Authors: Nova Ren Suma
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Social Issues, #Runaways, #Horror & Ghost Stories, #Visionary & Metaphysical
wire glittering in the falling darkness.
“You’re saying I dressed up for
nothing, then?” Jamie tugged at the shirt
collar under his coat, his one good gray
button-down that he might have even
ironed for the night out. But he didn’t
seem mad about it, I could tell.
Jamie and I had gotten together over
the summer (the same summer Abby,
mere miles from us, had been swatting
away gnats and rowing canoes and
singing campfire songs in repetitive
round-robins). It happened fast, between
Jamie and me.
Before I discovered Abby, and soon
the others—before a fundamental piece
of who I am shifted to reveal itself
inside me, like an iceberg rising up to
show its true and monstrous size from
the frigid depths of the sea—I’d been the
girl Jamie fell for. Whoever that was. It
wasn’t so long ago, but she and I were
different people now.
He and I were different, too, but I
don’t want to forget all the good things
about him. Like how he’s fearless when
it comes to braving heights, or breaking
and entering; he once scaled the side of
my house to reach an open window
when I’d locked myself out, balancing
on a flimsy gutter high up over the
backyard, holding on by his fingertips.
There was the way he’d go ahead and do
something with me, simply because I
asked him to. He didn’t need to know
why.
Like right then, in the snow. He was
lifting the lock to take a look. A puff of
his cold breath hung between us, as if
reaching out to touch me, but I was just
out of range. Just.
There I was, watching flurries fall and
catch in his hair, those unruly curls of his
poking out from under his hoodie,
wishing I could tell him about Abby. But
Jamie didn’t believe in things like
ghosts. And how do you tell a sane,
rational person that you’ve had an
encounter with one? That you’ve
connected somehow with a girl whose
face you found on a poster? A girl who
went missing
right here
? How she’s
reaching out to you, you’re sure of it?
How she’s trying to communicate
something, though you can’t quite make
out the message?
I think bringing him with me was my
way of telling him—but no matter what
screamed out in the dark of my head
while we stood there together at the gate,
I guess he couldn’t hear if I didn’t open
my mouth and let it out.
NO TRESPASSING signs hung on the
chain link above us, glowing, practically
nuclear, in the night. Snow dusted the
shoulders of his green army peacoat, the
one from the thrift store that was made
for someone much bigger than him (but
he wore it anyway, because I got it for
him). He was silent for too long; I
thought he’d given up and would say we
should just go to the restaurant. Then his
face lit up.
“So I can’t pick this lock,” he said,
with a small smile. “But the chain? It’s
busted.” With one hard tug, he got the
chain open. The padlock fell into the
snow.
Jamie was trying to meet my eyes, and
I was trying not to let him. “So what is
this place, anyway?” he asked.
“A summer camp, for girls,” I said as
I shoved the gate open into a snowdrift.
“They close it up for winter, but I
wanted to see.”
I didn’t give him the chance to ask
why. I pulled him through to the grounds
of Lady-of-the-Pines, abandoned for
winter, though from the way it looked
that night, expanding into the dark
distance, it could have been abandoned
years ago, before my mom and I moved
to the area, before I was even born.
Jamie and I walked along what I
guessed was the main path inside. He
took my hand. I don’t know what he
thought we were doing there—what my
intentions were, seeing how cold it was.
It was starting then, my need for
distance. I could feel this crawling sense
in my skin whenever he touched me, the
need to put some molecules of air
between us. I could feel the cold sweat
on his palm and something greasy, like
he’d gotten goop on his hands when he
was playing with the lock on the gate.
There was an ultra-awareness of him,
prickling and uncomfortable. Something
so much more important was crowding
out all thoughts of him.
We passed a shed and a white
structure with the words MAIN OFFICE
carved in over the wooden door frame.
We went slowly, my flashlight exploring
anything of interest, no words between
us. Paths split off into the trees, the
levels of snow lower to give hints of
where they started, but not where they
led. The quiet, except for our boots
swishing through the freshly fallen snow,
grew more and more intense.
Jamie startled me when he spoke. “I
thought you said this place was closed.”
He’d found a set of prints, or really a
series of indents over which the day’s
snow had fallen. A small, squat building
made of cinder blocks was to our left,
and to our right a fenced-in square with
a sign noting it as the compost, though
whatever had been in there, rotting into
the soil months before, was now frozen
solid and shrouded in white.
“Probably only an animal,” I said, and
as soon as the words left my mouth, a
rustling could be heard, fast and loose
like someone breaking into a panicked
run. Then we saw it wasn’t someone at
all—it was some
thing
. A fat little
creature trundled out from the darkened
patch of woods, over a fallen branch, to
the edge of the compost, watching us
with two yellow eyes as if waiting for
the right moment to pounce.
“Is that a—” I started. “Oh, please no.
That’s a skunk.”
“It’s a fox,” he said. “I think.” We
backed away slowly, putting distance
between us and it.
This might have been our only
encounter of the night on that vacant
campground if the wind hadn't shifted
and let me know she was close.
“Do you smell that?” I asked. “Like
something’s burning?” It drifted—the
scent of fire—from an unknown source.
Faint and far-off, but familiar enough to
remind me of the dream. Of her. Of how
I felt sure they were tangled up together.
“No, I—” he started, but I didn’t give
him the chance to say more, because I
was moving faster now, searching now,
the smoke-thick veil between my world
and her world loosening enough to let
me slip in.
At some point during this, I let go of
Jamie’s hand.
—
6
—
SHE’D
been here.
Abby Sinclair walked this very path, I
could sense it. She’d spent whole weeks
of her summer in this place before she
was gone. She’d raised the flag on this
pole and counted out change for candy at
that canteen.
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