Authors: Nova Ren Suma
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Social Issues, #Runaways, #Horror & Ghost Stories, #Visionary & Metaphysical
I was a kid. But also, I know she’s right.
I’ve seen the girls in reflective surfaces:
mirrors and windows, and once in the
exceptionally clean surface of a fork
from the dishwasher. And I’ve seen the
girls in small spaces, where they emerge
only if no one’s looking, and in the trees,
where the shadows make good places to
hide. But I don’t know how being out in
the open, with the pine forest all around
and no roof above, will let them know
it’s safe to emerge. The only other way
is the flicker of flame, the mask and
smell of smoke. That’s why we have to
do it, Fiona says.
Once we do, they’ll be lured out, and
so will their stories. I think of them like
apples bobbing to the surface of water,
though these are real girls, and real
girls’ heads. Soon, families and friends
will have closure. Mysteries will be
untied and left out in the sun for the
finding. I’ll mourn every last one of
them, hoping against hope I’m wrong.
And Abby Sinclair, the girl my
thoughts keep returning to. The one girl
whose end I can’t see. Her story starts
here, on this closed-off tract of land in
the pines. She’ll have to step out of the
woods once the fire starts. How could
she ignore us now?
When the fire catches the kindling and
begins to burn, I warm my hands over
the growing flames. I don’t let myself
think about Jamie, who I ditched at the
hospital. Or my mom, who’s surely
gotten a phone call that I’m not there and
is in a panic trying to figure out where I
could be. I mean, I think about them, but
only for a moment. Fiona stops me. She
wants me to see . . .
At this high point, looking over the
campground, all the dark, empty cabins
can be viewed. The mess hall, the arts-
and-crafts cabin, the chapel, the empty
flagpole flapping its loose string in the
billowing wind. Abby Sinclair spent her
last days here, and now—side-eying
Fiona, who drifts fire-bright at the edge
of the stones—I wonder if this is where
I’m about to spend mine.
The fresh night air clears my head. It’s
cold, but it’s cleansing, and I can think
again the way I used to.
I stand up. I pat my pockets, feeling
for a cell phone, and remember I had no
cell phone at the hospital, so I have no
cell phone here. For a second, I’m on a
frozen, windy hill in a vacant, forgotten
place on a late January night and I don’t
know why.
Then I see what Fiona has been trying
to show me.
The snow has disappeared to make
way for the sidewalk. The cracks are the
same, and I avoid stepping on them, and
the black iron gate swings open with a
shriek and a creak, the way it always
does. The stairs don’t crumble under my
weight the way I sometimes suspect they
might as I approach the door, and the
door pushes open, because it’s never
kept locked, not for any of us, not for me.
Inside the house is a wall of heat,
from the fire. It climbs high to eat a
gaping hole out of the ceiling. I duck
when the chandelier drops and falls. I’m
so deep in it, the heat should blister my
skin and catch and blaze up my clothes,
but I can’t feel a thing. It doesn’t touch
me.
That’s when they start to come out,
one girl from behind the banister, and
one girl from another room. One from
within the folded curtains, and one from
the floor, since there’s no furniture to sit
on. They come from upstairs, where
their rooms are, and they gather here
with me.
There’s a flicker, and I lose sight of
the house and can see only the quiet
campground again. The fire burns from a
pit of ash and sticks and branches at my
feet.
But then the night flickers back to
what it was, to what Fiona knew would
happen. They’ve been smoked out, as
she said they would be. Smoke clears to
show that the girls are here. The girls I
haven’t seen since getting sent away.
Now they surround me.
Natalie Montesano, who thought for
sure her friends would come back for
her, who never thought they’d leave her
behind in the crushed car on the sleek,
steep road after the accident, but when
they did, she took off and she didn’t look
back. Even when she wanted to.
Shyann Johnston, who sometimes
fantasizes she could glide through the
school hallways again, but this time with
a sawed-off shotgun tucked under her
arm, because they’d see it and they’d
shut their mouths. And when the
hallways emptied, she’d put the gun
down on the floor because it’s not like
she’d ever use it and she’d get a drink
from the water fountain, which she’s
never been able to do before without
getting shoved in, and she’d smile.
Isabeth Valdes, who thinks she
wouldn’t have gotten in the strange car if
she hadn’t been carrying all those books
in the rain, and she wouldn’t have been
carrying all those books if she didn’t
have three tests on Monday, so if she
didn’t have three tests on Monday she
might still be here.
Madison Waller, who bought herself
three fashion magazines for the bus ride
into the city, who’s practicing her face
for the camera even now, even though
nobody who’s anybody can see her.
Eden DeMarco, who only wanted to
see the Pacific Ocean, who only wanted
to touch it with her toes, that’s all.
Yoon-mi Hyun and Maura Morris,
who both think love changes a person for
the better, and both agree that it
is
possible to find your soul mate at age
17, no matter what your parents may say
when you bring the girl home.
Kendra Howard, who expects she’s
the bravest, baddest, most kickass girl
those guy friends of hers have ever
known, and bets they still spend nights
talking about her, still toast her memory
over cold beers, saying how high she
leaped, how far she fell, how she had
balls, and she’ll never be forgotten, RIP.
Jannah Afsana Din, who believes
starting a new life with Carlos in
Mexico
wouldn’t
have
been
as
impossible as people said—they could
have lived on the beach together and
raised chickens; they could have sold the
little cakes she makes on the streets and
survived, even flourished, even found
happiness.
Hailey Pippering, who’s done some
things she can’t say out loud because it’d
make her sick; she only wants her
parents to know that she didn’t run away
this time, even if they think she did. This
time, she wanted to stay.
And Trina Glatt, who always meant to
track down the father who abandoned
her when she was a baby, so she could
throttle him and blame him for every bad
thing that ever happened to her, but also,
secretly, so she could hug him, and admit
she missed him, and if he invited her to a
baseball game, or to the backyard, to
throw a Frisbee around or something,
she’d probably go. She’d tell him that, if
she could.
There are a lot of things the girls
would tell the people they left behind, if
they could.
All those girls. So many to keep track
of tonight, my head swirling. Only,
something’s missing. Something’s not
right here. The circle of girls comes
close and then weaves tighter around
me. I can’t tell if I’m at the center or if
the fire is.
The night flickers.
What I thought were the soot-streaked
walls of the house are the tall stalks of
the pine trees; the staircase to the upper
floors is the side of the mountain leading
up to the looming ridge; the ceiling
doesn’t end because it’s the night sky.
Pinpricks of flurries rain down, as soft
as ash but cool on my cheeks. My
surroundings keep shifting: I’m at Lady-
of-the-Pines, in the ring of stones where
the campers toast marshmallows in
summer. Then I’m in the house in my
dream. My dream is here, or this place
has become a part of it; I don’t know the
difference.
The girls’ hands are tightly clasped,
though there’s no singing. This isn’t
summer camp. This isn’t the kind of
night for belting out “Row, Row, Row
Your Boat” and holding a flashlight to
ghoul up your face and tell ghost stories.
The ghosts tonight have already told
their stories.
I cast my eyes around the fire. I still
can’t shake that something’s not how it’s
supposed to be. Madison’s bright-blond
hair seems wild in the fire, and there’s
an uncountable number of stars in her
eyes, but it’s not her. Trina shoots me a
threatening glare, but it’s not her, either.
Then I know: Yes, the girls have come
out. Some (Jannah, Hailey) have only
recently become familiar and I barely
know their full stories yet, and some
(Natalie, Shyann) are girls I feel like
I’ve known since first grade. But there’s
one whose face I can’t find in the roaring
glow, one I keep looking for in the
hissing, dizzying circle of smoke,
thinking I must have missed her.
Thinking they’re moving too fast, and if
they’d only slow down or stop so I
could see her.
Where’s Abby?
She doesn’t step out of the smoke. She
still hasn’t come. I haven’t gotten her
out. All this, and I haven’t found her.
I turn to Fiona to ask what happened. I
see Fiona now, at the edge of the ring,
not holding a hand, not taking a step
inside, only watching. Only waiting. An
observer to a disaster about to occur,
standing back so she can wipe her hands
of it after.
She wants me to join the girls. It’s not
fair that I’ve been living my life out in
the daylight, driving my van down any
road I want, walking into any house I
want, seeing the people who love me at
any moment, on any day. She’s forgotten
I’ve been in the hospital, unable to have
any of these things, either. Because
surrounding us is an entire sky made of
shadows, and there’s no escaping your
fate.
I’m 17. Like she was, like they all
were.
Then Fiona meets my eyes, and I
question my distrust of her. I question
everything.
Because no, she didn’t bring me here
to get rid of me. She expected Abby to
come out, just as I did. She’s looking at
the fire, waiting and wondering where
she is, too.
Then she makes a decision.
She grabs my arm. I can’t tell if I’m
feeling her touch or if what’s come back
is a memory of her touch, from before.
Her hand has a hard grasp of my arm,
reminding me of that night when I was
still eight and she was 17 as she is now,
when she grabbed me and shoved me in
the closet. But tonight it hurts so much
more than it did then because she’s
grabbing my left arm, my bad arm.
We’ve got to burn the place down,
she says.
No, no, wait, we can’t yet, I try to tell
Fiona. Abby’s not here. Aren’t we
supposed to find Abby first, and only
after can we—
But I’m not fast enough to catch her.
Fiona’s racing down the hill with the
bottle of kerosene in her arms. It’s too
late. She will start the destruction
without me.
—
60
—
SHE’S
telling me to do it. She’s
telling all of us, pulling our strings and
giving commands. Soon the girls have
sticks gathered from the outskirts of the
woods that they raise to light the way,
and soon the kerosene can is in my good
arm and the spout is open and the liquid
is dribbling out on my toes.
I start to wonder: Is it too late for
Abby? Fiona is acting like it might be.