The Missing Girl by Norma Fox Mazer Page B

D-A-N-D-E-L-I-O-N. ” Both ways sound right to you. Rats! You don’t want to think about it anymore.
    You squat down in the empty field and you hug your knees and look at the things that are growing right along with all the trash, the beer bottles and the sticky papers and some awful reddish gloop, which you don’t even want to know what it is. You squat there for a while, watching a bunch of ants rushing around, and thinking that when Poppy is feeling good again, he’ll show you more stuff about nature and plants. He could spell dandelion for you, too.
    It’s getting sort of windy, though, and a little bit dark in the sky, like it might rain, and now you notice that you’re hungry, really hungry. It must be way past Sunday brunch time. You missed the pancakes, and now you’re sorry, and you’re ready to go home, but you’ve lost track of the streets. You’re not exactly lost, but you’re not exactly sure how to get home, either. You need to ask somebody.
    You stand up and brush off your jeans and look around.
    You better go to one of those houses down on the other end of the street. Oh, lucky you! Someone is out in front 147

    of the first house, raking. You walk toward the house, humming to yourself, because you don’t want the man to think you’re scared of being lost or anything like that. He’s raking old dried leaves into a big pile, and you think about jumping in leaves and how much fun that is, but you usually do that in the fall, not in the spring. The man doesn’t seem to notice that you’re coming along, so you walk right up to him and say in your politest voice, “Hello. Could you tell me something, please?”
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    BURNED PANCAKES
    EVEN THOUGH THE sky had darkened, and it looked like it might rain, Beauty opened a window to clear out the smoke from the burned pancakes, which were Nathan’s fault. Well, not really. She’d been distracted by him, the way he wiped his face with his sweatshirt, showing his belly, small, hard, smooth, like an orange.
    What would it be like to touch that belly, to put her hand over it?
    Fancy brought her sewing into the kitchen and sat down. “Stinks in here,” she said cheerfully, laying her head on their father’s shoulder. He patted her and went on sort-ing nails and screws into separate piles. Nathan was sitting 149

    next to him, watching and occasionally picking up a nail and putting it in the right box. A wave of pity for her father went through Beauty. He looked so old and white, so thin shouldered, next to Nathan, whose skin almost glowed with health.
    Her mother came into the kitchen and sat down at the table, but immediately jumped up, saying, “I should change this shirt. It smells like a cafeteria.”
    “Smells like a cafeteria?” Fancy repeated in her fast, high voice. “That is a funny joke, Mommy! Smells like a cafeteria,” she said again, her voice parading over the words.
    Nathan leaned and sniffed her mother’s neck. “Smells good to me.”
    What a jerk, Beauty thought unwillingly. Flirting with her mother? Her father was watching, too. Beauty thought she might just strangle her so-called object of desire . She leaned over the table toward her father. “Dad, we really need to clean up here. Can I help you do that?”
    “I’m good,” he said, and gathered up his tools and the thin strands of copper wire.
    Beauty closed the window again and went to the staircase. “Mim,” she called, “are you going to set the table, or 150

    do you want me to do it?” She waited, her hand on the banister. This was usually Stevie’s job, but Beauty wasn’t about to ask her for anything today. Poor kid, being sent away. No matter how much Stevie raged or how much people bickered with each other, they were family—that was the bottom line.
    “I’ll do it, Beauty,” Mim answered.
    In the kitchen her father cleared away his tools and his toolbox. Mim set the table. Her mother appeared in a fresh blouse. Stevie came in, looking at no one and, the