17 & Gone(59)

Not saying she did or would. Just having the weapon and knowing she could use it was enough.

The thing is, she never once made use of that knife. Not technically, because slicing incisions into the arms of her mother’s couch didn’t count. And making snowflakes out of loose-leaf paper for her little half sister didn’t count, either.

She never made use of the knife on a person.

That was her biggest regret. She could have done so much with it! When she leaped up while telling this part of her story, the other girls backed away. Not like they could get hurt in the smoky house, which was more charred and patterned by fire each time I visited— because this house held them close, kept them safe—but they remembered being hurt and reacted like they still could be.

Maybe it was talk of the knife that brought her out after all this time. She shifted from the curtains, and before anyone knew what was happening, Fiona Burke’s arm reached out and smacked the silvery butterfly knife from the new girl’s hand. It went sailing and landed with a thunk, spinning on the blackened wooden floor far across the room where no one could grab for it.

It doesn’t matter, Fiona Burke said to Trina Glatt, as if they were the only two lost girls in the room. You know it doesn’t matter, don’t you?

It matters, Trina growled. Give it back.

You can’t have that here, Fiona Burke said. None of us can have any of the things we had.

It happened as we heard her say those words.

One of the girls, Eden, crept over with curiosity to retrieve the butterfly knife— though it wasn’t clear who she planned to give it to, between Fiona and Trina, or if she meant to keep it for herself— but before her fingers got close enough, Fiona Burke had her foot in the fray, stomping down on the knife to keep it from being rescued. Trina got in the mix, lunging forward to kick away Fiona Burke’s spindly leg. But when she did so, there was no knife beneath Fiona’s foot. There was the blackened floor, and the dusted ash from the fire in relief against the shape of Fiona’s foot. But no knife.

Fiona Burke wanted to teach the girls a lesson.

You couldn’t hold on to what you loved—unless you were Yoon-mi or Maura, who loved who they brought here.

You couldn’t have a keepsake in this burning house. All you could have were the clothes on your back, and even those were illusion because they were the last things you remembered wearing. (When she said this, I caught a flash of them, of all of us, ghostly gray and naked in the smoky night. Then it passed. It passed, and I looked down and my dream-self was still wearing pajamas.)

Fiona Burke continued with her lesson. All the girls couldn’t help but listen. She knew more than anyone, and this was the first time she’d shared this information.

It didn’t matter what you had before, or who you were before, or what you did in the moments leading up to being here. If you fought or if you let go and watched it happen. If you were the one who turned down the dark road on your own, or if someone led you there.

Because you could be pissed off, you could stab everyone in sight with your boyfriend’s stolen butterfly knife, and yet you could still end up here.

You could come here quiet, and you could come swinging punches. You could come and sleep for a week. You could come here and try to leave, but you couldn’t make it back down the stairs and out that door. You could come here and wonder what happened. You could come with questions. Or with that night’s homework half done. You could come here the day you turn 17, and you could come here on any day before you’re 17 no longer. You could come here any one of those 365 days.

You just couldn’t come here after your eighteenth birthday. Not one girl ever has.

That’s what Fiona Burke told us.

Then she said one last thing. Being here meant you couldn’t be out there anymore. She counted us all on her fingers and then settled her eyes on me.

Strangely. Being here meant you were dead—or soon would be. Didn’t we— you, me—get that yet?

— 47 — TRINA’S knife. I had it. Outside.

Here, now, in my hand.

Or a knife almost identical to it, one with the silvery coating and the blade that tucked to hide inside itself but that could snap out quick when needed.

Because you never know when you might need it.

The butterfly knife was there in the bathroom medicine chest when I’d opened it in the night. It was late, closing in on morning, and the dream had woken me up. I couldn’t get back to sleep and was looking for nail clippers, which was random enough, but in their place on the bottom shelf was this knife. I’d patted it at first, to be sure. Removed it from the medicine chest and studied it in my palm. Closed the cabinet and looked into the mirror at myself and what I had in my hand:

Yes, a knife. So much heavier than the nail clippers. Larger. And with so much more possibility.

I couldn’t deny that a pair of ordinary nail clippers had somehow transformed themselves into Trina Glatt’s most treasured possession, the one she was banned from keeping inside the house.

The one I’d last seen under Fiona Burke’s foot.

The blade slid out and begged me to extend a fingertip to touch it. Just to feel.

Only to see how sharp it really was.

And it was sharp.

But then the knife slipped and time slowed and I could see what was about to happen.

How my fingers would lose their grasp on it. How the knife would flip in the air, blade side aimed down. How my arm would be in the way. How the impossibly sharp blade of the knife would land, perpendicular to my arm, slicing my wrist, and how it wouldn’t hurt at first, not until I saw the blood.