Once Was Lost (18 page)

“We could drive around some more, if you want,” I say. “I mean if you don’t have anything else you have to do right now.”

“Nothing. I’ve got nothing to do.” He immediately does a U-turn, letting the tires fishtail on the wet pavement. He grins. “Sorry. That’s what they call in driver’s ed an ‘unsafe maneuver.’ ” He turns on the truck radio. “What kind of music do you like? I haven’t even picked out my presets on this radio yet.”

“Anything is fine.”

“No, come on. I want to know.” We’re moving again, him steering with his knee, adjusting the wiper speed with one hand, fiddling with the radio with the other. “There’s got to be something you like more than anything else.”

“Country.”

We stop at the last traffic light in town. Nick reaches for the radio again, and cocks his head at me with a little smile that I can’t help smile back at. “Country?”

“Yeah. Country.” I flick his fingers away from the dial, still smiling, almost forgetting for a minute about all the stuff that’s wrong. I find one of the three country stations that come in from Dillon’s Bluff. “Like this. Stuff you can sing along with.”

“Let’s hear it, then.” The light turns green and Nick signals right. We’re making a loop, staying within Pineview.

And he wants me to sing.

My throat seizes. “I don’t really know this one,” I say when I can talk. “Maybe the next one.”

We ride along and listen to the rest of the song, Nick drumming his fingers on the steering wheel until, suddenly, he brakes, craning his neck to see something on the driver’s side of the truck. I lean forward so that I can see, too. It’s a giant poster of Jody. A small billboard, really, on the side of Murray’s gym. With Jody’s face and information about her height and weight and where she was last seen, a phone number, a website.

A car behind us honks. Nick doesn’t move for a few seconds, then the car honks again, longer and louder this time, probably someone from out of town because people from here don’t honk like that. Nick moves the truck forward, the windshield whipped by rain, which has gotten heavy again.

The song on the radio now is one I know, a ballad about lost love and regret that’s been popular all year. I can sing every word. Nick rubs the heel of his hand into his eyes, driving slowly. I sing a few bars with the radio, my voice trembly and breathy, then I stop and turn it down.

“This is why I’m not in choir.”

That makes him smile. I can make Nick Shaw smile, even so soon after him having to look at the building-size face of his missing sister. It’s the happiest I’ve felt in a long time.

“You know what that reminds me of?” he asks. “You singing? You probably don’t even remember this, but we danced at Heidi’s wedding and you kind of sang under your breath while we danced.”

He remembers dancing with me, just like I do. “I did? I mean, I remember us dancing but not me singing.”

“I don’t think you knew you were doing it. It was kind of funny.”

“Kind of embarrassing, more like.” I look out the window. We’re getting close to my house again. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Go ahead.”

“When you asked me to dance, at the wedding?”

“Yeah?”

I think hard about how to phrase this. “Did you do that because you felt bad for me, sitting there with nothing to do? Or did Vanessa or Erin or someone tell you that you should ask me?”

“Hmm…”

“Never mind,” I say. “You don’t have to tell me. You probably don’t even remember.”

“No, no, I’m just thinking. No one told me to or asked me to, I know that. Maybe I did feel a little sorry for you. Is that bad?”

We’re at the last stop sign before my house. I touch my hair to see if it’s getting dry. And to determine just how bad I look before I say what I’m going to say. “I guess not. I guess it’s better than nothing. It’s just…”

“It’s just what?” He turns off the windshield wipers; the rain has slowed to almost nothing.

I feel his eyes on me. This won’t be so hard, I think. He’s got a girlfriend and is leaving for college soon and I really want to know. “Do you think guys could think of me as a real girl?”

He laughs. “As opposed to what?”

“As opposed to the pastor’s kid. As opposed to shy and… whatever. Seriously.” As opposed to a substitute little sister, I think. A placeholder for Jody. “Like when I go to a new school, how will they see me?”

We’re stopped in front of my house, the truck idling. Nick rolls his window down a little to let in the fresh, clean air. He isn’t laughing anymore. “You’re totally a real girl,” he says. “No doubt.”

Then, even though he’s been looking at me off and on this whole time, the way it feels changes, and we’re both kind of staring at each other and all the sounds around us seem extra loud: the truck running, birds doing their post-rain singing, the radio still playing softly in the background. His eyes are intense. On me.

“Thanks,” I make myself say, starting to open the door so I can get out before I die of embarrassment. “And thanks for the ride.”

“Wait, wait.” He holds my forearm for a second; the tingle goes all the way to my neck. He lets go and the intensity vanishes as quickly as it came. “I’m not just saying that. Look.” He sounds like a big brother again as he pulls the passenger-side visor down, flips open the mirror. “Do you think your mom is pretty?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s beautiful, right?”

I nod. She is beautiful.

“Well you look like her.” He points to the mirror, and I stare at myself. “Can’t you see it?”

Maybe the eyes. Maybe the neck. I think my mouth is like my dad’s, full and crooked lips. “A little,” I say, flipping the mirror shut.

“Okay, then.” And he smiles at me.

“Thanks again, for the ride and everything.”

“No problem.”

I get all the way to the front door of my house before Nick calls out, “Hang on!”

Breathless, I turn, ready for him to say,
You want to go get lunch
?

“Your bike.” He gets out of the truck, lifts my bike out of the back, wheels it over.

“Oh, thanks.”

Then he puts his arms around me for a quick, brotherly, youth-group hug. He smells like rain and dryer sheets. “Bye, Sam.”

“Bye.” I watch him climb back in. He waves to me as he backs out and drives away.

KPXU

LIVE @ FIVE

On the eve of the ninth day of the search for Jody Shaw, the Pineview teen missing since last Sunday, the volunteer command center at Library Square is dormant. The Shaw family and others coordinating the effort have decided to decentralize. At a press conference this morning, Al Shaw insisted the family is not scaling back the search; rather, they are focusing their resources on specific pockets of interest throughout the county, including the unincorporated woodlands and foothills that surround Dillon’s Bluff and Lawrence Springs. Shaw and his wife, Trish, once again expressed their gratitude for all the cards and letters that have poured in from around the world.

Police Chief Marty Spencer said that his staff has been in the process of interviewing and eliminating suspects, and sorting through the tips that continue to come in. The voluntary polygraph tests administered over the past several days have not yielded tangible results. In the last week, 1,500 square miles have been searched, 150,000 flyers have been printed, and 37 horses, 19 trained dogs, 1 helicopter, and 2 kayakers have been used in the search. And yet, Jody Shaw is still missing and her abductor is still at large.

Dad comes home during the very end of the report, and stands behind me until Melinda Ford throws it to the weatherman.

“Everything go okay today?” he asks, putting his hands on my shoulders.

I turn off the TV and angle the floor fan with my foot, so it’s blowing on me more directly. “Fine.” All I’ve been doing since Nick dropped me off is sitting here thinking about him, that look he gave me, the crackle when he touched my arm.

Now it’s Dad’s chance to come through. With the TV off and only the two of us here, we can continue the conversation we almost started this morning. We can talk about Mom, when she’s coming back, when he’s going to stop going to the Shaws’ every day. When we’re going to face the fact that Jody is probably gone forever and try to adjust to our new normal.

“Hungry?” he asks me.

“Yeah. Kind of starving.”

“Good. Erin’s coming over with some food in about twenty minutes. I’m going to hop in the shower.”

I turn around and stare at him. “Why?”

“Because it’s been nearly a hundred degrees all day and I stink?”

“No. Why is Erin bringing us food again?”

“Funny thing about that. Turns out humans have to eat every day. Several times. Not very efficient, I know. Take it up with God.” He leans his arms on the end of the sofa and gets serious. “And because she likes to cook, and she cares about us. I hope you can show her some appreciation.”

I don’t want her to care about us, I think. Not like this. How can he not see what Erin really wants? Or maybe he does.

“Okay, Sam?”

I nod.

* * *

Erin shows up laden with a casserole dish and, balanced on top of it, a green salad in a wooden bowl. “Can you grab the salad?” she asks.

I take it. Through the plastic wrap that’s stretched over the top, I see the carefully halved cherry tomatoes and the expensive dark lettuce and the way the yellow bell pepper rings are arranged just so. Erin’s hair is ironed shiny and flat. She has on lip gloss, and a white linen cap-sleeved blouse just low enough to show the dusting of freckles across her collarbones.

I want to close the door on her eager, smiling face.

“Um,” she says, laughing, “can I come in?”

“Sorry.” She walks past, leaving her trail of lemony brightness. “You can leave that on the counter,” I say, following her to the kitchen. “Do I need to reheat it or anything?” I peek under the foil. Lasagna. My dad’s favorite. There’s no reason to make lasagna on a hot day unless you know someone loves it and you’re trying to impress them.

“Oh, no, I got it.” She takes a glass down from the cupboard and fills it with water from the tap, then leans against the counter and smiles at me again. Apparently she’s staying. “Your dad said you’ve got a project going on in the yard. Can I see?”

“If you want.”

I lead her through the sliding glass doors and point to the black plastic sheeting. “There’s not really anything to see. That’s all I’ve done so far.”

“That’s okay,” she says, crouching down and lifting a corner the plastic. “What’s your vision, here?”

“My vision?”

She stands up. “For how it’s going to look after?”

“I’m not sure.” I readjust the plastic where she lifted it. “Not so messy and wild, I guess. More like…” The rest of that sentence is
what they have at New Beginnings
. I don’t want to talk about my mom, not with Erin. “Just not so messy.”

“Sam,” she says, “about yesterday, I’m sorry if I nosed in where I don’t belong. It’s sort of my job, you know.”

“I know.”

“I mean it’s literally in my job description: ‘Befriend and spiritually mentor the teenage participants in church life.’ ”

I nod. “Okay.” Thinking: But it’s not in your job description to be my dad’s substitute wife.

“So if you want to talk to me about anything…” She looks toward the house. “I promise you it’s confidential.”

“I know,” I say again, even though it’s way too late for me to trust her now, with how she’s made herself so pretty to come here and cooked my dad’s favorite meal. I add, “Thanks,” so that we can end this conversation.

The door slides open; my dad comes out, scrubbed and happy. “Maybe we should eat out here,” he says. “It’s marginally cooler than inside the house.”

“No,” I say, “let’s eat in.” Eating outside would feel too much like a celebration, a real summer night like real families have. “Mosquitoes.”

After dinner, Erin wants to play Scrabble. I wait for my dad to say no, that it’s late and we’re tired, or that he has to go see the Shaws or make phone calls for work. Instead, he practically jumps up. “You’re on. House rules say we can swap out blanks at any point during the game. I need to check my handheld for anything life or death, then I’ll grab the board.”

I clear the plates.

“I’ll rinse,” Erin says, standing.

“I got it. You cooked, I’ll clean.”

“I don’t mind.” She reaches for the stack of plates in my hands. I pull them more tightly to my stomach. A fork that was balanced on top clatters to the floor. Erin bends down to pick it up, and so do I, and as I grab it out of her hand more silverware falls out of my stack. I gather it all up and take it to the sink, turning my back to Erin as I run the steaming hot water. I know she’s watching me. She puts her hand on my shoulder.

“Let me help, Sam.”

I keep rinsing, and loading the dishwasher. Eventually Erin takes her hand off me and I can see from the corner of my eye she’s quietly wiping off the table. My dad comes in, rattling the Scrabble box, asking, “Ready to lose?”

“Actually,” Erin says, “I think I’m going to head home. I didn’t realize how tired I was.”

Dad’s whole body sags with disappointment. “It’s not even eight,” he says.

But Erin has already slung her purse over her shoulder. “I really am exhausted. I’m sure you guys are, too.”

“I am,” I say.

“Well, thanks for dinner. It was great.” Dad glances at me. “Sam?”

“Thanks.” I barely turn from the sink where I’m washing my hands.

“No problem. Anytime.”

“Samara. Turn around and thank Erin properly.”

I dry my hands and face them. “Thank you for dinner.” Then I toss the towel onto the counter and walk past them, down the hall, and to my room where I sit on my bed for a long time, waiting for my dad to knock on the door and have a talk with me. I plan out what I’ll say. But he never knocks. And I won’t come out.

With nothing else to do, I spend the rest of the evening cleaning my room. I go through my drawers and closet, trying everything on, getting rid of clothes that don’t fit, wondering what I’m going to wear if I end up in the public school. In my sock drawer I find a mini cross-stitched potpourri pillow I made for 4-H a long time ago. It’s pink and green, my old favorite colors, and in neat block print reads: FAITH, HOPE, CHARITY.