Gone

ALSO BY
LISA M
C
MANN

Wake

Fade

The final book in the Wake trilogy

LISA McMANN

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

SIMON PULSE
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
First Simon Pulse hardcover edition February 2010
Copyright © 2010 by Lisa McMann
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected].
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.
Designed by Mike Rosamilia
The text of this book was set in Janson Text.
Manufactured in the United States of America
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McMann, Lisa.
Gone / by Lisa McMann. — 1st Simon Pulse hardcover ed.
p. cm.
Summary: While eighteen-year-old Janie ponders her future with Cabe, knowing that her being a dream catcher means eventual blindness and crippling, she encounters her past as the father she never knew is hospitalized with brain trauma and seems to need her help.
ISBN 978-1-4169-7918-0 (hardcover)
eISBN 978-1-4424-1386-3
[1. Dreams—Fiction. 2. Lucid dreams—Fiction. 3. Choice—Fiction. 4. Love—Fiction. 5. Fathers and daughters—Fiction. 6. Alcoholism—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M2256Gon 2010
[Fic]—dc22
2009018682

For all those who have trouble at home.
You are not alone.

Many thanks to all my invisible friends who shared their painful stories about what it’s like to live with an alcoholic parent, and to Carl Loerwald at the Washtenaw Alano Club in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for all his help.

Thanks also to:

Jennifer Klonsky, whose tough suggestions made me cry
Gone
so much better. And, of course, to my agent, Michael Bourret, my favorite person on earth, for everything and more.

Diane Blake Harper, for being wonderful and for having the tackiest snow-globe collection ever. To Marcia and Dan Levy for all the early help—it was an honor to learn things from you. And to Joanne Levy for the priceless feedback. Go, NDP!

Matt and Kilian, for being awesome guys; Rachel Heitkamp and Kennedy, for letting me use their cool buzzword; and to Trevor Bowler, because I promised.

And to all the fans of the Wake trilogy: Thank you from the bottom of my heart for spreading the word about Janie and Cabe. You are amazing. I am grateful.

To anyone whose life is impacted by someone else’s drinking problem, please check out Alateen or Al-Anon at
www.al-anon.alateen.org
.

24/7/365

It’s like she can’t breathe anymore, no matter what she does.

Like everything is closing in on her, crowding her. Threatening her.

The hearing. The truth coming out. Reliving Durbin’s party in front of a judge and the three bastards themselves, staring her down. Cameras following her around the second she steps outside the courtroom. Exposed as a narc, all of Fieldridge talking about it.

Talking about her.

For weeks, it’s on the local news. Gossip in the grocery store. Downtown. People point, murmur with heads close
together, those looks on their faces. Randomly coming up to her and asking invasive questions. Strangers, former classmates, leaning into her space, whispering, like they’re her closest confidantes:
So, what did they really do to you?

Janie’s not cut out for this—she’s a loner. She is underground. It’s like she hasn’t even had time to let all the other stuff sink in—the real, the important. The Janie life-changing stuff. The stuff from the green notebook.

Going blind. Losing the use of her hands.

The pressure is breathtaking.

She’s suffocating.

Just wants to run.

Hide.

So she can just be.

Five minutes that matter.

Across the desk. The spot beside her, empty.

“I don’t know anymore,” she says. “I just don’t know.” Presses her palms into her temples, hoping her head doesn’t explode.

“Whatever you decide,” the woman says.

It is their secret.

Tuesday, August 1, 2006, 7:25 a.m.

“I can’t breathe,” she whispers.

His hot fingers lace her ribs, sear through her skin to her frozen lungs. He holds her. Kisses her. Breathes for her. Through her.

Makes her forget.

Afterward, he says, “We’re going. Right now. Come.”

She does it.

On the three-hour drive, she looks through eyelashes at her blurred fingers, curled in her lap. Pretends to be
asleep. Not sure why. Just soaking in the quiet. And knowing, deep down.

Knowing that he,

and this,

are not answers to her problems.

She’s beginning to realize what is.

August 3, 2006, 1:15 a.m.

The inquisitors are nowhere to be found on this side of the state. Here, at Charlie and Megan’s rental cabin on Fremont Lake, no one knows her. The days are peaceful but the nights . . . in a tiny cabin, the nights are bad. Dreams don’t take vacations when people do.

It’s always something, isn’t it? Always something and never nothing for Janie. Never, ever nothing.

Like the car a doctor once told her never to drive, she craves it. Craves the rebellious never, the elusive nothing. And when the next nightmare begins, she thinks about it for real.

1:23 a.m.

Janie shakes on a lumpy sofa. Beside her, stretched out in a reclining lawn chair, is Cabe. Asleep.

He’s dreaming about her.

Janie watches, as she sometimes does when his dreams are sweet. Storing up memories. For later. But this . . .

They’re playing paintball in an outdoor field with a dozen faceless people. It looks like a video game. Cabe and Janie move through the obstacles and shoot at each other, laughing, ducking, hiding. Cabel sneaks up and takes two shots at Janie, two red paintballs.

They nail her right in the eyeballs.

Red paint drips down her cheeks, her eye sockets hollow.

He keeps shooting and takes out one limb at a time, until Janie is just a body and a paint-striped face.

He sobs, remorseful, kneels next to her on the ground, and then picks her up and carries her, puts her in a wheelchair. Rolls her away to an empty part of the field and dumps her out onto the yellow grass.

Janie pulls out of it. Knows she shouldn’t be wasting dreams. But she can’t help it. She can’t look away.

When she can see, she stares in the dark at the ceiling while Cabe tosses and turns. She slides her arm over her
eyes, trying to forget. Trying to pretend like this hasn’t been happening for two months straight, on top of everything else. “Please stop,” she whispers. “Please.”

4:23 a.m.

He dreams and she is forced awake again.

She holds her head.

Janie and Cabel are in the backyard of Cabe’s house, sitting in the green grass. Janie’s arms end at the elbows. Her eyes are sewn shut, needles still connected and hanging from the thread, down her cheeks. Black tears.

Cabel is frantic. He pulls an ear of corn from a paper grocery bag and strips the silk away. Attaches it to one of Janie’s elbows. He plucks two marbles from the paper bag. Big brown Tiger’s Eye shooters. He pushes them into Janie’s sewn-up eyelids, pushes hard, but they won’t stick. Janie falls over backward like a rag doll, unable to catch herself without hands. The ear of corn breaks off her elbow and rolls away. Cabe cradles the Tiger’s Eye marbles in his hands.

Janie, numb, can’t watch anymore. And she won’t try to change it. Not a dream like that. Because it’s about her, and how Cabe is dealing with things. It feels completely wrong to manipulate that. She just hopes he never asks her to help.

Still, she doesn’t want him dreaming it, period. Not any of it. She kicks out her leg. Connects. Everything goes black.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. Goes back to sleep.

It’s been like this.

It’s like everything he can’t say comes out in his dreams.

9:20 a.m.

Familiar stirrings put an end to dreams. A welcome relief. Janie rests on her couch half-asleep. Talking herself back up. Back to normalcy. She puts on her facade.

Until she can figure out what to do about it.

About life.

About him.

9:33 a.m.

She hears the lawn chair creak, and then feels Cabel snuggling up behind her on the sofa. She stiffens, just a little. Just for a second. Then takes a deep breath. He slips his warm fingers under her cami and slides them across her belly. She smiles and relaxes, eyes still closed. “You’re going to get us in trouble,” she says. “You know your brother’s rules.”

“I’m on top of the blanket. You’re under it. They’ll
be okay with that. Besides, I’m not doing anything.” He strokes her skin, kisses her shoulder. Slips his fingers under the waistband of her jammie pants.

“Dude.” Janie links her fingers in his. “Nope,” she calls out, in case Charlie and Megan are paying attention. “Nothing happening over here.” She murmurs to Cabel, “You’re making breakfast. Right?”

“Right. I’m starting the fire with my mind, frying bacon with my darkest, crispiest thoughts. And you thought you had a special ability. Think again, missypants.”

Janie laughs, but it comes out strained. “Did you sleep okay?”

“Yeah.” His chin scratches her shoulder. “Well, as good as anybody can sleep on weaved strips of fibrous plastic and a metal rod riding his ass.” He nips her earlobe and adds, “Why? Did I have a nightmare? You always make me nervous when you ask that.”

“Shh,” Janie says. “Go make me some bacon.”

He’s quiet for a moment, and then he gets up. Slips into his jeans. “Okay, then.”

9:58 a.m.

They do vacationy things. Sitting around with Charlie and Megan, drinking coffee, making breakfast over the campfire. Relaxing. Getting to know one another better.

Janie’s distracted.

She stares at everything, afraid she’ll miss something that needs to be seen before it’s too late.

She really doesn’t know how to do vacations.

Besides, some stuff you just can’t get away from.

But she’s brave. Everything appears normal. Even though inside, she’s wrecked.

It’s been a tough few months.

Facing them—Doc, Happy, and Dumbass—was way more difficult than she thought it would be. Reliving all the lies. The setup. The assaults. All the things those teachers did. It was horrible.