17 & Gone by Nova Ren Suma Read Free Book Online Page A

up
    beside me, alert and on guard—“we, I
    mean, I just wanted to see what was out
    here. Since the summer.”
    “Uh-huh,” the officer said, putting out
    a hand. “ID.”
    He made us open our wallets and
    show our driver’s licenses. Jamie wore
    a deathly stare in his photo, like he’d
    been planning to set a pipe bomb in the
    DMV. I looked inexplicably sad in mine,
    which was strange, as I remember being
    pretty happy that day, the day I got my
    driver’s license.
    Seeing our IDs—that we were both
    17, and both local—the officer seemed
    satisfied enough, though he still wanted
    us off the property. He said he’d
    remember us. He’d remember and arrest
    us for trespassing next time.
    He motioned for us to start walking,
    ushering us toward the gated entrance,
    where we’d parked.
    I found myself lagging so I could keep
    pace with the officer, leaving Jamie
    alone up ahead, the officer’s flashlight a
    white-hot force against his narrow back.
    “Officer Heaney,” I said, “were you
    around here over the summer? When the
    girl went missing?”
    With the light on Jamie and not on me,
    I could see more of the officer’s face
    now, making him less of a uniform and
    more of a person. Only, Officer Heaney
    was nondescript in the way middle-aged
    men often are, with their bloated,
    stubbled faces and their shedding heads.
    I wouldn’t recognize him out of uniform.
    He could be anyone.
    I noticed Jamie slow down a little
    ahead of us, listening. But I had to ask,
    even if Jamie heard me.
    “Which girl?” the officer said in a
    low voice.
    He said it like there could be a great
    many girls, a whole jumble of thin,
    coltish legs and heads of long, blown-
    out hair, and I could select the one I most
    wanted from a model casting. He was
    only testing me. He knew which girl.
    “The girl who stayed here over the
    summer,” I said, and then let the name
    stumble off my lips for the first time.
    “Abby
    Sinclair. Abigail Sinclair, I
    mean. The girl who disappeared.”
    The officer was moving us quickly off
    the property. As we passed the naked
    flagpole, its rope hanging slack and then
    flowing upward with the wind, I caught
    Jamie glancing back at me. His face had
    gone bone-white in the beam of the
    flashlight, a piece of understanding
    settling there. He now knew why I’d
    stopped the van, that I’d planned this and
    kept it from him.
    The officer had stopped mid-step, as
    if trying to decide what he could say, but
    when he spoke, it was with recognition
    and with authority, like I didn’t have a
    legal right to ask for her by name. “Yes,”
    he said. “Abigail Sinclair. Why are you
    asking about her?”
    I didn’t like the way he said her name.
    “She’s an”—I was avoiding Jamie’s
    gaze—“old friend of mine. I heard she
    was up here this summer, and then I
    heard what happened, and I thought I’d
    come here and look around . . .”
    The officer nudged me to walk faster.
    We’d passed the compost now and were
    coming up close to the front gate. “From
    what I understand,” he said, “you’re
    looking in the wrong place.”
    I shivered from the slap of a cold
    breeze. My feet had gone numb, and I
    was almost surprised to look down and
    see I did still have my boots on, and not
    Abby’s flip-flops, because I could have
    sworn my bare toes were buried in
    snow.
    “What do you mean, the wrong
    place?”
    “The girl ran off. Her family knows
    that. Everyone knows that.”
    “You’re wrong. She didn’t run away.”
    “You sure about that?”
    I was, all at once.
    We’d reached the chain-link fence out
    front. He held it open with an arm out
    level with my chest, and there seemed to
    be a fraction of a second when he was
    keeping me from stepping through the
    broken gate.
    “ I know her,” I said lamely. “I know
    she wouldn’t.”
    Jamie spoke up, surprising me.
    “Didn’t anyone see anything? Where she
    went? Who with? Anything?” He gave
    me a sidelong glance, assuring me