Imaginary Girls(88)

She aimed the flashlight beam at her face. It washed her out, bright as it was, but there were visible lines I hadn’t noticed before. She’d never looked this tired.

“What’s going on?”

“Balance, Chlo . . . Give and take. Push and pull. You for her, her for you. I think they’re mad that I tried to have it both ways—to keep you alive and her, too.”

“But what’re they going to do?” I said, getting scared now.

“Do I have to chop off my own arm and hand it over?” she said, speaking nonsense. “Because I’d do that, I would. If you could keep yours.”

“Okay,” I said. “But what are you talking about?”

She lifted her arm slowly, the arm still attached to her shoulder, and pointed out at the trees in the distance. “Look,” she said. “It’s too late to take back.”

She was the one to notice it first, but then, all at once, everyone noticed, and they were running toward it, and shouting. Ruby stayed put. I hesitated for a second, and then I, too, started running. We were all converging on a figure in a bright white shirt.

She looked ghostly as she emerged from the trees, her body birch-white, her short hair almost the same color as her clothes, as if she’d rolled around in baby powder to give us a good scare. The palms of her hands were up in the air, waving.

London had come back—alone.

She was a blinding bright spot against a backdrop of dark trees and then she was surrounded. By the time I reached her, there was a small crowd. A friend was propping her up. You could see bits of gravel on London’s hands and blackened skid marks on her knees as if she’d crawled down the road and through the woods to reach us.

Questions were thrown at her: “What happened?” “How’d you get here?” “Where’s O?” “Omigod are you hurt?”

London took a step away from the crowd, it seemed toward me.

“I must’ve blacked out again,” she said.

I glanced back at Ruby, but she hadn’t left her spot at the edge of the water. From this distance, she looked like any other brown-haired girl sitting on a rock under the stars. All that sky overhead made her look small.

“I think there was an accident,” London said. “I think. I mean, I don’t remember. Where’s my parents’ car?”

Then more questions, and London’s friends surrounded her again, and I couldn’t get to her, I couldn’t see her face or hear what she was saying. I thought of when I found her in the rowboat, and then when everyone knew, and everyone saw, and you couldn’t think with all the yelling and the splashing and the need to get away.

I could see the accident as clearly as if I’d been in the car as it happened, in the back, watching. Speeding down the dark road, no cars ahead, no cars behind, and then the blur of a traffic sign to the right, the town line crossed, and the girl at the wheel gone. The car would keep going even without her frail weight on the gas pedal. The wheel would veer even without her hands there to make it turn.

Owen wouldn’t know what was happening at first. He’d shout, “Watch the road, Lon!” The windows would be down, so his ears would fill up with wind. He wouldn’t be wearing his seat belt.

When he realized the driver’s seat was empty beside him, it would be too late to jump in and take over. Far too late to hit the brakes. He wouldn’t know how to stop the car. The last sight through the windshield would be the thick, oncoming trunk of a tree.

Then, inexplicably, by some kind of cruel miracle, the girl would reappear, but outside the car, dozens of yards away.

She’d be back inside the town line, a town—she wouldn’t know this—she couldn’t ever leave.

Her parents’ car gone.

Her friend with it.

And she’d have no idea how.

If you were driving on Route 28 late that night, you might have seen the girl in the middle of the road, looking like she’d dropped from the hatch of a low-flying plane and only just got to her feet after the fall. She would have been dazed. She wouldn’t have moved out of your way, so you would have pulled up near her, rolled down your window, called out, “Are you all right? Do you need a ride?”

“I blacked out again,” she would have said, and run off—a streak of white into a dark nest of trees.

That was how I pictured it.

Now Pete was rushing to his car, off to find his brother. And Asha was frantically trying to reach Owen on the phone. Damien was crying like a girl. And Vanessa was peppering London with questions. Cate was staring into her flashlight, and Kate, who I’d forgotten was there, was trying to find her shoe. Others had phones out searching for signals, and a boy I didn’t know was saying, “This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening,” though it was, most definitely it was.