Once Was Lost by Sara Zarr Read Free Book Online Page B

tragedy.
    We pick up orange mesh vests and bottles of water, and Erin talks to one of the coordinators. Then she explains it to us.
    “They’re sending people out in groups of three, mostly,” she says. There are five of us. Vanessa squeezes my hand tighter. “But I told them we want to stay together. Okay?”
    We all agree.
    Then, one of the volunteer coordinators—Darlene, according to her name tag—comes over and tells us that we’re going door to door. We’ve been assigned the neighborhood west of Main and we’re asking the residents questions, passing out flyers, looking for anything unusual.
    “What about searching?” I ask. “What about actually looking for Jody?”
    “We really do need people going door to door.” She touches my arm. “It’s just as important.”
    It’s not how I pictured it. I thought we’d be hiking through scrub forest and foothills. Instead, we cram into Erin’s little car and drive closer to our assigned area, then walk the roads of Pineview in our orange vests, dividing up and sharing tasks. It turns out Kacey is pretty good with maps. A different side of her comes out as she looks at it and points with her pink-polished nails to show us where we are and where we’re going. “We should start this way,” she says, definite, and we follow her. Erin and Vanessa decide they’ll knock on doors and ask questions while Daniel and I search the yards wherever anyone is home and says it’s okay, keeping watch for anything strange.
    It’s still early; the streets are quiet. I’ve been inside some of these houses. I recognize one as the home of my third grade teacher, Mrs. Benchley, who always had an end-of-the-year party at her house for all the parents and kids. We’d have relay races and water balloon tosses on the big field behind her house. Now Mrs. Benchley doesn’t live there anymore, and Daniel and I are walking across that same field, eyes to the ground, searching for we don’t know what.
    I look to the instruction sheet Darlene gave me for help. “It says to call the victim’s name,” I tell Daniel when we stop at the next house. We have to look in garbage cans and recycling bins and in any corner or hidden spot where someone could conceal something or someone.
    Erin and Vanessa talk to the resident on the porch; Kacey leans against a car in the driveway, waiting. The first time Daniel calls Jody’s name, they all stare, alarmed. “It says to call her name,” I repeat, this time to Erin and Vanessa, and Kacey, who looks away.
    He does it at the next house, and it still sounds wrong. By the third stop we’re getting used to it, but there’s one moment after he says her name and I hear the thunk of a garbage can lid being dropped that I feel that sob rising up again, and I have to press my hand against my mouth to keep it in. We’re looking for Jody—Nick’s little sister, Mr. and Mrs. Shaw’s daughter—in garbage cans.
    “Well this is depressing,” Daniel says as we all cross to the next block, if you can describe the layout of Pineview as blocks. It’s really more like clusters of old farmhouses, with newer houses sprinkled in between, now that most of the farmland has been divided up into residential tracts.
    Kacey makes a check mark on the map with a little golf pencil, and says, stopping at the corner, “We could either zigzag across streets to get both sides at once, or do a loop back to the car and get the other side of the street on our way back.” She turns the map for a different view. “Or…”
    “ God , Kacey,” Vanessa blurts, “how can you be so…”
    Kacey sweeps her blond-streaked bangs to one side. Her eyes are steady. “So what?”
    “So efficient.”
    “Okay,” Erin says, putting one hand on each of their shoulders. Kacey pushes it off. Daniel’s eyebrows go up.
    “It’s what I’m good at,” Kacey says to Vanessa, defensive. “I’m good at maps and organization and checking things off lists.” Her body relaxes a