing each other,

going
blam, blam!
with the steel against

each other’s temples and the writhing on

the floor until we got tired and decided

to be dead. I’d only touched it, with one

finger, once, and all I remembered was

that it had been this hard, and this cold.

Thinking of this, I may have begged

her, please, not to, begged her, please,

leave me alive, and she may have lost

her bravado and cracked up laughing.

She lowered her hand and all that was in

it was a small Bic lighter.

She flicked it and brought up a tiny

flame that matched the dyed sections of

her

hair.

The

color

was

indistinguishable up close, so for a

moment it seemed her whole head had

caught fire.

“God! What do you think I am, a

monster?” she asked.

I shook my head as far as it would

shake with me standing in the crook of

the wall.

“Maybe I am,” she said. “Maybe I

should burn this whole house to the

ground so that’s what they’d find when

they get home from the funeral. A pile of

stinking ashes and their daughter gone.”

She crooked her head at me, and she

blinked, and I truly didn’t know what she

was capable of doing. Then she blinked

again, and the flames shrunk away from

her face, and I saw how scared she was.

Petrified. She slipped the lighter into her

jeans pocket that already contained the

pendant, and she patted it, making sure it

was there. Then she looked out the

window at the driveway.

“When he gets here, you’re not going

to say a thing to him, are you?” she