I now knew for sure that Fiona was connected to Abby and Abby to her, somehow. They were reaching out from wherever they were now, trying to let me know.
They stood wavering like a two-headed mirage in the space where the couch was. Then, when my mom reached out to turn on the reading lamp, like shadows do when the light hits, they disappeared.
— 14 — THERE was a witness. The officer said someone saw Abby Sinclair ride the bike off the campus of Lady-of-the-Pines and into the night. He didn’t say who the witness was. Of course he didn’t; why would he tell me? But Abby did.
It was another girl—a kid. She was one of Abby’s campers in Cabin 3, and happened to be the only soul who knew that Abby would sneak off after lights-out, and who she’d go to meet. This girl carried around the secret about Abby and Luke for weeks, first because she got up to pee in the middle of the night and caught Abby tiptoeing into the cabin with a blazing smile on her face that illuminated her teeth even in the darkness. And then because Abby wanted someone to confide in, and she believed that this girl—with her frizzy braids and her thick glasses, her lack of friends and her innocent sense of devotion—would never betray Abby to the counselors.
And so, the girl ended up witnessing more than the last bike ride. Nights previous, she’d seen Abby slip back in beneath the mosquito netting with her eyes full of stars, her lipstick smeared, and the grass stains riding up the back of her shirt. The girl wasn’t there herself when it happened, but she heard it recounted later, how Abby and Luke almost did it. Almost. This girl was young enough to wonder, for hours on end, in vivid-if-anatomically-impossible detail, during games with balls she was supposed to be in the outfield to catch, just what “almost” could even mean.
It wasn’t so much a premonition but simple curiosity that made her follow Abby that night. The faint slap-slap-slap of Abby’s flip-flops were what had woken her, as if Abby were being careless and begging to be caught.
When the cabin’s front door swished closed and the shadow of her favorite counselor-in-training sneaked past the window, she slipped out of her bed and tiptoed outside. She felt the crunch of leaves and pebbled dirt beneath her bare feet and wished she’d thought to bring shoes. Once she saw Abby make a run for it past the mess hall, where the counselors had gathered to be loud and reckless now that the campers in their charge were asleep, she knew she’d have to run, too. And again she longed for shoes.
Somehow she made it past the counselors—in
there
laughing
and
popping bottles, not one of them glancing out the windows to catch Abby or the girl streaking past—and she caught up to Abby by the bike shed near the edge of the road. What did she expect Abby to do once she saw she had company?
Welcome her with open arms? Let her ride the handlebars of the borrowed bicycle and join her on the hill past the fence with Luke, lying between them and making a game of searching out constellations in the sky? Even better, making it so Abby changed her mind and didn’t go see Luke at all?
She didn’t exactly know. But she sure hadn’t expected Abby to get so mad.
Abby snapped at her, called her a nosy brat, and a few worse names besides, and told her to get her butt back to Cabin 3 before she got them both kicked out. The girl happened to mention that the bicycles in the bike shed were for counselors only—she believed in following rules—and since Abby was only in training to be a counselor she wasn’t allowed to ride them, and that made Abby madder still.
The girl backed away, stung, and then watched dejectedly as Abby pedaled off on the old, rusted Schwinn bicycle toward the main road.
That was how I pictured it.