17 & Gone(13)

“The girl ran off. Her family knows that. Everyone knows that.”

“You’re wrong. She didn’t run away.”

“You sure about that?”

I was, all at once.

We’d reached the chain-link fence out front. He held it open with an arm out level with my chest, and there seemed to be a fraction of a second when he was keeping me from stepping through the broken gate.

“ I know her,” I said lamely. “I know she wouldn’t.”

Jamie spoke up, surprising me.

“Didn’t anyone see anything? Where she went? Who with? Anything?” He gave me a sidelong glance, assuring me we’d talk about this later, but for now he’d go along with it.

“And did you ever search the area?” I added. “The woods? Did you look for her bicycle, did you—”

“If you’re only curious and that’s all this is, I’ll tell you,” the officer said, looking only at Jamie’s face, I noted, not mine. He revealed a couple details I didn’t remember from the Missing poster, and I drank them in, holding them close for later.

It was Abby’s grandparents, her legal guardians, who said she ran away— that’s what they told camp officials and the police—and that’s why there was no urgency to propel anyone to keep searching.

The

officer

pointed

off

the

campground toward the old highway, now called Dorsett Road. A witness— he didn’t share who—had seen Abby take a right on her bicycle down this road, and that was the last anyone saw of her. He shook his head like there was nothing that could be done. She’d done it to herself.

Besides, I could sense him thinking, what was she? She was only a 17-year-old girl. And 17-year-old girls vanish all the time.

Soon after this the officer closed the gate, made sure we got in our separate vehicles, and then took off. He drove an unmarked car without any lights on top, and I wondered if he’d been off-duty when he noticed our cars parked here.

But as soon as his taillights were swallowed by the night, Jamie got out of his car and strode over to my van.

“What was that?” he said, taking a seat on the passenger side. My engine was idling to get the heat running, and he cupped his hands to the vent.

And here was another opportunity for me to tell him. Here—in the quiet night, minutes after I wore Abby’s body, or she wore mine, when the two of us together rolled in a bed of pine needles, in the arms of the boy she said she loved. Now that Jamie knew she existed, I could have told him how connected I felt to her, this stranger who wasn’t a stranger to me.

I could have. But all I said was, “I saw her Missing poster. I looked up this place. I was . . . curious.”

(I did not tell him I had the Missing poster, folded as many times as a piece of paper could be folded, in my backpack, near his feet. I felt Abby in the trees, and I felt Abby in the air. I felt the exhale of her breath through the heating vents, and I felt the inhale in my head.

She didn’t want me to show Jamie, and what she wanted felt far more important than what I wanted.)

“So you don’t know her,” Jamie said.

“So you lied.”

“She didn’t run away,” I said. “She didn’t. She—”

“How can you possibly know that, Lauren?”

I was staring down into my hands. The light from the dashboard lit them up enough for me to be able to see the lines of my palms, and yet when I gazed at them, there were no lines. My palms were smooth and unmarked as if I had no past, and no future. I had a moment of wondering whose hands were on that steering wheel, whose body walked out of the Lady-of-the-Pines Summer Camp for Girls and climbed into my van.

“I don’t know for sure,” I said. “It’s a feeling I have, that’s all.”

I couldn’t read his face.

But I’m going to find out, I thought but didn’t say. She wouldn’t leave me alone if I didn’t.

He moved toward me then. I felt his hand on my chin, and his mouth on my mouth, and before I knew it I’d pulled away, putting some needed inches between us. A hand was out, shoving into his chest. That was my hand, making it impossible for him to get any closer.

I watched confusion cross his face, then something worse that looked a lot like anger. I’d never shoved him away from me before; I didn’t even know why I had.

“Who was that who called you?” I blurted out randomly. I hadn’t been bothered by it then, in Cabin 3 when he’d answered the phone, but in this moment something told me I should be.

“When?” he asked. He was frozen, leaning over my seat as if suspended in midair. My arm was still out, my unlined hand pressed up hard against his chest as if I were the one keeping him there, dangling. And I was.

I watched him move away from my hand, shrink back and retreat. It felt like witnessing something die between us, a stop-animation visual of a rotting and shriveling thing turning to particles of gray dust, then the wind lifting that dust up and away until there was nothing. I knew I should care. Only a few days ago, I would have fought it, leaped to close the distance, said I was sorry. Yet I did no such thing.

“Who called you? On the phone?” I repeated. “In the cabin before. Someone called.”

“Oh, just my manager at work. Telling me my schedule for next week.” He was in his own seat by this point, not even looking at me.