what if I told you something and I couldn’t explain it and you couldn’t ask me why or how I know or anything?
What if I told you that Abby is here in the car with us, right now? What if I could see her sitting in the seat behind you and she’s waving at me to stop talking now, but I’m not going to, I’m going to tell you. What if, Jamie? What if I told you all that?”
He shut his eyes and held them closed.
At his back, in the seat directly behind his, Abby Sinclair glared at me. I could see the dirty reflection of her face in the rearview mirror even if I didn’t turn around to be sure.
Finally Jamie spoke. “I’d say you were really trashed and you should go in and have a glass of water and go to bed.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m glad I didn’t tell you then.”
There was a stunned look on his face when I slammed the car door and headed up the walk to go inside.
— 44 — MY mom knew I’d been drinking before I’d even taken off my coat. She wasn’t going to punish me over it, but she did remark on it, and she did ask how I got home and how I was going to get a spare key for my van if I couldn’t find the one I lost, and she did comment that I deserved a hangover if I got one.
She said that last thing with a vindictive little sparkle in her eye.
It was when she was asking me about the party, when she was saying something that required an answer from my mouth, that the room cracked open and the voices came out. They weren’t slivers of whispers like usual. They didn’t take turns, and they didn’t play nice. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them, closing in on all sides, voices gone raspy and hoarse from breathing fire and hoarser still from all the screaming.
Aren’t you going to go look for her?
Your mother. She knows.
You haven’t said hello to me yet.
Can’t you see me?
You’re a nasty ho. And you’re not that cute, either.
You lie. You lie. You lie.
HOW LONG DO I HAVE TO STAY
HERE!
You don’t have much longer.
You said you were going to look for her. You’re not looking for her.
Hi. I’m saying hi. Hi. Do you see me? Hi.
You don’t have much longer.
Hi.
My head hammered with the girls’
voices, more than I could have counted, more than I even recognized, proving there were lost girls I hadn’t gotten to meet yet and that I hadn’t been imagining them in the woods. I screwed my eyes shut as if that could stop them and it did, for a moment. Then it made it worse.
One story drowned out the next story and capsized the story that followed and took over where the last story left off.
New voices. A new girl named Jannah wanted to tell me about a boy named Carlos—how she was supposed to meet him, and she never made it before she got taken, and how he had the most intense brown eyes. And another new girl named Hailey did some things she wasn’t proud of, and who am I to judge? And a girl named Trina hated every single person who laid eyes on her —she hated every girl here; she especially loathed me.
Hailey had run away before. She had a chipped tooth from the first time, a pierced belly button from the second time, a prostitution record for the third time, but this time, the fourth time she went missing, she hadn’t run away at all.
Jannah loved Carlos and she ran away to have a life with him—or she meant to, before her family caught her and punished her for what she did. Trina ran off because no one was even looking.
She ran simply because she could. And good fucking riddance.
Do you think he waited for me?
They think they know. They don’t know. No one knows.
Going, going, gone. How you like me now, huh? How you like me now?
Are you listening? Why aren’t you listening?
Do you think he waited?
Can’t you hear me? Hi, hi.
She’s out, idiot.
Wake her up, wake her up. Someone wake her up.
Then—in a gap between the noise— she spoke. Louder than the others, closer somehow, more urgent.
Help.
I knew that voice. That was Abby Sinclair.