17 & Gone(41)

Her

second

night

away,

she

abandoned the shed. It was too close, and now that she’d stayed out a whole night, she was getting anxious about the consequences of coming back. Part of her did want to go home, but when she stepped nearer to the trash cans, she heard voices she recognized, from those kids who lived on her block. She imagined what they’d throw at her, like the bottle that one time. Like trash in the street. Like brightly colored pellets of candy,

small

and

rock-hard

as

hailstones. When held in hot, grimy fists they sweated off some of their coating, so you could see the impact of them on her clothes as if she’d been out playing paintball. Orange, brown, blue, green, red; the darkest spots where she was hardest hit.

She was about to come out, but she heard those voices. And she knew that if she left her hiding place, if she went home and returned to school, she’d get worse things thrown at her. Far worse.

And then she’d topple. They could dump all they wanted on her, the contents of whole trash cans even, and she’d just lie there, and let herself be buried, and that would be the end of Shyann.

That was why she couldn’t ever go back.

After the first night in the shed, she spent one night in an old warehouse, and the night after that in a condemned house where the padlocks had been ripped from the doorjamb so anyone or anything could get in. Her fantasy of spending her last months before she turned eighteen in the wilds of a vacant lot, sleeping nights high up in a thick oak tree where nothing could bother her—that fantasy fell to pieces once she’d experienced the cold.

She was constantly shivering, in dark places where the electric and heat didn’t work because the city had shut it off. She tried to keep warm, but the winter nights were long, longer than she’d expected.

She didn’t know how many nights she’d be able to last.

The last thing she remembered was something of a dream. Her eyes were closing, and the cold had gone deep into her bones, and she felt like she could hear the whole city talking about her. But they weren’t taunting—this time they were saying nice things. The mayor would lock them up if they didn’t.

All the girls at school, on camera, they were going: “Shyann, please come home, we’re so sorry. We’re saving you a seat at lunch.” And the guys on her block, they were going: “We only said you’re ugly ’cause we want to get with you, Shyann. Didn’t you know? We thought you knew.”

Teachers were praising her, coming up to the microphone one by one. Mr.

Wallace said how wrong he was for blaming her for the candy dropped under her desk and giving her detention for eating in class. Ms. Taylor, who led the grueling warm-ups in gym, swore on the spot that Shyann would never have to do extra sit-ups for being slow with the laps again. And Ms. Atkins, the nasty English teacher, publicly announced that she was taking back all the Fs and awarding Shyann an A.

Stuff like that. Stuff like her parents saying all this was too little, too late, and they’d homeschool her to graduate.

And they’d buy her a car. And she’d find it when she came home—all shiny and blue, wrapped in a bow like on commercials.

She was too cold to move. Too cold to get up and see if this had all come true, but she could picture herself doing it. She could see herself slipping into that sparkling blue thing—hers, all hers —and driving far, far away.

— 31 — I looked it up to be sure. They still hadn’t found Shyann’s body—at least, there was no funeral announcement, no search party scouring the vacant lots of the city, paying careful attention to private hideaways and the climbing branches of tall trees. They hadn’t found her, just like with Natalie on that mountain road two states away. And with Fiona, down whatever road she took, wherever she landed aside from back here with me. None of the girls I saw in the house had been found.

There were more stories still to be told. More girls, their voices rising, their

Missing

flyers

entering

my

collection. My memory expanding now to hold all of their names.

— 32 —





ISABETH


Isabeth got in the car. Didn’t she know a girl alone should never get in the strange car when it pulls up alongside her, when the man calls out asking if she needs a ride, when even after she says no, he keeps tailing her, keeps asking?

She knew.

On any other day, she wouldn’t have accepted the ride. But what she wanted her family and friends to know, what she hoped they’d only understand, had they been there, was how the rainstorm had caught her unaware when she was walking home from school. How the burst of showers came from out of nowhere and how, within seconds, she was soaked. And that’s when the car pulled up behind her.

At first she ignored him. Then he pulled the car closer, and she happened to take a peek and realized—a glimmer of relief—that it was only someone she knew. Well, sort of. The man’s face was familiar; he was from around the neighborhood. He knew her dad, or was it her brothers? He worked in a store in town, or was he a member of her church? Either way, she’d seen him before, somewhere.

“Need a ride?” this man, technically not a stranger, called.

She hesitated.

“Come on, get in out of the rain,” he said.