I’m sure I can, and I know why they’re asking. Because Lucas is here too, so there’s one more of us to collect. I haven’t seen him since that moment in the forest, and every time I’ve wondered why, I’ve pushed the question back, locked it in a box at the far corner of my mind.
I already know the answer. I’m afraid of what I’ll see.
I went sixty-two days without looking at him after the first time we kissed, but that was then. And now is very different. When I see him, I’ll have to face what happened in the woods. Mr. Walker. Ms. Brighton. The thorns. He is wound into every memory of that terror, especially the awful end. Seeing him might be like reliving a nightmare.
“Come on,” Emily says. “I’ll walk with you.”
“I don’t…” I don’t know how to finish, so I shrug lamely and look at the floor. There’s a black scuff on the pale linoleum, like the letters on our arms. I think too many things in that second, flashes that jar me like punches. Bottled water on my parched tongue. Black flies buzzing in a cloud. Mr. Walker’s bloody fingers. Ms. Brighton falling onto her knife. How can anything good come of what happened out there?
The door to my hospital room snicks open. We tense with one collective breath, and then someone shuffles into the shadows. His height betrays him before he says a single word.
“Sera?”
My whole body goes warm as he crosses the room to my bed. If he’s surprised to see Jude and Emily, he doesn’t show it. No one speaks or explains. Lucas just looks at the box on Emily’s lap and helps me out of bed.
He laces his fingers with mine, and we sneak our way to an on-floor waiting area because we all know staying in my room is an invitation to get caught. It’s tomb-quiet at night and dark in the hallways, so it’s easy to go unnoticed.
No one says much when Jude unfolds the instructions and Emily starts pulling out stacks of cotton pads and swiping us down, one by one. The nail polish remover takes off about half the ink. The alcohol is pretty useless.
“Hell,” Lucas says, wrinkling his nose at the fumes. “Are we trying to get high or clean here?”
Emily just purses her lips and directs us all to the sink. We rinse off, and then she’s back at it with detergent and bleach, warning us not to mix the bleach with anything else. She sets in on Jude with a toothbrush, and he doesn’t look thrilled with her enthusiastic scrubbing.
“A little harder and they’ll think my very white dads are biological,” he teases, and Emily just laughs and eases her touch.
“You want to go first?” I ask Lucas.
He looks at me like we’re still on Sophie’s back deck. Like we’re still by the stream with his hands in my hair and my eyes spilling out secrets he’s dying to hear.
“Hey,” he says, eyes cashmere-gray and voice softer than that. His arm is in a sling, and he’s scraped and raw in too many places to count. He’s beautiful.
I smile. “Hey.”
He turns up his good wrist, and I scoop a little bit of the detergent mix onto his arm, see the scratches on his hand and his wrist, the bandage around his ankle where Ms. Brighton stabbed him inside the thorns. We’re both in hospital gowns, and we must have had the same nurse because we’ve both got an extra gown on as a robe, keeping our butts from waving in the breeze.
I graze his arm when I turn with the powdered bleach and detergent mix, and my eyes tear up. I could blame it on the bleach, but I won’t.
Lucas hisses when a little gets in his cut, and I flinch. “I’m sorry. Sorry.”
“It’s OK.” Then I’m tearing up, and his hand is on my arm, my face. “Hey. I’m all right. What you did—”
“Hurt you.” The words come out with tears.
“Saved me,” he corrects softly.
His face is the worst. There’s a puncture in his left brow, a row of scratches down his jaw and neck. I pull him to the sink and rinse quickly because I can’t put him through more pain.
The D and the OUS are still easy to read, but the rest is gone—just a smear of gray, spelling something that isn’t him.
“What’s with the words?” Jude asks after he rinses. “Was it a random part of her crazy?”
“Not random,” I say. “The girl who died out there before was Ms. Brighton’s stepsister. Her name was Hannah. She looked like me.”
I close my eyes and see the brightness of Hannah’s smile, frozen on the blood-stained memorial program. When I open them, they are waiting. “I guess it was an accident, but Ms. Brighton couldn’t accept that. She needed someone to blame, so she investigated the kids who were with Hannah. She stalked them really.”
“So we’re supposed to be the reincarnation of those kids?” Jude asks.
I sigh. “I guess so.”
“You don’t look like a Hannah,” Emily muses.
I lift my chin. “No, I look like a Sera.”
“I still don’t get the words,” Lucas says.
“We’re never going to know for sure,” Jude says. “That woman was a full-fledged lunatic.”
“I think she was sad. She was looking for motive,” I say. “Some reason or trait that might make one of you guilty. She wanted words to explain, words that would give her someone to blame.”
“Labels,” Emily says.
“Tidy little boxes to tuck us into,” Jude says.
“You and your damn boxes.” Lucas’s words hold no bite. The boys exchange a look that isn’t the same as before. We’re still us. At least, some part of us anyway.
“She was wrong.” I have to say it because I need to make sure they hear it. “She didn’t know you at all. She didn’t know any of us.”
There’s nothing left to say, so we curl onto the stiff waiting room couches and flip through the news. They’ve got everything mixed-up already.
“Two points for every time they call me Judah,” Jude says.
Lucas chuckles. “Five for every time they mention my violent past.”
“At least they don’t have our faces on the screen,” Emily says, but they flash Hannah’s face up, and we all take a breath.
I catalogue her features one by one. They do not add up to me.
In the end, we change the channel to old cartoons. Emily finds a bag of microwave popcorn, and Jude treats us all to soda. Lucas is leaned against my chest—we propped him up with every pillow we found in the closet—and his legs are everywhere, but his free arm is resting on my leg, his fingers pressed to my bare knee where my hospital gown has ridden up.
Jude is telling Emily to listen to the orchestra rise behind the action scene. I hear the soft rumble of her reply, feel Lucas’s deep breath against me. I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror beside the window. The world rights itself, all the tilted things leveling. Here—far from the trees and the terror and the blood—there are no ghosts waiting in my reflection. Not my mother or Hannah. The only one looking back is me.
Acknowledgments
Probably the greatest blessing of being a writer is all the amazing people I meet along the way. I find myself encouraged, inspired, and kept on track in so many different ways by just as many people.
As always, my thanks to God for blessing me with joy throughout every step of One Was Lost. This book was a breath of fresh air, scares and all, and I am so grateful to have written it.
Thanks to Cori Deyoe with Three Seas Literary, who helped me tremendously in shining my initial draft and who is wonderful, wise, and kind in countless ways. Words can’t express!
Thanks to my unbeatable team at Sourcebooks Fire: Todd, Amelia, Stephanie, Elizabeth, Stephanie, and my super sparkly unicorn, Alex. A special thanks to Annette for getting me to the finish line with some seriously brilliant insight! And most of all, thank you, Aubrey. Your vision for this book made it a joy to revise, and your wisdom made it the project I’m proudest of to date. Thank you so much!
To my crit
ique partner and dear friend, Romily Bernard, who sees all the ugly parts I hide from everyone else and still picks up the phone when I call. Thank you doesn’t cut it, but still…
A special thanks goes to Dr. Mark Gittins (Boots!) for the injury advice, to Justin Hall (thank you!) for the help with all the quad stuff, to Liz and Susan and Margs for theater advice, and to my cousin, Angela, for talking me through a scary choice, and to Leigh Anne for constant cheer.
I’m blessed with friendships with so many talented writers who make my life brighter. To Julia Devillers, Margaret Peterson Haddix, Erin McCahan, Lisa Klein, Jody Casella, Edith Patou, Kristen Orlando, Pintip Dunn, Meg Kassel, Stephanie Winklehake, Sheri Adkins, Robin Gianna, and others I’m missing. Thanks for pushing me on and making me laugh.
There are several librarians, readers, bloggers, and teachers who have championed me in my writing journey. Amanda, Donna, Erin, Teddi, Sara, Stephanie, Cath, Pam V., and many more. Thank you with all my heart! You mean the world to me!
And, of course, my biggest thanks are always saved for my wonderful husband and our three beautiful children. They are my light in every dark place. All of this, every word, is only possible because of the four of you. I love you.
About the Author
A lifelong Ohioan, Natalie D. Richards spent many years applying her writing skills to stunningly boring business documents. Fortunately, she realized she’s much better at making things up and has been writing for teens ever since. A champion of aspiring authors, Richards is a frequent speaker at schools, libraries, and writing groups. She lives in Ohio with a Yeti and a Wookie (her dogs) and her wonderful husband and children. One Was Lost is her fourth novel.
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