Essential Maps for the Lost (30 page)

“Finally,” her mom says. “Can you believe it? We've only been looking forward to this for years.”

Mads remembers something silly, then. Something from The Book: Claudia and Jamie, discussing their homesickness. Their lack of it. Since they ran away, Claudia says, she feels older. Even if she's already been the oldest child forever.

•  •  •

It's all back, the not eating, the not sleeping, the weighty dread, the endless search for online answers.
Are You Self-Destructive? Is a Real Estate Career Really for You? Goldberg Depression Screening, number twelve: I feel like a failure. Goldberg Depression Screening, number sixteen: I feel trapped or caught.

Mads finds a picture of Anna Youngwolf Floyd she's never seen before. After typing in
Anna
and
La Conner
, she locates an image of
Anna, a volunteer, and a few of the hundreds who turned out for the annual Oyster Run. . . .
Anna is about her age, and the world is literally her oyster. At least, she holds one in each hand as she stands next to an outdoor grill, surrounded by a few guys in motorcycle gear.

Spiral, fixation, food that's gone tasteless, sleep that's the opposite of bland, all this and the beating heat of summer, too. Mads stops calling Billy, stops leaving messages with pleadings and apologies, because she has no real way of explaining herself, and she'll be gone in a week's time, anyway. Harrison is following her around again, and Claire yanks her out of bed one morning, shoves her into the car, and heads to Dr. Bailey's office. A small amber prescription bottle now sits on the desk in her room, watched over by the photograph of Claire and Thomas and Harrison. It's like a little beacon, from a lighthouse at the end of a rocky shore, something so the sailors don't crash. She won't open it until she's sure she should be saved. During the day, she click click clicks on the image of that bridge, to the place her own feet would be standing. At night, she dreams of diving into that water, again and again. The body, the cold flesh, bruises. The body is Anna's, the body is Billy's, the body is her mother's, the body belongs to Mads herself.

At work, she has a job to do. She has to hurry, too. There's not much time left.

She lets Ivy play with dirt and Play-Doh and frosting, because Ivy needs to know that she can make messes. She takes her to the playground so that she can see that there are bullies and brats, but people to trust, too. Mads takes her outside as much as possible, so Ivy can see that the real world awaits.
Out in the world
is the last place Mads wants to be, but she'll do it for Ivy.

She tells Ivy everything she knows so far.
Trust the boy who has eyes like old stars. Let the rain soak you. Kiss like it's the last time.
She sounds like the bad, annoying stuff printed on decorative pillows, but she doesn't care.

“I sorted through the resumes,” Mads tells Suzanne.

“I can't believe there are so many,” Suzanne says. “It's a
babysitting
job. That's the economy for you. Carl says I should be reading them all myself, but I told him it's the least you can do, leaving on such short notice.”

No, Carl. Shut up, Carl.
If Suzanne chooses her replacement, Ivy will get a younger version of Suzanne herself, or else another girl like Mads, helpless and hopeless in this condemned situation, swimming too far out over her head.

“I really like this one,” Mads says. She hands Suzanne the resume as Ivy lets a handful of Cheerios fly like confetti.

“Jesus, Ivy!” Suzanne peruses the paper as Mads picks up the cereal bits. If she does it quietly enough, if she barely moves, Suzanne won't notice how much she wants this. “God, the woman graduated back in 1980!”

Yes, and she lists her hobbies as
dogs and babies.
She sounds loving but firm. And she previously stayed with a family until their children were grown.

“She's old enough to be
my
mother, let alone Ivy's,” Suzanne says.

Exactly.

•  •  •

“Guess what? I have the best news! Mr. Hermann talked with the people at WCC, and you can pop right into their program and finish up. He said he was amazed you did so well, given what happened with that woman. He said he had no idea.”

“You don't exactly go around telling people you found a dead person in a lake.”

On the phone with her mother, Mads feels the bump and soft give of the body all over again. That day is bigger and more present to her than ever. It's like a whining child, getting louder and louder the more it's ignored.

“Have you heard from Billy yet?”

“No.”

“That's awful. That's the worst.” This is another thing people will never understand. The way her mom can be there for her, too. In Mads's worst times, she's there with an almost eager loyalty. “I know you really like this guy, even if the way you met was . . .” She stops there. “Well, if it's meant to be, it's meant to be.”

“Right.”

“Either way, Knightley says he's got the notary ready for Monday.”

One of the ogres squeezes her throat so no sound at all comes out, not even a squeak. It's so easy for the beast; he taps a foot at the same time, gazes out at the twittering summer day. She could thrash and bite, scratch and flail, but this seems like more energy than she has. The pulse of her own desire is faint. It has only the tiniest throb, like the heart of a mouse.

•  •  •

Thomas is barbecuing. Big columns of smoke roll across the yard and make a run for it over the fence. Harrison fills up his squirt gun with the garden hose, and Mads and Claire sit on those precarious outdoor chairs with woven plastic seats. Mads feels like her butt is hanging low. She probably couldn't get up if she wanted to, not without help anyway—it's a lawn chair message.

“Three more days.” Claire sighs.

Mads has no answer for this. How do you answer a fact? “You know we're the first ones he's going to shoot after he fills that up,” she says.

“Harrison, I'm warning you,” Claire shouts.

“I'm getting
Dad
,” he says, but Thomas doesn't hear. He's got some old transistor on and is busy wiping the tears from his eyes, caused by smoke and burning turkey dogs.

“Are you tired of having big talks?” Claire asks.

“Kind of.”

“Same here.”

Claire is so nice. They are all so nice. Mads, too, in spite of what she's done, and in spite of the fact that nice is the last thing she'd call herself. Try
selfish.
Try
cowardly
.

“I'm so sorry again.” Lately, there is an abundance of regret. Mads has been handing out apologies right and left. No one even wants them. She's the woman in the grocery store, trying to get people to take her tiny biscuit-wrapped sausages.

“Enough sorrys! We're just sad, is all. We're going to miss you so much. If you can't tell, Thomas and I are pretty much crazy about you.”

“Even though I lied my head off.”

“Even though you lied your head off.”

“How can that be?” Mads just doesn't get this. It's like all the things that don't even seem possibly possible: supernovas and winged dinosaurs and our own thin highways of nerves and vessels.

“Mads, that's
love
. It just
is
. We can love you even if you disappointed us. Plus, you're not exactly a terrible, scheming psychopath. You're one of the sweetest people I know.”

“You're too understanding, Claire.” Mads could cry again. She hates to cry, but there it is once more, that squeezing in her rib cage. “Someone's going to steal your life savings.”

“Not at all. The thing is, I get it. Thomas does, too. Speaking your own truth—sometimes it's one of the hardest things we have to do. It seems easy. Open your mouth, let the words come out. . . . But it can look so huge, even lying seems like a party in comparison.”

“Lying isn't a party. I can tell you that much.”

“Honestly? I'm kind of glad it wasn't that Ryan guy. That whole rich family on the East Coast thing—he sounded like a snob. I mean, that wedding was over the top. There were
doves
, Mads.” Harrison squirts Thomas's knees, and Thomas lunges for a handful of his shirt. “Careful, Hare! Hot barbecue!” Claire shouts again.

“Too far with the doves?”

“I was starting to hate those people. I'm sure I'd like Billy much better.”

The squeeze in Mads's chest turns to a horrible crushing. She presses her palms to her eyes. A tear escapes anyway, a single drop bent on survival; it rolls down her nose, heads out of there.

“Oh, honey. Now I'm the one who's sorry.” Claire reaches in the pocket of her jeans but only finds a crumply old Kleenex. “Oh, this is gross. Never mind.”

Stupid crying, there's nothing she can do. Mads is a wreck. “He's really an amazing person,” she manages to say.

“A resilient one, for sure.”

“He's not just the stuff that's happened to him.” She says this into her hands. It deserves volume, but it's also just another thing she's lost.

“Of course not, Mads.”

“He isn't.”

“You really care about him.”

Care? So much more than that. The truth of it shakes her shoulders with grief. Claire struggles out of her chair—Mads hears it tip. Claire's arms are around her. Thomas is no doubt watching nervously and burning more hot dogs, but Mads can't stop herself. All that's gone catches up, and she just misses Billy, too. She misses him bad, and now she'll have to miss him her whole life. She cries into Claire's soft shirt.

“I think I lmm hmm.”

“What's that, sweetie? What's that?”

“I think I lumm hmm.”

“Love him?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, honey.”

“I don't know what to do. I don't know where to
go
.”

“Who does, huh? Whoever does? It's okay, sweetheart. Everyone gets lost. Every single person. It'd be nice to have a map, or something, wouldn't it? How about a map, huh?”

•  •  •

A map.

Mads thinks about maps that night as she sits in her bed, knees up, book propped on top. Yellowed maps with dark ink letters, old maps, wrong maps, the maps before anyone even really knew where we were, when they thought the poles were seas they could sail to, or the earth was a land one might drop from.
Wouldn't it be terrifying
, Mads thinks,
to not even know what was beyond where you stood, or what was over that mountain range?
Except, little nomad, we do it every day.

The essential maps for the lost would say,
Out, this way.
They'd say,
Don't turn back, go only forward.
They'd say,
Courage, traveler.

It's dark, and she reads by the small lamp near the bed. Claudia has just retrieved her violin case from the carved marble sarcophagus. Again. She retrieves it
again
, the third time for Mads, the zillionth time or more for Claudia. Who could even guess how many times, since E. L. Konigsburg first typed those words.

Mads opens to the middle of the book, her own purchased copy, since Harrison snitched the one from the library. She wonders how many kids are reading it right along with her—how many shiny bookmarks or bent-down pages are between its covers, how many hungry eyes pause on the thrilling word
sarcophagus
. Mads and Anna Youngwolf Floyd and millions of others might be entirely different people, but they all hid in that museum together.

Maps for the lost would have corridors like this, and rooms leading to rooms. They would spread large, because life has those places where old, old stuff is tucked away, and where arms and armor are collected after battle. Routes would wind around buried things and unearthed objects charred and damaged by war and floods and hard history. There would be twists and turns to exits. Dead ends. In the terrain of those maps, tragedy would be everywhere you looked, but so, too, would be the huge halls of treasure to be discovered.

Mads is not wearing her glasses, and the print on the page is tiny. It's hard to concentrate. She sets down her book. The window is open and it smells like night and cut grass and August, all of which are the scent of something finishing or finished. The moon is a crescent, a lunar hammock. It gives off a yellow glow, the world's night-light, same as the one in Ivy's room.

Fate can trump the ogres if you let it. Trouble wrecks stuff so a person has a shot at a second chance. Elsewhere, there's a swirl of heat and change rising. Right then, as Mads rests the book on her knees, Amy has Billy Youngwolf Floyd backed up against that tree. There he feels the lift of true love. It can't save or rescue all by itself, but it can stand by and urge you to save yourself.

So strange, but Mads hears a small voice:
Courage, traveler.
Weird. It's coming from inside her.
Hold your little map and shout to the darkness
, it says.
Shout this: You are nothing, darkness, against something as old as love. Shout: I walk right through you, darkness, because I
am
, and I will
be. This boldness—she's felt it before. In the truck, when she first saw Billy. No, before that, when she was brave, so brave, and brought Anna to shore.
This
is how you save yourself?
This
is what can defeat the ogres? This small voice inside? This microscopic cell of belief, allowed to divide?

Yep. Uh-huh. The voice is your own personal sword and shield—remember that. Remember that every hard day.

Mads sticks her head out the window, gazes at the tilt of the moon, takes a long inhale of her approaching future. Hear that?
Future.
It's a decision. It's a
vow.
Across the street, she sees that the lamp in Ivy's room is on. She hopes—no, she prays—that Suzanne is holding Ivy close. Trying to rescue everyone else is so much easier than rescuing yourself.