by Sara Zarr
“Me, too.”
For a second I think we’re really going to talk. For a second I think this is the moment our whole relationship will change.
“Well,” he says, getting up. “I’ve got to head out.” He bends forward to give me a kiss. “Call me if you need me for anything. Promise?”
I nod, and watch him leave. What I said, about things changing because of Mom needing me, that’s definitely at least partly true. But also, I grew up, is what happened. Why can’t he see that?
Out in the yard, my plastic sheeting is in the heap where I left it, now speckled with dust and dirt. I start to pull it over the wild bushes and fallen-over hollyhocks but then stop halfway. I don’t know what I’m doing. What if I kill off something that’s actually not as already-nearly-dead as it looks? There are enough clouds in the sky to make me think we could get more rain today. Maybe I should leave all this alone and see if the rain helps. I sit down in a lawn chair and flip through the xeriscaping book, comparing the pictures of the plants in the book to what we’ve got. A lot of the stuff my mom and dad planted two summers ago matches up with what’s in the book. They already picked some good drought-resistant plants; they just need maintenance.
I stare at the mess. It’s too big a job for someone who doesn’t even know where to start. Maybe I can get Vanessa and Daniel to help me with this later. If Vanessa will talk to me. Last night after my dad agreed that I could come home, I handed my cell phone to Vanessa’s mom so he could let her know what was going on, and before he picked me up Vanessa watched me pack, sulking. “It sucks that much here, huh? You’d rather be home all by yourself?”
“It’s not that,” I said, shoving the last of my clothes into my duffel. “I just need one thing in my life to feel normal.”
I think she could have understood if she’d tried, but I know that also she was still mad at me for taking off on Saturday. I’d be mad, too. Now, I get up and pull the sheeting over as much space as I can cover, and secure the edges of the plastic with rocks and the stone frog I gave my mom a few years ago.
My bike, in the garage, has a flat tire but otherwise looks okay to ride.
I pull the pump off the frame of my mom’s bike and inflate my tire. I’ve got my phone, my key, and this time a ten dollar bill I took out of what I’ve been saving up for clothes. I open the garage and walk the bike out to test the tire. Technically, I’m still probably not supposed to go anywhere without permission, but Dad didn’t say anything this morning and this will be quick. The tire seems to be holding its air. I close the garage and pedal away.
The sky is thick with clouds by the time I get to the hardware store. While I park the bike, I can see Cal through the window. He’s sitting behind the register, reading a book. He looks up when I come in, bells jingling. His glasses are on the top of his head. “Hello,” he says, and I can tell he’s trying to remember my name.
“Hi,” I say. “I have your two dollars. Thanks for the loan.” I go to the counter and pull the ten out of my pocket.
“No problem.” While Cal makes change, I ask him about container gardens.
“What happened to xeriscaping?”
“I’m still doing it. Only… my mom’s been away, and I want to have something look nice when she comes back. The yard’s going to take forever. I thought I could at least do one pot or box in the meantime.”
He closes the register and puts his glasses on. “How long do you have?”
“I’m not sure.” It could be a week, it could be another month. I err on the side of optimism, for a change. “Not that long.”
“You’ll probably have to go to a real gardening store and get some plants that have already started growing if you want it to really look nice.”
“Oh.” I’m about to ask him if he thinks it will work for me to transfer a cut of something from our own yard into the container, when the store rattles with a huge clap of thunder.
“Wow,” he says.
I go to the storefront window and watch the rain start to come down.
“Is that your bike out there?” he asks. “You can’t ride home in this.”
“I’ll wait a minute. Maybe it will stop.” I don’t want to call my dad for a ride and get in trouble again, even if he didn’t actually say I couldn’t go anywhere.
Cal comes around from behind the counter and stands next to me. Rain blows against the window; a few birds fly by, looking for shelter. “I thought your dad did a nice job with the special service on Friday,” Cal says.
Thinking about my conversation with Nick last night about the vigil, I’m not sure what to say. “I guess.”
“I noticed you ducking out early.”
I look at him; he’s looking at me, his hands clasped behind his back. “You did?”
“I think so,” he says. “Green dress? I was way in the back.”
“Yeah. I needed air.” The rain hasn’t slowed down at all, but I decide it’s time to leave the store, which suddenly feels very empty. “Well, I guess I’ll just deal with being wet. Thanks for the gardening tips.”
“I could run you home, if you want,” Cal says. “I don’t think I’m going to get a rush of customers or anything.”
“It’s okay, thanks.” My heart pounds but I try not to show it. He’s just being nice. A ride home in the rain is the kind of thing anyone in Pineview would offer.
“You sure? I think it’s going to be a pretty big one.”
I shake my head. “It’s okay. I’m not supposed to take rides, anyway.”
He smiles and nods. “That’s probably a good rule, these days.”
Before I’m barely a quarter mile away, my tire is going flat again. I get off the bike and start to walk with it, against the wind, thinking about what just happened at the store. I hate this feeling of suspecting everyone, even the nicest people who are only trying to be good neighbors, but also I wonder if I should say something to someone. Not my dad, because I’ll get in trouble for going out in the first place. The police? That feels extreme. I could call in an anonymous tip…
The rain finally starts to taper a little when Nick’s silver truck comes around the corner, toward me.
He rolls down his window. “Hey! Stay right there.”
The truck makes a three-point turn to maneuver next to me, and Nick jumps out. “Here.” He picks up my bike and lifts it easily into the truck bed. “Get in.”
“Good timing,” I say, breathless, as I climb in.
“So, where are we going?” He revs the engine and glances over his shoulder before pulling back out onto the road. “Vegas? Paris?”
I rake my fingers through my soaked hair, hoping it looks okay. Water droplets make a trail down my back, inside my shirt. The rain has also left small marks on Nick’s cargo shorts and settles in beads on the tops of his knees.
“Just home.”
“I offer Paris and you take home? Fine.” He looks over at me for a few long seconds while stopped at a crosswalk. “You okay?”
I nod. “Why?”
“I don’t know. You seem a little upset.”
“Just…” I shake my head. “The storm kind of snuck up on me.” The farther away I am from the hardware store the surer I am that I was being paranoid.
“The rain is nice, though,” Nick says. We drive a bit, watching it bounce off the hood. He glances at me. “Did you get back to sleep okay after we talked?”
“Yeah. Did you?”
“Sleep isn’t really high on my list of achievements lately.”
We’re already almost to my house. It’s like the first time Nick gave me a ride, which was only like five days ago, but this time it’s different. This time it’s like we’re really friends, more equal. When I think about how it felt to have his hand on mine, something in me hurts, but in a good way. And I don’t want to go home. I just want to be with Nick a little bit longer.
“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.�
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“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.
