17 & Gone(58)
That was when I saw it on her chest.
The hint of red. Bright and searing red.
Like a patch of flames.
My mom had new ink. Did she get another tattoo while I was out at the party? Because a blazing crimson thing was
newly
visible
beneath
her
collarbone on her chest. Her shirt was open beyond the third button, and somehow I’d missed what looked to be an unfamiliar picture there, until now, because now I couldn’t seem to see anything else. The tattoo was a fiery heart above her real heart.
“Mom,” I said carefully, “you didn’t tell me you were getting a new tattoo.”
“What?” she said. “But I’m not.”
“You already did. Can I see?”
“What, when? I didn’t. What do you mean?” And right then, so I could see her do it, and so the shadows watching us could see, my mom took her hand and held it over her chest. Covering the new tattoo.
It was here, while studying her, while paying attention, that I noticed the difference in her face. It was very slight, and there was a good chance I wouldn’t have
noticed
if
I
hadn’t
been
concentrating. But I was. And my mother —the one I’ve had all my life—has a beauty mark on her left cheek, just beside her lips. So black it’s almost blue. I always wanted one of my own, and when I was little she’d pencil one on me with her eyeliner and say I was just like her, except mine washed off in the bath at night.
This mother, this one sitting at the kitchen table with me in the early, early hours of a dark morning—she had a beauty mark on her right cheek.
Same spot and same color and same shape. Wrong side.
She saw me staring and rubbed her cheek. “Have I got some food on my face or something?”
“No,” I said, “it’s nothing. I’m tired. I should sleep.”
But, oh, it wasn’t nothing.
The secret tattoo was one thing, but now this? This made me question everything about her. It made me wonder if telling her about Abby had really been the right thing.
I shouldn’t have asked for help, should I? I shouldn’t have trusted her. I should have done this on my own. With only myself. And the girls.
MISSING
JANNAH AFSANA DIN
CASE TYPE: Endangered Missing DOB: April 4, 1995
MISSING: January 2, 2013
AGE NOW: 17
SEX: Female RACE: Middle Eastern HAIR: Brown EYES: Brown HEIGHT: 5'3" (163 cm) WEIGHT: 135 lbs. (62 kg) MISSING FROM: Clarkestone, MA, United States
CIRCUMSTANCES: Footage of Jannah was caught on surveillance video at a gas station in Clarkestone, Massachusetts, in the early-morning hours of January 2. She may have been meeting someone but appears to have left before that person arrived. She was wearing a white coat, blue jeans, and a Red Sox baseball cap. Jannah also wears contact lenses.
ANYONE HAVING INFORMATION
SHOULD CONTACT
Clarkestone Police Department (Massachusetts) 1-617-555-4592
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS
GIRL?
Please help find my sister Hailey Pippering.
She comes here or she used to all the time.
If you see this flyer and you know anything, e-mail me PLEASE!!!!!
You don’t have to use your real name! I won’t call the police. I just want to know where she is!!!!
[email protected] (Trina Glatt: disappearance
unreported)
— 46 — THE house was waiting for me.
Always there, when nothing else was.
The girls were gathered—the newest of the girls, Trina, at their center. She was flashing something that caught the firelight. A blade of some kind . . .
sharp, silver. A knife.
No one knew how she smuggled it in, and everyone wanted to hold it, but when she said maybe it’d be for the best if they avoided getting their prints on it, they stopped reaching for the contraband and they stopped asking.
Trina told us that it all began when she got that knife. Before it came into her life, she felt helpless. She felt like a girl.
She spat out that word like it was the worst insult in the world, to be what we all were, and so she offended every one of us.
The knife itself was titanium, the blade and handle coated in a silvery finish. It was a butterfly knife that folded in on itself so it could fit in the crevice of a clasped hand.
Trina had stolen the knife from a boyfriend who’d himself shoplifted it from an army-navy surplus store. She couldn’t explain why she’d swiped it from his pocket while he was sleeping— better would have been to rifle through his wallet—but she wanted to take something from him that would really bother him. Something he’d notice, something he couldn’t replace. She’d planned to return it, maybe a week later, but once she had it she found she couldn’t part with it. The knife was so compact, it could be tucked into her front jeans pocket, and the secure sense of it under her pillow helped her sleep at night.
After she dumped him—all right, she admitted, he dumped her—she realized the knife was hers forever. She’d find herself playing with it, like in school or at home in full view of her mom’s boyfriend on the couch. What was to keep her from plunging it into someone who tried to mess with her? Nothing.