Free 17 & Gone by Nova Ren Suma Page B

almost as long as Fiona Burke had
    been missing.
    “Yeah,” I told my mom. “I hadn’t
    thought of her in a long time, either.”
    She asked a simple question next. She
    asked why.
    This is how it’s been between me and
    my mom since I was a kid: I’d tell her
    anything. I’d tell her things before she
    asked. I told her the first time I tried a
    cigarette, at thirteen, and never again.
    And as soon as Jamie and I were getting
    close to taking it to the next level, I
    confided in my mom and she made me an
    appointment at Planned Parenthood.
    That’s what happens when it’s only
    you and your mom and no one else.
    There’s a trust you share that no one can
    get close to. My mom had a tattoo on her
    left arm of two blackbirds in a knotted
    tree; that was the piece she got for her
    and me, after I was born. We were in
    this tree, together, she liked to say.
    Something breathed in the living room
    with us, and I was the only one aware.
    Was it Abby, whispering through the
    hollow spaces in the walls? Was it the
    rising voices of the other girls, who I
    didn’t know were coming yet, so I didn’t
    know to listen for them? Was it Fiona
    Burke herself, haunting this property and
    reminding me she could still have us
    evicted from this house?
    All I knew was something—someone?
    —didn’t want me to tell my mom why
    right now. I felt sure of that, almost as if
    I could hear a voice breathing these
    commands into my open ear:
    Don’t tell her. Don’t tell her about
    the dream.
    I knew I shouldn’t tell her about
    Abby’s Missing poster rescued from the
    telephone pole, or about the summer
    camp where she’d gone missing. Not
    about Luke Castro, either, who I’d now
    tracked down and would go visit. And
    not about Abby’s grandparents’ address
    in Orange Terrace, New Jersey, and
    how I’d mapped my path there from our
    front door. Not about the pendant I was
    now wearing on a long string that hung
    under two layers of shirts and felt warm,
    oddly warm, against my bare skin.
    I was not supposed to tell my mom
    any of these things.
    I spoke carefully, as if there were
    someone keeping tabs on me from the
    shadows, making sure.
    “I don’t know why,” I said. “I . . . I
    just thought of her. Like randomly. For
    no reason. And I wondered if Mr. and
    Mrs. Burke ever got any word about
    what happened. Did they?”
    My mom had gotten to her feet by this
    point and stood there worrying the
    tattoos at her wrists, winding her fingers
    around and around them, as if she could
    rub off the vines and start over with
    fresh skin. This was a nervous habit she
    had, when she was finding words for
    something difficult.
    She drifted to the window, the one
    facing the hedge that separated our house
    from the Burkes’ next door. The night
    was glistening white and as silent as an
    unsprung trap. Billie wove herself
    through my mom’s legs and tried to look
    up and out the window herself, though
    she was far too short to reach and a little
    too fat lately to go leaping.
    Obviously I assumed my mom was
    going to tell me that Fiona Burke was
    dead. But she only confirmed what I
    already knew: Fiona Burke had run
    away, and no one had ever heard from
    her again.
    The Burkes’ house was dark, as if
    they were away—and maybe they were,
    like the night their daughter took off—
    but my mom studied its windows as if
    expecting a light in one of them.
    “It’s so sad,” she said, turning back to
    me. “I still don’t know what to say to
    Mr. and Mrs. Burke, now, after all these
    years.”
    “Me either,” I said.
    “I could have helped her,” my mom
    kept on. “Fiona. I could’ve done
    something. If I’d known.”
    I could see how she took it in, what
    happened to the girl who’d once lived
    next door, knotting it up into her own
    little ball of knots she carried around
    inside, lifting it out every once in a
    while to dwell. She was studying to be a
    psychologist at the university where she
    worked; it would take her