Essential Maps for the Lost by Deb Caletti Page A

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    Thomas’s truck shudders over sixty-five. Mads arrives at the Bellaroses’, sweaty and out of breath. Suzanne basically shoves poor Ivy into her arms and then takes off, tires screaming. Suzanne always speaks through objects. Tires and doors and Ivy.
    â€œIt’s good to see you. It is so, so good to see you.” Mads says this to Ivy, but in her mind’s eye, she is also saying it to Billy Youngwolf Floyd, the moment he runs up to Thomas’s truck, the moment he speaks four words she never knew were magic: Is it the battery?
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    â€œYou can just go out with him and see what happens. Having a date doesn’t mean you’re marrying him. You can take it slow.” Mads sits on the edge of the bed in her room at Claire and Thomas’s house. It’s their former office/spare room, where they put in a twin bed for her. There’s a big oak desk, too, and on it, a picture of Claire, Thomas, and Harrison standing near a fountain. Also—Harrison’s first-grade school photo in a frame. In it, he looks serious and responsible, like he’s about to come fix the air-conditioning unit in the apartment complex.
    â€œHe’s so short, he’s up to my eyebrows! His wife cheated on him. That’s why he’s divorced. He wanted to stay married. He’s not the type to just up and leave, like some people we know.”
    Mads likes that room, but right then, listening to her mother on the phone, she feels as if she’s somewhere else. In a lake, where water-words are drowning her. In a desert, where her mother’s voice rolls over her like waves of heat as she slowly melts.
    â€œGood, then,” Mads says.
    â€œWell, I’m in no hurry to be with a man. I like things the way they are, with you and me. Us girls. Boys just bring complications.”
    I like complications , Mads thinks.
    There’s a rap on the door, and Claire pokes her head in. “Dinner,” she mouths.
    â€œGotta go, Mom.”
    â€œWe barely got to talk.”
    â€œDinner’s ready.”
    â€œYou hardly have five minutes for me anymore.”
    Mads’s chest squeezes with the bad/ungrateful/guilty feeling. She can be so selfish, she thinks. Selfish = bad person. She should be more generous. Even this guy, Jim Beam, will be gone soon enough. She knows this. Her mom will pick at him; she will jab and belittle. One day, he’ll strike back, because he doesn’t understand the rules, how you’re supposed to keep the waters calm, and then it will be over. Everyone leaves Catherine Jaynes Murray, which means Mads never can.
    On the other end of the phone, their home sounds empty and abandoned. Of course, Mads worries about abandoned . She’s seen what it’s done before. It turns her mom into all of the fairy-tale characters at once—the small, scared Gretel lost in the woods, and the angry, consuming witch with the oven and the house of candy. She’s a grown woman , Mads’s father would say, Claire would say, Thomas would say. But she isn’t really. Mads understands that even the witch is just having a very large tantrum, even if it’s hard to say what’s worse, the small and scared or the angry and consuming.
    â€œWe’ll talk tomorrow.”
    â€œI wanted to tell you about a new listing I got.”
    â€œClaire’s calling.”
    â€œI think it can go for over four hundred. It’s got a view. The seller’s a bitch, though. You know what she said?”
    â€œMom, I’ve got to go.”
    Mads’s mom sighs. The wind whistles through the desert. “Well, I’m off. I have work to do.”
    â€œLove you.”
    â€œI love you. I miss you so much. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
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    â€œMads, you barely ate anything,” Claire says. She slides the casserole dish of vegetarian lasagna toward her. “Thomas, give her another