“I’m sure he remembers,” my mom said in that soothing way that made me want to scream. “Oliver’s coming home and he’s safe. That’s what matters right now.”
I looked at Caro. She crossed her eyes back at me.
My mom suddenly stopped. “Hey,” she said. “Why is your hair wet?”
All three of us froze, Caro almost choking on her crêpe.
“We dared her to try out for the swim team,” Drew said, not missing a beat.
“That’s why I didn’t get your messages,” I added, tapping Drew’s ankle under the table in a silent thank-you. He kicked back his own version of you’re welcome.
My mom just laughed. “Crazy kids,” she said, then turned around to get more food. “You know Emmy can’t swim very well.”
Caro, Drew, and I looked at one another, then Caroline leaned over and brushed some sand off my elbow, wiping away my secret.
CHAPTER THREE
The day dragged on as we waited for more news about Oliver. Not that there was anything to hear, of course. He was on a plane in the sky, hurtling back to us with the same instantaneous force that had caused him to disappear in the first place. His dad was still missing, but my parents kept Caro and Drew and me away from the news and computers. (They don’t know that Caro and I figured out how to disable the internet parental controls years ago. Plus, hello? iPhones.)
Drew and Caro immediately got permission to sleep over. Caro’s parents hadn’t even heard that Oliver was found and I could hear her enthusiasm diminish with every sentence between them. “They found him! . . . No, they don’t know where he is. . . . No, I already cleaned my half of the room. . . . That’s Heather’s mess, not mine. . . . Okay, yeah. No, I don’t know. Thanks, bye.”
Sometimes, I suspect that Caro’s parents lose track of their kids. There’s six in all, and Caro’s the youngest. “I’m shuffled to the bottom of the deck,” she says whenever it comes up. I think the biggest problem is that she’s had to share a bedroom her entire life with Heather, her older sister, and Heather is basically a tornado with legs. Caro, on the other hand, is a very organized, neat person, and watching them share a room is like watching two movies on one screen. Caro is desperate for Heather to move out.
Drew’s parents were beside themselves with joy that he wanted to spend the night with us girls. “Just Caro and Emmy,” he said into the phone, wiggling his eyebrows at us lasciviously. “We just want to hang out and talk . . . no, Mom, it’s Friday. No school tomorrow . . . okay, fine. Fine. Bye.”
“You lucky guy,” I said as soon as he hung up. “Spending the night with two lovely ladies such as ourselves.”
Drew just grinned and pushed his hair out of his eyes. It was getting long and I suspected that it was a metaphorical middle finger to his straitlaced parents. Who could blame him? “Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink,” he said mournfully, then plopped himself on my bed next to Caro and sighed.
The nervous energy started to creep in once the sun set. It had been setting later now that Christmas was over, and by seven o’clock, the sky was dark. No one really ate dinner, and finally my dad pushed his chair back from the table and said, “Well, I’m done,” and the rest of us followed suit.
There had been so much food when Oliver first disappeared. So much, in fact, that Maureen’s kitchen couldn’t hold it all and much of it made its way to our house. Not that anyone was eating then, either. Casseroles don’t look appetizing even in the best of times, and there were just so many of them. Even at seven years old, I knew there was a limit to the magical healing powers of baked ziti. Neighbors kept bringing them by, trying to look past us and into our house and Maureen’s house, like we had shoved Oliver into a cupboard under the stairs. We gave some of it to the nicer reporters. Caro and I spent an afternoon eating an entire bowl of ambrosia salad with teaspoons and then an entire night in total abdominal agony. We weren’t in trouble, though—that creepy indulgence was in full effect—and for the first time in my life, I had wished we had been. At least that would have been normal.
From the moment they discovered Oliver was found through the next day, a few neighbors came knocking on our door. “I didn’t want to disturb Maureen,” they said, then offered their brisket/creamed-corn casserole/Jell-O mold with mandarin orange slices jiggling in the middle. Drew looked at all of it and shook his head. “Why don’t people just bring alcohol?” Drew wondered aloud.
“Hear, hear.” My dad sighed as he tried to make room for the Jell-O in the refrigerator. He had spent the entire Saturday with Drew, Caro, and me hanging out in our backyard, not eager to leave the house in case something happened and we missed it. I didn’t know what “it” would be, but it felt better to be at home than anywhere else. (Well, besides surfing, but I had no idea how to sneak out to the ocean and back with news crews parked all the way up the street.)
“Ugh, ambrosia,” Caro muttered when she saw the salad in the refrigerator. “I can’t even use coconut body lotion without feeling ill.”
“Pretty much,” I said, then helped myself to some tomatoes off the veggie tray that our neighbors across the street had delivered an hour ago.
I knew we’d eventually toss most of the food, like we had ten years ago. Seeing the dishes lined up on the countertop made my stomach flip and I gripped the tile in my hand just as I heard some shouts from the cameramen.