IF WE’D KNOWN, we might not have been so angry, so fused solid with rage, so willing to kick a girl when she was down and walk away.
This is night. And we’ve finally located the one we called Ori.
The late-August heat hovers over her as she descends the hill and gets on her knees to crawl through the hole in the fence.
If she could see a mirror in the night—a mirror better than the tinfoil hung for vanity in our cells—she would be struck by the changes. When she was sent upstate, after sentencing, she had round cheeks and dark, endlessly long hair. The detention center made her cut her hair, and the stress and shock and fear of being accused and then found guilty for a crime she did not commit took away the apples in her cheeks and most of the shine from her eyes. If she saw who she would turn into, outside our walls, upon exiting the hole in our fence, she would have been startled.
Three years have passed on the outside. Outside our walls, she is eighteen.
We watch her down there, now. We see how she’s just emerged through the hole in the fence.
There is a hand, a boy’s hand, and it’s reaching out to help her up. The night sounds keep in time with her breathing—a bleating of insects, a rustling in the woods, but no birds beyond a lone owl. If she looks up, she could have seen stars. Look up, we want to tell her. For us. Look up.
“Hey,” the boy says. “You okay?”
Miles is just as she remembered him, but more wild-eyed maybe. Longer hair, scruffy chin beard and stubble. He seems dazed, but he’s only out of breath from running down the hill. Did he see what she saw? We can’t know. But we can assure her it’s him, absolutely and inexplicably him, though she doesn’t need us to tell her.
She would know for sure it is really Miles when she took his hand and felt his palm, which would be warm and dry and strong in grip, as strong as she remembered. She could trace his lines. She could reach up and map his face, draw the whorls in his ears, stick her fingers inside, though he used to hate when she did that and he’d squirm and say stop. She could lean in close and breathe in the particular smell of his neck, which would be just as she remembered, as he still used the same soap. She could put her mouth to his and make like she was going to kiss him, only she’d suck his bottom lip, taking it inside her mouth like she wouldn’t let go and holding it there, a piece of him. She hasn’t been able to do so many things to him in so long.
But she hasn’t been let out for a boy. She knows that, as we do. There is a whole life out there, waiting for her. Even the shoes fit.
Miles tries to help her stand up, but it’s all too much for her, too much. For a moment, she has no breath in her lungs. Her knees bend back down to the ground, and her legs, still muscled, still strong, have turned to jelly. She’s in the grass, on the damp ground outside the fence. And the ground here is littered with stuffed bears and headless dolls and doll heads, and candles burned down to the nub so no match could ever hope to light them. There are ragged, crumpled pieces of colored paper that give best wishes to the dead for an eternity in heaven (or in hell), though what exists beyond this iron gate is neither.
Miles crouches down at her side. “C’mon. They want to get going.”
He points to a green sports car she’s never seen before in her life.
He’s still trying to pull her up. “You said good-bye like you wanted. But we’ve got to drive back. Juilliard is waiting. I thought you said you had to pack.”
Remember? We are pushing her to remember.
In increments, particle by particle and piece by piece, she begins to recall it. Then, as she stands back up again, she sees it. The glint like a spark in the darkest patch of night. She bends down to pick up the delicate gold strand from where it must have fallen. She recognizes it right away as Violet’s.
Miniature sculpted ballerinas hang from the strand, tinkling. How tiny their toes are, how spindle-thin their raised arms, too minuscule to contain fingers. But there is a knot in the chain she can’t get out, a clump of dried mud or fungus or something in the clasp. It’s blood, but she doesn’t catch that.
The bracelet fits around her wrist as if it had been made for her. Violet had never let her even try the bracelet on before, since it was expensive, she said, and all those charms were special, bought for her by her dad, and her parents wouldn’t like it.
“Let’s go,” says Miles.
Someone is leaning out the open window of the green car, someone she recognizes, vaguely, from a long time before. Violet used to be cruel and call this girl Rooster.
“We waited forever!” the girl says. “We were so worried. We were going to call the police!”
And another boy, in the driver’s seat, is waving her over impatiently now. He’s hungry, he says. He wants to stop and get something to eat.
And Miles again. Miles. “It’s over now,” he says low, near her ear.
And he’s pulling her by her arm. And he has her weight and she lets him help her, and then she doesn’t need his help and she wants to walk on her own two feet and she lets go.
And she is lighter than air. And she walks on air to the car. And does he not know where she’s been? And does anyone know where she’s been? And for how long?
She has no idea we’re still watching. She’s split off, become separate from us, so she doesn’t feel our gaze hovering over her as she takes one last look at our iron gate and then goes back, to prop up a few teddy bears that have fallen and to take a peek at the cards and signs that say our names, looking for her own name.
She’ll never find it, because when she exited the gate, her name was sponged off in an instant and replaced with another.
We will always be an even forty-two.
She gets in the car. She wears her seat belt, as she believes in safety first. Tommy starts the engine, and Sarabeth gives her a hug. Miles holds on, firm, to her hand. Once inside the car, she does not look back again.
She got her justice, thanks to us—and, thanks to her, we will always be watching the road, to see who might climb the hill and take the place of one of us. To see who might claim our guilt, so we could be innocent, too.
For us, it is perpetually August. We come awake in our cells, sweating. We wear our green sleeping clothes because it’s night and our green jumpsuits are hung up for tomorrow on our hooks. We hear the rain and the wind. We don’t hear the locks coming open, for reasons we don’t think we’ll ever know, but we do hear Lola scream. We hear Jody ram her thick skull against the door, and we hear the door come open and her roar of delight as she shares the news.
We step out of our cages. We are free, like we sense we’ve been before. We’re alive, or are we? At least we know she is.
We lose sight of her when the car makes the turn. We can see the green sports car with the stripes for as long as it keeps straight on our road, but when the car heads for the highway, that takes her out of our line of sight. We can’t follow now. Our world stops where the gate stops. Our feet can’t run that road.
We wish we could see her down in the city some of us had been born in and some of us had committed our crimes in and some of us had never gotten to visit, and wished we could have at least climbed the Statue of Liberty once, before. Violet will tell us all about it, in time. She got so close.
But Violet’s not the one anymore. It’s Ori we’re wishing we could see.
She’ll be wearing black, for us. That’s how we picture it when she steps out onstage and stuns the crowd. She will be everything we couldn’t be, and more.
In our heads we will give her a standing ovation. From down the hill and down the state and hours away, hours and years and memories, we hope she can hear us. Our applause. How proud of her, how thrilled for her, how envious we’ll be. We’ll clap our hands for her. We’ll stand in our seats. We’ll shout, we’ll wolf whistle, we’ll scream. We’ll make thunder for her. We’ll make thunder for ourselves.
In the sky above the ruins of what was once the Aurora Hills Secure Juvenile Detention Center, there will be a flash of lightning, a clap of thunder, and then we’ll be washed in rain.