17 & Gone(23)

“If it’s her bike, why didn’t you give it to the police?”

“What do you mean? Why would I?”

“Because she’s missing,” I said.

“She ran away,” he said, and shrugged. “That’s what I heard. Some girl at that camp told me.”

I couldn’t speak. Why could no one who knew her see that she hadn’t run away? How was it that I hadn’t met her in real life and yet I, of all people, knew?

“She rode this over that night,” he said. “Then she had a conniption when she heard me on the phone—she was late, I didn’t think she was coming, so I called some other chick. So what?”

“She . . . She did see you that night?” I wasn’t expecting that. “She rode all the way here, on her bike? That night? Are you sure?”

“Yeah, but like I was saying, she didn’t stay long. She started bawling, the whole freak show. Then she gets on the bike to go and runs over something in the driveway and this happens.” He kicked at the flat back tire. “And—get this—she dropped the bike and she took off. I went after her, but I couldn’t find her anywhere on the road. Maybe she took the shortcut through the woods, dude, I don’t know.” He shrugged. “We weren’t exclusive. What did she expect?”

I was still trying to understand. I’d seen her reach the bottom of the hill, but nothing beyond that, nothing outside that patch of darkness, and I’d assumed that’s where it had ended.

Instinctively I touched the pendant, resting beneath my clothes. How did it get in the gully then? Was it when she was walking back? Did I misunderstand, get the whole trip reversed, shuffle the events out of order, confuse the whole night?

Luke seemed happy to get rid of the bike. I was the one holding it upright now, and he used his free hands to fix his hair.

“You’re . . . giving this to me?” I said.

“I figured she’d come back and get it, but yeah. Then I heard she was gone, so.

It’s a piece-of-shit bike anyway, but take it. It’s what you came here for, right?”

“But, Luke, that was the night she disappeared. You were the last person to see her.”

“Wasn’t me, Officer.” He put up his hands in surrender, laughing, but when I didn’t laugh back he lowered his hands.

“Seriously, though. Everyone says she ran away or whatever. You don’t think I —”

I wasn’t sure what to think. It depended on what Abby thought. And I needed her to tell me what that was.

“Why’d I keep her bike all this time then, huh? That should prove I didn’t do shit to her. I’d have thrown it off a cliff by now if I had.”

I didn’t say anything, so he kept talking.

“Lauren, you know me. C’mon now.

Be serious.”

I closed my eyes. I wished I could will the dream to life. That I could climb the steps of the house, no matter the time of day, awake or asleep or in the middle of conversation. If only I could control it, the smoky space that controlled me. I could be in the dairy aisle during my shift at the Shop & Save, stacking the 1

percent and the 2 percent milk cartons beside the whole and then the smoke would start sifting in, up from the floor like that time the little kid broke open the bag of flour, and the pale cloud would be a curtain through which I could visit the dream. Or here, now, in Luke Castro’s garage. I’d step through and ask Abby my questions. I’d find out what I needed to know. I’d come back, I’d know all.

This time it worked, in a way.

Because the place in the dream was near. I could smell its smoke. Or someone who reeked of it.

“Who are you looking for?” Luke asked. “My parents are out. It’s just you and me.”

It’s just you and me, a voice mocked, in my head.

She was meaner than I expected.

Don’t go inside the house if he asks you. He just wants to do you in his parents’ water bed.

I was looking around wildly then, to see where the voice was coming from. I thought she was behind me, but the voice had come from across the garage, on the other side of the car. So was she under it or crouching down against the door?

Just wait, she said. You’ll ruin everything.

“No,” I said. “I have a boyfriend.”

“Whoa,” Luke said at this, though I wasn’t even talking to him.

I waited for the voice to return so I could find where she was hiding, and then when she kept silent I realized. That wasn’t Abby. That voice was cruel the way Fiona Burke was cruel, and snide the way Fiona Burke used to be snide.

That was Fiona’s low whisper in my ear.

“Listen,” Luke was saying, “if you do hear from her, no hard feelings, right?

It’s not like we were serious. She knew that.”

My face must have said otherwise.

“She didn’t?”

“She thought . . .” I started, wishing she’d speak up and tell me. “She thought maybe,” I finished.

Luke shook his head. “Why doesn’t she just call me herself? Why’d she send you?”

“Because I told her I’d help her,” I said, and by saying it out loud, it was like I was declaring it. To him and everyone. To myself. To her and to Fiona Burke—I felt their held lungfuls of breath as they listened.