Lurlene McDaniel (3 page)

“I—I … all right. Come on, maybe you can help think of someplace else she might have gone.”

I hang up, scribble a note to my parents. I have
two older brothers, one in college, one in the army in Iraq, and Mom and Dad give me a lot of freedom, just so long as I'm honest with them and always let them know where I am. I stick the note on the fridge with a magnet, grab my coat and move as quietly as I can into the garage. My brain is spinning.
Analise, baby. … Where are you?

“Well, aren't you going to tell me about last night?”

Mom's sipping coffee across from me at the kitchen table while I'm digging my way through a carton of yogurt. I'm still processing last night and I'm not ready to talk about my big date, but she's looking so expectant that I decide to throw her a bone. “I had a good time, and Quin said he did too.”

She cocks her head like a bird, continues to stare me down.

I take in a large spoonful of yogurt.

“There must be more.”

“I made it home by curfew.”

She scrapes her chair across the tile floor and away from the table. “I was hoping you'd have more to say.” She sounds annoyed. “If you don't want to tell me, say so.” She stops on her way to
deposit her coffee cup in the sink. “I just want you to enjoy high school as much as I did. I'm not prying.”

She
is
prying; it's her way, but pointing it out will only cause hard feelings. I decide on the “give details” approach. “The party was up on Thompson Mountain. No parents. Lots of beer. And I drank some too.”

I can see her thoughts written on her face and I wonder what side she's going to come down on—stern forbidding parent or understanding parent. I'm betting on understanding.

She says, “I prefer that you don't drink, Laurie, but I remember how it was when I went to school. We all did it. Just promise me you'll be careful.”

Bingo! Can I call it, or what? “I kept the same bottle going all night.” A little white lie, but she nods approvingly.

“That's good. No sense asking for trouble.” She pauses, and I see her mental wheels turning. “Uh—Quin wasn't impaired, was he? I mean, I certainly don't want you in a car with an impaired driver.”

I remember the deer incident and how he asked me to keep it between us. I decide Mom doesn't need to know. “No. He drank, but he was
almost sober before we left.” I tell her what she wants to hear.

She smiles. “That's good. You know, his father's the biggest land developer in the county, and I've sold many homes in subdivisions he's built. He's planning on breaking ground for his next one in the spring.”

“Okay.” Mom's real estate deals really aren't on my radar. They pay the bills and give her satisfaction, while Dad, in Ohio, is still a loser. At least, that's what she always says. He's never been into making loads of cash like she is.

She looks at the clock. “I have to clean up. I'm showing a house in an hour.” She starts for the doorway. “What are you doing today?”

“Judie's coming over and we'll probably hit the downtown stores. Holidays are coming. Never too early to see what's out there.” Judie's already sixteen, so she can drive, while I only have my learner's permit.

“True.” Mom gives me a satisfied smile. “Let's go out for dinner tonight. Would you like that?”

“That's fine.”

“How about Provino's?” She names my favorite restaurant.

“Any occasion?”

“Just because I love you.”

“Good enough.”

She pauses at the doorway. “Do you think you and Quin will go out again?”

I weigh the truth against what she wants to hear. I think,
Probably not,
but I say, “If he asks me, I'll say yes.”

“You're a pretty girl, Laurie. And you're mature for fifteen. I'm thinking that he will.”

She leaves and I stare out at autumn leaves being swirled and scattered across our back deck like dry scraps of old paper. The day's supposed to be in the mid-sixties. I decide what to wear and how I'll tell Judie about my big date with Quin Palmer.

Since one-thirty in the morning, we've been through three pots of coffee and a ton of “what if “s. I can't come up with any ideas as to where Analise might be. She hasn't called home or me, and numerous calls to her cell go straight to her voice mailbox. Analise's dad, Jack Bower, has put in two calls to the police, but they say until she's been gone twenty-four hours, they don't consider Analise officially missing. Teens run away. Teens get depressed and hide. He says Analise isn't depressed and she'd never run away.

“Are you sure there are no other friends to call?” Sonya asks me, after I make a list. “Maybe she has other friends you've forgotten about. She does so many extracurricular things at school.”

I don't want to quash the hope I see on her face, but in truth, high school is like a huge social club. Most everyone operates in groups and
spheres that never touch. There are the jocks, the artists, the nerds, the geeks, the brains, the do-gooders—the list is long and the school is big. I hardly know the kids sitting near me in my classes. “There's nobody else,” I say.

“Then she's in trouble. Something's happened to her.” Her knuckles are white, her hands wrapped around a coffee cup. “I should never have let her ride her bike.”

It's the umpteenth time she's said this.

“Stop it, Sonya,” Jack says. “It's a simple ride up to the Swartzes’. And they were supposed to be home by nine.”

Analise's parents told me earlier that the Swartzes had called at nine to tell Analise they wouldn't be home until eleven. “I should have insisted that she let me pick her up. Eleven is too late to be riding a bike down the mountain. Why didn't I make her let me come get her?”

The three of us know Analise too well. She would have argued to get her way. She wouldn't have wanted to leave her precious bike overnight at the Swartzes’ with the Destruct-o Twins around. I picture the shiny green bicycle. For her seventeenth birthday in September, Analise got a racing bike, a really expensive one with an aluminum
frame and special gears for climbing and coasting in our mountains. She's a serious biker and finished fifty-ninth out of a hundred and sixty competitors in early October in a breast cancer event, which raised a ton of money. She snagged me for fifty bucks and her parents for a hundred.

“Whoa,” I said the first time I saw her decked out in her racing gear, before that race. “I like the look.”

“Spandex is not friendly to girls with big butts.” She was looking in a mirror in her bedroom and assessing her rear end.

We were meeting Amy and some guy at the movies, and I'd stopped off to pick up Analise. “Depends on who you ask,” I told her, patting her backside.

She ignored me, tied up her hair and shoved on a silver and blue racing helmet for the full effect. “I look like the freakazoid in
Alien.”

“
My
freakazoid,” I said, and put my arms around her.

“Get used to the look,” she told me. “This June, I'm doing the twenty-five-mile race in Charlotte for Special Olympics awareness. Be prepared to donate generously.”

“Long race.”

“I'm in training until then. When it's too cold to ride, I'll hit the gym.”

I tipped her helmet back and kissed her. “I'm in love with Wonder Woman.”

“Well, Wonder Woman has to peel off the spandex and get dressed for the movies.” She glanced at her butt in the mirror one more time before shoving me out the door.

The jangle of car keys snaps me back to the present. I'm at the Bowers’ kitchen table and pale light is breaking outside in the sky.

“It's light enough to start looking,” Jack Bower says. “I'm not waiting until the police decide she's really missing.”

Sonya grabs a jacket. “I'm coming with you.”

“We need someone here—”

“I've forwarded the phone to my cell. If she calls …”

I say, “I'll use my car too.”

Jack nods. “We need a search plan. Let's start at the Swartz house. You drive up the mountain. We'll drive down. See if there's any sign of her.”

My nerves are stretched tight by caffeine and worry. We rush out into the cold morning air.

a cognizant v5 original release september 20 2010

My father unloads on me as he examines Mom's SUV. I'm leaning against the door frame of our three-car garage listening to him call me some seriously rude names. I parked the SUV tight against the wall, thinking I could camouflage the damage, but in the bright light of day, I see that the fender and front bumper are a real mess. I blast myself for not driving my Mustang last night, but Mom's car has more room. Hoping to score with Laurie, I thought we'd be more comfortable. I'm a big fan of advance planning.

“I'll bet there's two thousand dollars’ worth of damage,” Dad shouts.
“Two thousand,
Quin!”

Mom's in the house working on her second Bloody Mary and is steering clear of what's going on between me and Dad. I put off saying anything this morning until Dad was ready to leave the
house. When he walked into the garage, I followed him out and dropped the bomb about the fender.

“How did this happen?” he asks again.

I've told him already, but he hasn't been listening. I say, “I hit a deer. It was loping along the side of the road. I swerved, but it darted sideways and I hit it.” This is how I've reconstructed it for myself. In truth I never saw the deer, just a flash of white, which I figured must have been its tail.

He crouches by the fender, rubs a spot. “Is this blood?”

“Deer bleed.”

“Where'd the animal go? You didn't leave it lying in the middle of the road, did you?”

“I didn't kill it. I think it bolted over the guardrail, but I couldn't see it when I looked over. Too dark.” I recall dragging brush to cover the break in the guardrail where the animal crashed through.

He shakes his head, stands, snarls, “I don't want this reported to the insurance company. They'll raise our rates through the roof—which means I'll have to pay for replacement parts out of pocket.
You'll
pay for it.”

I don't have a job because he says baseball is my job, but I have a savings account from summer
work on his home-construction sites. “All right,” I say.

He glares at me. “You're grounded except for school and the gym.”

Baseball season is months away, but I work out in the off-season, lifting weights to bulk up. I need to have a good season to get the athletic scholarship I want: Southern Cal. As far away from this place as I can get.

“Were you drinking?” Dad asks.

“No.” I see he doesn't believe me. “Yeah. I had a few beers.”

“A few?”

“I was sober when I left the party.” I fudge the truth. I
would
have been sober if Laurie had crawled into the backseat with me. But no, she put on her virginal
don't-touch-me
face and refused. I didn't want to argue about it. I was going to dump her at her house, return to the party and hit on Samantha Givins. I've done her before and she's not half bad.