The basement.
So close I wanted to weep.
Could I dash forward, run downstairs, verify it was the room where I’d seen Maureen on her knees, and rush back before Mom came apart? I’d need a reason for my flaky behavior, and then an excuse to get Mom out of there. It was a lot, an overwhelming mountain to climb, but I could do it. If it would save Maureen, I could do it.
I almost jumped out of my skin when I felt the feathery touch.
Junie’s hand was seeking mine, her blue-lined eyes locked on Mom. She’d heard the pop, too. My heart plummeted. I couldn’t leave her. I was so close to that basement, but I couldn’t abandon my sister.
We both twitched when we heard the siren. Its keening sound was soon followed by spinning lights slicing through the descending lavender dusk and bouncing off the trees. A police car screeched to a stop in front of Sheriff Nillson’s house. Nillson reached toward his waist as if searching for his pistol, but he wasn’t in uniform. He hurried outside, Dad on his heels.
The driver’s side door opened, and a uniformed officer shot out. “We found the girl, Jerome. She’s over at the quarries.”
The air became thick.
Alive? I wanted to yell. Did you find her alive?
“In the car,” Dad ordered us. “Now.”
“Give me two minutes,” Sheriff Nillson said, hurrying back in the house.
“I’m going to bring my family home, and then I’ll meet you there,” Dad told the officer, his face grim. “Which quarry?”
“Dead Man’s.”
CHAPTER 27
Dad raced us home and took off toward the quarries almost before we were out of the car.
Mom watched him drive away, hand shading her eyes from the sun dropping into its violet pillow. I was a pounding ache, unable to imagine going inside or staying outdoors.
“I wonder which girl it is,” Junie asked, all three of us standing in front of the house.
I whirled on her. “What?”
But the truth smacked me before the word had fully left my mouth. Maureen wasn’t the only missing girl in Saint Cloud. Beth McCain still hadn’t returned. I felt guilty for how desperately I hoped it was Maureen, whole and healthy, that they’d discovered in the quarries.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want Beth to be found. It’s that her absence didn’t leave the same hole in my life as Maureen’s had. Before all this, Beth had occupied an untended room in my head, the one where you stored neutral people who moved at the edges of your circle, those who were not quite acquaintances but who you’d be happy to see if you ran into them somewhere foreign, a place where you didn’t know the rules.
Hey, you’re from Saint Cloud!
Yeah! You too.
Maureen, though? She was like family.
“I’m going on a bike ride,” I said, my mind climbing on top of itself. Was it safe to leave Junie with Mom?
“I wanna come,” Junie said.
Mom shuffled past us, into the house. From behind, it looked like someone had smudged her edges with their thumb.
“You can’t,” I said. “I’m biking too far.”
“You’re going to the quarries, aren’t you?” she asked, hands on her hips, her stance defiant. “To see if it’s Maureen.”
“I’m going to drop you at Claude’s,” I said, watching Mom’s back.
“But I’m hungry!”
“You can join them for supper.” Mrs. Ziegler had made many a meal for us. It’d been less often now that I could cook, but their house was our house. Mrs. Ziegler had said it and she meant it. “I’ll pick you up on my way home, and we’ll make Jiffy Pop and watch TV tonight together. Deal?”
She grumbled, but after I called Mrs. Ziegler, my heart stampeding—which girl was it?—and Mrs. Z said not only did they have plenty of food but that they were about to sit down to a pan of lasagna with rainbow sherbet for dessert, Junie was all smiles. I walked her to the end of the Ziegler sidewalk, was tempted to wait and make sure she made it inside, but a thousand red ants crawled across my skin, entering through my pores, creeping beneath my flesh. I could no more stand still than I could grow wings.
“Don’t leave the Zieglers without me,” I called as I ran my bike toward Brenda’s. “Remember I’m picking you up.”
I charged up Brenda’s walkway and pounded on the front door. Her mom answered, her smile doing an up-down as she saw it was me and then, a beat later, read my mood. “What is it?”
“Is Brenda home?”