Once Was Lost by Sara Zarr Page A

have something to do with my eyes other than look at him.
    Forced to deal with a mute, he says, “Your dad’s been really great. I don’t know what we’d do without him.”
    “Oh. Yeah. Good.”
    Sometimes, moments like this, I can see my dad a little bit through other people’s eyes. Objectively I can say he’s a good man who cares about people, a good pastor who cares about his church. And I wonder if I expect too much. If I picture it as a giant scale, with me and Mom on one side, and the whole congregation on the other, Mom and I are way up there, light as feathers, compared to the weight of the rest of everyone else who needs him.
    Nick leans back on the sofa, groaning and patting his stomach. “One brownie over the line.”
    I smile a little and set down my milk. “Yeah.” I’m sure this conversation will go down as one of the worst in the history of Nick’s life.
    “Look,” he says, “I’m sorry. I know this is… I should have let you go with Erin.”
    Even he realizes this is a disaster and wants to get rid of me.
    He sits forward. “I just wanted to feel normal for a minute. Spending twenty-four hours a day with my parents and grandparents is definitely not normal.”
    I want to feel normal, too. “When do you leave for State?”
    “I’m supposed to be packing up my room and stuff for moving into the dorms, like, right now. I can’t do that to my parents… pack up and leave in the middle of this. But in my head I am. Sorting out my junk. What I’ll take, what I’ll leave.” He glances toward the staircase and lowers his voice. “I want to leave, though. That’s horrible, right? To want to bail? To want to just get out of here and be somewhere else?”
    And that second, everything changes. Nick doesn’t think I’m a disastrous, boring mute. We really are having a conversation. I just haven’t figured my part out yet. Now is my chance to finally say something. “I don’t think it’s horrible. I think… probably anyone would want to be anywhere else.”
    “Yeah.” He nods, like he expected nothing less of me than to understand. “You’re right. Speaking of getting out of here, I can take you home, you know.”
    “Oh, I think I should wait for Erin.”
    “Call her,” he says, already standing to get his keys off the side table and feel for his wallet.
    I stand, too, and straighten my shorts, tighten my ponytail. I pull my phone out of my pocket and pause. I don’t want Erin to say no, to say she’s already on her way. In about three minutes I’ve gone from desperately not wanting her to leave me here alone to desperately not wanting her to come back. So I text her instead of calling: Nick’s taking me home .
    On our way out, Nick slides his feet into the sandals by the door and says, “Let me just tell my grandpa I’m leaving so that no one worries.”
    He jogs up the stairs, and I step out into the night to wait. Though the sun is down, the day’s heat lingers, pulsating from gravel and through the thin soles of my flip-flops. It feels more like a regular summer night, and less like the backward world we’ve been living in since Sunday. And even though so many things are going wrong right now, I want something in me to still be able to enjoy a night like this, to feel that it’s good to be here, and alive.
    “Okay,” Nick says, closing the door behind him and pointing to the silver mini-truck in the driveway. “You’re the first passenger in my new ride. I just got it Saturday. It’s five years old, but my last one was thirteen so it feels brand new to me.”
    I walk around to the front of the truck as Nick turns on the headlights, illuminating my legs and swarms of gnats. When I climb in, his cell rings. He flips it open while simultaneously backing out of the drive. “Hey,” he says. “Nothing.” He holds the phone to his shoulder with his head and puts the truck in gear to start us moving forward. “I can’t.”
    The trees and houses and fences flick by as