17 & Gone(52)

I realized two things: One, that cranberry juice Deena left me with sure had a lot of vodka mixed up in it. And two, none of these people would notice if I went missing.

Flash, I’m gone, and they’d keep partying.

It could happen to me here, at this party, at right that very moment: There’d be a girl in my spot on the couch and then no girl taking up space on the plaid cushion. The seat would stay open for a minute or two before someone snagged it. And that would be the last of me.

I checked to see what clothes would be listed on my Missing poster: black boots; black cargo pants; ugly flannel shirt I forgot I even had on; under that, a V-neck gray shirt with a rip in the shoulder; black tank top underneath it all. Would anyone remember any of those details when asked?

That was when I noticed it, the pendant, how it wasn’t tucked under all the layers of my clothes the way I liked it to be. It had been pulled out, and I hadn’t noticed. It was hanging down over my chest. Glowing a milky, fizzy white.

I stood up. I grabbed my coat. Of course no one stopped me. I took a step toward the door, and everything went on just as it was.

It was when I was pushing through the crowd to get to that door and to the front porch and then past the porch to where I parked my van outside. It was right then.

The shadows. I noticed them at the edges of the room, down by the floor, near the heating vents, and up by the ceiling, where the stucco met the plain white walls.

These

shadows

formed

themselves into thin tendrils, like fingers. And the fingers grew, coiling into long, snakelike arms. Reaching. I knew if I got close, they could grab me.

Maybe this was what each of the girls saw before her time came. One of the shadows was directly over my head now. It could let go at any moment. It could drop and take me down with it.

No one else could see them. Everyone from the party was oblivious: Chugging cups from the keg. Smoking up in the corner. Dancing to bad music on the worn rug. Making out against the wall.

Picking a fight near the windows.

Ordinary things on an ordinary night— and Happy Birthday, Deena, you made it —all while something terrible was coming for me, about to swallow me and make me gone.

It couldn’t be my time yet. Could it? I had people to help, girls to unearth and keep track of, girls who needed me out here, alive. Didn’t I? I had to leave this house. I knew how hot the shadowy hands would be, from the fire, how their grip would singe through my flannel shirt and my cotton shirt beneath it and even the shirt beneath that, to what’s left, which was my skin.

Once they touch your skin, you’re theirs.

— 42 — I was facedown in the snow, and there was a boot planted before my eyes.

Something damp was in my mouth, but it wasn’t a tongue. It was the sopping-wet finger of my own glove. I think I might’ve been sucking on it.

I pulled out the finger, spit out some lint, and looked up. The sole of the boot had a red stripe, and ice and snow were crusted into the laces. There was another boot exactly like it beside the first, and far up above both the boots was a set of shoulders and, above that, a head. The head was shaking with laughter.

Then he reached out a hand, stretching out his arm so it was close enough to be grabbed by mine. “C’mon, let me help you up.”

This wasn’t Jamie, but it was a guy I knew. Really, it was a guy I’d talked to only recently, a guy I wouldn’t have known if not for knowing the girls.

“You’re plastered,” Luke Castro said —Abby Sinclair’s Luke. He grinned when he said it, and I couldn’t see his face to tell if this was all a joke to him or if he really cared.

“No,” I mumbled, “it’s not that.”

Because it wasn’t. It wasn’t the spiked cranberry juice that made me run out of Karl’s house—or if it was that, it was only partly that. I remembered the shadows, targeting me and descending fast.

“Sure,” he said sarcastically. “You’re perfectly sober. Sure.”


“I’m fine,” I said, and I shook off his hand and stood up on my own. I wobbled and tried to hide it. “Are you a friend of Karl’s or something?”

“You asked me that already,” he said.

Wait. I did?

“Tell me again,” I said. “Tell me again you didn’t do anything to her.” I was back in our first conversation, asking after Abby Sinclair, and it took him a few moments to get there himself, even though I was the one who’d so obviously been drinking.

“I didn’t. Do anything. To her,” he said.

We were off to the side of the house, away from the windows, like we meant to sneak over here for a reason. Did I?

Did I find Luke at some point and lead him out here? Did I do anything embarrassing? Did I say something stupid? Did he hurt Abby and all along I didn’t know it? Did anyone see us go out here? How many of those things did I say out loud?

There was a motion sensor and not a regular light, which I didn’t realize until it flicked off and dropped us into darkness. I couldn’t see the puff of breath trailing from his mouth, though I could feel it, since his face was so close to mine. He smelled the way I remember Abby remembering he smelled—or else it was the way he’d smelled when I made that visit to his house weeks before. Her memories were cutting into mine, lifting up out of nowhere and confusing me.