— 9 — I was standing in the middle of the road where Abby Sinclair went missing.
Jamie had left minutes ago, or an hour ago; all I knew was that he’d left.
I’d pulled out of the Lady-of-the-Pines parking lot and turned right, the direction the police officer said Abby had gone.
I’d driven for a short distance looking for a hill, and since this was a mountain road, it wasn’t long before I found one.
I’d decided it could be the hill, it had to be, the one Abby had coasted down on the bicycle the night she disappeared. I pulled over, wanting to feel my feet on the asphalt she’d traveled that July night.
I made myself walk the center of the road, following the decline, and as I did I imagined the speed of her bike picking up, how she stopped having to pedal, how she began gliding down, faster and faster, down and down . . . but to what?
As I descended to the bottom of the hill, the pines rustled, and it sounded like they were whispering again, spilling secrets I couldn’t understand. They held their breath as one, keeping still, when I got close.
I remembered how, in the rearview mirror the morning Abby showed me her story, it came to a stop at the bottom of the hill. I wanted to see what went on after the end, when there was no one watching.
The narrow road was flat here, a pocket of darkness without streetlights or the glow of any nearby houses. There was nothing here. Just the shallow gully running alongside the stretch of pine trees on the left side, but nothing to separate the pines from the road on the right. Even so, the forest appeared to be brightly lit—glowing from the recent snowfall. All was quiet; all was alight.
What did I expect to find?
There wasn’t the ghost of Abby herself, ready to talk and spread herself open for the reveal. Not her shimmering figure, standing in the shallow dip of snow to my left maybe, a hand lifted and its fingers slowly curling in to beckon me closer. Not her bicycle—leaned up and rusting against the bristly trunk of a towering pine tree, where the police were too blind to spot it. Not the man who grabbed her—if it was a man—or the car that hit her—if it was a car. Not an answer in a box with a bow on it, left there on the asphalt for me to find.
In fact, standing in the middle of the road told me nothing.
Still, I stepped into the gully, my eyes searching. I bent down, to inspect closer.
Snow was in the way, and any evidence left there in summer would be long washed away or buried, but I kept looking. As if, somehow, I’d find a spot and a feeling would come over me and I’d know.
At some point I happened to turn and look back up the hill.
My van was parked on the side of the road where I’d left it, but what startled me were the bright beams of the headlights on high, cutting through the deep gloom.
I’d left the lights on?
I was sure I hadn’t, was sure I’d turned off the lights and the engine and then gotten out and started walking, but I must have forgotten, because who else would have climbed into the van and flicked on the headlights?
I felt myself shiver. My van was black, with windows only in the very front and the very back. The main cavern was windowless, which made it seem like the kind of vehicle a serial killer would aspire to drive, to make it easier for transporting a body. I’d never noticed how ominous the van looked from the outside, how threatening.
It stared at me from up on top of the hill, eyes blazing.
And I think this was the first time it came over me—the reality. I was being followed. Haunted, by another girl the same age as me. She needed me to do something for her, and she wouldn’t leave me alone until I gave her what she wanted. Would she?
She knew every little thing I did, could see me here on the dark road right now. She could hear my thoughts. She could feel my heart and how furiously it was beating. She could feel the panicked sweat dripping down my spine.
I never felt so alone, or so crowded.