Long Lost

by Jacqueline West

  “Help!” she screamed, sucking in a wet breath. “Help! Somebody!”

  “No one is coming,” said Evelyn in a patient voice. “The ones who should find you will just let you go.”

  Fiona’s mind flew to Arden once more. I hope the Searcher finds you.

  Her sister hadn’t just let her go. She had wished her gone.

  The pain in Fiona’s chest didn’t just come from the lack of air anymore.

  As the water closed over her, Fiona remembered sinking through the blue depths of that water-park pool, years ago. The pool that Arden had told her was safe.

  No one was here to pull her out this time.

  Evelyn was right. No one would find her. Not until it was too late.

  Maybe not even then.

  So the warm hands grabbing her didn’t make sense.

  She had to be hallucinating. Her air-starved brain was telling lies. But the hands kept pulling. Something—the sole of a shoe—kicked her in the side. The water was sloshing crazily, and light was coming from somewhere . . . not otherworldly, end-of-a-long-dark-tunnel light, but yellow electric light from a hanging bulb.

  “Get up!” shouted Arden’s voice. “Come on, Fiona!”

  Fiona blinked. Through the water in her eyes, she could just make out her sister’s face. Behind her, in the dark water, something else turned and thrashed, sending waves sloshing over the tank’s side.

  “Climb on my leg and I’ll boost you over!” Arden commanded.

  Fiona set a foot on Arden’s knee, hauling her exhausted body onto the cistern wall.

  “Now help me up!” shouted Arden.

  Fiona squirmed around, her waist still balanced on the rim of the cistern, and reached down with her cold, wet hands.

  Arden grabbed on. With a graceful jump, she swung one leg sideways, hooking a foot over the wall. Fiona’s feet thumped to the floor. A second later, Arden’s did too.

  Near their soggy shoes, a curly brown dog paced frantically, eyes fixed on the top of the cistern. He let out a panicked whine.

  “Hey,” said Arden, crouching beside the spot where Fiona had dropped, gasping. “Are you okay? Can you breathe?”

  Fiona nodded.

  She stared past Arden, breathing hard, as something emerged from the cistern. A girl with fog-pale skin, a black cloak, and trailing dark hair clasped the cistern’s side. A second later, another girl lunged up beside her, half hauling, half shoving the first girl over.

  Pixie yipped.

  “Go on, Evelyn!” Margaret’s voice commanded. “Climb out!”

  “You don’t need to rescue me, you little idiot!” Evelyn jumped to the basement floor, long black cloak splaying like a puddle around her. Fiona and Arden scuttled backward.

  “You’re too late,” said Evelyn. “Much too late.”

  Margaret, with her soaked dress and lank hair, slid down to the floor. “I know that, Evelyn.” Her voice was smaller than her sister’s, but clear enough to ring across the stony basement. “I know I’m too late. That doesn’t mean . . . it doesn’t mean I can’t try.”

  Arden put one protective arm in front of Fiona. “What’s going on?” she whispered. “Who are these girls?”

  “They used to live here,” Fiona whispered back. “A long time ago.”

  Arden didn’t ask anything else. But her body stiffened like a stretched string, ready to fly.

  Evelyn, in her trailing black cloak, stared through the light at Margaret. Her hollow eyes were unreadable. Pixie quivered beside her, glancing desperately back and forth between his two girls.

  “You climbed into the cistern,” Evelyn said at last. “I thought you’d be too afraid. Like always.”

  “I was afraid,” Margaret whispered. “But I did it.”

  “And you tried to swim in that part of the river,” Evelyn added, after a long beat.

  “Of course I did, Evelyn. I tried and tried. I wouldn’t ever have stopped, but the branches—” She broke off, voice choking. “I tried.”

  Pixie nudged her hand with his nose.

  “I didn’t see you fall, Evelyn.” Margaret’s whisper was ragged now. “So I thought . . . or I wanted to think . . . that something else could have happened. That you had just . . . gone away.” She paused, and Pixie nudged her hand again. “Because then maybe you would come back.”

  Evelyn didn’t speak.

  Margaret seemed to steel herself. She squared her shoulders, her pale shape shifting under the gold electric light. “It wasn’t a lie, Evelyn.” She stepped toward her sister. “It wasn’t. It was just the story I had to tell myself.”

  Evelyn didn’t move. Pixie, Fiona, and Arden all kept silent, watching, waiting.

  “The story didn’t even change anything,” Margaret went on. “Everyone blamed me anyway. And I blamed myself.” She spread her hands. “For the rest of my life, I was—I was just your sister. I was the sister of that girl who disappeared.”

  “So you felt guilty,” Evelyn said flatly. Softly. “You should have.”

  “But that isn’t it.” Margaret spread her hands. “Feeling guilty was nothing compared to how . . . how much . . .” Her voice broke into whispered fragments. “How much I missed you.” She took a tiny step forward. “I missed you so much, Evelyn. I missed you all this time.”

  Evelyn kept still, letting her sister finish, her hollow eyes fixed hard on Margaret’s face.

  For a moment, everything was quiet. Fiona could feel the droplets of water trailing from her hair down the back of her neck. She could feel Arden breathing beside her.

  At last Margaret reached into the pocket of her skirt. She pulled out the mother-of-pearl-handled knife.

  Evelyn glanced at it. She let out a tiny sound, something closer to a laugh than anything else. “You want to give back what you stole from me?” The words were sharp. Their tone wasn’t. “It’s too late for that too.”

  Margaret waited, holding out the knife. “I know,” she said.

  When Evelyn still didn’t take it, Margaret turned the knife around. She pulled the blade out of its handle. Then she grasped a hank of her long hair, pulled it tight, and sawed it off just above the roots.

  Evelyn went perfectly still.

  “You did this for me once.” Margaret lowered her hand, the cut strands dangling from her ice-colored fingers. “Mrs. Rawlins was so angry. Remember?”

  There was a long, silent breath.

  “She said we looked like two half-plucked chickens,” said Evelyn quietly.

  “But you just laughed. We both laughed.” Margaret sliced through another handful of hair. When she spread her fingers, the scattered strands disappeared before they touched the floor.

  “Margaret.” Evelyn gave a soft snort. “You look ridiculous.”

  One corner of Margaret’s mouth curled upward. “Like a half-plucked chicken?”

  Evelyn’s mouth started to curl. Suddenly, like someone pulling a cork from a bottle, she let out a laugh. “Exactly like a half-plucked chicken.”

  Margaret began to smile back. Pixie’s tail wagged wildly.

  Fiona glanced over at Arden, who was watching everything with wide eyes. Having her sister beside her in this impossible moment made the moment feel even more impossible. And at the same time, it made her feel something else—something like certainty. Because if Arden was here, Fiona belonged here too.

  “Evelyn,” said Margaret, her voice dwindling to a whisper again. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Oh, stop it.” Evelyn placed a hand on Pixie, who was wriggling against her side. “You didn’t make me take that shortcut. And you couldn’t have stopped me, either.”

  “I should have tried harder. I should have told the whole truth. Not pretended that you could come back.”

  “I told you to stop, Margaret.” Evelyn pulled the knife from Margaret’s hand. “Besides, you were right. In a way.” She folded the blade into its handle. “I did come back.”

  Then she slipped the knife into her own pocket, where it belonged.

/>   Both pairs of sisters stepped through the library’s back door. It must have been past midnight, Fiona realized. The night was dark and far from over, but the clouds above the lawn had thinned, letting moonlight reach the woods below. The river glimmered through the trees.

  Evelyn and Margaret led the way. They walked arm in arm, their old-fashioned shoes stepping in matching rhythm. Margaret’s hair, suddenly long and smooth again, drifted in the breeze. Evelyn’s long black cloak had disappeared, and her dress, pale linen like her sister’s, billowed gently behind her. Pixie bounded beside them.

  Fiona and Arden followed, side by side.

  “Hey, Arden?” Fiona asked softly, as they climbed down toward the bank. “How did you know?”

  Arden’s eyes flicked toward her. “How did I know to come and get you? I didn’t.” She shrugged. “After you left, I just couldn’t sleep. I sat by the windows in my room, waiting for you to come home. Finally it had been so long, I started to think—” She halted. “I thought maybe what I’d said had come true. So I grabbed my bike and rode to the library.”

  “You could have just told Mom and Dad,” said Fiona, climbing over a fallen tree. “You didn’t have to come out by yourself in the middle of the night.”

  “That would have taken more time, waking them and explaining everything. And you would have gotten into huge trouble. And I just . . .” Arden paused again. “I had to make sure you were okay. Myself.”

  They reached the riverbank. For a moment, the muddy smell of the water made Fiona’s steps falter. The waves closing over her face in the old cistern had smelled just the same. But here, there was moonlight and wind and the scent of fresh leaves. And Arden was beside her.

  Margaret and Evelyn started across Parson’s Bridge, Pixie pattering ahead. Their feet made only the softest sounds on the wooden boards.

  Fiona and Arden tagged after. The two of them were walking fast, but somehow they were falling farther behind.

  “When you got to the library,” Fiona asked, “how did you find me? How did you know where to look?”

  Arden’s profile was silvery in the moonlight. “When I got there, the front doors were wide open. I ran inside, but everything was dark, and while I was trying to find the lights, that dog came running up to me, barking its head off. And then I saw that girl, running down a hallway. . . .” She pointed toward Margaret, ahead of them. “I followed her to the basement. Even though you know I hate basements. And even though I could tell she wasn’t . . . she wasn’t really . . .”

  Fiona met her sister’s eyes. “They’ve both been gone for a long time.”

  “Well, at least . . .” Arden broke off with a little shudder in her voice. “At least they found each other again.”

  Fiona looked down. Arden’s steps were shaky too. She hadn’t noticed it before, with the darkness and uneven ground, but Arden was limping.

  “Hey,” she said. “Are you hurt?”

  “No. Not really.” Arden shook her head. “I just landed wrong on one ankle when I jumped out of that water tank. I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Arden hesitated for a split second. “I don’t know. But that’s okay. You’re here, and I’m here, and we’re okay.”

  “If you need to lean on me or anything,” said Fiona, “you can.”

  “Thanks,” said Arden. “If I need to.”

  They had reached the denser woods on the far side of the bridge. The Chisholm sisters were many steps ahead of them now, their dresses just pale spots between the thick trees.

  “Where are we going, anyway?” Arden asked.

  “To the Enchanted Forest, I think. It’s part of the woods where the sisters used to go. They named all the trees and decorated them and made up stories and stuff. It was their special place.”

  “Hey, Fifi,” said Arden. “Do you remember the Hidden Cavern?”

  Fiona hadn’t remembered. But Arden’s words brought it back: the low, crooked nook underneath the staircase at Grandma Crane’s house, where she and Arden had played during every summer visit.

  “The Hidden Cavern,” Fiona breathed. “I haven’t thought about that in forever.”

  “Well, you were only five when Grandma moved out of that house,” said Arden. “I wanted to imagine that it was a secret room full of jewels in an old castle, but you wanted to say it was a hole full of dinosaur bones.”

  “So we pretended it had both.” Fiona smiled. “Jewels and dinosaur bones.”

  The ground sloped beneath them, guiding them down into a patch of ferns. The surrounding trees, tall as church steeples, whispered softly. Fiona gazed around. Even in the middle of the night, this grove looked green. It smelled and felt green too, full of things that would always be alive and growing, even when they were hard to see.

  “Where did they go?” Arden asked.

  Fiona pulled her eyes back to the ground.

  The sisters had vanished.

  She scanned the trees in every direction, but there were no summery linen dresses, no heads of long brown hair. She thought she heard a single bark from Pixie, somewhere very far away. But that was all.

  She and Arden were alone in the leafy moonlight.

  Once there were two sisters who did everything together, Fiona thought.

  They stood still for a long, quiet minute, breathing in the silvery air.

  “We should get home,” Arden said at last. “I really hope Mom and Dad didn’t get up for a midnight snack or anything.”

  “Yeah.” Fiona turned away from the grove. Her stomach, no longer twisted up with fear, gave a low growl. “Now I really want a midnight snack.”

  “You know what we should do?” said Arden as they headed toward Parson’s Bridge. “Make ice-cream sundaes. If Mom and Dad wake up, we can say that’s what we were doing all along.”

  “Yes!” Fiona smiled. “Let’s run and get our bikes!”

  Arden’s face shifted. “I don’t know if—” She broke off. “I’m not sure I should try to run on this ankle. I mean, it’s probably fine. I just . . . never mind. You should go ahead. You’ll get home faster.”

  “No,” said Fiona quickly. “I’ll walk with you. And you should hold my arm, just in case.”

  “Okay. Fine.” Arden took Fiona’s elbow. “We can call this the favor you owe me.”

  “What? No way.” Fiona turned to watch her sister’s face. “The favor should be something big.”

  Arden didn’t look down, but she held Fiona’s arm a little closer. “Like you coming to watch me skate sometime?”

  “No,” said Fiona again. “That’s not a favor. That’s just something I should do.”

  There was a beat.

  “Okay,” said Arden. And Fiona could see her smile, even through the darkness. “We’ll save it for another time, then.”

  And they stepped onto the old wooden bridge together.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Three days later, when Charlie was finally allowed to leave his house, Fiona told him the whole story over cinnamon buns at the Perch Diner.

  It took a long time, because he kept interrupting, and they had to go silent whenever Judy or other diners came near their booth, and by the time Fiona reached the end of the tale, over an hour had passed.

  It was funny, Fiona thought, how short hours became when you were with certain people. Time had always flown when she was with Cy and Nick and Bina. Sitting here with Charlie felt almost like being with one of them—except instead of feeling comfortable and familiar, this felt new and unfamiliar. And that was good too.

  “There’s one more thing,” said Fiona. “When I got home that night, The Lost One had already disappeared from my backpack. I thought it might have gone back to the library again. But when I sneaked up to the third floor to check Evelyn’s room, it wasn’t there either. It wasn’t anywhere.”

  “That makes sense,” said Charlie, looking annoyingly unsurprised. “The book doesn’t need to be read anymore. It’s done.”

  “I guess so,�
� said Fiona. She felt heavy and empty at the same time. A lot like a blank leather-bound book.

  Charlie cut a bite of cinnamon bun but didn’t eat it. “I wish I had been there,” he said, looking down at the tabletop.

  “Me too,” Fiona answered.

  Although she only said it to be kind.

  If Charlie had stayed at the library with her, everything would have been different. Arden wouldn’t have had to jump into the cistern and haul Fiona out. The two of them wouldn’t have walked through the moonlit woods, ridden their bikes across the sleeping town, or sat on the kitchen floor eating giant bowls of ice cream at two thirty in the morning. Fiona wouldn’t know, not for certain, how many rules Arden would bend or how many chances she would take, just for her.

  And Fiona liked knowing.

  “It’s weird,” she said, turning her cocoa mug in circles. “I’m glad we know what really happened. I’m glad we helped. But I’m also kind of sorry that the story is done.”

  Charlie nodded. “I know what you mean. But stories are supposed to have endings. Plus, they can only really end if no one knows them. And you and I will remember this one.”

  “Yes.” Fiona gave him a full smile now. “Definitely.”

  “So,” said Charlie as Fiona scraped up a trail of icing. “You’re still going to be here in the fall, right?”

  “I’d say the odds are ninety-nine-point-five percent. Why?”

  He shrugged, looking almost sheepish. “I was just wondering if you’ll be going to school here. If you do, we’ll be in the same grade.”

  “Oh.” Fiona had barely thought about the school year. With all of summer stretching out ahead—a summer that had seemed so blank and lonely just a week ago—the next grade was a barely visible bump on the horizon. “Yeah. I suppose we will be.”

  “Good.” Charlie flashed a smile. “It’ll be great to have someone else around who . . . I mean, most of the kids here don’t understand why someone would spend half their summer in a library.”

  Fiona scooped up the last drip of icing. “I don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t.”

  “Me neither,” Charlie agreed. “When you get your school schedule, you should show me. I know all the teachers, so I can tell you what they’re like. And I can help you find your way around the school. It’s not too big, but I still know all the best routes. And there’s a science club. We invent things and solve problems and go to competitions. You could join us. If you want to.”