Liar, said Fiona Burke.
My mom looked relieved. “I do have a paper to write, but Lauren? We’ll talk tomorrow about all of this.”
I got the bicycle gliding and hopped on. It balanced perfectly and didn’t topple over. I hadn’t forgotten anything I’d seen so far. Not even how to ride a bike.
I pumped the pedals until I was out of sight of my house and the Burkes’ house and could let go and have the spinning tires do it all without me having a say. I thought of Abby on this bicycle, on the way to meet Luke. Then there was Abby leaving Luke’s house on foot in the warm summer’s night, there was the road, there were the pine trees, and beyond that I guess there was something I wouldn’t get to know. There was a dark night sky starred with questions, and she was one of them. I kept thinking if I looked hard enough maybe I’d be able to pick out her point in the constellation.
Or more likely I’d keep getting it all mixed up, like how I could never seem to find the Big Dipper, even when it was right there, screaming out its existence in the sky right over my head.
Then I changed the story. I imagined Abby on the way to meet Luke, but never stopping, never bothering going to his house and instead riding a wide circle and making it back safe to the grounds of the summer camp that night.
I imagined her still alive.
I kept pedaling and soared around each coming turn. I sped past mailboxes.
I flew over humps in the road. I somehow managed to avoid slicks of ice. I pedaled so fast, I didn’t know how I’d ever get the bike to stop.
When I reached the railroad tracks, I saw the light in the distance and heard the rumble: a train was coming. It sped closer, rattling the air, a freight train that didn’t look to be stopping at the commuter Amtrak stop at Pinecliff. I pumped the pedals and steered the bike down the narrow road that ran alongside the tracks. I was ahead of the train, but I felt it gaining on me, a hulking monster I was too small and insignificant to think of ever beating.
The train was just behind me and then it was beside me, and for a single, perfect moment the freight train and I were matched, its nose even with the bike’s front tire.
Then, fast, it overtook me and thundered past me and I was left behind.
— 40 — SHE was waiting for me in my bedroom, watching in silence as I shook out my legs, my muscles burning after riding her bike so hard and for so long.
Her eyes held on me, and the weight of that gaze felt like she was pressing her entire body down on top of me, caked in mud and littered with burrs and twigs, scraped raw in places, as heavy as a sack of bricks.
“I tried,” I said.
She kept staring.
I sat on the end of my bed and watched her in the vanity mirror. It was easier than looking directly at her.
Talking to her reflection came easier, too.
“I told them,” I said. “I told them you didn’t run away. That’s what you wanted me to say, right? But, Abby, I don’t know if they believed me. And that Cassidy girl from the summer? Don’t even ask me what she said. I went down there and I told them . . . I don’t know what else to do.”
I tried to keep my voice down, so my mom wouldn’t hear, but why wouldn’t Abby say something? Anything? Why wouldn’t she blink or nod or give me a sign?
If she told me what to do next—where to go, what to look for—all of this could be over by morning. Any one of the girls could give me a little push like that if she wanted. I mean, if that’s why they contacted me, why wouldn’t they do the simplest, quickest thing? It made me question them, and myself, and all of this. It made me wonder about the dreams and the house that contained them. Either I was meant to stay outside and help, or I was meant to join them inside and never get out. This dark thread of tightrope between the two options couldn’t keep me upright for long.
Abby, though. Abby was different.
She would be the one to give me her secret and let me unravel the answers.