What We Lost

by Sara Zarr

  “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.

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  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.
r />   “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.”

  Day 12

  Wednesday

  KPXU

  SPECIAL REPORT

  This is Melinda Ford, live at the search site just outside Dillon’s Bluff, where hikers made a gruesome discovery yesterday morning. Here’s what we know: three hikers were a few miles off the Ridgeline Trail when they literally stumbled onto a human hand, and immediately notified authorities. As you can imagine, there was concern that the remains were somehow related to thirteen-year-old Jody Shaw, who has been missing for nearly a week and a half.

  Unfortunately, yesterday’s confusion led to misinformation. A local radio station reported that Jody’s body had been found, and that story was widely reported for much of the day. However, as of right now, it is not believed that the remains are at all related to the Jody Shaw case. The size of the hand and the state of decomposition led experts to believe that the hand belongs to an adult male deceased for at least a month. There will be a press conference later today to confirm these details.

  It’s not all good news for the Shaw family. Sources tell us that Nick Shaw, Jody’s eighteen-year-old brother, was taken into custody yesterday afternoon for reasons not made known and given a second polygraph. Neither the family nor the authorities have any comment at this time, but we expect that to be addressed at the press conference as well.

  I’m in the yard, fiddling with the plastic sheeting and wondering how long it’s going to take to thoroughly smother everything that’s under there, though I guess I shouldn’t worry about that since Mom’s return is so… indefinite. I hear the back door slide open and look up; Dad stands there, watching, his coffee cup in hand.

  “You need any help with that?”

  “No.”

  You would think I’d feel happy and relieved now that we know that the remains aren’t Jody’s. In a way it feels like we should start the search all over again, like we’ve been given a second chance. But in another way, the more time goes by, the harder it is to not know anything, to just be in the dark. Knowing for sure, even bad news, would at least be one thing that’s certain.

  Dad tried to sit me down last night and talk to me about what happened with Nick. He tried to get the point across that this is danger, real danger, and I can’t go on acting like everything and everyone is safe.

  “I don’t think that,” I said. If anything I feel the opposite. Just because I trust one person doesn’t mean I trust anyone else.

  We went around and around, and eventually I wouldn’t reply to anything and only sat there at the table with my arms folded, telling him over and over, “I’m tired.”

  Finally he gave up, and let me go to bed.

  I didn’t sleep. I stayed up nearly all night with my phone in my hand, on vibrate, hoping for a call or a text or anything from Nick. Over and over again I replayed being out in that field with him, the moment I knew I was safe with him and he was going to kiss me.

  He didn’t call. I worried that they’d put him in jail. I worried that all this is my fault, and it kind of is—he was just a friend giving me a ride.

  I made one call in the night. To the police tip line, and all I said was, “You should talk to Cal at the hardware store.”

  The only call I got was this morning, from Vanessa. She started right in, sounding confused and hurt more than angry. “I didn’t even know you and Nick were friends like that.”

  “How do you know what happened?” I asked.

  “I heard my mom telling my dad. I didn’t mean to but I was going to the bathroom in the middle of the night and they were talking in the kitchen and I kind of… stopped to listen.”

  “How did they know?”

  “Your dad? The Internet? Who knows.”

  She asked me a bunch of questions and I answered with as little detail as I possibly could without making her hate me.

  Now, Dad comes over and helps fix a corner of the sheeting that’s blown up even though I told him I don’t need help. “I made a couple of calls,” he says, “following up on yesterday’s meeting. Hopefully we’ll hear something soon about tuition assistance. Lord, honey, your legs.”

  They look bad, but they don’t hurt too much. It’s my palms that still sting, and my elbow is sore from sort of landing on it when I fell. I take the sheeting from him. It might be easier to take his lies if they didn’t roll off his tongue so easily.

  “It’s kind of getting too late, Dad. School starts next week.”

  “We’ll hope for the best but plan for the worst, okay?”

  I say nothing, and brush off my shorts, ready to go in.

  Dad lowers himself into a lawn chair. “Sit with me here a minute, Sammy.”

  I shake my head, and keep my face turned away from him. He wants to talk about yesterday, I know, talk about Mom, talk about everything and then give me orders about how I should spend my time today, which will no doubt involve being dumped off at Vanessa’s so he’s free to do whatever it is he does.

  As I pass him on the way inside, he gently takes my wrist. “Sit,” he says, not meanly, but firm. I do.

  “Tell me what the sudden urge to see your mom was about, honey.”

  For the last twenty-four hours, in my imagination, I’ve been confronting my dad about Erin. Asking him directly, accusing him, listing the evidence, demanding an explanation. Now that I have the chance, I can’t. He’s my dad. What I’d be asking is so personal. I’m not even sure I have the right to know, or if I want to know.

  “I just had to,” I say.

  He takes in breath and opens his mouth, to say that’s not an answer or to ask again, but something makes him change his mind and all he does is look down at his coffee. “I’m sorry if you think I’ve been overprotective. The world feels very different than it did, before.”

  “I know. For me, too.”

  “Everyone thinks I have answers about why this happened, but it’s not like God has called me up on the special pastor’s hotline and told me.”

  “Do you think she’s dead?” I ask, and hold my breath as I watch him think.

  What he wants to say is yes. Yes is all over his face. But he’s a coward, and won’t do it. The best he can do is, “I don’t know.”

  I stand up and this time he lets me go in. Before I close the sliding door, I look back at him. “Dad?”

  “Yeah, Sammy?”

  “I don’t want Erin to bring us dinner anymore.”

  The look on his face tells me everything that I thought I wanted to know.

  I was right about Dad dumping me at Vanessa’s. “It won’t be f
or long,” he says. “I just have to run to the office and to the Shaws’ to help them prepare for the press conference, then I’ll come right back for you.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “If you want to come with me, you can.” Neither of us have said anything else about Mom or Erin, but I feel like he’s trying to prove to me that he’s not going to do anything wrong, anymore, ever again.

  “It’s okay.” I don’t want to be in charge of him, monitor him, any more than I ever wanted to be monitoring Mom.

  When I get to Vanessa’s, Daniel is there, too. We hang out in the basement, watching TV and not talking much.

  “Jeez, Sam, seriously,” Daniel said when he first saw my legs.

  “I’m fine.”

  Vanessa kept her eyes on the TV, where they have remained fixed for an hour now. When she goes upstairs to ask her mom about lunch, Daniel looks at me. “I’m supposed to be the buffer. How am I doing?”

  “Great.”

  “So,” he says, “what’s your version?”

  “Of why Vanessa is mad at me? Or of yesterday?”

  “She’s not mad at you. She just feels like she doesn’t understand you anymore. That’s what she told me, anyway.”

  I don’t understand me anymore, either, I want to say. Or anyone. We all keep saying how different the world is since Jody disappeared, but even if she comes back it will still be different. For us, for her. Maybe she’ll come home and her room will look unfamiliar, her parents will feel like strangers. Maybe she won’t even recognize herself, the way I don’t recognize myself, like I’m a stranger in my life and it’s all going on around me and I don’t know how to be, or who to be in it. I want to know where I am in this different world. Maybe I’m in the same place I always was, but I don’t realize it because I don’t recognize anything.

  All I can tell Daniel is, “Nick didn’t do anything. He gave me a ride to see my mom and that’s all.”

  “And you look like you rolled down a hill of broken glass because…”

  “That was my fault. The whole thing was my fault.” I pick up the remote and change from the music channel we’ve been watching to a cartoon. “How’s your calling coming along?”