The American Girl: A disturbing and twisty psychological thriller

Quinn Perkins

Molly Swift

Molly Swift

Molly Swift

Molly Swift

Molly Swift

Quinn Perkins

Molly Swift

Quinn Perkins

Molly Swift

Quinn Perkins

Molly Swift

Acknowledgments

Further Reading

About the Author

About the Publisher

Quinn Perkins (#ucaff2cac-5f20-5a5e-9842-b67e7aa2be31)

AUGUST 5, 2015

Video Diary: Session 6

[Quinn, a girl of seventeen, sits on the edge of a hospital bed wearing a white gown. As she talks, her bare legs kick the frame of the bed and monitors beep softly in the background]

You ever have one of those Magic 8 Balls as a kid? Yeah, pretty retro, I know. I remember asking mine if Adam Epstein was planning on taking me to senior prom. It said, Don’t count on it, so I sat on my little pink bed with the daisy-pattern comforter and shook it again and again until I got the answer I wanted.

Um, my mind keeps circling. Back to that Magic 8 Ball. See, if I can remember those details—my room, the pattern on my comforter—then why can’t I remember all the other things that are so much more important? The therapist who gave me this camera told me to keep a diary. He gave me some exercises and helpful advice, too: “the mind is a mysterious place” kind of thing. But in the end, I guess, he found it just as frustrating trying to get inside my head as I do. Everyone seems to.

[Quinn moves closer to the camera and stares into it]

I’m that 8 Ball, y’know. Shake me once—one answer bubbles to the surface. Shake me twice—I say something different. Might not be the thing you want to hear, though. I can’t help it. All those sharp little shards inside me could be answers, but they’ve come loose. Now I see them in fragments that don’t make any more sense than my nightmares do.

Those puzzle pieces are all in there somewhere. I know it. They’re waiting for the right person to fit them together. That must be why they keep shaking me over and over and over, asking the same question:

“Where is the family?”

[A nurse walks into the frame and adjusts the sheets on the bed. She glances at the monitors, notes something on a chart hanging from the bed, and leaves without speaking]

I’m back. Anyhow, sorry. Didn’t mean to sound crazy there. Dunno what’s come over me since … well, since whatever happened. But I want to help find them. So here goes. I’m telling all of you—the therapist and the police and everyone—what I remember about that night.

I woke in the woods. I don’t know how I got there. I could see my hands in front of me in the dark and that was all. I was only sure of one thing—I had to get away from that place.

I got up and I didn’t know which way to go. I kept spinning around in circles, but the trees looked the same every way I turned. There was a full moon, I think, and I had the idea that if I kept it on my right, I’d get to where I needed to be, so … I started to walk. Then I realized I was barefoot. These sharp little bits of stuff dug into my feet and I had to pick my way along on tiptoes. I walked a few steps. Then I heard the sound of twigs cracking. Yeah, uh …

[Pause]

It sounded like someone was behind me. God. This horrible thought came into my head like there’d been something back there in the dark I was scared of—really scared of. That something terrible had happened to me. I had this thought, They’ll start hunting for me soon. That thought was like … well, it was like wooden letters spelled out in my head. Yeah—just a sentence with no explanation.

The footsteps came closer. I hid behind a tree. I tried to think what to do. Then I just started to run. It felt as if I was moving in slow motion, like my mind wasn’t really moving my legs. I fell, hard. I can still … well, it throbs … The ground punched me in the face, I think.

[Laughs]

Which is how I got these cuts around my lips, I guess. I remember blood in my mouth, getting up, winded. My knees and my tongue stung ’cause I bit them. I was getting more and more stressed. I wanted to stop somewhere. Prayed someone would come and help me. All I could do was keep going and not look at anything like the dark or the trees. They were pretty scary.

I just knew I had to keep running. I ran and ran. I didn’t know if anyone was behind me or not. Maybe I should have looked around or something, but I couldn’t stop long enough to listen. Then the sun started to rise. I remember thinking it looked like melted metal running down between the trees. Would’ve been pretty if I hadn’t been so terrified. By that time, I couldn’t feel my feet anymore. All of a sudden, I heard, um, a river rushing by, I thought.

So I ran towards the sound, but there was a slope I didn’t see and I stumbled down it. Then I saw where the noise was from—not a river, but the road. Well, more of a track. I followed it for a while. I don’t know how long. My feet really hurt. I was cold, shivering. I kept looking over my shoulder all the time, hoping someone would come.

Then I heard this sound … tires on the road and I saw a red car coming, so I ran to it, waving my arms and shouting and stuff, but the driver just kept on going and the headlights blinded me. I kind of knew it would hit, but I couldn’t move. I just … froze.

[Quinn laughs softly]

Do you find all of that as hard to make sense of as I do?

Well, you can “ask again later” if you want to.

Molly Swift (#ucaff2cac-5f20-5a5e-9842-b67e7aa2be31)

JULY 30, 2015

It’s two days since they found her. The papers say she was wandering on the road, barefoot and bloodied, her mouth open in a scream the driver couldn’t hear. He slammed the brakes but didn’t stop in time; he hit her and took off.

As fate would have it, a German tourist couple was parked on the top of a hill along the road, filming a panorama of the sunrise over the lavender fields. In the midst of their early-morning filmmaking, the camera panned towards the road—and caught the whole accident, from the moment she walked out of the woods. She was lucky, I guess. If they hadn’t spotted her, who knows how long she would have lain there bleeding.

According to Le Monde, the tourists ran to help and rushed the unconscious girl to the hospital here in St. Roch; but by the time the doctors wheeled her into intensive care, she was in a coma. Shaken, the pair returned to their holiday flat and watched their French sunrise video. They were shocked afresh by the sight of the girl lying crumpled in the road, the way the red car sped away, the scene captured as they ran downhill to help her—filming as they went.

That’s how the video went viral. The Good Samaritans saw that glimpse of red car, the hint of a plate (a nine? an E?), the merest blur of a man’s face, hair dark, sunglasses on. They decided the best thing to do was upload the clip to YouTube. It spread to Facebook as one of those long status updates calling on the public: “find this monster,” “help the #AmericanGirl.”

She wouldn’t have made the headlines except it was a slow news week and the story of an American girl abroad for the first time, alone—a mystery girl who walked out of the woods—spread in the way stories do nowadays. In the video, there was that hint of foul play: not just a hit-and-run, after all, but something darker. Otherwise, why would the girl be half naked and screaming before the car ran her down? Soon the clip was trending on Twitter and dominating the insistent worm of text that slithers across the bottom of your TV during the news. It became one of those stories everyone’s curious about, one of those mysteries everyone wants to solve.

That’s why I’m here, me and the handful of other hacks camped outside the Hôpital Sainte-Thérèse in St. Roch, where the nuns come and go at inhospitable hours, murmuring prayer and giving no sound bites. I’m the most recent arrival, late to the party, crashing in uninvited as usual. Well, not quite uninvited. I was in Paris when I heard the news. First holiday in years, and then this story broke.

I was intrigued. I called Bill to tell him about it and he said, “Why don’t you go? Cover it for the program. We’ll do an episode on it.” Dangling the thought, a whole episode with me at the wheel.