Long Lost, стр. 2

But they wouldn’t have lost the time in the first place if it weren’t for Arden.

“Quarter to five!” cheered Fiona’s dad as they carried in the last load. “Exactly enough time to get to the rental place.” He lifted his hand for a high five. Fiona slapped it with her sweaty palm. “All aboard, Fifi!”

“Hey, Dad?” Fiona shouted before he could jog away. “If we’re dropping off the truck, how are we going to get back home?”

Twenty-five minutes later, they were pedaling their bikes out of the truck rental lot into the unfamiliar streets of Lost Lake.

Fiona followed her dad past an ancient brick post office, a town hall with stiff white columns, and two churches with steeples sharp as nails. Monstrous oaks and maples layered the streets with shade. Even though it was only five thirty, most of the downtown businesses were already darkened for the night, their signs flipped from OPEN to CLOSED. A thick hush dampened the air.

“Hey!” shouted her dad as they pedaled down Main Street. “An ice cream parlor! We’ll have to try it sometime!”

Ice cream? Fiona looked up, surprised. Three-fourths of the Crane family—the three-fourths that were an anatomy professor, a nurse practitioner, and a future Olympian—were intensely healthy eaters. If her dad was offering ice cream, he must be trying to cheer up the one-fourth of the family that was going to be an archeologist-historian and eat whatever it wanted.

Fiona followed her dad’s pointing arm. Like everyplace else in downtown Lost Lake, the ice cream shop was closed. The wire chairs and tables on its sidewalk looked stiff and unwelcoming, more like barricades than furniture. The blue awning above the door flapped listlessly.

Something about that empty shop mixed with the emptiness inside of Fiona—the emptiness where her old house and friends and life belonged—making it darker and deeper than before.

“Hey, Dad?” she called. “Do you think we might ever move back to Pittsfield?”

Her dad glanced over his shoulder. “Move back?”

“Like in a few years, when Arden can drive herself to skating practice, do you think we’ll move again?”

Her dad checked a street sign before signaling a left turn. “I guess it’s possible. But it’s not very likely.”

An invisible rope began to wind around Fiona’s ribs. “Why not?”

“Well, your mom’s job is pretty mobile. Wherever there are kids, they need pediatric NPs. College teaching positions are rarer. If I’d been offered another position in the Boston area, we might have moved east years ago.”

The pressure on Fiona’s ribs pushed harder. Years? She could almost see her life erasing itself around her, the path that led backward disappearing, and any path that might lead forward devoured by the shade of Lost Lake’s giant trees.

By the time they’d pedaled back to the house on Lane’s End Road, Fiona felt not just empty, but sweaty and smelly. She dragged herself upstairs to the shower. It wasn’t until she’d climbed into the spray that she remembered her shampoo and conditioner were still buried in boxes somewhere. And it wasn’t until she’d climbed out again that she realized the bath towels were still packed up too.

When she finally slumped, dressed and dried, back down to the kitchen, her dad and two boxes of delivery pizza had beaten her there. Ice cream and pizza? Her dad was pulling out all the cheer-up-Fiona stops.

“Daniel’s House of Pizza.” she read the box aloud. “Why didn’t you get Pizza Hut? Or Papa Gino’s?”

“They don’t have those here.” Her dad flipped the box open. “But I’m sure this is great.”

It wasn’t.

The pizza was cut into little squares instead of wedges, which was bad enough, as far as Fiona was concerned. On top of that, the sauce was bland, and the crust drooped like a piece of wet fabric.

“Hmm,” said her dad, after a minute of quiet chewing. “Well, new things always take some getting used to.”

The sky beyond the windows was just starting to smudge with darkness when Fiona gave up on her last square of pizza and headed upstairs to her room. She kicked open the door, flopped down on the bed, and pulled her hand-me-down laptop from her backpack.

And, like he knew she needed it, an email from Cy was waiting.

Hey! How’s Lost Lake?

One more week until my birthday party! My mom already got our tickets, so we can see the Wonders of Egypt exhibit before we visit the rest of the science center. You should wear your cartouche shirt. Nick and Bina and I are going to wear ours too.

Have to get to soccer. Check the attachment!

Cy

The attachment was a photo of a hieroglyphic message. Last fall, Fiona and her friends had taught themselves the alphabet in Egyptian hieroglyphs. They printed T-shirts with their translated names and passed notes during class that no one else could read. Fiona scanned the row of symbols. Quail chick, reeds, owl . . .

We miss you.

Fiona’s heart rose and ached at the same time.

It had taken her ages to make real friends. She had spent half of elementary school feeling like a visitor from another world—until she’d found Cy and Bina and Nick, who seemed to have come from that other world too.

And now she’d lost them again.

She switched her laptop off. The room felt instantly emptier, as though someone who’d been sitting beside her had disappeared.

For a distraction, Fiona threw herself into unpacking her books. She started with her Macaulay collection—Pyramid and Castle and Cathedral—and then moved on to history and mythology. She was just organizing the mystery section when there came a long, low creeeeak from over her shoulder.

Fiona spun around.

No one was there.

Not in her room. Not in the hallway beyond.

But her door had swung a bit wider on its ancient hinges.

Air pressure, Fiona reminded herself. Old wood swelling and shrinking.

She stared at the door for several long seconds.

Finally, just to be sure, Fiona stepped through the door into the hallway. She padded along the groaning floorboards toward the front of the house.

She peeped into her parents’ new bedroom. A few things had