The air-conditioning suddenly starts working again. I wake up freezing cold and find my dad in the hall, staring at the thermostat. “Wow,” he says. “That’s weird.”
I fold my arms and squint at it with him. “You didn’t do anything?” I ask.
“Nope. It just kicked back into gear, I guess.”
It’s a miracle, I almost say, then change my mind. “It’s too cold now.” I go back to my room to pull on a hoodie. Dad follows me.
“I’ll make you hot chocolate. Hot chocolate in the dead of summer. To celebrate our frozen house.”
What does he think I am? Twelve? “Summer’s practically over.” I get back under the covers.
He stands there, arms hanging. All I want is him to say something to let me know he might have even a tiny inkling what I feel. All I want is for him to be as confident and right and real with me as he is when he stands up in the pulpit. Instead, he’s mute.
So I ask, “Am I going back to Amberton Heights or not? I need to know one way or the other.” I’ve already made the transition in my mind, but I just want him to come out and say it.
Dad sits on my bed, which means the answer is going to be long and complicated and not good. “The money’s just not there. They give us tuition assistance, but it’s not enough. And now with your mom… insurance covers some of that but not all.”
“But what if she doesn’t stay?” Ralph walks down the hall and past my door but doesn’t come in. “What if Mom comes home next week when she’s supposed to? Then could we pay tuition?”
He shakes his head. “We couldn’t really pay it last year. An anonymous donor at church paid it.”
“What?”
“Someone at church heard we needed help and helped.” He tucks the sheet around my knees. “It’s not the first time.”
I kick out from the sheet. “Random people at church are always giving us money?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘always,’ but, yeah, we get help.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You shouldn’t have to worry about money.” But I’ve been worrying about everything else—about Mom and about Dad and Erin, and about money, and he could let me in on at least two of those three things. I’m just figuring out how to put all that into the right words to say to him when he says, “I’ve got the pastor’s fellowship meeting in Lawrence Springs this morning. I missed it last month, and I really should go. I know they’ll all want to know what they can do to help the Shaws. The head of the board at Amberton Heights will be there; I’ll see if there’s any way we can get you in.”
“Forget it,” I say. “Don’t beg.”
“Expressing a real need isn’t begging.”
“Maybe you should express your real need to our church, for a raise.”
“Everyone is having a hard time right now. Maybe next year.” He gets up and looks at his watch. He’s always getting up and looking at his watch. Always on the way somewhere that isn’t here. “You’ve got two options for today: come with me, or I can drop you at Vanessa’s.”
“Why can’t I just stay here?” I want to call Nick, or stay here and think about him.
“You did that yesterday.”
“That’s okay.”
“Not with me.” And he smiles his I-know-you-don’t-like-me-right-now-but-I’m-your-father smile. “So which is it?”
The choice is easy. “Vanessa’s.”
We go to Daniel’s for the pool while Mrs. Hathaway takes Robby shopping for school clothes. Vanessa is a lot less mad at me than she was, but still not happy, and tells me as we unroll our towels on the pool deck, “I’m not asking any questions. If you want to tell me something, you have to tell me. Because I’m done asking.”
I decided on the way to Vanessa’s that I’m going to be easygoing today and not think about school or Jody or my mom or Erin or anything that will make me feel bad. I’m only going to think about Nick.
“Okay?” Vanessa asks.
I say, teasing, “That’s a question.”
“Ha, ha.”
We watch Daniel do the backstroke across the pool, his pale flab showing above the blue water line. “I’ve never figured out how Daniel stays so white,” I say.
“SPF 50.”
It goes like that for a while, Vanessa and me laying out and Daniel getting in and out of the pool, us talking about nothing, joking around, being normal. And it’s easy, somehow, to just choose to stop thinking about things that feel bad. I can choose to sit by the pool and not think about the billboard of Jody, or the look on my mom’s face when she said she didn’t think she was ready to come home, not sit here and try to make myself believe in God, not worry about how I’m going to adjust to public school. Only a little more than a week after Jody being taken and the world changing forever, it’s actually easy to let life go on.
I don’t like it.
Life shouldn’t just go on, not with everything that’s wrong. How can we lounge around the pool? We should be doing something, anything, other than relaxing.
“Hey,” I say. Daniel paddles over, Vanessa sits up. “I’m trying to fix up our yard before my mom comes home. Maybe you guys could help me.”
“Sure,” Daniel says.
I stand up. “We have ice cream sandwiches in our freezer.”
“You want us to go now?” Vanessa asks.
“Well, yeah.”
Daniel hoists himself out of the pool, his slick body landing awkwardly on the edge. “Let me dry off.”
“I think we should wait until my mom comes back to get us,” Vanessa says. “And ask her.”
She’ll say no, especially after how I ran off last time.
“We’ll ask Daniel’s mom.” Daniel’s mom is busy watching soap operas and will let us do whatever.
“Sam…” Vanessa is pleading.
Daniel stands there with his towel around his shoulders, like a cape. “What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal,” I say, “is that Vanessa doesn’t want to get in trouble, or break rules, even though I know she breaks rules when she’s with her other friends.” Vanessa opens her mouth to protest. “No,” I say, looking at both of them, “I know, like when you guys went to that party at the lake at the end of the school year. I know. You’re only being this way because my dad is the pastor, and I’m me. You say I don’t tell you things, but you don’t tell me things. Only certain things. You’re… Good Vanessa and Good Daniel when you’re with me.”
They’re speechless for a few seconds, then Daniel says to Vanessa, “It’s kind of true.”
“But I like Good Vanessa,” she says with a pout.
“We’re just not supposed to go off alone,” I say to her. “We won’t be alone. There are three of us all together. It’s close. We’ll do some work in the yard, have ice cream, and come back before your mom even gets back from shopping.”
She sighs. “Fine.”
We all go in and change, then Daniel calls to his mom, “Mom we’re going to Sam’s for a little while okay thanks bye.”
On the walk to my house I’m starting to feel a little bit hopeful. The temperature has dropped just enough that you can imagine a taste of fall in the air if you try. Nick Shaw thinks I’m beautiful. Daniel and Vanessa are going to help me make progress on the yard, and there is the air-conditioning miracle. Maybe going to a new school won’t be so horrible. Kacey Franklin goes there. We could be friends. I can reinvent myself a little. Be less shy.
Then we round the corner. My dad’s car is in the driveway. He’s supposed to be forty-five minutes away in Lawrence Springs. My first instinct is to look around for Erin’s car, maybe parked down the street, or maybe we already passed it and didn’t notice.
“I thought your dad was gone,” Vanessa says, recognizing his car.
“Maybe there was an emergency. With the Shaws or something.” I slow down. “Maybe we should go back.”
Daniel says, “We can’t, because I have to pee. Seriously.”
“He wouldn’t really be mad, Sam. Like you said, we’re all together and Dan’s mom gave us permission.” She pulls on my hand. “Come on.”
It’s just his car. There isn’t any sign of Erin. This will be fine. I keep walking, and when I get to the door of my house, put the key in and make as much noise as possible. “Dad?” I call, tossing my keys loudly into the metal bowl near the door where we keep keys.
I look at the empty living room, and into the empty kitchen.
The house is completely quiet.
Then I see a purse on the kitchen counter. Erin’s.
“Let’s go,” I say quietly to Vanessa and Daniel, who have followed me this far.
“What? Why?”
I push them toward the door. “Because.”
“Let me just use the bathroom,” Daniel pleads.
“No.”
I finally get them all the way out the door, grab my keys, and close it softly. Vanessa and Daniel give me confused looks.
“There was a note,” I say. “He’s… sleeping. He got… food poisoning. It said don’t bother him.” I start to walk away from the house, fast, and realize they aren’t following me. “Come on.”
“I said I have to pee, no joke.”
“You’re a guy,” Vanessa says, impatient. “You can pee in the gutter.” She catches up to me. “Are you sure your dad’s okay? Maybe you should have checked on him.”
I don’t answer, and break into a jog. I don’t know where I’m going or where I want to go or who I want to see right now. But I can’t tell this to Vanessa and Daniel because it affects them. It affects everyone. Stopping, I turn back around to face them. “You’re right. I should go back.”
“You want me to call my mom?” Vanessa asks. She looks worried for me, like she can tell there’s something I’m not saying.
“No. It’s fine. You guys go back to Daniel’s. It’s okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” I’m walking backward toward my house, making sure they keep going the other way. “Call you later.”
I go around the side of the house, as if I’m going to go in the back door. Then I crouch down, and pull out my cell phone. With unsteady hands, I call Nick. He answers on the third ring. “Hey.”
“Are you busy right now?” I try to keep the tears out of my voice but I can’t.
“Sort of, but… are you okay?”
“Yeah. Never mind.”
“No, wait, it’s okay. What do you need?”
“Can you come get me? At the corner east of my house?”
“Um, sure, yeah.”
I pull myself together enough to say, “I need you to take me to see my mom.”
I wait for Nick at the corner, the whole time thinking: what if I’m wrong? I need to calm down, not jump to conclusions. There’s no sign of Erin’s car anywhere. Maybe she left her purse at our house last night. But then, I’m sure I remember her putting it over her shoulder before she left. Maybe she came to pick up the lasagna pan and left her purse. Maybe my dad’s car broke down and Erin gave him a ride to the meeting. Maybe a lot of things. I didn’t see or hear anyone in the house, I could just go back, walk in, and look around better this time.
But then Nick’s truck comes into view and all I want is to be driving far, far away from Pineview and everyone in it. We don’t have to go see my mom. We could just drive and drive.
Nick pulls over, and I climb in. The cab smells like fabric softener. “Hi,” I say.
He smiles but mostly looks concerned. “Hey there.” After I get buckled in, he asks, “So, what’s the urgency level here? Am I driving ambulance speed, the posted speed limit, or normal Nick?”
“Normal Nick.”
“And you know where this place is?”
“Yeah.” I think I can remember the way. “Just head toward Dillon’s Bluff.”
As soon as we’re on the highway, the rational part of me feels stupid, almost sure that there’s got to be some explanation. I should call my dad right now and ask. But I’m afraid. And that makes me think about Cal yesterday in the hardware store, and how I hate thinking everyone is doing something wrong. Tears come to my eyes as I wonder if there’s anyone in the world I can actually trust.
When Nick asks me, “What’s the story?” I only say, “I just really, really need to see my mom,” and that’s enough for him.
We listen to country radio and make small talk and for the most part I’m able to keep calm, wiping away a tear now and then before Nick can notice.
When we pass a car dealership outside Dillon’s Bluff, Nick looks at it longingly and says, “I want to get a shell for the truck. You know, something to put over the back? I could put an air mattress and a sleeping bag back there, and a cooler with some food and stuff. Then my truck would be like my own traveling apartment. I could go anywhere.”
“That would be nice.” I picture going with him.
“They’re expensive, though. I can’t ask my parents for any money right now. I’d have to save up. The problem is they don’t want me to have a job during the semester.”
“So you’re going?” I ask. “For sure?”
“Almost for sure. My parents don’t want me to put my life on hold.”
Even the Shaws are starting to let life go on. How do you know when to do that? How do you know when to move on without exactly giving up?
We slow down behind a line of cars; up ahead there’s a guy in an orange vest holding up a stop sign. Road construction. In the growing silence, I dare to ask Nick, “What do you think of Erin?”
“What do you mean, what do I think?”
“Just in general.” The line of cars starts to inch forward. Nick puts the truck in low gear.
“She’s a good youth group leader. A lot better than that dude we had two years ago. At least she doesn’t force us to do skits and trust falls and all that crap. Why?”
I think about how to phrase what I really want to ask. “What do you think of her as, like, a girl? Or… woman, I guess.”
“Oh.”
“All the youth group guys have crushes on her, right?”
He shrugs. “Maybe at one time or another, yeah, probably.”
“Did you?” I watch his profile, and know he’ll be honest with me.
“I think I did when she first started. She’s cute and energetic and everything in that outdoorsy kind of way. If you like that.”
We’re past the highway construction now, and moving at full speed, the cars separating. I roll my window down and stick my hand out to test the air. “It’s cooler here.”
“Higher elevation.” He reaches to turn down the fan and rolls down his window, too, filling the car with the faint scent of the pines that grow thicker up here. “Why all the questions about Erin? Don’t you like her?”
“I don’t not like her.” Or at least I didn’t used to. “She brought us dinner. Twice.”
“That’s nice. That’s totally Erin.”
“She’s a good cook.”
“True.”
“She’d make a good wife for someone.”
Nick laughs. “Are you trying to set her up with someone or something?”
“No.” I lean toward the window, letting the air blow on my face. “She just seems like she wants to be married. And guys like her. So why isn’t she?”
“Don’t ask me. Isn’t she only like twenty-five?”
“Twenty-six.” The truck crests a hill and the sign for our exit comes into view. “Seven more miles,” I say.
We ride three or four of those miles in silence, then Nick asks, “Can I tell you something personal? No one knows, so you have to keep it secret.”
“Okay.” I put all the stuff about Erin and my dad out of my head so I can really listen.
“Dorrie broke up with me. She made me promise not to tell, and then when we both go away to separate colleges we’re just going to kind of tell people we wanted to focus on school.”
“Oh.” I’m not sure if I should say I’m sorry, or what. “I saw you guys at the vigil. You looked really… together.”
“Yeah, well.” He glances at me. “When I called you? That was right after she texted me to say she couldn’t handle it anymore.”
It makes me see his phone call in a whole different light.
“Like, the media attention on my family is too much, it’s all kind of depressing when she’s supposed to be starting an exciting time of her life at college.”
“That’s…” I don’t know how someone could break up with Nick. Especially with a text message.
“I don’t blame her. I’d probably break up with me, too, if I were her.” He doesn’t seem too upset, but then, I don’t know that much about guys and how they think. “I know it’s hard to sit around with my devastated parents and a bunch of tragedy groupies, watching the news and dodging the media.”
“Tragedy groupies?”
“Yeah, you know. People who suddenly turn up in your life when something goes wrong, because they want to say that they were there, and because their lives are boring until something shitty happens to someone else and they can have a piece of it.” He has a little bit of a smile on his face, but also sounds angry in a way I’ve never heard before. “Anyway,” he says, “you ready to see your mom?”
“I think the turn is up here,” I say after we exit, and he slows at a turnoff onto an unpaved road. We bump over red dirt and rocks until we see the sign for New Beginnings. What looks like a big old farmhouse sits at the end of the road. “It’s smaller than I remember from the day we brought her,” I say as Nick pulls into the gravel lot.
He takes in the wraparound porch, and the pen full of goats grazing near the gardens. “This is rehab?”
“Yeah.” Now that we’re here I have no idea what I’m going to do, or say. I stare out the window. “How mad would you be right now if I changed my mind and wanted to go home?”
“Not mad at all.”
“Let me think for a minute.”
“No problem.” Nick turns off the engine and we sit there and watch the goats, mostly brown and speckled plus one little baby black one. Through the open windows we can hear the sounds of cicadas and sparrows and cars going by on the highway.
“You should see the gardens,” I say suddenly, opening the door to get out.
I lead him past the goats and around the side of the farmhouse. “That’s the vegetable garden,” I say, pointing, “where the residents grow their own food. It’s like part of therapy. The brochure they gave us that first day says that healthy activity and being outdoors are important for them. And over here”—I walk him around to the other end—“this is the xeriscaping. Have you heard of that?”
“No.”
“It’s a special kind of gardening where you only plant stuff that doesn’t need extra watering, stuff that can just live on whatever water is naturally there.”
He surveys the garden. “Looks like a bunch of rocks.”
“There’s lavender, there. Juniper. Cactus.”
“I see,” he says, nodding. “Plus a bunch of rocks.”
“Well, yeah.” I let myself laugh a little bit. “The rocks help cover the soil and keep moisture in. I’m trying to do something like this in our yard at home so that when my mom comes back, it will be…” I stop and stare at the perfectly landscaped garden, and compare it to our yard, which is currently covered by an ugly black tarp. “Well, it won’t be like this.” But we can work on it together, I think, realizing that’s what I really want. I don’t want to do it alone, I don’t want to do it with Vanessa and Daniel. I want to do it with Mom.
The back door of the farmhouse opens and a bunch of people come out, and the way everyone looks at us I feel like we’ve been caught stealing or something. Fortunately, Margaret is there and recognizes me. She comes over. “Sam? It’s not a visiting day, I’m sorry.”
I’d forgotten about the visiting days and non-visiting days. I’m partly relieved because I could just say, okay, thank you, bye, and be on my way back… where? Home? Where possibly my father is in the very act of… I don’t know what?
“Can I see my mom for just a minute?”
The residents who have come out to work in the garden are all looking at me like I’m an imposter, someone who has violated their peace and quiet away from their families and anyone else who might actually need something from them.
Margaret relents. “I’ll ask her. Come around the front and I’ll let you into the waiting area.”
She goes in through the back, and Nick and I walk around to the front, past the goats again, who glance up and are the only witnesses to the fact that Nick takes my hand for the last few steps up to the door, and then says, “It’s going to be okay,” before letting go. The crackle isn’t as intense as it was in the truck yesterday, but it’s there.
Margaret opens the door and leads us to the waiting area. Nick sits on a small sofa that has room enough for me, too, but I choose a wooden chair.
“I’ll be right back,” Margaret says.
When she’s gone, I tell Nick, “I don’t even know what I’m going to say to her. If she comes out.”
“She will.”
I keep my eyes on the coffee table, with its careful array of magazines and pamphlets and a box of tissues in the middle of it all. “There’s this support group for families of the residents,” I say. “But it’s on Saturday mornings and my dad always has too much to do to get ready for Sunday.”
Nick’s not buying it. “That’s kind of a crappy excuse.”
Margaret comes back in alone. Nick stands, but I don’t move. “She’ll be out in a sec,” Margaret says. “She wanted to fix her hair.” A phone rings out in the hall. “Excuse me.”
Nick comes over to me, kneels down, touches my knee. “You want me to stay? Or wait in the truck? Or what?”
I don’t have time to answer, because my mom walks in. “Sammy? What are you doing here?”
She looks so good. Better than she did at brunch on Sunday, better than she’s looked at home for a long time. I don’t mean physically. Physically she’s always pretty, put together. I mean now she’s calm. Soft. Like she’s comfortable here. And I know I can’t tell her anything about my dad and Erin, not unless I know for sure and even then, maybe not. Not when she’s just getting steady.
“Hey, Mrs. Taylor,” Nick says, getting up. I stand, too.
“Hello, Nick. I’m so sorry about Jody.”
And she comes over and hugs him.
She pats his back. She murmurs things that I can’t hear. She’s warm and dignified and beautiful in ways I’d forgotten she could be. When Nick pulls away he’s got tears in his eyes.
Mom wasn’t like this on Sunday with my dad there. I want her at home, and I want her at home like this, but now I don’t know if she can be home and be like this at the same time.
Nick looks at me. “I’ll be hanging with the goats.”
When he’s gone, Mom comes over and puts her arms around me and I’m already crying when I say, “I just wanted to say hi.”
“Hi,” she says, squeezing tight. Then she holds me out to inspect me, like we haven’t seen each other in a year, like we didn’t just see each other two days ago. She studies my face. “You look so grown-up.”
I wipe tears away, feeling not so grown-up. More like a baby.
“Does your father know you’re here?”
I shake my head. Her eyes shift to the door. “I didn’t know you were such good friends with Nick Shaw.”
“Only recently.”
“Sit down.” She sits on the sofa and pats it. I sit next to her. “I have a group meeting in a few minutes, and I have to go to it.”
I picture her in a room full of other residents, talking about the things that make them want to drink, things like their families, maybe. “Do you like the meetings?” I ask.
“Sometimes.”
“You like the people?”
“Some of them.” She brushes a piece of hair out of my eyes. “Are you okay? Is everything all right?”
I nod, because if I talk I’ll cry again, and I don’t want her to be stressed by me and worry that if she comes home it’s going to be like this, me crying and not being all right. I want to say, “I miss you,” but those are the words that will make me cry hardest.
“Sammy,” she says, “I know.” And she pulls me close. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She kisses my head. “I’ve put a real wrench in things. It’s not fair. I know.”
“Are you going to come home?” I ask, pulling away.
And she looks at me. And I know that the answer is no, or at least, not yet.
I turn away. She hands me a tissue from the box on the table.
“Why not?”
“Because,” she says slowly, carefully. “I still have a lot of work to do. And I still need support.”
“We’ll support you,” I say. “Me and Dad.”
She shakes her head. “Your dad’s not ready, either.”
I want to ask her what that means, assure her that at least I’m ready, I think, but Margaret leans into the room. “Time for group, Laura.”
“I have to go,” Mom says to me. “I know you’re angry—”
“I’m not.”
Then she laughs a little bit. “Well, you should be. I am. And I’m learning not to be afraid anymore of being angry. I want you to know it’s okay for you, too. You don’t always have to be pleasant and say yes and not do things that might upset others.” She holds the box of tissues out to me. “That includes me.”
I take one, and blow my nose, wanting to tell her again that I’m not angry with her. But maybe that’s not totally true.
“And,” she adds, because she knows me, “you’re allowed to be angry with your father.”
Somehow I’m not having a problem with that, I think.
“He’s only human,” she finishes. “We all are.”
“I know.”
Then she hugs me again, kisses me, promises she’ll call later in the week. She says good-bye. She walks out.
“How was it?” Nick, sitting on the ground by the goat pen, looks up at me, shielding his eyes from the sun. One of the big billies ambles to the fence and sticks his nose between the wooden slats. I scratch his head.
“I don’t know.”
Nick gets up and stands beside me, propping a sandaled foot onto the fence. “How come you had to suddenly see her, anyway?”
I give the goat’s head a couple more scratches and withdraw my hand. I’m thinking of the way my dad’s shoulders sank last night when Erin said she couldn’t stay for Scrabble. His car in the drive when he was supposed to be in another town. Her purse on the counter. My mom not being ready to come home. Us all being only human.
“I don’t know,” I say again, and turn back for the truck. “It was stupid.”
“Let’s get food. We can talk about it if you want, or not. Either way, I’m starving.”
“Okay.” We walk to the truck and I resist the temptation to look back at the farmhouse. In my imagination, my mom is standing on the porch, waving at me, wishing me luck.
Nick opens the passenger door for me and offers his hand as I climb in. “There’s a cool little taco stand off the highway near here, I think,” he says. “Is that okay?”
“Yeah. Good.” I get my phone out of my pocket. The fact that Dad hasn’t called or anything means he still hasn’t realized I’m not with Vanessa and Daniel. He could still be in his meeting, or still be… I call him while Nick backs out, the tires crunching on gravel.
My dad answers. “Sam?” He sounds pretty much normal.
“Hi.”
“Everything okay? You ready for me to come pick you up?”
“No,” I say. So he doesn’t know yet that I’m not where I’m supposed to be. And doesn’t seem to know that I know that he was not where he was supposed to be, when he was supposed to be there. “Are you still in Lawrence Springs?” I ask.
“Just headed home.”
“In your car?”
He laughs. “Yes. Who else’s car would I be in?”
“I don’t know.” I look out the window. Nick and I are back out on the dirt road that led us to New Beginnings. “Maybe you got a ride with someone or carpooled to save gas.”
“Not today.”
My heart pounds. “What did they say when you asked about help for my tuition?”
Nick glances at me.
Dad pauses. “Well, no answers just yet. I put it out there, you know, and I’ll follow up in a couple of days.”
I fight hard not to let him hear the tears that I know are coming, as I give him one more chance to tell the truth. “You’re on your way home now? From Lawrence Springs?”
Another pause. “Are you sure everything is all right, Sam?”
My stomach hurts, so much. “Fine. I’m at Vanessa’s just watching a movie so you can come get me whenever you want.” I slide my phone shut and turn it off.
“You’re at Vanessa’s watching a movie?” Nick asks.
I don’t say anything.
We’re on the highway now. My window is down, and the truck radio is off, so all we hear is the wind and the distant sound of sirens. Fire trucks headed to a brushfire, maybe, or police rushing to another semi rollover at that unexpected curve at the pass, or a motorcycle down and someone’s body all over the road. More tragedy, more destruction.
Nick suddenly brakes and swerves down an unmarked road to our right. “Sorry,” he says. “I think the taco stand is down here. It kind of snuck up on me. Or maybe I should just take you home?”
“No, I’m hungry.” The big aching hollow in my stomach isn’t hunger, but I don’t want to go home.
We bump along, the road rough enough that I have to hold on to the plastic handle that hangs from the truck cab roof. Scrub brush and weeds and rocks line both sides of the road. It doesn’t look like the kind of place where a taco stand could do any real business.
“Are you sure it’s here?”
“Uh, no,” Nick confesses. “It’s been awhile. I think my memory is screwed up.”
“Should we turn around?”
“Let me go a little farther. If it’s not around the next bend or two we’ll go back.” We pass a bend. He takes another road. “Maybe this is it.” Then another turn. “This looks familiar. Sort of.”
There are no houses, no roads to anything that could be a house, no mile markers, no power lines. I wonder if the searchers looked here for Jody, if this was part of the 1,500 square miles they searched, and how many other deserted stretches of scrub forest there are in the county and if those have been searched. She could be here. We could be driving by her, or her body, this very second.
And no one is looking for her. Everyone is doing what they do. How many people are sitting at home watching TV while Jody is missing, how many lounging in pools like I did today, choosing not to think, how many shopping, how many counting the money in their cash registers, how many giving a long kiss good-bye to the person who is not their spouse. All while God watches, if he exists.
And Jody, still, alone.
I rest my head on the warm metal of the truck door and at first just let the tears come out. The truck makes a lot of noise on the dirt road and I don’t think Nick can hear me.
“Hey, Sam? I think we’re lost. Really lost. And I have the feeling I’m going to be in trouble with your dad if he thinks you’re at Vanessa’s and really you’re with me.”
I lift my head and look at him, not caring that my face is probably splotchy and tear-streaked now. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Hey, don’t worry, I’ll get you home.”
“I said it doesn’t matter.”
“Come on, Sam. Talk to me.” He’s driving slow now, and reaches over to touch my knee.
I look at him, and he’s so kind, and so good. His whole family is like that. “It shouldn’t have happened to you,” I say. “It shouldn’t have happened to Jody. She has so many people who love her.”
He stops the truck. “It shouldn’t happen to anyone.”
And I stare out at the wilderness we’re in, thinking about my family and the way we’re islands, now, and if I could just drift my island away, they could go on into their separate lives and be happy. And God, he could just let me go, too, once and for all, instead of this slow, endless betrayal.
“I wish it was me,” I say.
“What?” Nick whispers it, sounding afraid.
“I wish it was me who disappeared.” And my stomach lurches so hard I think I’m going to be sick. I whip off my seat belt and open the passenger door to jump out.
“Sam… hold up!” Nick grabs my arm and yanks up the brake. I jerk away and nearly fall out of the truck cab, and now I don’t feel like I’m going to be sick but I run into the field of nothing, knee-length scrub scratching my legs, feeling the rocks through the soles of my flip-flops.
Nick’s footfalls crunch behind me. “Sam, wait! What is it?”
But I don’t know, I don’t know what it is. Except I can’t stop running, and I just want to lose myself in the desert, and either disappear forever or wake up from whatever this is. Everything that’s happened since the day Jody disappeared seems like it’s been part of some other reality, where I’m friends with Nick but fight with Vanessa, my mom in rehab is a better parent than my pastor father, and Erin and my dad do whatever they want and God doesn’t care or do anything or stop it.
All the suffering, all the brokenness, and no one to fix it.
With 150,000 flyers and 37 horses and 19 trained dogs and 1 helicopter and 2 kayakers can’t we at least, at the very least, find Jody?
“Jody!” I scream out her name.
Nick’s footsteps stop for a second, then start up again, faster.
I keep running, calling Jody’s name. Field sparrows rise up from the brush ahead of me.
“Stop it,” Nick says from behind me, breathless. “Sam, stop!”
He catches up with me, grabs my wrist. We both fall onto a clump of sagebrush and rocky ground. I’m on my stomach, Nick’s body on top of mine. My hands bleed from trying to stop my fall.
“She’s not here,” Nick gasps into my hair. “She’s not here, Sam.”
He’s so big, crushing me under his weight. And for the first time I know, can feel, that even though all the times I’ve been with Nick he’s seemed more or less okay, all things considered, that he’s as destroyed as any of us. Because he’s crying now, too, big scary sobs against my neck.
“Nick,” I try to say, but my face is in the sage. I can barely breathe. I need him to get off of me. I push my hands into the ground to create air space, but his weight keeps me down, so I turn my head to the side the best I can. “Nick,” I say again. I take in as much breath as I can and say, as loud as I can, “I can’t breathe.”
It’s like I’m not here. Invisible, inaudible, nonexistent while Nick cries and cries and smothers me. I put my hands on the ground again, and dig in my toes, and throw my weight back against him as hard as I can. It works well enough that I can wriggle out and roll over onto my back, gasping.
He stops, suddenly, and looks around and at me, blinking. “Oh, my God. Are you okay? Your face, your legs… you’re bleeding.”
“I know.” Everything stings.
He crawls to me and, still half-lying on the ground, touches my scraped knee, scratched thighs, bleeding hands. “I hurt you.”
I don’t say anything, just take in air and try to think, think about this situation, being hurt and in the middle of nowhere with someone that really I don’t know that well when you think about it, someone my dad has warned me about, someone who is, like my dad, maybe a suspect.
“I didn’t mean it,” he says. “I didn’t mean to.”
And suddenly I panic, hearing a double meaning in what he says, thinking about the sirens on the highway and how quickly he turned off after we heard them. The way he grabbed my wrist so tightly, pulling me down, the way he said, “She’s not here.”
I stare him in the eye and whisper, “Where is she, Nick? If she’s not here, where is she?”
A blank look crosses his face. Then a confused one. “What?” He scoots away from me and sits up. “No,” he says. “No no. You don’t think… Sam, no. No.” He puts his face in his hands and starts crying again, quieter this time. “I can’t believe you think that. I can’t believe anyone thinks that.” He lifts his face, takes one hand and rips up a clump of brush, throwing it into the empty field. “I wouldn’t hurt her. And I wouldn’t hurt you.”
I want to believe, but I’ve believed a lot of things that didn’t end up being true.
He crawls back over to me and looks me up and down, all my scratches and bloody spots. “This was an accident. I freaked out. When you jumped out like that, I thought you were having some kind of nervous breakdown or something.”
I hear the sirens again, closer.
“Sam,” he says. “I wouldn’t. Do you believe me?”
Do I believe?
I believe just enough that Jody is alive that I think we should keep looking.
I believe just enough in my mom to try to make a garden for her to work on when she gets home.
I believe just enough in my dad that he’ll have an explanation, even if that explanation is that he’s only human.
I believe just enough in myself to know that even if I start in a new school I’ll be okay.
I believe just enough in forgiveness that eventually we’ll be a family again.
I believe just enough in God that I’m praying right now that Nick means what he says.
Nick lies down next to me and puts one hand under my head, cradling it. He pushes back my hair, all undone and full of dirt. His eyes are red and puffy as he picks a few little bits of gravel off my forehead. “You’re beautiful, Sam.” His voice is soft.
He gets even closer, practically on top of me, and puts his other hand behind my head so that I couldn’t move if I wanted to.
I don’t close my eyes. I want to see it all: Nick’s teary face over me, my hand resting on his upper arm.
His lips are soft on mine, and his hands on my head and neck are soft, too, not hands that could ever hurt me, I know it. Then, he stops, and rests his cheek against mine. I rub his back, touch his neck, his arms, his waist.
I want him to kiss me again and think that in a few seconds, he probably will, and we don’t hear the cars pull up to the side of the road or the voices until someone shouts, “There they are!”
I watch from the passenger side of one police car, while Nick is in the county sheriff’s. They’ve handcuffed him, because of “procedure,” even though I’ve said over and over that he didn’t do anything. But they saw me and my bloody scrapes, in the middle of nowhere underneath Nick, who they apparently told earlier in the investigation not to go over the county line. Just in case. Not until they knew more about what happened to Jody.
They ask me a bunch of questions about what we’ve done since the minute Nick picked me up. I want to start before that, with what made me call him in the first place, but they don’t ask.
What I’ll find out later is that Nick didn’t tell his parents where he was going and didn’t leave a note like he was supposed to, and something turned up that made everyone panic and there was a big news alert, and they came looking for him. A highway construction guy called the police saying he’d seen a truck matching the description of Nick’s and that there was a young girl with him but all I know now is that they’ve called my dad and we’re waiting for him.
“Nick didn’t do anything,” I repeat to the female officer in the car with me.
“We hope not.”
When Dad shows up, he escorts me to his car, and we sit. He squeezes and unsqueezes the steering wheel, shaking his head. Sometimes angry, sometimes almost but not crying. “I told you that you couldn’t be alone with him.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes. I did.” He’s silent for a few seconds. “You know you’re not supposed to go off and do things we didn’t plan and agree to.”
I watch the back of Nick’s head, what I can see of it, in the sheriff’s car. I wish I could go over there and tell him it’s okay, we’ll sort it all out.
“Samara, I feel like you’re not listening to me. I said you know you’re not supposed to go off and do things we didn’t plan and agree to.”
“You were in Lawrence Springs. I didn’t want to bother you. In your meeting.”
He’s quiet.
I add: “Nick didn’t do anything.”
Someone from the sheriff’s department comes over to our car. He leans into the open window on my dad’s side. “You all can go on home,” he says. To my dad: “Did you tell her?”
“Tell me what?”
Dad won’t look at me. The officer crouches down lower so he can see my face.
“Tell me what?” I ask again.
Dad closes his eyes, shakes his head.
The officer says, “They found remains.”