17 & Gone(43)

Both age 17.

— — —





KENDRA


Kendra ran to the edge of the cliff and waved to all her friends. “Guys, guys!”

she called. “I’m gonna do it. Watch!”

Kendra had seen the guys jump the cliffs before—one of the guys would take a running leap to clear the outcropping of rocks and cannonball into the bright blue basin of water below.

The splash would be terrific. Then there’d be those heart-pounding moments after the jumper went in, when he was so deep no trace of him could be made out, and then, just when some coward was thinking of dialing 911, the surface of the lake would shatter.

The jumper would surface, whooping and yelling, and the next guy would get in line to see if he could make a bigger splash.

None of Kendra’s friends had ever jumped off this particular cliff—the highest point above the lake—and she knew they were too chickenshit to try.

She’d be legend.

She powered through the run, took the leap, and her body set sail. Gravity took hold and air rushed around her as she started to fall. It sang her name.

When she hit water, she didn’t expect it to sting so much. She’d fallen sideways, and the impact was a surprise, and the cool temperature of the water was also a surprise, and she was sinking fast, going deeper than she knew the lake could go. Traces of foam surrounded her, forming a tunnel that seemed to bury her in the wet and sopping center of the Earth.

She looked up and up, and up and up some more. That pinpoint of golden light at the highest height of the blue above her was the sun, she knew, casting down over the water. All she had to do was swim up to reach it.

How far could it be?

Kendra Howard: Gone 2012, from Greenwich, Connecticut. Age 17.

— 33 — EVERY night it seemed I was out on the cracked sidewalk again, feeling that distinctive pinch of smoke in my throat as I approached the front gate. I was climbing the stairs and ignoring the bell —because there’s no need to ring a doorbell in a place that’s like home— and going in. I always went in.

The house was brighter, the flames having caught the drapes and only beginning to dance in delight across the vaulted ceilings.

I didn’t know if this was a new fire, set from a flick of Fiona Burke’s lighter, or if time had woven in on itself and the remnants of fire I saw on nights before this were meant to become this one, this fire that still had a chance to build and rage.

Still, the flames didn’t hurt us. We lived with them like we would the quirks of any ordinary house, the way my mom and I constantly catch our socks and pant hems on the loose nail in the floorboard in the upstairs hallway, but we’ve never bothered getting it fixed.

The house was getting crowded now as each new girl arrived. Voices coasted down corridors and stairways, echoing so it sounded like they were repeating ever after the same things.

Two of the newest girls were moving in. They wanted to share a room, since they came here together, and they didn’t want to spend a night apart.

I met them on the stairs outside and noticed they were holding hands.

What is this place? Yoon-mi asked me as she eyed the door. Yoon-mi wore a hat that hid her long hair, so she seemed made of only two bright brown eyes.

Beside her, Maura wore her own hair tightly tied back, pulling sharply at the skin of her scalp. Only when they were alone did she take down her hair. She whispered something and then Yoon-mi asked that question also, for the both of them.

Why are we here?

“It’s where you live now,” my dream-self told them, holding open the door so they could join the others. Once they made it through, I pushed the door closed. And I wondered: They wouldn’t get out, would they? Now that they were here, they were as good as stuck and I couldn’t do a thing to stop it.

They must have read the curse of this place from off my face. Maybe they thought

I

was

the

one

who’d

manufactured

their

doom,

who

commanded this house and kept them bound here. I expected them to fight me, claw at my arms and try to push open the door to get out onto the ashy street, but they didn’t seem too upset so long as it was both of them on the same side of that door.

There was one girl, though, who couldn’t accept it—the curse of what being in this house meant for her fate.

For her plans.

Whenever I saw Madison, she was trying to find a way out. The house had many windows, some with no glass left in the frames so it should be easy to jump through and hit the sidewalk running, but none of the girls could leave through the windows or even the front door. If they could make it to the rooftop, if the crumbling stairs didn’t cave in on the way up, they still couldn’t take a flying leap to reach the bottom.

Something always stopped them.

Still, Madison had tried every one of the exits. She’s got someone to meet, she’d

go

around

saying.

That

photographer. It was really all she talked about—how she had to leave and get back to his place, how they never did get around to finishing the pictures for her portfolio.

Madison hated that I could simply come and go and she couldn’t, so she tried to block the door to keep me with her. It was only fair, she told me. It’s not like anyone would want to take my picture, with my choppy haircut and my ugly boy boots and my face, which was okay, she conceded, but nothing special.