17 & Gone

Also by Nova Ren Suma

IMAGINARY GIRLS

NOVA REN SUMA

DUTTON BOOKS

AN IMPRINT OF PENGUIN GROUP

(USA) INC.

DUTTON BOOKS

A member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Published by the Penguin Group

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand,

London WC2R 0RL, England

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,

places, and incidents are either the product of the

author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any

resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business

establishments, events, or locales is entirely

coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Nova Ren Suma

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

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The publisher does not have any control over and does

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Published simultaneously in Canada

CIP Data is available.

Published in the United States by Dutton Books, a

member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

www.penguin.com/teen

ISBN: 978-1-101-59252-6

For my mom,

who’s helped so many

— — —

And for Erik,

who found me when I was eighteen

Contents

Also by Nova Ren Suma

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

AND THEN

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

THREE

MONTHS

LATER

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

GIRLS
go missing every day. They

slip out bedroom windows and into

strange cars. They leave good-bye notes

or they don’t get a chance to tell anyone.

They cross borders. They hitch rides,

squeezing themselves into overcrowded

backseats, sitting on willing laps. They

curl up and crouch down, or they shove

their bodies out of sunroofs and give off

victory shouts. Girls make plans to go,

but they also vanish without meaning to,

and sometimes people confuse one for

the other. Some girls go kicking and

screaming and clawing out the eyes of

whoever won’t let them stay. And then

there are the girls who never reach

where they’re going. Who disappear.

Their ends are endless, their stories

unknown. These girls are lost, and I’m

the only one who’s seen them.

I know their names. I know where

they end up—a place seeming as

formless and boundless as the old well

on the abandoned property off Hollow

Mill Road that swallows the town’s

dogs.

I want to tell everyone about these

girls, about what’s happening, I want to

give warning, I want to give chase. I’d

do it, too, if I thought someone would

believe me.

There are girls like Abby, who rode

off into the night. And girls like Shyann,

who ran, literally, from her tormentors

and kept running. Girls like Madison,

who took the bus down to the city with a

phone number snug in her pocket and

stars in her eyes. Girls like Isabeth, who

got into the car even when everything in

her was warning her to walk away. And

there are girls like Trina, who no one

bothered looking for; girls the police

will never hear about because no one

cared enough to report them missing.

Another girl could go today. She

could be pulling her scarf tight around

her face to protect it from the cold,

searching through her coat pockets for

her car keys so they’re out and ready

when she reaches her car in the dark lot.

She could glance in through the bright,

blazing

windows

of

the

nearest

restaurant as she hurries past. And then

when she’s out of sight the shadowy

hands could grab her, the sidewalk could

gulp her up. The only trace of the girl

would be the striped wool scarf she

dropped on the patch of black ice, and

when a car comes and runs it over,

dragging it away on its snow tires, there

isn’t even that.

I could be wrong.

Say I’m wrong.

Say there aren’t any hands.

Because what I sometimes believe is

that I could be staring right at one of the

girls—like that girl in my section of

study hall, the one muddling through her

trigonometry and drawing doodles of

agony in the margins because she hates

math. I look away for a second, and

when I turn back, the girl’s chair is

empty, her trig problem abandoned. And

that’s it: I will never see that girl again.

She’s gone.

I think it’s as simple as that. Without

struggle, without any way to stop it,

there one moment, not there the next.

That’s how it happened with Abby—and

with Shyann and Madison and Isabeth

and Trina, and the others. And I’m pretty

sure that’s how it will happen to me.

MISSING

ABIGAIL SINCLAIR

CASE TYPE:
Endangered Runaway

DOB:
June 20, 1995

MISSING:
September 2, 2012

AGE NOW:
17

SEX:
Female

RACE:
Caucasian

HAIR:
Brown

EYES:
Brown

HEIGHT:
5' 7" (174 cm)

WEIGHT:
120 lbs (54 kg)

MISSING FROM:
Orange Terrace, NJ,

United States

CIRCUMSTANCES:
Abigail, who more

often goes by the nickname Abby, was reported

missing September 2 but may have been seen

last on July 29 or July 30 on the grounds of

Lady-of-the-Pines Summer Camp for Girls in

the Pinecliff area of New York State. She was

said to be riding a blue Schwinn bicycle off the

campground after the 9 p.m. lights-out. She may

have been wearing red shorts and a camp

counselor T-shirt. Her nose is pierced. Her

family does not believe she returned to New

Jersey.

ANYONE HAVING INFORMATION

SHOULD CONTACT

Pinecliff Police Department (New York) 1-845-555-

1100

Orange Terrace Police Department (New Jersey) 1-

609-555-6638

—
1
—

SHE’S
Abigail Sinclair, brown hair,

brown eyes, age 17, from New Jersey—

but I call her Abby. I found her on the

side of the road in the dead of winter,

months after she went missing.

Abby’s story started in the pinewoods

surrounding my hometown. The seasons

changed and the summer heat faded, and

no one knew yet. The dreamland hung

low in the clouds, smoke-gray lungs

shriveled with disease, and no one

looked up to see. The snow came down

and the bristly trees shuddered in the

wind, sharing secrets, and no one

stopped to listen. Until I did.

I was forced to stop. My old van

made it so, as if someone had tinkered

with the engine, knowing it would hold

out down my driveway and onto this

main stretch of road, until here, where

the pines whispered, it would choke and

give out and leave me stranded.

I drove this road practically every day

—to school and to the Shop & Save, the

supermarket on the outskirts of Pinecliff

where I stocked shelves and worked the

registers on Saturdays and a couple

afternoons during the week. I must have

passed this spot where the old highway

meets Route 11 hundreds of times