17 & Gone
This was Abigail Sinclair from the Missing flyer. I could smell her, harsh and hot like a tuft of hair burning.
She uncrossed her arms and lowered her knees, and I noticed that her T-shirt had the name of the summer camp and a picture to go with it: a veiled lady lifted up above a trio of pine trees, as if in the midst of being taken herself. The shirt was covered in grime and streaked with mud, so the words COUNSELOR-IN-TRAINING could barely be made out above her heart. Below the shirt, I saw she had on a pair of shorts. Red ones, with thin white racer stripes. She had been on the home team in Color War that day—I found that out later.
She was letting me see what she was wearing on the night she disappeared, but I knew, even then, that this wasn’t about what a girl was wearing when she found herself gone. Nothing she could have worn on that night would have made a difference. Not these shorts or another pair that were longer or less red. Not a bathing suit. Not a bear costume. Not a short skirt. Not a burqa.
There was so much more to her story I didn’t know.
“Abigail?” I said. It came out in a whisper.
Without a word or warning, my vision shifted. I was soon seeing through some layers of smoke and coughed-up haze into what she herself saw the night she went missing. This seeing was more like knowing. I didn’t have to question it—in the way that I can be sure, without needing to check first, that there are five fingers on my hand.
What I came to know was this:
She didn’t like it when people called her Abigail. So I wouldn’t, not anymore.
And she did ride away on that bike, though it was green, not blue as had been reported. What I saw of her—what she willed me to see—was a moving image spooling out in the frame of my rearview mirror, a home movie projected in an empty theater for me and only me.
There she was, riding a bright green bicycle into a sea of darkness. That was her, coasting on a gust of wind and letting her long hair untangle and fly. It was a rusty old bike, one she borrowed from the counselor’s shed; it was an empty road, one on which no cars passed; it was a slick, sweet-smelling summer’s night.
That was it, that was the last of her. She lingered on it, and so did I, holding the memory between us like something sweet slowly licked off a shared spoon.
I watched the reflective light mounted on the back of the bicycle catch and glow and grow small as she traveled into the dark distance. Watched her pedal, quick at first, then slowing to coast down the hill. Watched as she lifted both arms from the handlebars for a heartbeat of a second, then put them back down and held on. I watched her go.
Then I lost sight of her. The bike dipped under, but the image of the road stayed still. I was leaning forward, trying to see farther, when the mirror went dark and I realized someone was pounding on the window of my van.
My neck turned until I was face-to-face with the intruder.
It was Mr. Floris, ninth- and tenth-grade biology teacher by trade and prison guard in his dark dreams and deepest fantasies. Everyone knew Mr. Floris loved trolling the school grounds during his free periods, itching to hand out detentions. And even though it was no surprise to find him in the parking lot seeking to foil late sleepers and slackers, it was still a shock to be caught. I’d forgotten where I was.
He rapped his knuckles on the glass, then lowered the red scarf that he’d wound around his face to keep out the cold. When his mouth was free, I saw the chapped lips beneath his mustache shape out the words: You. Roll down this window this instant, young lady.
There was only a single layer of window glass between us, but I couldn’t hear him. I heard nothing but the distant whirring of two bicycle wheels. Then he pounded again, and I heard that and flinched and was rolling down the window and saying, “Sorry, Mr. Floris. I didn’t see you there.”
At the same time I was taking another glance in the rearview mirror, needing to know—was she still in the van with me? Was she huddled behind my seat, in the dark cavern in back? But something was blocking my view: the reflection of the pale girl in the mirror who must have been rubbing at her eyes again, a bad habit. She had smoke-gray tracks of mascara streaking down her cheeks as if she’d been holed up in the van crying. She wasn’t. I hadn’t cried in years.
On top of my head was the puffy wool hat my friend Deena Douglas stole from the mall and didn’t like on herself and so gave to me. The hat was pulled low over my eyebrows, hiding my ears and hiding the view of the backseat where Abby still could be.
“Miss Woodman,” Mr. Floris said, “you do realize it’s third period and you should be in class? Get out of this van and come with me or I’ll have to write you up.”
I’d never been written up before. This was before I started skipping all that school, before the “marks” on my “permanent record” that I’d “regret” for the “rest of my life.” This was before I shattered into the particles and pieces I’m in now.
Even so, I didn’t get out of the van.
“But . . .” I said, pausing there, waiting.
Because didn’t he see?
I was expecting him to notice her behind me. He was close enough to my window that he must have been able to see the bench seat and who was in it. There . . . the apparition of a girl hiding behind her hair, wasn’t she there with her grimy face and her scratched-up knees?
I could still smell her. I could sense her breathing, too, her mouth sharing air with my mouth even though logically I knew it wasn’t possible.
But Mr. Floris’s eyes landed on something else: The lighter in my dashboard had thrust itself out with a hard pop.
“That’s it, Lauren, get out. Now. I’m writing you up.”
He didn’t see—he was blind to it. To her. Soon enough he was opening the door for me and waving me out onto the icy pavement. I glanced directly at her only once, when I was reaching down to rescue her flyer from the floor.
Her long hair was tangled with leaves, I noticed then, stuck through with loose green leaves and pine needles and matted with twigs and sap. One bruised knee was bleeding, and the trail of blood had wound down her leg to between her toes. She was wearing one flip-flop. The other had been lost somewhere I couldn’t imagine.
I knew she fell off the bicycle; I could see it happening, a loose rock under her tire catching her off-balance in the dark depths of the night. But did she get up again, or did something stop her? What and who did she meet at the bottom of that hill?
She didn’t say. I wouldn’t have expected her to tell me in front of him, anyway.
I stepped out of the van, closed and locked the door, and followed Mr. Floris to the front office, where I was about to be awarded a block of after-school detention. But I did look back. I kept looking back. Nothing would keep me from looking for her now.
— — —
That was the first time I was visited by Abby, who met her fate outside the Lady-of-the-Pines Summer Camp for Girls. Now, there are so many more things I know about her.
She’s Abigail Sinclair of Orange Terrace, New Jersey. Yes, there’s that. But she’s really only Abigail to her grandparents and her homeroom teacher. To everyone else, she’s Abby.
Abby with the smallest speck of a stud in her nose, so it looks like a sparkling star has been plucked from the sky and hung low beside her face, a star that follows her wherever she goes, night or day. Abby who chews her nails, just the ones on her thumbs. Abby who never wears skirts. Abby who’s afraid of clowns and isn’t kidding when she says so. Abby who doesn’t mind when it rains. Abby who played flute, for three months, then quit. Abby, solid C student. Abby, still a virgin, on a technicality, which does count. Abby who can tap-dance. Abby who can’t whistle, no matter how hard she tries. Abby who likes, maybe even could have loved, Luke.
Abby with brown hair, brown eyes, 120 pounds, 5'7", small scar on her right knee from tripping over the back step when she was five.
Abby: age 17, reported missing September 2, but gone before that, gone in summer and no one went looking.
Gone.
— 3 —
I don’t know how I made it through the day I first found Abby.
My memory holds on only to vague pieces, because other, sharper things have since come to take their place. I remember the detention slip for cutting class and smoking in the parking lot, torn ragged on one side so it looked like someone had taken a bite out of my sentence, but I don’t remember the detention itself. I don’t remember what happened in my classes or what I learned, if anything. I don’t remember lunch period with Deena, and what particular kind of slop-on-a-tray I carried to our table and then put in my mouth. Or what plans she made for her eighteenth birthday party, which was all she could talk about even though it was weeks and weeks away. Or anything else she said.
At one point there was my boyfriend, Jamie Rossi, at my locker, asking what happened and why I was late, and I remember this because it was the first time I had ever kept something from him.
“Just engine trouble,” I heard myself telling him, “that’s all.” I didn’t say anything about a girl taped to a telephone pole, a girl hidden in the back of my van. It was still possible I’d imagined it. Imagined her.
I have this freeze-frame of Jamie in my memory, this picture. In it, the hood of his sweatshirt is popped up over his head, and the dark curls over his forehead are spilling out because he needed a haircut again like he seemed to practically every other week. He’s leaning in, eyes closed so I see how long his lashes are. And there are his lips out to meet mine. His stubble showing, but only on his chin, because he couldn’t grow a full beard, not if he tried. I can’t tell what he’s thinking—if he believes me—because his eyes are closed. Not that I could ever guess, with Jamie. He’s a guy, so he’s used to keeping things close.
Then the picture of Jamie’s face falls away, and I must have kissed him back, or a teacher came by and stopped us, but I don’t remember that part.
I was outside myself, as if I were standing at the dip in the highway that led to Pinecliff Central High School, the last place you could turn before heading to school, all while some shadow-me was inside the building going to my classes, kissing my boyfriend, answering to my name when it was called.
I couldn’t get Abby out of my mind.
During my free period, I did a search online, on one of the library computers, and found a listing in the missing persons database for an Abigail Sinclair from New Jersey. That flyer on the telephone pole may have been a few months old, but she was still out there somewhere. She was still 17 years old. Still missing.
There was also a public page online that her family or friends must have made for her—a memorial of sorts where anyone could post a message:
ABBY! IF YOU ARE READING THIS! Come home! We miss you.
------------------------------------------------------
Abigail, it’s your cousin Trinity. You have Grandma and Grandpa so worried you have no idea. Where are you????? Call me if you’re reading this. We just want to know you’re ok!
------------------------------------------------------
Dear Abby, I have never met u but I am praying for u every night
------------------------------------------------------
Abbz U R missed @ school
------------------------------------------------------
luv you girl come home!!!!
It was when I was scrolling through this page of notes left for Abby, notes I felt sure she’d never seen, from some people she didn’t even know, that I realized a person was standing behind me, waiting for the right moment to speak.
When I turned in my chair, I watched this girl’s gaze peel away from my computer screen and go to me. I didn’t recognize her at first, and then her face took on shape and I realized she was a freshman, a girl I’d seen around school. I was more aware of the fact that she was breathing, undeniably alive, than of anything else. This girl wasn’t missing; she was right here. And all I wanted was for her to go away.
“Hey, Lauren,” she said, “we saw you this morning. Are you, um . . . okay?”
“You saw me? Where?” The thought of being watched while I was in the van alarmed me.
“Before school? You were in the middle of the road? The bus almost hit you? We all saw you and we called out the window to you.” She waited. “Didn’t you hear us?”
I shook my head. A feeling of cold came over me as she brought me back to that moment—so immediate I could have been out on the windy highway beneath the snowy pines right then. I shivered involuntarily.
“We were all like, ‘Hey what’s going on, why’d we stop?’ And the bus driver was like, ‘Whoa, there’s a girl in the road.’ And then I was like, ‘I know her, that’s Lauren Woodman! From school!’ You know we used to be on the same bus and—”
“My van broke down,” I said, so she’d stop talking. I’d already clicked away from Abby’s page and filled the computer screen with the library’s search catalog. But the flyer—Abby’s dirty, crumpled flyer—was on my lap under the desk, and I twisted it up and rolled it into a tight tube.
“Yeah, but you ran across the road. We saw you—”
She was a tiny girl, with warm brown skin and warm brown hair, and she seemed harmless enough, she seemed genuinely concerned, but I couldn’t listen to her anymore. What caught my attention was the movement out the window: not the flurries of snow but the flash of red. A gloveless hand on the glass that left streaks of mud in its wake.
She’d left my van and come close to the school, even though she couldn’t get inside. There she was, a girl dressed for summer, though all around her was a white stretch of December snow. Her face was clouded with dirt, her long hair woven with brambles, with sticks and leaves and other indecipherable things gummed up and glimmering through the glass. The expression on her face—that haunted look in her eyes—made it seem like she’d seen things I hadn’t, things not many of us had. Bad things.
The hand to the glass, the gesture, palm out, five fingers spread, insinuated so much to me: I should say nothing about her if asked, not to this random freshman and not to anyone. And it said she wanted something from me, needed it, and that I was the only one who could give it to her.
Help. Abby Sinclair needed my help.
“What’re you looking at?” the freshman asked. She followed my gaze to the window and when she said, “Oh . . .” my heart seized, and I wanted to block her view with my body. But then she added, “Gross. Someone’s got to clean that window—so dirty.” She looked back at me and shrugged.
She wasn’t able to see Abby, but she could see what Abby had left behind: the handprints, if not the hand that made them.
— 4 —
THAT night I had the dream.
In it was a house. I could try to explain it like it’s an actual place that could be found on some street somewhere. Narrow and made of brick. Abandoned. Four floors rising up to disappear into shadow-smogged sky. The broken iron gate. The cracked and collapsing set of stairs leading up to the dark front door.
Even though the dream starts with me standing out on the street, I know it’s not a street I could find anywhere in the waking world. There’s no town or city beyond this place. The sidewalk begins and ends in a prickling patch of darkness. I can only go inside the house. And I always go in.
That first night, I was at the door in no time. Though the windows were covered in boards, and though a shroud of silence enveloped the building, curling out from the cracks and gaps in the brick, gagging me with it, I lifted my hand to try the bell. It was grown through with rot, so when I pressed the doorbell my finger sunk into something soft and wet, as if plunging into an open, oozing wound.
I pulled my hand away, then tried the door itself. It gave. One push, a few steps in, and there I was standing in darkness. I didn’t realize I was in the foyer, beneath the dangling skeleton of a once-grand chandelier. I didn’t know what was above me, or beside me, or shuffling down near my feet.
But I could smell something: the distinct scent of smoke
. It tickled my throat, made my eyes water. Coming from close or far away, I couldn’t tell. The hush of it was simply in the air, like a hot breath exhaled.
I should have been afraid, want to race out of there, even if I met my end where the sidewalk did. But I stayed put. It may have been dark, too dark to see my own hand before my face; and it may have been quiet, so quiet someone could have been hidden in the shadows observing my every move; but I felt the need to stay.
Soon I’d come to know the space of this dream like I know the house I live in with my mom, the carriage house we rent from the Burkes who live on the other side of the hedge, that little house with its unnecessary closets and stacked cupboards, its creaky steps and crooked doors. But on this night, my first night visiting, I didn’t know what I’d find in this place. Or who.
When the smoke thickened, the oppressively hot air filling my lungs, I began to think I was in danger. That I could die. But no, actually. The dream wasn’t that.
Soon I’d know this dream wasn’t about anyone dying—it was about living on, forever. The house was a place where you could be remembered, even visited. A home for you when you lost your own. If you ran away. If you got taken. If you steered your bike down the wrong dark road.
All the girls ended up here.
When I’d visit on other nights, I’d come to notice the patterns decorating the wallpaper in all the rooms, the prickly vines of climbing, choking ivy. I’d see the gaps in the patterns, the blackened gashes where the rot had licked the walls away.
I’d know the layout of the rooms, even the upstairs, once I got the courage to climb the staircase without fearing it would turn to dust under my weight. There were many bedrooms, all down the hallways; enough rooms to make me wonder how many people had once lived here, how many people could fit here now.