17 & Gone(27)

She lowered her hand and all that was in it was a small Bic lighter.

She flicked it and brought up a tiny flame that matched the dyed sections of her

hair.

The

color

was

indistinguishable up close, so for a moment it seemed her whole head had caught fire.

“God! What do you think I am, a monster?” she asked.

I shook my head as far as it would shake with me standing in the crook of the wall.

“Maybe I am,” she said. “Maybe I should burn this whole house to the ground so that’s what they’d find when they get home from the funeral. A pile of stinking ashes and their daughter gone.”

She crooked her head at me, and she blinked, and I truly didn’t know what she was capable of doing. Then she blinked again, and the flames shrunk away from her face, and I saw how scared she was.

Petrified. She slipped the lighter into her jeans pocket that already contained the pendant, and she patted it, making sure it was there. Then she looked out the window at the driveway.

“When he gets here, you’re not going to say a thing to him, are you?” she demanded.

“I’m not going to,” I assured her.

“You’ll stay here until your mom gets back. And you won’t call anyone, and you won’t do anything. What’s she doing out so late anyways?”

“She’s out dancing.”

She scoffed. There was something in her tone that made me feel very small, smaller than I even was with her towering over me. “Oh, I know what she’s doing. I think I know where she works. Your mom’s not out dancing.”

“She said . . .”

“You know what your mom’s doing right now? She’s grinding her tits into some perv’s face.”

I remember how strange a picture that made for me, with actions and objects I couldn’t fathom at that age. And I would think back on this later, when my mom would tell me about her job at the club, and then when she quit that job and got an office job and went back to school, and I’d wish I had said something to defend her. But I’d never been able to stand up to Fiona Burke, not for all the time I’d known her, and especially not that night.

Besides, that was when the truck pulled up. First one man came banging into the house, and then there were two.

Two men, and Fiona Burke had been expecting only one. The first was tall, and bigger than the width of two Fiona Burkes put together, and the other was quite short. I came up about to his mustache. This second surprise man, the short one, was the one who scared Fiona.

I was surprised, too. What surprised me was how much older they were. I knew Fiona Burke was 17, and I couldn’t estimate the ages of adults— they all just seemed old to me—but these two men weren’t in high school, I was sure of it. They were far older than that.

When she started carrying her bags out to the truck I realized the men were taking Fiona Burke away—she was voluntarily, assuredly going with them— but they were also taking more than just her. The little man was unhooking some paintings from the wall. And the big man was dismantling the stereo system.

With them occupied, Fiona returned to my corner.

“If my mom asks why, tell her I hate her,” she hissed. “Tell her I hate her stupid guts, her and Dad both. Tell her I’m getting a ride to LA and I’ve got a job waiting for me and how’s she like that? Tell her I’m never coming back, not ever.”

I assured her I’d pass all this on to Mrs. Burke.

But Fiona Burke wasn’t done. She’d been holding a lot inside, all those years since the Burkes had made her theirs.

She wanted me to tell her adopted parents that they should have left her where she came from, and why’d they ever think she wanted to live in their stuffy old house with boring old strangers? And I think she would have kept on going if I hadn’t stopped her.

“But why?” I asked.

I was the kind of kid who used to ask that a lot, to any small thing and any large thing, unwilling to leave anything unanswered. Maybe not much has changed since then.

Fiona Burke shook her head and rolled her eyes. “You’ll understand when you’re my age,” was all she said.

So dismissive, like I’d never get it; I was just a kid.

I didn’t understand then—but I do now.

The little man approached. He’d taken everything he’d wanted from the house and entered the dining room with hands out and empty. Even so, Fiona Burke flinched at the sight of him, as if she knew what he was capable of doing with his bare hands.

He wasn’t saying anything. He was only looking. He was looking at me.

“What?” Fiona Burke said. She didn’t stand in front of me or block me with her body or anything, but she leaned ever so slightly in my direction to let her shadow cover me.

“How old is she?” the little man said to her, as if I didn’t understand the language.

“Nine,”

I

answered.

A

slight

exaggeration. Fiona Burke probably had no idea how old I was anyway.

“She’s not going to tell on us,” she was saying. “She won’t call anyone or anything. I made her promise.”

“She knows my face,” the little man said. “She’s looking at me right now.”