“No,” I said. “Do you need me to—do you want me to . . . call someone? Do something?”
She tilted her head, and I sensed her cold eyes go dim. What could you do?
she said. I should not have even asked such a ridiculous question.
All she wished, if she could have a wish, if somewhere outside this limbo a wish from a girl like her could be plucked from the darkness and granted, she’d want them to know she hadn’t meant to cause the accident. That she was sorry. That she would take it back if she could.
It was here that the smoke of the dream seemed to clear and her hair parted and I could see her face for the first time since it appeared in my bathroom mirror. What I saw was something different, because in here, in this house, she was her true self. Her cheeks were still punctured from the windshield glass, causing her face to alternately bleed and sparkle. It was lovely and terrible at the same time.
She turned her back and walked the rest of the way up the stairs. My eyes were adjusting to the lack of light and I saw for the first time that she had impossibly long hair, hair that had never known a pair of scissors in its lifetime, plain and stick-straight and parted down the middle. And for a moment all she was out of the darkness was hair, and all I was in the darkness was another person who’d done nothing to help her.
She turned in a cloud of frizz.
It’s too late, she said, for me. The frizz alighted, and the glass shards in her cheeks shimmered, and the two sharp needles piercing through it were her cold eyes. But it’s not too late . . . for her.
— 27 — NOT too late for her. Something told me this had to mean Abby Sinclair.
I’d seen Fiona Burke in the house, and now I’d seen Natalie in the house, and on my way out and into consciousness, before the dream sifted away like a haze of smoke tends to do, I caught sight of another figure. This one stood statue-still, her back to an ash-gray wall.
No, not Abby—and no matter how much her disappearance itched at me, tugging and not letting go, she wasn’t the only girl who wanted me to have her story. That’s the thing I’d soon discover: There were more. So many more.
There were more lost girls out there than I’d ever imagined, and now they knew where to find me. Their whispers came from the shadows, the sound of so many voices more static than song.
MISSING
SHYANN JOHNSTON
CASE TYPE: Endangered Runaway DOB: November 10, 1994
MISSING: January 30, 2012
AGE NOW: 18
SEX: Female RACE: African American HAIR: Black EYES: Brown HEIGHT: 5’6” (168 cm) WEIGHT: 153 lbs (69 kg) MISSING FROM: Newark, NJ, United States CIRCUMSTANCES: Shyann was last seen leaving school on January 30, 2012, when she was 17 years old. She has a chicken pox scar under her right eye. She is believed to have stayed in the local area.
ANYONE HAVING INFORMATION
SHOULD CONTACT
Newark Police Department (New Jersey) 1-973-555-8297