I turn to Fiona to ask what happened. I see Fiona now, at the edge of the ring, not holding a hand, not taking a step inside, only watching. Only waiting. An observer to a disaster about to occur, standing back so she can wipe her hands of it after.
She wants me to join the girls. It’s not fair that I’ve been living my life out in the daylight, driving my van down any road I want, walking into any house I want, seeing the people who love me at any moment, on any day. She’s forgotten I’ve been in the hospital, unable to have any of these things, either. Because surrounding us is an entire sky made of shadows, and there’s no escaping your fate.
I’m 17. Like she was, like they all were.
Then Fiona meets my eyes, and I question my distrust of her. I question everything.
Because no, she didn’t bring me here to get rid of me. She expected Abby to come out, just as I did. She’s looking at the fire, waiting and wondering where she is, too.
Then she makes a decision.
She grabs my arm. I can’t tell if I’m feeling her touch or if what’s come back is a memory of her touch, from before.
Her hand has a hard grasp of my arm, reminding me of that night when I was still eight and she was 17 as she is now, when she grabbed me and shoved me in the closet. But tonight it hurts so much more than it did then because she’s grabbing my left arm, my bad arm.
We’ve got to burn the place down, she says.
No, no, wait, we can’t yet, I try to tell Fiona. Abby’s not here. Aren’t we supposed to find Abby first, and only after can we— But I’m not fast enough to catch her.
Fiona’s racing down the hill with the bottle of kerosene in her arms. It’s too late. She will start the destruction without me.
— 60 —
SHE’S telling me to do it. She’s telling all of us, pulling our strings and giving commands. Soon the girls have sticks gathered from the outskirts of the woods that they raise to light the way, and soon the kerosene can is in my good arm and the spout is open and the liquid is dribbling out on my toes.
I start to wonder: Is it too late for Abby? Fiona is acting like it might be.
And if we destroy this place, this last place
Abby
stayed
before
she
disappeared, will we set her free?
Maybe we will. Maybe doing this will set us all free. Even me.
First go the cabins closest to the hill.
We set fire to the empty beds. Next is the camp office, a small building with a wraparound porch, and we run a line of kerosene all around the porch, from end to end. The canteen is a tiny outhouse of a structure and we leave a fire at one corner, like a bird’s nest. The canoes go up as if they were doused already and were just waiting to be set alight.
Smoke is in the air the way it always is in the dream; it smells just the same.
But then something’s not the same.
Something’s off, and calling to me through the smoke. A voice. And not a voice in my head or a whisper at my ear or the girls with the torches at my back.
This is an actual voice shouting out into the actual night. Someone is on the campground with me.
I’m afraid it’s a delusion, that my mind has shattered and scattered all over the snow. And when he reaches me and he’s been running and the panic colors his face and he says, “Lauren! Are you okay? Lauren?” it takes me a long moment to realize he’s not a ghost or an escaped piece of a dream. He’s Jamie.
Jamie’s been here with me once before, so I should have guessed he’d know where to find me.
He’s shouting. At me. “Did you do this? What did you do?”
He means the fires. When I glance back behind him I expect to see a tidal wave of fire, the coiling, curling lip edged with girls holding torches as tall as their arms will lift, so if they reach high enough they could catch the night on fire. They could destroy the whole world they’ve been stolen from. They could end everything.
But there are only the fires in the places where I set them myself, and there is a trail of kerosene in the snow that no one’s dropped a match to light.
The fires are burning, and letting off black puffs of smoke, but they’re not near as large as I thought they would be.