17 & Gone(9)

The farther in we went, the more it came clear to me. What she saw here, what she felt and experienced and breathed. I sensed, in an abstract sort of way, Jamie following behind me, but I didn’t look back after him, I didn’t explain.

I could feel the sweaty air that hung thick inside the mosquito netting of the camp’s cabins. There was a dampness on my skin, the humidity that clings to this valley in summer clinging now to my clothes. I kept hearing flashes of activity through the trees, remembered noises echoing at me from the darkness. A series of splashes in the lake, the clatter of forks on plates in the mess hall, the satisfying thwack of an archery arrow into a target’s heart.

We kept walking. It felt like we did so without a word to each other, but Jamie could have been saying things and I could have not been responding to what he said.

We found the mess hall and the arts-and-crafts cabin and the sports field. On a raised hill, we could see the ring where fires had been built. There was a large circle of stones, and I imagined the campers gathering here on the hottest nights, here where the thick cluster of pines broke open and the air thinned and where, overhead, there was a clear view of the blanket of stars.

Nothing appeared to be burning, and the scent I thought I’d caught in the woods had drifted, but still I brushed off a stone and rested my weight on it, gazing up. Night had fallen enough by now that the stars had come out. The jagged ridge in the distance was only a fuzzy and faintly shimmering outline, as if not a part of the mountain at all. I tried to see this place the way Abby might have. She was a visitor to this area. Not from here. Not used to this. Maybe our sky looked different to her, outside the suburb she was from. Everything was so much darker up here, away from stores and streetlights. And in the dark, out of view

of

traffic

and

neighbors,

practically anything could happen.

Jamie cleared his throat. He was right next to me and I’d forgotten. Again.

“What are we . . . are we looking for something?” he asked.

He was occupying himself by throwing stones into the woods beside the fire pit. Sometimes a stone would hit a tree—I could hear the thump of impact, or a whistling rustle into a thicket of branches—but sometimes the stone found only air.

I stood up. She wanted me to keep looking.

“We’re exploring,” I said to Jamie.

“We’re just seeing what’s here.”

“Hey, c’mere, hey, Lauren.” He was grabbing for my arm, or my hip, or some part of my body, to pull me closer. But he missed me in the dark, and I made it past him and away from the fire pit and headed down the hill. The decline forced speed on me, and I started running.

I followed the pathways between the sleeping cabins and peeked in through holes in the sagging skins over the windows: the screens and mosquito nets that couldn’t be that much help in keeping back the mosquitoes. The steps leading up to the cabin doors were buried in snow. I noted more animal prints—tracks from deer and raccoons, claw marks that had to be from birds, and a larger set that could belong to a giant owl hiding in the trees. Nothing human, not until me.

There were only five cabins for campers to sleep in. It took three visits with the flashlight to find it.

Cabin 3. Abby’s cabin.

But I didn’t know that at first.

All the furniture had been left inside the cabins for the off-season, the rows of beds with their plastic-cased mattresses stripped of sheets and their yellowed, lumpy pillows left behind in zipped pouches for next summer’s girls.

Jamie was the one who helped me discover Abby’s bed. He’d followed me in, as he’d been following me around all the cabins, and he said, “Hey, check out the walls.”

This was how I discovered that the girls at Lady-of-the-Pines liked to carve their names or initials and the dates of their stay onto the rough-hewn walls beside their beds. Over the years, enough girls had done this that there was a yearbook of sorts, an inmates’ record on the walls of a prison cell.

I circled the cabin hoping, taking my time to check the latest set of names

marking each metal-framed bed, which were arranged in two long rows against the walls.

I had a feeling I’d find her, somewhere, and then I did. Abby hadn’t just carved her name into the wooden wall behind the bed she slept in. She didn’t bother to note the year she spent here the way the other girls had. What she’d carved was a clue:



abby sinclair

luke castro

forever



Jamie said it before I did. “Weird.

Remember that Luke Castro kid from school? What a douche.”

I knew who he meant—some guy who’d graduated a year or two ago. He played on some sports team, or hung around with the guys who did. I didn’t really remember.

“Maybe it’s the same Luke Castro,” I said, and even as the words came out of my mouth I knew it had to be the same Luke—this carving of his name together forever with Abby’s told me so.

I don’t think Jamie noticed how I lingered at this particular bed over all the others, how my finger reached out to trace the shape of the lopsided heart Abby had carved into the soft, splintery wood near where she rested her head each night. He had no idea I was trying to picture how she’d carved it, and with what. I was looking back into memories I didn’t own, wanting in.

I heard him down at the other end of the cabin, talking to himself—or, no, someone must have called his cell, because he was talking to someone on the phone. His back was to me and his voice was low, like he didn’t want me to know who it was.