17 & Gone(37)

she

saw

everything that was happening and was about to happen and understood it in a way she didn’t know life could be understood.

Then she saw the guardrail come for them—and beyond that, the gaping edge of the mountain—and this was when she screamed. She screamed the way the man’s wife did when she found the bag with the body, the way a madwoman would scream when she tore open the guts of a lying, two-timing man. She screamed, and then the car jolted to a stop.

She showed me how she screamed, and my ears rang for days.

— 25 — NATALIE’S story doesn’t end there, with the accident. There was what came after.

If anyone could have been on that mountain to see the smashed black Mustang, if they’d been peering in through the cracked windshield to where Natalie lay in the backseat, they would have wondered what might happen to her. Would any of the kids who’d been in the car come back for her, and why hadn’t anyone tried to wake her first before taking off?

There had been all that snow as the night went on, but now ice cascaded from the dark heavens in whipping, slapping sheets. Anyone would have hoped, as Natalie would have hoped had she been fully conscious, that they wouldn’t just abandon her. The girl, Jeannette, did say they’d go get help.

To stay put.

To be okay, okay?

To hang on. They’d be back.

But Paul did not come back. Tim did not come back. Jeannette did not come back, either, even though she was the one who said they would. They climbed out of the totaled car and slipped into the storm, retreating on foot to Lila’s house, where they could call for help.

It could be that they ran through the ice as fast as they could. Maybe leaving her behind was all they could think to do, under the circumstances, with the drug in their systems and no signal on any of their cell phones. It could be that they did care, that they did try, that some obstacle they couldn’t control was what kept them away and kept the accident from being reported for so long.

Or it could be that they knew what Natalie had longed for, recognized that burning-cold part of her that made the offhanded wish and then watched it happen—and they turned their backs because of it. Why they never came back for her is not the part of the story I know.

What I do know is that she was unconscious for a long time. Then, when she woke up, she was simply confused.

She emerged from what felt like a deep sleep, pieces of glass embedded all over her body. Then she was crawling

through

the

shattered

windshield and calling out for someone, anyone, on the vacant road. Discovering there was no one. The wind whipping through her hair as she got to her feet.

The crunch of ice under her feet as she started walking. And nothing after that.

No trace of her. No trail. No girl.

— 26 — THE house in my dream howled with wind. The wind blared through broken windows; the drapes flapped and slapped at soot-stained walls.

I was aware of some things, like time.

Like I knew it was January in my waking life, so maybe it was also January in the dream. It could be that the dream lived alongside me, mirroring the weather and holidays, that as I moved ahead through life, so did the dream.

But if that was true, the embers from the fire would have gone dark by now.

If time was the same in here, Fiona Burke would have grown older. All the girls would have. From the newspaper stories I read about her, I knew that Natalie Montesano would have been twenty-four.

Natalie found me before I could find her. She was on the second floor, pale eyes peeking from between the shrunken black sticks of kindling that had once been the banister and, from behind that, all her hair. She wanted me to come up, and I wanted her to come down, so we met, instead, in the middle.

If I’d had my wits about me—if in the dream I kept my wits—I would have asked her why she was following me.

Was there something she wanted me to do? Is that why she kept visiting?

But the gum in my brain could only function enough to get me close to her.

Close enough to hear her speak.

I didn’t mean to do it, she said. And again. I didn’t mean to do it. Sometimes she said the same thing so many times, I’d lose count.

There was no working electricity in the house, so we hovered on the delicate stairs in the darkness.

They never found me, did they?

Natalie asked, and the way she said it, resigned to the wind in her face, to the darkness thick with smoke, made me realize she never expected them to find her. Not ever.

“No,” I said. “Do you need me to—do you want me to . . . call someone? Do something?”

She tilted her head, and I sensed her cold eyes go dim. What could you do?

she said. I should not have even asked such a ridiculous question.

All she wished, if she could have a wish, if somewhere outside this limbo a wish from a girl like her could be plucked from the darkness and granted, she’d want them to know she hadn’t meant to cause the accident. That she was sorry. That she would take it back if she could.

It was here that the smoke of the dream seemed to clear and her hair parted and I could see her face for the first time since it appeared in my bathroom mirror. What I saw was something different, because in here, in this house, she was her true self. Her cheeks were still punctured from the windshield glass, causing her face to alternately bleed and sparkle. It was lovely and terrible at the same time.