17 & Gone (18 page)

when the girls’ room door banged open,

slamming against the wall, and a group

of three freshmen clattered in, crowding

me.

At the same time, the door, third from

the right, slowly swung itself open,

creaking as it went, revealing an empty

stall. No soot-covered snow boots. No

girl.

The freshmen tittered a little, bowing

their heads and not making eye contact—

as freshmen do around upperclassmen

and I don’t even know why—and then

one of them got brave and spoke up. She

was the smallest of the three, brown

glowing skin and shiny dark hair held

tight against her head with two yellow

clips, and she said, “You cut off all your

hair.” She flushed when I turned and

looked at her, but still stared at my head.

“Rain!” one of her friends said,

admonishing her.

“I like it,” Rain said, ignoring her two

friends but talking so fast it could barely

be made out. “I mean it brings out your

eyes or, I don’t know, something.”

“Thanks,” I said. This was the same

girl who’d bothered me in the library,

but now I had my eyes on the stall. I had

my heart lodged in my throat and a

whisper of a voice in my ear. The voice

wasn’t Fiona Burke’s; it didn’t snap at

me, it wasn’t cruel. And it wasn’t Abby

—she was staying quiet, giving this new

girl a turn to speak. It was Natalie

Montesano, whose face had lodged itself

over mine just that morning. I was

hearing voices, seeing phantom feet. I

didn’t care what some freshman thought

of my haircut.

“I’m Rain,” she said patiently. “We

used to be on the same bus? You look

—”

“You should go,” I said. I almost

growled it, and I don’t know why it

came out that way, like I was one of

those bullies who’d demand lunch

money or an iPhone and humiliate

someone simply because she was

younger than me. I fit the part, maybe

today, with my asymmetrical haircut that

toughened up the angles of my face and

my red eyes from the thrashing I’d done

in my sleep and the insistence, the deep

need
, to be alone again because

someone was trying to tell me something

important.

“Oh, okay,” Rain said, lowering her

head.

“The sink’s broken in the art room, so

we just needed to fill this up,” another

freshman said, and I noticed now that

she was carrying a bucket. “Ms. Raicht

said we could. She told us to come in

here. She said . . .”

“Just do it,” I said, like I ruled the

girls’ room and commanded the sinks,

“and hurry up.”

They filled the bucket quickly and

were heading out the door when Rain

turned back and held it open, pausing to

say this to me: “Are you feeling okay?

You look like you’ve seen a ghost or

something.”

I looked her in the eyes for the first

time and wondered if she might be able

to see the girl in the stall, too. If I

pointed her out.

Then she said, “I had the flu over

break and I was so dizzy and I puked and

everything. Do you need me to take you

to the nurse?”

I was about to tell her I was fine and

she should leave me alone when a

person shoved past her into the bathroom

and said, “Someone said you were up

here. Nice haircut.”

Jamie walked in and leaned up against

the far sink.

“You’re not allowed in here,” Rain

said to him. “You’ll get in trouble.”

Jamie glanced at her, then said to me:

“Who is this girl?”

“Nobody.” It was true. She wasn’t

even close to sixteen yet, let alone 17, so

I didn’t have to bother about worrying

over her. I was staring right at her and

blanking on her name.

It took her a few moments to sense

that she should leave. The door slammed

closed, and Jamie stepped closer, as if

we were alone, but we weren’t. It was

impossible now to be alone with me

because I was always being followed.

He stepped close to me, and then I

stepped away, and I think that’s when it

began to dawn on him.

“Didn’t you see me downstairs?” he

asked.

“Yeah,” I admitted, not able to keep it

up anymore, not now that the visions

were multiplying, now that there were

three girls.

“So you’re avoiding me?”

I shrugged. I felt my shoulders make

the motion, and I didn’t do a thing to stop

them.

“What’s gotten into you?” he said, just

coming out with it. “Are you into

someone else? Is that it? Who is it?”

“It’s no one. It’s not that.”

“So what is it then?” I now realized

we were having “the talk,” and that I

wasn’t going to get away with avoiding

it today.

He’d retreated back to lean against the

sinks. His arms were crossed over his

narrow chest and his thick, dark hair

was curling down over one of his eyes.

He didn’t reach up to move it away.

I didn’t want to let myself keep

looking at him—like I’d given up that

right—so I dropped my gaze and thought

and thought of what to say. There was a

drain in the middle of the tiled floor that

I hadn’t noticed before and my eyes

caught on it. Was that how Natalie had

entered the room? And was that the exit

she’d taken to leave? Could the girls

travel through the pipes of the school?

Were they anywhere, and everywhere,

able to find me wherever I went, no

matter if I wanted them to or not?

“Lauren,” Jamie said. “You owe me

this. You know you do. Just say it. I can

take it.”

He was right: I did owe him an

explanation. It was more than just that

we’d gotten physical together and that

made all of this so much more serious.

And with seriousness comes the

lowering of the walls, and with the

lowering of the walls comes the

nakedness, and with the nakedness

comes the connection and the fear. Both

of us had done things we’d never done

with anyone else before—at least that’s

what
he
said; I know I was telling the

truth—not to mention the talking and all

the secrets spilled after, like when we’d

lie in bed together, under the covers, at

his house or my house, when no one else

was home.

He told me how his dad used to hit

him until one day, when he was thirteen,

he hit him back and got lucky with his

aim and bloodied his lip. I told him how

my dad disappeared when I was three

and a few years ago we thought he was

in a homeless shelter down in Texas, but

when we called to talk to him he

wouldn’t come to the phone. Jamie told

me how he used to think of suicide

sometimes, when he was reading a lot of

Camus. I told him how I never once

thought of suicide, but I knew my mom

had, before I was born, and knowing I

was the one keeping her alive and happy

made me more afraid to die than

anything ever could. Jamie and I simply

told each other a lot of things. And I

guess that once you’ve gone that far with

someone, once you’ve let him in, in all

the ways a person can be let in, you

should say why you don’t want to see

him anymore. You should
know
why,

yourself.

I didn’t, but I tried to explain.

“It’s me. It’s me and it’s not me.

There’s more of me than you know.

There’s more, and I can’t tell you, I can’t

say. There are things . . . There are

people.” I got the distinct feeling I was

saying too much. It’s true that Jamie

knew a lot about me, but he didn’t know

everything. I’d never told him about

Fiona Burke running away all those

years ago. And, right then, I was

relieved I hadn’t. She wouldn’t want him

to know.

“Wait, so you’re saying I don’t know

you? Are you
serious
?” He’d heard only

part of what I’d said.

“You used to. You don’t anymore.”

“You’re not making sense.”

I agreed. It felt like we were having

two separate conversations, that he was

hearing things my mouth wasn’t saying,

and I was saying things his ears couldn’t

hear.

Then I remembered the phone call

he’d taken when we were at the Lady-of-

the-Pines Summer Camp that night. He

was acting like all of this was my fault,

but was it? Who was the guilty one here?

“Maybe I should ask
you
if there’s

someone else?” I said. “If there was,

would you tell me?”

“No,” he said, and hearing that

answer felt like a slap. Then he

clarified. “There’s no one else.” He

added this last bit without looking at me:

“But it sounds like you want me to get

with someone else.”

I couldn’t blame him if he did. I

wasn’t fit for consumption. I was

defective. I was about to melt down that

drain and share the pipes with the only

people who understood me. The girls.

I don’t know what I wanted him to do:

pull me into his arms, maybe, and say it

didn’t matter. Sense there was someone

in the stall and not be scared away by it.

He did none of those things. You see,

Jamie Rossi was great. He was kind. He

was really, really into me, or at least he

used to be. But he was also a pretty

typical 17-year-old boy, and you can’t

expect so much from them.

“Whatever you want,” he said, his

eyes hardening. “I guess we’re broken

up then.” He turned for the door, and I

thought he was about to leave; then he

turned back.

“That’s mine. That hoodie you’re

wearing. Take it off.”

“You’re kidding.”

He waited, and the expression on his

face said it all. It was more a lack of

expression, an iron door behind which

he’d packed all his emotions; I’d never

get close to them again since I wasn’t

strong enough to lift that door. He

absolutely was not kidding.

“C’mon,” he said. “You made me late

to class already. Just give it so I can go.”

I unzipped the red hoodie, then pulled

it off, arm by arm. Underneath I wore

only a T-shirt of the thinnest cotton, and

it was January, and my nipples turned to

pebbles and the gooseflesh on my arms

popped up, and surely he’d see this and

let me hang on to the hoodie for the rest

of the day.

Nope.

I held it out to him, dangling it in the

open space between us. He closed the

gap, tore it out of my hand, and left.

Natalie, upon hearing the door slam,

dropped her feet down off the toilet and

came out of the stall. She made me

cough, and she made my eyes tear up,

and I couldn’t look at her, not even in the

mirror, and there was a lump in my

throat so I couldn’t speak.

She didn’t touch me, because I don’t

think a ghost can touch a person. But she

stood very, very close to me so her

whisper teased at the lobe of my ear:

You don’t need him,
she said, and I

knew just what she’d say next.
You have

us.

—
24
—

NATALIE
wondered what else

she’d inherited from her mother, beyond

the physical characteristics most kids

inherit through the curse of DNA: eye

color, hair texture, bumps on the nose,

extra weight around the hips. Did she

carry something else of her mom’s, that

raging flare buried and faintly glowing

somewhere in her, the one that made her

mother sneak the blade from the kitchen

and plunge it, without warning, into the

snoring chest of that man in her bed?

Maybe this kind of calculated rage

was genetic. It could be that Natalie had

this trait just as she had anything else.

You have your mother’s eyes.

You have your mother’s skill with a

carving knife.

Natalie feared it could snap on at any