The trails? What happened to the mall? “Yeah, I’m sure he’s just still goofing around out there.”
Mom nodded, pulling her hair back away from her face, barely pushing back panic. It’s like she knew. Mother’s intuition or something.
I went back to my room, but I didn’t stay there long. I felt an uneasiness gnawing at my insides. I put Forever down again and went outside into the heat and over to the Kellers’. I felt better, doing something, instead of sitting around. Josh wasn’t outside anymore, so I knocked on the door and Mr. Keller answered, the cold air from inside whooshing out at me. Mr. Keller was tall, blond going gray, wearing jeans and a blazer. “Hi, Beth.”
“Is Josh here?”
“Yes, he is. You want to come in?”
“Can he just come out for a second?”
“Sure,” he said. He yelled for Josh, who came down the stairs to the foyer and seemed to pause when he saw me. He came outside, and Mr. Keller shut the door and left us alone.
“Sam’s not home,” I said.
“I know. Your mom already came over here.”
“Did you two ride to the mall earlier?”
He hesitated. “Yeah, we did. Did you tell your mom that?”
“No. She would flip out if she knew.”
He seemed relieved. “We did start out together. But I came back.”
“Why?”
Again, he hesitated. “I don’t know. He was mean.”
“What did he do?”
“Nothing.”
“Josh, you just said he was mean. What did he do? You can tell me.” I felt a twinge of tenderness for him. I wanted to say: I know how he is. He can be a little brat.
“Someone drove by and threw, like, a Coke at me. It got all over me and I fell off my bike and Sam . . . he just laughed. He laughed at me.” He rubbed his elbow and I saw a scrape. There were a few scratches on his knees, too.
“Are you okay?”
He shrugged. His face reddened as he looked down at the ground.
“So you came home after that?”
He nodded. “I was all scratched up and all covered in dirt and stuff. So I rode my bike home. I—never mind.”
“What?”
“I just rode off. I was mad at him. I didn’t look back.”
“Well, maybe he rode on to the mall. I’m sure he’ll turn up soon.”
Josh nodded again. “Yeah.”
“I’m sorry he was mean to you.”
“It’s okay.”
“I’ll just tell Mom what you told me. That you were riding in the woods.”
“Okay, good. I just didn’t . . . I don’t want to get him in trouble.”
We were both protecting him. Or so we thought.
“He’ll turn up,” I said again, like if I said it enough it would come true. Josh looked at me then, relieved. He believed me. And, right then, I still believed myself.
Panic didn’t truly set in for another hour or so, when Sam still hadn’t shown up. Outside, the daylight was fading.
“And tell me again, what did Josh say?” Earl asked Mom when he got home and she started explaining. She’d already called him on his cell, which she hardly did when he was at a construction site job.
“He said he left him in the woods.”
“So let’s go look there.” He was in his jeans, a sweaty white T-shirt, and his boots. He looked sunburned and overheated from the long day.
“I can help.” That unease was gnawing at me again, and I wanted to do something to keep it at bay. Still, deep down I thought Sam would turn up eventually. Just like him to cause us so much worry.
“No, you stay here in case he comes back. Call my cell right away if you hear from him,” Mom said.
I could tell she blamed me for this whole mess. Somehow it was my fault, and not Sam’s. I almost told them right then that he had gone to the mall—that he had totally broken the rules. But then I’d be in trouble, too, for letting him. And anyway, they were already out the door, carrying flashlights for when it got dark, which I realized would be soon.
Where the hell was he? The idea that he would have vanished seemed ludicrous. Little girls were the ones who went missing. Boys knew how to take care of themselves. Nothing could happen to a tough boy like Sam.
I sat and waited, tried to distract myself with my book, then with TV. But nothing really worked. The unease spread through my whole body like a fever. I couldn’t get my mind off Sam. As it got darker out, I started to get scared. I finally walked over to the Kellers’. I knew I was supposed to stay put, but I had to speak to Josh. He answered right after I knocked, like he was expecting me.
“He’s not back yet?”
“My mom and my stepdad went to the woods to look for him. Josh, we have to tell them.”
A voice floated from the living room. “What’s going on, Joshie?” It was Mrs. Keller. She walked down the hall toward the foyer, barefoot with a pencil tucked behind her ear. She was in law school.
Weird, for a woman her age, my mother always said. But maybe she said that because she was jealous. Mrs. Keller was pretty—tall, with long dark hair, an elegant and smooth face with hardly ever any makeup on. She was going to be a lawyer, a fancy rich lawyer, Mom would say. We’d always been friendly and neighborly, but I could tell that Mom didn’t feel totally comfortable around them. Maybe because Mom believed the Kellers thought they were better than us. Mr. Keller taught geology at the University of Alabama. Earl was in construction—the foreman, in charge of a lot of elaborate projects and renovations, a good job, but still. Mom was a secretary at an insurance company. She had never finished college, because she’d gotten pregnant with me. So everything was always my fault.
“Sam’s missing,” I told Mrs. Keller.
“What? Since when?”
“Since this afternoon.” I looked at Josh, and I could see his blue eyes widen. Don’t tell, he seemed to be saying. “Mom and Earl are looking for him in the woods.”
“Can we help?” She turned then and shouted, “Hal!”
“Josh may be the last person who saw him,” I said.
“When, Joshie?” she asked, stooping slightly and zooming her focus on to him. “When did you last see Sam?” She was normally a distracted person, kind of spacey, maybe because she was always thinking about legal cases and writing papers and stuff. But now she was giving us her full attention. I knew then that it was serious.
“I dunno. Like, at three maybe? We were in the woods.” He looked back at me, like he was checking to see if we were still going to continue with this. But I knew we couldn’t.
“You’re sure it was three?” Mrs. Keller asked.
He stood there, sort of staring into space. “I dunno.”
“Think. This is important.”
Mr. Keller walked up then. “What’s going on?”
I rehashed the whole situation.
“Josh? You sure it was three?” Mrs. Keller asked again.
Right then, as if under a bright light, Josh began to break down, started crying. “I dunno,” he said, and then choked out the story, the truth about heading to the mall. “I came back home. I . . . left him.”
Mrs. Keller was calm. Mr. Keller, too. They looked so kindhearted and understanding, and I envied Josh for that. Not the glares and tears and accusatory tones that would normally come from Mom, not the put-upon looks from Earl.