17 & Gone(79)

That’s not me being psychic; that’s me being kind and not corrupting her with what I know.

There’s another knock on the door, and then he’s here. He seems surprised to find Rain in my room with me, also disappointed he hasn’t found me alone.

But he still comes in; he still leans up against the wall beside the bed.

There’s a difference in what Rain believes about me, and what Jamie believes. Rain wants to believe any wild thing to the point that I could tell her there is, right this very moment, a shrunken shadow crawling on the ceiling directly over her head, about to bound down to her shoulders, about to come and curse her future, and she’d believe it because she wants to believe. But she only wants the horror-movie shiver, so delicious because it can be turned off when the lights go up and the movie’s over.

Jamie believes that I believe, and that’s all that matters to him. He knows what the doctors have said; my mom told him. Besides, I can tell by the way he looks at me sometimes, the unsaid diagnosis scuttling beneath his lips. How terrifying that must be for him, to not know for sure what’s happening to me yet.

“Oh hi, Jamie,” Rain says, blushing.

“I should go.”

She slips out and pulls the door closed with her, so now it’s just Jamie and me.

He edges closer until he’s beside the bed. I move my book so he can climb up, and he does, leaning against the pillows propped up behind me so our shoulders touch. “So glad you’re home,” he says.

He takes my bad arm and holds my hand.

“Me too,” is all I say. I don’t apologize again about the arson charges; he’s told me to stop bringing it up. I don’t say how even though I’m home from the hospital, that doesn’t mean I’m cured. Because I’ll never be the way I was before, and there’s a reason I know this, there’s a reason I hold it like a whisper in my ear, hearing it again and again, even when I tell myself not to listen. There’s a reason.

“How’re you feeling?” he asks, his fingers laced in my fingers, his wrist against my bad wrist.

“Tired,” I say. “It’s the meds. I don’t know if they’re helping, except that they make me tired. So tired I can’t even read this book.”

He sits up straighter. “They’re helping,”

he

says.

“They’re

not

helping?”

“Sure. They’ve helped a lot.” I turn to the window.

“What’s out there?” he asks. “What are you looking at?” Whenever I look at anything, anything at all, he’s going to ask me what I’m seeing. I need to get used to it.

“Just that tree,” I say. And I am gazing at the tree I have no memory of standing so close to my house in the backyard, the tree brushing its branches against my window. How is it I never realized a tree was right beside my bedroom before? A whole tree?

I don’t want to say what else I’m seeing.

“Did you find out about any others?” I ask, changing the subject.

He hesitates. “You sure you want to know?”

“Always.”

Jamie’s been helping me. My mom keeps track of what sites I visit on the computer, but he understands my need to know what happened to them.

“Shyann Johnston,” he says, pulling a printout from his backpack to show me.

“She made it home. See?”

I take in a breath, holding my mind very still in fear of its reaction, as I read the story he’s printed out about her.

Apparently she won a prize at the senior-class science fair, and this is dated just last month, which means she couldn’t have frozen to death in a vacant lot in Newark, she couldn’t have died.

It’s always a beautiful thing when a girl I thought had found a tragic end turns out to still be alive. I feel choked up about it, in my throat, and I hold my hands there, hovering, letting the relief sink in.

I felt the same when I learned about Yoon-mi Hyun and Maura Morris, who ran away to Canada and did make it up there together before they got sent home.

Some girls don’t have such good ends.

Hailey Pippering’s remains were found in a landfill during the time I was in the hospital. And Kendra Howard was pronounced deceased even though she hasn’t washed ashore yet. The lake is deep, and town officials say they may never find her body.

Whenever I learn a bad thing about one of the girls, it breaks me up some more. Which might be why Jamie usually only brings me the good stories, the happy ends.

Besides, I won’t need his help soon.

I’ll have private access to a computer again, and I’ll be able to take up the searching. I’ll keep checking, with or without him.

Silently, to myself, I’ve vowed to check up on all the girls. Whether we had a true connection or not doesn’t much matter to me. These are real girls.

They’re important. The runaways, too, even if the police don’t act like it. Even if the girls’ families don’t care and don’t go looking, I vow to. These girls matter.

I need to know what happened to every last one of them.

“Thank you,” I tell Jamie. Knowing about Shyann has lifted my spirits a little, and I find myself turning to the window again, almost smiling.

Jamie’s eyes follow mine, but he says nothing. It’s best if he doesn’t ask what I’m seeing out that window or what I’m thinking.