Sara Lost and Found (8 page)

“That's it,” Pablo says, nodding for her to keep going. “You are the important beat, Anna. You keep us on track.

“Now you, Sara. Your beat is this.” He turns his attention to me and taps on the drum. “On, pause, Wis-con-sin. On, pause, Wis-con-sin.”

I try to match his beat, but it's hard with Anna tapping out her beat.

“Keep trying. You almost have it,” Pablo urges. “Just say, ‘On, pause, Wis-con-sin' over and over while you tap, and when you say ‘pause,' don't hit the drum.” He plays it along with me to help me pick up the beat.

I finally get it.

“Now I'll add my beat. ‘Mis-sis-sip-pi, go. Mis-sis-sip-pi, go.' ”

It takes a second, and then something magical happens. A gentle rainstorm fills the patio. I look over at Anna. Her head is tipped back and her eyes are closed. She has a little smile on her face. It's been a long time since I've seen her looking so normal. So at peace.

When the storm ends, Mrs. MacMillan and Dr. Dan clap wildly. Pablo gives us a high five and we head back to the table feeling all pumped up.

Pablo leans back in his seat, resting his head against the top of it. I lean my head back, but it doesn't even come close to touching the top of the chair.

“We made a good team just then.”

Dr. Dan nods. “That's sort of like how I feel about the doctors that I work with. We all bring a different skill to the job at hand and help make a difference in someone's life.”

He pauses and glances at me. “You look thoughtful, Sara. What are you thinking about?”

“Animals,” I answer, and he leans in toward the table and smiles.

“Any particular ones?” His eyebrows shoot up.

I nod. “The ones that were used to make those drums. Daddy says the top of the drum is called a head, and that the ‘skin' on the head is the skin of a cow, and the thick string holding it to the wood is made from pig gut.

“It used to make me sad to hear him play his drums, because I knew animals died to make it, but he said that the spirit of the animal and the tree cut down to make the drum stay with it, and that playing the drum honors them.”

Anna nods and looks back at the drums.

“Wow. You gave me something to think about, Sara.”

Pablo looks at me and gives me a thumbs-up, like I'd said something major. Or maybe it's hard to come up with something Dr. Dan has to think about. He already sounds like he knows pretty much everything.

“Have you girls had enough to eat?” Mrs. MacMillan offers Anna a fresh green bean from a bowl of beans on the table, but Anna shakes her head.

I nod, but tuck a paper napkin in my pocket in case Anna and I get hungry later.

“Good! Then let's carry these dishes to the kitchen and relax a little. How does that sound?”

I grab my plate and bowl and Anna grabs hers, and we turn to follow Mrs. MacMillan into the house and then to the kitchen.

But before we get there, Anna looks over her shoulder at me and grins. I grin back, but smiles can turn to “Oh no” very fast, which is what my smile does. Anna sees the change. I know because I can see the alarm go off in her eyes.

TOO LATE TO SHOUT A
warning. Too late to catch the flying plates as Anna trips over a circle rug on the tile floor.

It's funny how a sound can shatter more than a plate. When the dishes hit the tile and explode into a million pieces, something explodes inside of me. The whole world turns slo-mo, and just like that, I'm back at home. Mama's hurling a plate across the kitchen and it smashes against the wall. Spaghetti falls in wet strands to the floor. Mama's yelling, but Anna and I can't hear her. We're screaming too.

Anna yelps, falling hard onto the floor. Her cry startles me. I let go of the bowl and plate I'm holding to reach out for her, when another crash fills my head.

I look in time to see Dr. Dan leap over the rug toward Anna. I catch the shock on Mrs. MacMillan's face. Her hands are in the air like someone's about to shoot her.

Pablo stops short behind me and scoops me up. For a second I am flying toward the ceiling, then just as fast I fall and Pablo catches me. My foot is bleeding.

I look behind Pablo at Anna. Dr. Dan has grabbed her and I open my mouth to shout, but Anna's teeth find their mark and sink into Dr. Dan's hand.

A noise comes out of him, and the house becomes an echo of cries, yelps, and howls.

It's a different kind of sound than our “team” tapping out a rainstorm. I see the look on Anna's face and know she is mortified. Our eyes meet and the feeling passes between us.

I heard at school once that twins do that, have feelings and thoughts pass between them.

Anna and I aren't twins, but we share a different kind of twin: fear.

And the fear-twins don't need to learn a language to understand one another.

When the glass settles and the howling stops, silence fills the room. All that can be heard is Anna whimpering, “Let go. Let go.”

Pablo sets me down gently, but holds my shoulders so I don't bolt across the broken glass toward Anna.

“Don't anybody move,” Mrs. MacMillan says, then breaks her own rule and steps into the kitchen, returning with a broom and dustpan. “Dan, how's your hand?”

Dr. Dan takes in a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “She barely broke the skin. It should be okay.”

“She didn't mean to bite you,” I tell him quietly. “She doesn't like to be touched.”

Meanwhile, Anna has cocooned at the end of a couch, wrapping her arms tightly around her knees.

“Pablo, can you carry Sara into the kitchen and put her on a chair so I can check to make sure there's no glass in that cut on her foot?”

“Sure.” Pablo swoops me up and lands me on a chair by the kitchen table. He had worn shoes, so he didn't get cut. My feet are bare.

As Mrs. MacMillan sweeps up bits of broken plates and glasses, Pablo rushes to get a trash can. Dr. Dan stays by Anna. I can't see them, but I can picture them sitting across from one another in an awkward silence.

“I know I scared you, Anna, and I am very sorry. I would never hurt you.” He pauses. “In the future, I'll try not to scare you, but it would help if you would just say the word ‘No' instead of biting.

“You bit my hand, Anna, and as a surgeon, I need my hands almost more than I need anything else.”

The long silence that follows is filled by swishing, clinking, and rattling sounds as Mrs. MacMillan's broom sweeps the last bits of broken glass and dumps them in the can.

Dr. Dan is the first to speak. “Anna, how did you get those cigarette burns on your arm?” He looks over at Mrs. MacMillan. “Did the caseworker mention these to you?”

Anna sharply sucks in air. I slip off the chair in the kitchen and when I reach it, peek around the door frame.

His questions freeze something in me.
Cigarette burns?

Anna buries her head in her knees and whimpers. I don't hear Pablo come up behind me, when he gently lifts me up and takes me to the couch.

I get on my knees and wrap my arms around my sister, rocking her back and forth.

Mrs. MacMillan walks over and strokes my hair. “She's lucky to have you, Sara.”

I am not sure “luck” is the right word. To me, luck is something more sudden than a sister. Luck is like finding a cookie that the rats overlooked.

Or not being called on when you don't know the answer at school.

Or finding Ben and Rachel home when you run away.

That's luck.

When Anna settles down and the glass is all swept and vacuumed, Dr. Dan picks me up and sets me on a counter in the brightly lit kitchen so he can take a closer look at my foot.

“Well, I don't see any glass shavings in the cut, Sara, but just to be safe, I'm going to put some hydrogen peroxide on it. This is going to sting, but only for a moment. You'll see a lot of bubbling around the cut as it cleans it out. Are you ready?”

Anna presses against my leg, clenching her teeth and staring at my foot, like she's the one getting the stinging stuff put on. It's the twin thing I talked about before.

Pablo and Mrs. MacMillan stand in front, giving me “It will be okay” looks, but I know it won't. Looks try to lie sometimes, but I usually can tell a fib look from a truth one.

“Ready,” I answer, not feeling one bit ready. The liquid is cold at first, then turns burning hot around the cut. I yelp, trying to jerk my foot away, but Dr. Dan has a good grip on it.

“Owwowow!” The bubbling starts and the burning fades. Anna and I lean forward and watch the liquid clean the wound.

“All done!” Dr. Dan chirps. “I'll put a Band-Aid on it and you, brave girl, are good to go.”

“And as for you, Anna, I have some lotion we can put on your arm that will fade those burn marks.”

“No!” Anna presses her other arm across the burned one.

“Good, Anna, for saying ‘no.' It doesn't sting,” Dr. Dan added quickly. “As a matter of fact, it feels good. Tell you what, I don't even have to put it on. I can just squeeze some lotion in this hand”—he turns the bottle over and pours lotion onto Anna's left hand—“and you can rub it lightly onto your arm. How's that?” He pulls me down from the counter and pats my head.

As Anna rubs the lotion on her burns, a small smile slightly curls her lips. “No hurt!”

Dr. Dan grins. “That's right. No hurt.”

But what Anna doesn't see is that Dr. Dan has the hand she bit behind his back, and he's flexing it. Open. Close. Open. Close.

Daddy's hands are important too. He can't play drums if his hands don't work.

Open. Close. Open. Close.

I stare at Dr. Dan's hands, wondering,
Is Daddy okay? Can he come and get us?

The MacMillans are nice, but I want to go home.

I DON'T HEAR HER COME
in, so when Mrs. MacMillan sits down beside me that evening, there's no trying to hide my tears. All the commotion earlier over the broken plates kept my mind on other things, but now old worries have begun to creep in. Exhausted by the day's events, Anna has fallen asleep on the floor under the window before I can ask her who burned her arm with cigarettes. The thought of someone doing that to her fills me with rage. When her arm falls to the side, I can see the marks make a
P
. I count the circles. There are eight of them.

Mrs. MacMillan hands me a book. “I hear you like stories,” she whispers. “This was one of Pablo's favorites, so I thought you might like it too.”

I stare at the cover, not making a move to open it.

She bends down to look at me. “Have you already read it? I can bring you another one, or better yet, why don't you pick one out that you like?”

“This one's fine,” I finally answer. I relax, remembering my trick to keep people from knowing I can't read.

“What was your favorite part?” I ask.

“If I tell you that, it will spoil it for you!”

My heart sinks. Most people can't wait to tell me their favorite part of a story, not caring if I've read it or not.

“You read it, then we can compare notes and see if the part you liked best was the one I liked best too!” She raises her eyebrows and grins, like she's expecting an answer.

I don't say anything. It's not like she really asked a question. “I think I know what's troubling you,” Mrs. MacMillan says quietly, stroking my hair.

My stomach tightens. “You do?”

She reaches in her pocket and pulls out an envelope. She takes a folded piece of paper out of it. “This fell out of the pocket of your jacket.”

Mama's letter!
“Did you look at it?” I can barely breathe.

When she nods, my throat tightens even more.

“You miss her, don't you?”

I nod, not believing that she actually read Mama's letter.

She slips the letter back into the envelope and hands it to me. Then she gets up. “Do you want to talk about anything?”