She held her leg across, her back wedged against the frame. She was tall, and her legs were quite long. Her top leg was propped up just high enough that I couldn’t hop over. Her bottom leg was propped lower, so I couldn’t crawl under. She wouldn’t budge.
Why do you think you keep coming back here, Lauren? she asked me. She spoke as if she were only curious, but I could see on her face it wasn’t that.
She wanted me to stay this night and the next. She wanted me here all nights, and it wasn’t because she liked my company. It was only that if she had to be here, she wanted me to have to stay, too.
One night you’ll come back and you won’t be able to get out again, she said.
There was a threat in her words, something unspoken. All the girls had that unsaid question in their eyes when they looked at me. I was in danger, too, wasn’t I? Because why else did I know about this place, and them—why else was I here like they were?
Madison was very blond in the dream, even more so than in the pictures posted all over her online profiles. It was like a fire was still burning somewhere, or flashbulbs were dancing in her hair.
One night you won’t be able to get out, she said again. Then she adjusted her leg, lowering it a smidge, and in that quick moment, I leaped over her shin and darted out the door. She called after me as I made it down the front stairs and into the street, I’m the one he wants to take pictures of. Not you.
I always did make it out, every time.
And though the voices stayed with me, snippets of the things they said ( You should’ve seen me jump, man, Kendra was going, you should’ve seen me. Or Isabeth, more quietly, I should have walked. It was only rain. I should have just walked home.) cascaded through my head like little lullabies sometimes, other times like cymbals crashing.
These girls were here inside the house and they couldn’t get out—and maybe, no matter how much it pained me, this meant they were dead.
But there was one girl who hadn’t set foot in the house yet. I’d looked, and I still couldn’t see her. She’d reached out to me, and it wasn’t to keep ahold of her story, to record it when no one else was listening, to hear her confessions, her regrets. To know her like no one else on the outside could. There had to be another reason.
She was different, wasn’t she? She was the one I could keep from ending up here. Maybe even save.
— 34 — On Thu, Jan 17, 2013, at 10:03
AM,
Cassidy
Delrio
<[email protected]> wrote:
Lauren,
Sorry it took me a little while to write you back. Yeah, if you’re around campus and you want to get coffee or whatever just let me know. I get out of econ at 2:40, then I have anthro at 4:10, so if you could meet me at like 3? Sorry about your friend. She was sweet. I really don’t know why she ran away, none of us counselors did.
Sucks you haven’t heard from her, for real. But if that’s not a bummer and you still want to come by and talk about it, that’s cool. I have an hour to kill.
Cass
— 35 — I was in math class when the message from Abby’s camp counselor came through on my phone. Which meant I had to leave. Right then. I couldn’t think about sines or cosines or try and fail to find the hypotenuse on the triangle when I knew I could meet her today, if only I could leave school and drive down there.
I raised my hand, and Ms. Torres said couldn’t I wait until the bell rings? I assured her I’d be quick even though I wouldn’t be, because it won’t matter, will it? Trigonometry, after you’re gone.
Jamie was sitting a few rows behind me in class, and his eyes followed me to the door. When I closed it and gave one last backward glance through the window slit, he was still staring.