Once Was Lost (7 page)

I release the straw from my teeth. “For breakfast?”

“You know what I mean.” He sets the glass down. “I rescued Rooster from the garbage can. He only needed a fresh battery. Good as new.”

Instead of telling him I don’t want the clock anymore, I say, “Thanks.” With my eyes on the ceiling, because I can’t stand to look at his face if it’s bad news, I ask, “Did they find Jody?”

There’s a long pause. I close my eyes for a few seconds then open them again.

“No,” he says. “They didn’t. Not yet. Searchers went out again today.” He holds the straw to my lips again. “Drink.”

I take another sip. Ralph trots into my room and jumps on the bed with a soft grunt. I run my fingers through his fur. “Did you talk to Mom?”

“I haven’t had a chance to call.”

“She didn’t call us back?”

He shakes his head.

Then I hear noises from the kitchen—running water, dishes clinking. “Who’s here?” I ask.

“Oh.” He glances at the door. “Erin came by to check up on you, and now she’s cleaning up a little. I couldn’t stop her. She’s going to hang out here with you while I’m out.”

“Where are you going?”

“Over to the Shaws. And to the church office.”

“I don’t need Erin to stay with me.” I try sitting up again, to prove that I can take care of myself. My head spins and I flop back down.

“Right,” he says.

Ralph walks to the end of my bed, where he can feel the fan, and curls into a ball, head up, the tip of his tail twitching.

“How about something to eat?” Dad asks me. “What sounds good?”

“Nothing.”

All I can think about is Mom not calling back. She knows my cell number backwards and forwards. If she were here, now, with all of this going on with Jody, we’d be inseparable. Maybe she didn’t get my message. But even if she didn’t, wouldn’t she call me as soon as she heard the news about Jody? To see how I’m feeling, to make sure I’m okay? To talk and speculate and wonder?

“You have to have something,” Dad says.

“Just bring me whatever.”

“Sounds like something I can handle.” He stands, kisses the top of my head.

But it’s not Dad who ends up bringing me food, it’s Erin. She comes in with a plastic tray she must have dug up from one of the bottom kitchen cabinets. Arranged on it are a turkey sandwich, a peach, and yet more of the water/ juice combo I’m already getting sick of.

“Hey there, gorgeous,” she says, setting the tray down on my desk. She holds up the peach. “This comes compliments of Vanessa, from the tree at her neighbor’s house. She guarantees it’s a perfect peach, just how you like it. She says to call her when you’re up to it.”

She hands it to me. I put my nose to the fuzzy skin. It does smell perfect, and for the first time I actually feel hungry. “Did my dad already leave?”

“He did.”

Without saying goodbye.

Erin sits on the edge of my bed, folding her toned leg under her. “So that was exciting, yesterday, huh?”

“Sorry.”

“What are you sorry for? The heat was crazy. You weren’t the only one on the search who went down.”

“Really?” I bite into the peach; it’s soft but not mushy, the flesh pulling easily away from the pit. I wipe juice from my chin. “Did you guys keep going, after? Did you finish the map?”

“Not quite,” she says, “but don’t worry about that, okay?”

“Sorry,” I say again.

“Stop apologizing, you,” Erin says, giving my arm a fake punch.

I take a few more bites of the peach. I want to be alone, I want to call Mom, I want a tuna sandwich, not a turkey sandwich, and I want it the way my mom makes it. “You don’t have to stay,” I tell her. “I’m fine.”

“Your dad made me promise not to let you convince me to leave.” She gets the sandwich from my desk and hands it to me. “He also made me promise to make sure you eat.” Apparently she takes this command very seriously, and literally; she sits there while I eat the whole thing and finish the juice.

I hand her the glass. “Happy?”

“You don’t even know.” She watches me for a little while, her feet propped on the edge of my bed while she sits in the chair. “It was actually kind of scary for a couple minutes there, yesterday. I imagined trying to explain to your dad that you collapsed on my watch.”

“I’m fine.”

“I know. But I’m saying that I care about you and don’t want anything to happen.” She nudges my hip with her foot. “Get it?”

I nod.

“And speaking of caring about you, you know if you want to talk to me about your mom or anything else, you can.”

“Okay.” I guess I knew she knew, that it would be something my dad would have told her, probably a long time ago. She waits, like I’m going to do it right now, just open up about what it’s been like to be part of a family that everyone on the outside thinks is so perfect, to have a dad everyone loves but who isn’t there for me, and then on top of that to lose my mom the particular way she’s been lost.

When Erin finally gets that I’m not going to talk, she lifts her feet from the bed and stands. “You want to get up and walk around the house a little bit, test out your legs?”

“In a minute.”

As soon as she leaves, I roll over in bed with my back to the door, and cry, and then go back to sleep.

KPXU

LIVE @ FIVE

Forty-eight hours since thirteen-year-old Jody Shaw disappeared from the quiet streets of Pineview, frustrated investigators and a shocked community are still without answers. While one witness account places a blue sedan near Jody’s last known location, police cannot confirm. Authorities are following several leads in the case but no arrests have been made. More than three hundred volunteers turned out yesterday to help with the search; unfortunately, the record heat curtailed efforts and sent several volunteers to the hospital with heat exhaustion, and there’s no sign of cooling in the forecast. The search resumed early this morning; we’ll be updating you throughout the evening with any breaking information.

This is Melinda Ford, reporting live from Pineview, where at least one family is waiting to hear some good news.

Erin and I are on the sofa, watching the news. Melinda Ford stands on Main Street, her eager face powdered sweatless and her blond bob sprayed into total submission. One time Mom and I watched her report on an apartment fire in Dillon’s Bluff, her colored contacts–enhanced eyes wide and alive, with the flames and smoke shooting up behind her.

“There’s nothing that girl loves more than bad news,” Mom said, before changing the channel with one hand, her wine glass in the other. Melinda Ford is always “that girl” to my mom. “Someone should introduce that girl to the concept of the roots touch-up.” “One day that girl needs to learn the correct pronunciation of ‘nuclear.’ ”

I start to say something like that to Erin, something my mom would have said, but it would feel a little bit like a betrayal to be dissing Melinda Ford without Mom there. And I miss her.

I don’t miss coming home from school not sure about whether I’d find the functional or nonfunctional version of her.

I don’t miss making up excuses when people from church would call to make sure Mom was okay after skipping a meeting of the building committee or failing to show up for a scheduled lunch.

I don’t miss the way Dad and I always pretended, even with each other and no one else looking, that everything was fine.

But I miss
her
.

I miss moments like watching TV together while Dad was at meetings or on visits, the way she always had a little comment about Melinda Ford, or how she’d absently rub Ralph’s stomach with her bare foot and he’d purr like crazy, so loud that she’d point the remote at him, pretending to turn him down. “Okay, Mister Cat. That’s enough; you’re embarrassing yourself.”

I stand and say to Erin, “Be right back.” She nods, focused on the news.

In the kitchen, the card for New Beginnings is tucked into the wall-mounted phone. She had to have gotten my message. New Beginnings isn’t some giant place with hundreds of people. It’s small and quiet and not chaotic, and every resident has a special cubby for messages and letters and boxes. So I know she got it.

While punching in the number, I have this image of her sitting on the edge of her dorm room bed, holding a piece of paper that says, “Call your daughter.”

And then not doing it. Because…

I don’t know why.

I hang up the phone on the first ring. Because what if I leave another message and she still doesn’t call me?

“Hey, Sam,” Erin calls, “your dad’s on the news.”

I can see the TV from the kitchen, but not very well. I get closer.

“It’s from yesterday,” Erin says, turning it up. “At the search. This was on last night, too. They’re replaying a clip.”

Melinda Ford stands in front of the media tent I saw yesterday, wearing different clothes, obviously, from what she had on in the live report she just did. She’s asking my dad what parents should say to their children about Jody being gone.

“There are no magic words,” Dad says, “but it’s especially important in times like this to let your kids know that you love them, and that they’re safe. I understand it’s difficult. My own daughter, Sam, is friends with Jody, so we’re very close to this situation.”

At first I’m not sure I hear him right, but Melinda Ford repeats it, nodding her head, a concerned look on her face. “Your daughter is Jody’s friend?”

“I’m not friends with Jody,” I say to Erin.

I feel her eyes on me as Melinda keeps talking on the TV.

“And how is she coping with all of this?”

I watch, eager for the answer.

“She’s out there searching right now, for one thing. Like all of us, she feels helpless.” If Erin weren’t hogging the remote, I’d turn Dad off.

“Pastor Charlie, what would you say to Jody right now if she could hear you?” Melinda holds the microphone to his mouth. Confident, he speaks right to the camera, his fingers interlaced in front of his chest. His sermon stance.

“Don’t lose faith, Jody. We love you. God loves you. And love drives out fear, so don’t be afraid.”

My eyes burn. I grab the remote from Erin and change the channel, then throw it on the sofa and go to my room.

“Sam?” she calls after me.

I say it again, “I’m not friends with Jody.” And close my door.

From the hall, she says, “You are. I mean, you kind of are.”

How many times have I begged him not to use my name, my life, in public? I don’t want to be a part of his act anymore. And love can’t be the answer to everything. If it was, us loving Mom should have kept her from falling apart. Her loving us should have made her want to change.

I’ve paid enough attention to his sermons to know that what Dad said wasn’t exactly right.
Perfect
love drives out fear, is what it says in the Bible. Perfect love. And who, my dad included, really knows anything about perfect love? Anyway, if God loves Jody so much, how could he let this—whatever it is—happen to her? And what else is he going to let happen to me?

“Sam?” Erin says again.

“Leave me alone,” I say through the door.

After a minute, she says, “I know how you feel.”

“I don’t think so.”

“My family has problems, too.”

I could open the door and say, okay, what are your family’s problems? And talk about it, and maybe she could help. But the only person I want to talk to right now is my mom.

“I’m going to lay down again,” I say, resting my head on the door. “I’m just… really tired.”

It’s quiet on the other side and I think she’s gone back to the living room, but then there’s a soft, “Okay. Holler if you need anything.” A moment later: “You could try writing a letter. To your mom. Not one that you would send but one to have for yourself, you know? The stuff you can’t say.”

I run my fingers along the bevel of my door, picking up dust as I go. Finally, I hear Erin walk away, saying, “Come on, kitty,” to Ralph, and making kissing noises at him.

Turning up the floor fan, I sit at my desk with a piece of binder paper and a pen in front of me. I stay exactly that way for about an hour, then go to bed.

Day 5

Wednesday

The national news has picked up Jody’s story. I sit on
the sofa eating cereal, watching pictures of Pineview and interviews with and about people I know. All this in the same hour that they talk about movie stars and the President. There’s a shot of Main Street, deserted, with wavy lines of heat coming up from the pavement. Even though I was just there two days ago, it looks as foreign to me as if I were watching pictures of a town in Russia.

Suddenly everyone in the country is an expert on Jody. A guy with slick hair and a tweed blazer, from a university back east, is saying that Jody probably ran away, that there’s probably an older boyfriend from another town, probably someone she met online.

“This is why we don’t have Internet at home,” my dad says from behind me. I twitch, startled, my spoon rattling against my bowl.

“Jeez, Dad. Don’t sneak up on me like that.” I haven’t seen him since he left for the Shaws’ house yesterday, without saying good-bye. Or saying hello again when he got home, apparently. So either it was really late or I slept like a rock.

“Sorry.” He comes around and sits next to me. “You look a lot better. Erin says you had a good talk last night.”

I look at him. Why is my life up for discussion between him and Erin? And I wouldn’t say we had a “good talk.” She talked and I had a good listen. I set my cereal bowl down on the carpet and Ralph comes over to lap up the milk I’ve left behind.

“Jody doesn’t have an older boyfriend,” I say. “Or any boyfriend. There’s no way.” If the “expert” could have seen Jody working on the glitter Jonahs, he’d know this.

“Maybe not. But—”

“Shh.” I turn up the TV with the remote. Brandy Wilcox, a soap star who grew up here, Pineview’s only claim to fame—until now, I guess—is on the screen. She’s putting up $75,000 for anyone who has information leading to Jody’s safe return.