17 & Gone (35 page)

FIONA’S
here with me now. She

pretend-shoots the doctor dead and then

she’s motioning for the window, like I

should make a leap for it, or push the

doctor through the glass to see if her

enormous earrings will break her fall.

I’m not sure what Fiona’s getting at, but

I’m not about to do anything stupid, and I

need to keep all reactions off my face so

the doctor doesn’t know.

With Fiona’s arrival, the doctor’s

office has darkened at the edges,

bleeding shadows in the corners and on

the ceiling tiles. I see our time is running

out. Not just on this session. On the girls.

Then I catch what Fiona wanted to

show me: She’s not motioning at the

window; she’s motioning at the desk

beside the window. The pendant is on

the doctor’s desk. It’s been here this

whole time.

I point to it. “That’s mine. Can I have

that back?”

The doctor gazes over at her desktop,

but she doesn’t move closer.

“I’m glad you brought that up,” she

says. “What is this little collection?”

I don’t understand what she means by

“collection.” There’s one thing: the

necklace. There’s the necklace I wore

around my neck, and that’s all.

I can see it there, out of reach but in

the same room with me now. Close

enough that I could stand up, and take a

few steps, and have it in my hands. I

study it as if for the first time: The stone

is gray but not completely gray; really, it

doesn’t look like a stone at all but a

breath of smoke that’s been caught inside

a bubble of glass. I think of breaking it

open, to see if that’s what’s in there.

Because it can’t be. Because it’s heavy,

heavier than something made of smoke

should be, and when you hold it in your

fist it grows hot, or your fist does, and if

I had it now I’d practically be burning.

“It’s just a necklace,” I tell her.

“Is it?” she says oddly.

I watch as she raises herself from her

plush chair and moves for the desk,

gathering up some papers in her arms

and my pendant on top. She walks it all

over to me and places the pile neatly on

the small table before the chair where

she has me sitting. I’m about to grab for

the necklace first, but she blocks my

hand.

“Is that what you meant? This

‘necklace’?” She points, and again I

notice how she’s careful not to touch it.

Her tone is confusing me. Also

confusing is when she asks me to

describe it for her, as if she can’t see it

on the table before us, right here. I tell

her about the smoky gray stone, which

gleams in the light and swirls with

movement, coming alive at the sound of

my voice. It’s like a mood ring, the kind

they sell at gas-station registers for five

bucks. But it never changes color, and

you wear it around your neck instead of

on your finger.

“Where did you get it?” she asks.

“Did someone give it to you?”

I avoid her eyes. “Not exactly.”

I’m worried she’ll make me tell the

whole story before I’m allowed to have

it back. And if I told, I’m not sure I’d get

to keep it.

“I . . . found it,” I say weakly. What I

should
say is that it belongs to a missing

girl. I should be confessing that it might

be a clue, and should be turned over to

police, if my wearing it against my skin

all these weeks hasn’t contaminated it.

But if I could only get it back, I’d have

my link to her again. To Abby. Because

she hasn’t finished telling me her story.

None of the girls have.

“Lauren,” the doctor says, waiting

until I meet her eyes. “What I see there

isn’t a necklace like you’re describing.

What I see there is a rock.”

A rock?

“A rock,” she repeats. “A rock from

the ground, which looks to be tied with a

string.”

I lower my eyes to the pendant, and

there’s the swirl and the gleam and the

shimmer, and then a flatness and a

stillness that wasn’t there before, and a

darkening that wasn’t there before, and a

rock. There’s a rock. The pendant has

turned into a rock.

I flash back to the side of Dorsett

Road, the gully filled with snow where I

found the pendant that night. I see my

hand reaching out to pluck it from the

ground and I see my fingers wrapping

around a dirty rock from the side of the

road and lifting this putrid thing into the

palm of my hand like it’s something

beautiful. I see it clear, and my throat

chokes up, and my eyes burn, and I’m not

so sure anymore about anything.

“What did you do?” I shriek.

I have it now, in my hand, and it’s still

a rock. No matter how many times I turn

it over, rubbing it in my fingers, it

doesn’t change back. It’s as gone as the

girls are, as gone as I should be soon, if

the shadows gathering by my feet under

the table are any indication. Gone, and

this dirty, lumpy rock is all that’s left.

“I didn’t do anything to it,” she says in

a quiet voice. “You know that.”

I put my head down, which is why I

don’t see the next thing she’s trying to

show me. There’s the sound of shuffling

papers and some movement on the table

before me, and then she says, as if this is

a portfolio showing at the end of art

class and she wants to know my artistic

influences regarding my still life of

grapes: “Now tell me about these,

Lauren.”

I won’t look.

“Your mother found them in your

room, in your dresser, she told me, and

under your bed. Your mother said there

were a lot more than what we have here,

but she brought in a few to show me.

Can you tell me about these posters,

Lauren? These ‘Missing’ notices? It

looks like you’ve printed yourself up

quite a collection.”

On the top is Shyann Johnston, gone

missing from Newark, New Jersey, at

age 17. Beside her is Yoon-mi Hyun,

gone

missing

from

Milford,

Pennsylvania, at age 17, but I don’t see

Maura Morris’s flyer, which bothers me,

because I always like to keep them

together. And then poking out from

beneath Shyann is a girl I haven’t found

in the dream yet, and edging out from

beneath Yoon-mi is a girl I looked for

and didn’t ever see and there are so

many, all age 17, and these aren’t even

all of them.

I wonder what Fiona will have to say

about this—or, more, what she’ll tell me

to say in my own defense. She stands far

across the room, beside the potted plant

the doctor accused her of being, and the

look on her face is something terrible.

I’ve seen that look only once before,

years ago, when she wanted to get me

away from that little man and did the

only thing she could think when his back

was turned, which was hide me, fast. In

the moment before she shoved me in the

coat closet, I remember how she looked

this sickened, this afraid.

I turn back to the doctor. Fiona has

given me no words, so I have nothing to

say.

It doesn’t matter. The doctor has

glanced at the clock. She gathers my

girls off the table and holds them in her

arms. This is enough, she says, for today.

We’ll talk some more next time. We’ll

have time to go through all of this—

we’ll have lots and lots of time to talk in

the coming weeks.

“Weeks?”
I say. “I thought I was

getting out on Monday.”

She won’t confirm if I am or not, only

that we’ll talk more soon. Then she tells

me I can go now. I can go out with the

others and line up now, because it’s time

for lunch.

—
56
—

THE
girl who I witnessed yodeling

when she first arrived has the other bed

in my room now, but she sleeps with her

face to the wall, so all I have is a view

of the back of her head and the lump of

her body. She sleeps day and night, night

and day, and there’s nothing that can

wake her, not even when I bolt upright in

the dark, shaken to consciousness by a

bad feeling I can’t name.

This isn’t a dream—those have been

taken from me. This is something else. I

let my eyes adjust in the darkness and

stare directly overhead, at the ceiling

speckled with midnight static. It takes

some moments before I start to be able

to decipher them. The shadows.

The ceiling and walls are clean and

unmarked where my roommate is

sleeping—no shadows there. That’s

because they’ve all gathered on my side

of the room, staining the wall beside my

bed and clawing upward to bloom in the

darkest spot directly over my pillow,

where my head is now resting.

“You have to get out of here,” a voice

says.

It wasn’t one of the girls’ voices

sidling through the slurred spaces of my

mind. It wasn’t Fiona’s voice, her body

appearing suddenly beside me in the

bed, her mouth tilted to face my ear. It

wasn’t even my neighbor, spouting out a

random lucid sentence in her sleep. It

was my own voice. I’d spoken those

words aloud. To myself.

—
57
—

JAMIE
has come to visit, and he’s

driven my van. He tells me he’ll go drop

it off at my house after. A friend will

come pick him up, and he’ll leave the

keys for me in my room.

I don’t know why he’s come all the

way over here to tell me about his

transportation arrangements, or why it’s

so important to him that I know he got

my van off Karl’s back lawn. He goes to

the window of the common room to

point out the van in the parking lot, and

there it is, at the curb beside a low-

hanging tree, black and menacing and

mine, and if only I could be in it now,

going anywhere, just driving.

Jamie’s back is to me, and I can study

the set of his shoulders under that old

peacoat he’s still got on. His thin legs in

those big black boots. The curls of his

hair sticking out under that knit cap. If

this were the last time I ever got to see

him, I’d be okay with it. This memory of

him here at the window would be a

decent one to hold on to.

Then he turns, and the memory I’m

making of him shifts. The pain in his

eyes is more emotion than I’ve felt

myself in days. It’s like they carved all

feeling out of me and handed the gore

over to him, as my guest, to carry

through the halls on my behalf until his

visiting time is up and the dinner hour

begins and they make him leave empty-

handed.

He takes a seat in a vinyl chair beside

me and turns it so we face each other.

“I’ve been thinking about what you

said,” he starts. “That night. When I

drove you home.”

It’s kind of him, only I can’t remember

exactly what I said that night. Bits and

pieces like that have been smudged

away.

“So that really was what you were

seeing?” he goes on. “That girl?” And

that’s how I remember I told him about

Abby Sinclair.

I have the very strong feeling that he

shouldn’t say her name here, so I put my

hand on his arm to stop him, the first

touch we’ve had between us since he

arrived. Unfortunately I’ve used my left

arm, and some of the bandage peeks out

from the edge of my sleeve. He sees it

and freezes. I pull my arm away and put

it back where it was.

Jamie and I aren’t together anymore,

and I’m not sure if we’re friends, but

we’re something. He wouldn’t be here if

we were nothing. He starts talking about

some random thing and while talking he

fidgets—I think the other patients in the

common

room

are

making

him