Missing by Becky Citra Page B

throat.
    Concentrate on Renegade. I survey him critically. His coat isn’t exactly gleaming. I know it will take days of brushing to get rid of all the dirt and bring out the shine. But he looks much better than he did.
    A film of dirt sticks to my arms and my hair and my clothes. My hands are dark with grime. Half an hour more, I tell myself, and then I’ll quit for today.
    The thought of jumping into the cool lake is tantalizing.

S ixteen
    Van comes over after lunch and we go out in his boat. He cuts the motor and we drift in the sun. We talk about the party for a while.
    â€œChloe likes you,” he says. “She has a pretty lousy life. She could probably use another friend.”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with her life?” I ask.
    â€œHer dad left a couple of years ago. She’s living with her mom and her mom’s boyfriend, who she can’t stand. I’ve met him. He’s a total jerk.”
    â€œWhat does he do?”
    Van shrugs. “He’s just a jerk. He hassles her over dumb stuff. And he drinks all the time.”
    â€œThat sounds depressing.” I think about Chloe’s infectious grin. She’s pretty good at hiding things too. “What about Chloe’s mom? Does she stick up for her?”
    â€œHer mom doesn’t care what Chloe does as long as she stays out of the way. She doesn’t even care that Chloe smokes.”
    My dad would freak if he caught me with a cigarette. And he asked a million questions before he let me go to the party. Something shifts inside me. Slightly. Maybe my life isn’t so bad.
    â€œChloe spends most of her time riding. If she didn’t have her horse, I don’t know how she’d survive,” says Van.
    â€œShe’s going to ride over to my place sometime,” I say.
    â€œThat’s great,” says Van. He sounds like he really means it, and I wonder if all the youth-group kids care about each other that much.
    I lift my hot hair off my shoulders and twist it into a braid. I think about going swimming. Van’s been leaning back, his baseball cap tipped over his eyes, but now he sits up. Turns out he’s thinking about swimming too. “There’s a good spot to land on Spooky Island,” he says.
    It only takes a few minutes to get to the island. Van turns the motor off and lifts the propeller out of the water; then he guides the boat between two fallen trees that stick out from the shore. He ties the boat to a branch and we climb out, wading across smooth slippery rocks until we get to the shore.
    The island is small and covered with scraggly dead trees. Dry sticks are scattered all over the ground; they’re sharp under our bare feet so we have to step carefully. Van shows me a fort he worked on for years. He pretends to be offended when I tell him it looks like a random pile of branches. He digs into the middle of it and produces a grimy jar with a rusty lid. “I used to leave messages in here,” he says with a grin.
    Van strips off his shirt. I’ve got my bathing suit on under my clothes but I still feel shy taking off my shirt and shorts. We wade in from a grassy bank to swim. The weeds feel like ropes around my legs until we get to deeper water. I float on my back and stare up at the sky. One puffy white cloud is floating in a sea of blue.
    I feel perfect right now. If only I could save this feeling for when we have to move again.

    On the way back, we talk about Van’s grandfather and Livia Willard. I’ve been waiting for Van to bring it up and he does, finally. He says he can’t stop thinking about it, wishing there was some way he could change the past.
    I know all about wanting to change the past. It doesn’t work. I could have told Van that.
    â€œGrandpa’s gotta be the gentlest guy in the universe,” says Van. “He’s had to live with this for so long. It’s not fair. And what I really hate is there’s nothing I can do about