Yoon-mi Hyun and Maura Morris, who both think love changes a person for the better, and both agree that it is possible to find your soul mate at age 17, no matter what your parents may say when you bring the girl home.
Kendra Howard, who expects she’s the bravest, baddest, most kickass girl those guy friends of hers have ever known, and bets they still spend nights talking about her, still toast her memory over cold beers, saying how high she leaped, how far she fell, how she had balls, and she’ll never be forgotten, RIP.
Jannah Afsana Din, who believes starting a new life with Carlos in Mexico
wouldn’t
have
been
as
impossible as people said—they could have lived on the beach together and raised chickens; they could have sold the little cakes she makes on the streets and survived, even flourished, even found happiness.
Hailey Pippering, who’s done some things she can’t say out loud because it’d make her sick; she only wants her parents to know that she didn’t run away this time, even if they think she did. This time, she wanted to stay.
And Trina Glatt, who always meant to track down the father who abandoned her when she was a baby, so she could throttle him and blame him for every bad thing that ever happened to her, but also, secretly, so she could hug him, and admit she missed him, and if he invited her to a baseball game, or to the backyard, to throw a Frisbee around or something, she’d probably go. She’d tell him that, if she could.
There are a lot of things the girls would tell the people they left behind, if they could.
All those girls. So many to keep track of tonight, my head swirling. Only, something’s missing. Something’s not right here. The circle of girls comes close and then weaves tighter around me. I can’t tell if I’m at the center or if the fire is.
The night flickers.
What I thought were the soot-streaked walls of the house are the tall stalks of the pine trees; the staircase to the upper floors is the side of the mountain leading up to the looming ridge; the ceiling doesn’t end because it’s the night sky.
Pinpricks of flurries rain down, as soft as ash but cool on my cheeks. My surroundings keep shifting: I’m at Lady-of-the-Pines, in the ring of stones where the campers toast marshmallows in summer. Then I’m in the house in my dream. My dream is here, or this place has become a part of it; I don’t know the difference.
The girls’ hands are tightly clasped, though there’s no singing. This isn’t summer camp. This isn’t the kind of night for belting out “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and holding a flashlight to ghoul up your face and tell ghost stories.
The ghosts tonight have already told their stories.
I cast my eyes around the fire. I still can’t shake that something’s not how it’s supposed to be. Madison’s bright-blond hair seems wild in the fire, and there’s an uncountable number of stars in her eyes, but it’s not her. Trina shoots me a threatening glare, but it’s not her, either.
Then I know: Yes, the girls have come out. Some (Jannah, Hailey) have only recently become familiar and I barely know their full stories yet, and some (Natalie, Shyann) are girls I feel like I’ve known since first grade. But there’s one whose face I can’t find in the roaring glow, one I keep looking for in the hissing, dizzying circle of smoke, thinking I must have missed her.
Thinking they’re moving too fast, and if they’d only slow down or stop so I could see her.
Where’s Abby?
She doesn’t step out of the smoke. She still hasn’t come. I haven’t gotten her out. All this, and I haven’t found her.