Authors: Nova Ren Suma
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Social Issues, #Runaways, #Horror & Ghost Stories, #Visionary & Metaphysical
at the flat back tire. “And—get this—she
dropped the bike and she took off. I went
after her, but I couldn’t find her
anywhere on the road. Maybe she took
the shortcut through the woods, dude, I
don’t know.” He shrugged. “We weren’t
exclusive. What did she expect?”
I was still trying to understand. I’d
seen her reach the bottom of the hill, but
nothing beyond that, nothing outside that
patch of darkness, and I’d assumed that’s
where it had ended.
Instinctively I touched the pendant,
resting beneath my clothes. How did it
get in the gully then? Was it when she
was walking back? Did I misunderstand,
get the whole trip reversed, shuffle the
events out of order, confuse the whole
night?
Luke seemed happy to get rid of the
bike. I was the one holding it upright
now, and he used his free hands to fix
his hair.
“You’re . . . giving this to me?” I said.
“I figured she’d come back and get it,
but yeah. Then I heard she was gone, so.
It’s a piece-of-shit bike anyway, but take
it. It’s what you came here for, right?”
“But, Luke, that was the night she
disappeared. You were the last person
to see her.”
“Wasn’t me, Officer.” He put up his
hands in surrender, laughing, but when I
didn’t laugh back he lowered his hands.
“Seriously, though. Everyone says she
ran away or whatever. You don’t think I
—”
I wasn’t sure what to think. It
depended on what Abby thought. And I
needed her to tell me what that was.
“Why’d I keep her bike all this time
then, huh? That should prove I didn’t do
shit to her. I’d have thrown it off a cliff
by now if I had.”
I didn’t say anything, so he kept
talking.
“Lauren, you know me. C’mon now.
Be serious.”
I closed my eyes. I wished I could
will the dream to life. That I could climb
the steps of the house, no matter the time
of day, awake or asleep or in the middle
of conversation. If only I could control
it, the smoky space that controlled me. I
could be in the dairy aisle during my
shift at the Shop & Save, stacking the 1
percent and the 2 percent milk cartons
beside the whole and then the smoke
would start sifting in, up from the floor
like that time the little kid broke open the
bag of flour, and the pale cloud would
be a curtain through which I could visit
the dream. Or here, now, in Luke
Castro’s garage. I’d step through and ask
Abby my questions. I’d find out what I
needed to know. I’d come back, I’d
know all.
This time it worked, in a way.
Because the place in the dream
was
near. I could smell its smoke. Or
someone who reeked of it.
“Who are you looking for?” Luke
asked. “My parents are out. It’s just you
and me.”
It’s just you and me,
a voice mocked,
in my head.
She was meaner than I expected.
Don’t go inside the house if he asks
you. He just wants to do you in his
parents’ water bed.
I was looking around wildly then, to
see where the voice was coming from. I
thought she was behind me, but the voice
had come from across the garage, on the
other side of the car. So was she under it
or crouching down against the door?
Just wait,
she said.
You’ll ruin
everything.
“No,” I said. “I have a boyfriend.”
“Whoa,” Luke said at this, though I
wasn’t even talking to him.
I waited for the voice to return so I
could find where she was hiding, and
then when she kept silent I realized. That
wasn’t Abby. That voice was cruel the
way Fiona Burke was cruel, and snide
the way Fiona Burke used to be snide.
That was Fiona’s low whisper in my
ear.
“Listen,” Luke was saying, “if you do
hear from her, no hard feelings, right?
It’s not like we were serious. She knew
that.”
My face must have said otherwise.
“She didn’t?”
“She thought . . .” I started, wishing
she’d speak up and tell me. “She thought
maybe,” I finished.
Luke shook his head. “Why doesn’t
she just call me herself? Why’d she send
you?”
“Because I told her I’d help her,” I
said, and by saying it out loud, it was
like I was declaring it. To him and
everyone. To myself. To her and to
Fiona Burke—I felt their held lungfuls of
breath as they listened.
Then I wheeled the bike out of the
garage and down the driveway toward
my van without another word. Maybe I’d
been wrong, I told myself. Maybe the
bike
had
been blue.
—
16
—
I
didn’t end up wheeling Abby’s blue
Schwinn bicycle into the police station. I
left it in my van parked outside and then
I went in, to tell the police I had it.
The station was small, with a waiting
room holding three chairs and an interior
window in the wall, through which a
receptionist sat reading.
I didn’t see Officer Heaney or anyone
else
official-looking
through
the
window, but I was told to sit tight and an
officer would be with me very soon. I
waited forty-two minutes. Then the
receptionist went on break, apologizing
for keeping me waiting, and an officer
came up front to help me, leaving me
sitting another eleven minutes while he
ducked back in to take a phone call.
During all the time I was waiting in the
plastic chair in the front room I
considered what this meant. If it was a
sign that I should leave. If I was meant to
hand over the bike to the police and tell
them what I knew, wouldn’t they have
helped me when I first walked in?
I was about to get up, walk out, and
drive away, when finally the officer
came back to the window and asked
what it was I wanted to talk to somebody
about. He wasn’t Officer Heaney, but
he’d do. I dug through my pockets and
my backpack searching for Abby’s flyer,
afraid I’d lost it, then remembering
where I’d hidden it, in the inside
zippered pouch. While the officer read
the details on the Missing flyer, I felt
something deep in my center rise in
temperature, like a pinpoint of panic that
would soon take over my whole body
and come spewing out my mouth. Then it
dawned on me what it was: not a sudden
illness or something I ate, but the
pendant I was wearing. The stone had
gone hot as an iron against my bare skin.
I lifted it out away from me, so it
wouldn’t burn me, hiding it in a ball
inside my sweatshirt-shielded fist.
The officer handed back Abby’s flyer
through the window and said he did
remember the girl from this summer.
Vaguely. Some runaway. See, it says that
right there on the flyer? Case Type:
Endangered
Runaway.
Get
that?
Runaway.
They can’t go chasing every
17-year-old kid who runs away from
home—do I have any idea how many
there are out there? What a waste of time
that would be? Of taxpayers’ dollars?
What a waste?
Within his words were the other
things he was saying: how little this
mattered to him, and how little this
should matter to me. She’d be eighteen
soon enough, besides, he added. And
then there was really nothing they could
do.
The officer loaded a website on the
front desk’s computer, angling the screen
so I could see it—the missing children’s
database, a public record listing anyone
who was under the age of eighteen when
reported missing, on which I’d already
found Abby’s information. But he had a
point to make. He entered these terms
into the search field: current age: 17;
sex: female. Then he scrolled through
face after face and name after name, to
show me. Here was a 17-year-old girl
who had also run away. Another 17-
year-old runaway. Another, another,
another, all 17, all runaways. He kept
clicking. Another 17-year-old, but her
case
was
labeled
“Endangered
Missing,”
which
meant
she
had
disappeared
under
questionable
circumstances. This next one, too. Some
were missing, he admitted, but more—
more than he’d sit there and count—had
run away by their own choice. And they
could always go home if they wanted.
The same number leaped out at me—
17, 17, 17—pouncing and etching itself
into my skin like a bloody needle in the
midst of one of my mom’s more intricate
tattoos.
I was 17.
I was a girl.
Didn’t we matter?
And the fact that I was also 17 and
also a girl couldn’t be all there was, but
it was enough for me. It wasn’t anything
this police officer would ever be able to
understand. This was meant for me only.
A piece of information that was all mine.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” he said,
assuming that’s what she was, and I
didn’t correct him. “Though I assure you,
if she wants to be found, she’ll turn up.”
“But what if she
didn’t
run away?” I
asked. I told him about the bike—the
same one mentioned right there on the
Missing notice—and didn’t they need it
for evidence?
“I’m not sure why we would. Besides,
this here says she’s from New Jersey.
Out-of-state.”
Go
, said the whispered voice close up
to the blazing-hot lobe of my left ear.
Get out of there right now, you
imbecile. Go.
This time I knew right away it was
Fiona. She knew I was about to mention
the necklace, which made me wonder
what else she knew. She’d keep insulting
me until I left.
“Okay,” I told the officer. “Thank you
for your time. I understand.” I grabbed
Abby’s flyer from off the desk and
returned it to the hoodie’s front pocket,
where the touch of the pendant would
keep it warm. I didn’t look back. I was
almost at the door.
“But maybe when I get a chance I’ll
look into it,” he called through the
window into the waiting room. My hand
was on the knob and the door was
coming open, and I knew he didn’t mean
it and that as soon as I walked out of the
station he’d let himself forget. I glanced
back at the window to be sure and
noticed him looking up at the clock on
the wall. “How old are you, miss?
Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“Winter break,” I said, though
technically it didn’t start for another day.
“You sure about that? My daughter
goes to Pinecliff Central, and she had
school today, she—”
The door swung closed before he
could finish. I was still here. I was still
searching. I was the only one who
seemed to care.
—
17
—
I
didn’t get far.
My eyes swam and then came into
focus: the parking lot of the Friendly’s.
The square of blacktop divided by
yellow lines. The gray concrete curb.
The bumper of my van wedged against
the curb. The sign on the plate-glass
window advertising a three-course
Christmas dinner special next week
(was Christmas next week already?) for
only $7.99. The cracks in the sidewalk.
The faces in the cracks. Smiling faces at
first and then mouths in the shape of
screams.
I’d been on the sidewalk outside the
Friendly’s for I-couldn’t-say-how-long.
Something had come over me when I
was leaving the police station and I’d
had to pull over. It was the growing
sense that I was being watched—and
then it was the growing sense that
whoever was watching, they were inside
the van. They were in the bowels of the
back, behind the bench seat. I’d opened