All of a sudden, grown-ups were everywhere, raising a racket as if there was a party going on, except to Lucinda their faces looked all wrong for a party, too sad and stunned and fretting, and they spoke too fast, as if they all had the most important thing to say, yet no one was listening to anyone.
From the couch, where she sat crushed between two doughy women sour with BO, Lucinda spied her dad through the kitchen doorway. He stood stooped over the kitchen table, shaking his head, hands planted on either side of a gigantic map he’d spread out and kept from rolling up on itself by setting a Campbell soup can at each corner. He jabbed a stout finger at the map and stared up at each of the three men in green jackets, state police, Lucinda knew, who stood around him, his eyes big, like, Listen up. This is Important.
The men nodded as Mr. B. walked in circles behind them, smoking a cigarette. Lucinda had never seen him smoke, and figured it was because he never had smoked, not because he tried to hide the habit, as Lucinda’s mom did. He pinched the cigarette as if it were an insect that might spring away, and he waved smoke from his face and winced. He was a funny man. He made Lucinda laugh, and Sally roll her eyes. But he didn’t look funny now, so Lucinda couldn’t laugh, even inside herself, secretly, like she normally did at grown-ups.
Lucinda recognized faces of grown-ups from town, many smoked cigarettes, without wincing, the ceiling fogged behind a hovering shroud of smoke. None of the grown-ups noticed her. She felt if she jumped up on the couch and shouted Where is Sally? no one would hear her, and no one would answer her. And Lucinda wanted an answer.
Everyone was here because Sally wasn’t here. Sally’s mom wasn’t either. And nobody knew where they were. They were just—gone. Except everyone was acting like if they didn’t find them this very second, they never would find them. Which of course was the stupidest thing. Mrs. B. was a grown-up. So she knew where she and Sally were. Of course she did. There was no need to get hysterical, a word Lucinda’s dad used when Lucinda’s mom was mad, which only made Lucinda’s mom madder.
More grown-ups jostled into the house, flashlights grasped in tense hands. Even Lucinda’s mom was here, though she stuck with the other women, and drank ginger ale from a can to settle her upset stomach.
Lucinda’s palm smarted where she’d sliced it on the stone. The cut wasn’t bleeding anymore, but Lucinda sucked at the flap of skin because it felt good.
The people who came and went left the front door open, and the house grew cold with the autumn air. Some women had a busy shine in their eyes, as if they were glad to have something important to do.
It was the same look the mean fifth-grade girls got when bossing around Lucinda and Sally at bake sales. The Eye Shadow Girls who were forever brushing their curling-ironed hair and glossing their lips with Bonnie Bell. Always bragging. Their smiles too sugary. When the Eye Shadow Girls caught Sally and Lucinda giggling and putting their fingers down their throats, pretending to gag at them, the Eye Shadow Girls would screech: “This is important! Homemade baked goods only at our sales.” Brownies from a box would spoil it all. Except that’s the only kind of brownie Sally and Lucinda ever brought. And everyone loved them; they sold out fastest and, boy, did that make the Eye Shadow Girls even madder. Which only made Sally and Lucinda giggle more. Because. Well. It was fun to make the Eye Shadow Girls mad. Because they were so mean and they deserved it.
Lucinda had asked her mom why the girls were so mean, and her mom had said they were jealous. What a fib! The Eye Shadow Girls weren’t jealous of Lucinda and her buck teeth and her freckles that looked like someone had splattered her face with mud puddle water, and her knobby nose to match her knobby knees and her knobby elbows, and her ribs showing like an old washboard, and her dull straight brown hair. She got why maybe older girls would be jealous of Sally, with her dark, phantom eyes like she was looking at you from another planet or some other time, long ago. Like she was a different creature. Sally had an odd-duck, yet lovely face. And was so tiny. The tiniest girl in her class, by a ton. But she didn’t look sick and weak, like that deaf boy in the special class. She was tough. If any of the big girls were ever jealous of Lucinda, it was because she was friends with Sally. Maybe the Eye Shadow Girls had ESP and could read her and Sally’s minds, and knew about their plans, and that’s what made them jealous and mean, because they knew Sally and Lucinda were best friends for real and were going to be best friends for real, always. Not fakes, like the Eye Shadow Girls. Lucinda and Sally knew they were going to have lockers next to each other in junior high. Knew they were going to be archaeologists, or those scientists who found dinosaur fossils. They’d love to be the first to ever find dinosaur bones in Vermont. Or bones or artifacts of some lost people. Girls could do anything. If they worked like twice as hard as boys.
The Eye Shadow Girls, for the most part, stuck their noses up at Sally and Lucinda, smirked and ignored them. But once, Betty Lansing got really mean. Scary mean. Sally had called her stupid and Betty had hauled back and slapped Sally’s face. Hard. So hard it sounded like a beaver tail smacking water. Sally had looked at Betty in shock, but Sally hadn’t cried. Not Sally. No way. Betty had this ugly look on her face, eyes squinted up like a pug’s, breathing hard through her nose, fuming, like if she were a cartoon smoke would blow out her ears, like she wanted to do more than slap Sally. Like she wanted to k—
Lucinda coughed; the cigarette smoke in the room was like breathing school bus exhaust. She felt sick and so tired and just wanted to be in her bed, asleep.
One of the doughy women got up with a wheeze, and a boy sat next to Lucinda in the woman’s place, the couch cushion caved where she’d sat. The boy was an older boy, like old enough to almost be a teenager. Maybe he even was. She’d seen him around. A loner. His face was inflamed and gross with pimples and he smelled weird. Like he’d been sleeping and sweating in an old sleeping bag for days. Eddie something. Eddie Barnes? Eddie Baines?
“You okay?” the boy said.
Was he talking to her? Older boys never talked to girls Lucinda’s age, or at least never to Lucinda.
“You okay?” the boy said.
He was talking to her.
She didn’t know what to say. She’d never said anything to a teenage boy.
“Something’s happened,” Eddie said and wedged his fingers into the tattered hole at the knee of his jeans. “She’s your friend, right?”
Lucinda nodded. How did he know that? How did he know her?
“I wonder what’s happened,” he said. “Something’s happened. Whatever it is.”
“Why are you here?” Lucinda said.
“I’m going to go look for her. My mom and dad want me to help look for her. And her mom, I guess.” A man pushed through the crowded room and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. The boy stood and took a flashlight from the man’s hand and disappeared out the door with him.
It had to be way past Lucinda’s bedtime, which was neat; she’d never stayed up so late, but the night was going on forever. There was nothing to do. Why wouldn’t anyone let Lucinda look for Sally? She hoped wherever Sally was it was more fun than here. She thought for a second maybe Sally was in the pit, but the pit was a secret and Sally would never show it to her mom. Why would she? Women around Lucinda chirped about “praying” and “strength” and “hope” and needing to get out “full force, bright and early.” All while their eyes shifted over at Mr. B., narrowing, like he was one of those shoplifters Lucinda’s dad had told her about; how obvious it was that they were up to no good. It made Lucinda mad because she liked Mr. B.
Lucinda felt suffocated and needed air.
She stood, wobbly, her head feeling like a helium balloon, as if it might float up to the ceiling. Through the swarm of bodies she glimpsed the queen of the Eye Shadow Girls, Betty Lansing, who must have sneaked into the house with her mom.
Lucinda thought she’d throw up for real seeing Betty in this house, Sally’s house. Sally would die.
Betty’s eyes burned into Lucinda, and she was showing her teeth, like a mad dog; but when Betty’s mom bent down to tell Betty something, Betty’s face went all sugary sweet with a fake smile. It seemed everyone had a fake smile, and Lucinda wondered why no one except her seemed to notice it.