Nearly Gone - Nearly Gone Part 32
Library

Nearly Gone Part 32

We stood that way for a while, picking apart the fibers, letting them dissolve on our tongues. It felt late, like we'd been waiting too long and we were all growing restless. I shielded my eyes against the setting sun. It stung my forehead as I scanned the promenade, searching for a clock. My eyes climbed the green metal structure beyond the fountains, a replica of the Eiffel Tower. Its lengthening shadow was the only clue to the late hour.

"What time is it?" I asked Jeremy. Shopkeepers had begun pulling down the chain-link gates. The park was near closing.

"We were supposed to board thirty minutes ago."

Teachers wearing blue-and-white West River T-shirts carried clipboards and weaved through the crowd. "We're missing Posie," they called. "Has anyone seen Posie Washington?"

I hadn't seen Posie all day. That wasn't unusual in a park this size, but it was unusual for Posie to be late. I kicked at the pavement, the blisters on my heels screaming. A toddler in a stroller laughed as the teacher repeated Posie's name. "Has anyone seen Posie Washington?" they called again, louder. The little girl shrieked Posie's name gleefully and sang behind me.

Pocket full of posie,

Ashes, ashes,

We all fall down.

My mind had that slippery feeling. Then it grasped at something solid, finding traction in the rhyme.

We all fall down. The tower will point the way . . . at day's end you'll know where to find me.

The Missed Connections clue was part of a nursery rhyme. We all fall down. Pocket full of posie.

Posie was missing.

I checked the equation I'd written on my hand. Height of tower = 1,052 feet high. It's 68 ft. higher than three times a side of its square base. If the sum of these two is 1,380, at day's end you'll know where to find me. I squinted at the green replica of the Eiffel Tower, backlit by the setting sun. The real Eiffel Tower was over a thousand feet high. This had to be it.

I shielded my eyes and followed it from base to tip. The observation deck was empty, closed for the night. The tower will point the way. No. The tower wasn't pointing the way. Its shadow was pointing, and growing longer by the minute.

I broke out in a sprint.

"Leigh!" Jeremy yelled. I could hear his hard footfalls right behind me. "What are you doing?"

I wasn't sure precisely where to find her, but I followed the angle of the tower's shadow deep into the amusement park, hoping it was far enough. I wove and dodged through the thinning crowd, sweating and swearing. The paths cleared and I pushed myself faster-until I slammed into a wall of people. My knees locked and I fought the forward momentum, freezing in place in front of the bathroom near the thrill ride called The Crypt. Jeremy stopped short behind me.

A crowd formed a tight knot at the entrance to the women's room, stretching up on their tiptoes and craning their necks to see inside. A voice called out from the bathroom, "Call 9-1-1!" Concerned faces looked at one another, and reached for their phones. Someone ran to find an attendant.

"What's wrong? What's happening?" I breathlessly asked the woman in front of me.

Without turning her attention from the bathroom door, she said, "Someone found a body in the ladies' room." A sheet of paper taped to the frame of the open door curled in the slight breeze, angling toward me. OUT OF ORDER, it said, in bold blue letters.

I'd found Posie Washington.

20.

"I have to help her! Let me go!" I threw myself against Jeremy, bucking and kicking.

He held me tighter. "Help who, Leigh? You don't even know what's going on! If someone's really dead in there, then this place is going to be crawling with police and paramedics in a matter of minutes, and we shouldn't be here! We've got to get back to the buses!"

I felt like I was drowning, struggling to get my head above the crowd, listening for the sounds of paramedics that hadn't come yet. The words dead girl bobbed over and over to the surface.

No, not dead. Posie couldn't be dead. I twisted my wrists, forcing a gap in Jeremy's fingers and wriggling free, then brought my elbow back hard in his rib. I heard him grunt, and I darted into the crowd, plowing through it, fiercely determined to get to Posie. To touch her. I blocked out everything else, the smells, the angry people I bumped aside, the morbid curiosity of everyone I touched, and forced my way into the bathroom. Fumes and sweat and fear assaulted me. I shoved my way farther in. I could hear Jeremy calling my name.

In front of one of the stalls, the crowd of bystanders waved hands in front of their faces, brushing away the noxious scent of something burning. Through the gap, I saw Posie's sandals peaking out of the open stall door. A man knelt at her side, crammed between her body and the wall. He coughed, his eyes watering uncontrollably. I pushed closer. The man held Posie's wrist, unable to find a pulse. A horrified expression came over his face as he drew her arm cautiously away from his body. Ash-gray blisters crept over her skin, a shape materializing on the inside of her forearm.

The crowd gasped, struggling to see as the number three burned into existence, leaving an oozing white path where it consumed her. The man covered his mouth with his sleeve and dropped her hand.

I fell to my knees and reached for her ankle just as two hands grabbed me under my arms and dragged me back.

It had only been a moment. The faintest flicker. But I'd felt her.

I let Jeremy carry me away, the crowd swallowing me as I screamed, "Someone help her! She's alive!"

An hour later we were on the bus, heading home. The emergency exit lights cast a haunting glow over the somber faces around us. It was quiet except for the drone of the engine. No one spoke. One teacher remained at the park with the handful of students who'd claimed they'd been the last to see Posie hours before. Jeremy had dragged me away before the police arrived, insisting that we needed to get back to the bus. He'd been livid, and walked clutching his bruised rib. When he took my hand, I'd tasted the copper and salt of his anger. He'd pulled me hard through the crowd, repeating himself over and over. If we could make it back to the bus, everything would be okay. Paramedics and police rushed past us, and Jeremy kept his head down, murmuring in my ear to keep walking. Everything would be okay, the soothing words at odds with what he was clearly feeling. "There's nothing we can do for her," he'd said, holding me close to his side until we were herded into the bus.

I curled in on myself with my arms around my knees, forehead down, and I shut my eyes against the image of Posie blistering and the number three burning. Three, eighteen, ten. What did they mean? Where was the pattern? I forced my brain to zero in on the details, to clamp down on the hard facts of what I'd witnessed. But they were clouded in the chaos of the moment, and the confusion of the crowd.

Think.

I took a deep breath, focused. Started with the obvious. The number in Posie's arm was made by a chemical burn. But it was the dramatic appearance-the well-timed bleaching of the number in her coffee-brown skin, white blisters in necrotized flesh-that gave the only clue to which chemical might have been used.

Bits and pieces of data circled my brain, like puzzle pieces sliding over a tabletop, seeking a logical intersection. Slowly, they began snapping together. The acid was probably lipophilic. Hydrofluoric acid was highly corrosive and yet slow to show burn symptoms on the skin. It could be purchased in most hardware stores, and would be easy to smuggle into the park in a sealed plastic water bottle. A set of rubber gloves and a small mask to protect the lungs would be just as easy to conceal. That's all that would have been needed to administer the poison, and a very small amount, just a few milliliters, would have been enough to kill her.