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“It’s good you’re not building it up,” Priya said, giving him a thumbs-up. “Nice expectation-setting.”
We were all on the couches to play this game that had still not adequately been explained to me, beyond putting celebrities’ names in a bowl. Wylie, Kenya, and Paula had passed, so it was just (just?) me, Russell, Chloe, Doug, Montana, Priya, Wallace, Connor, and Sydney who were playing.
Wallace shook a giant ceramic bowl that had Sanders Family Movie Night stenciled on the side and looked at us expectantly. “Are we ready?”
“Guys?”
I looked over to see Wylie standing in the hallway.
He was wearing blue striped pajama pants and a sweatshirt that read Harvard-Westlake. But before I could even process that I was seeing Wylie Sanders in his pajamas, I noticed the expression on his face.
“What’s up?” Wallace asked, lowering the bowl.
Wylie looked around the room, then back at us, his brows drawn together. “Has anyone seen Andy?”
CHAPTER 13 Monday
12:15 A.M.
Okay,” Wylie said, looking around at all of us. “Everyone have flashlights?”
We were all standing by the gate at the end of the driveway. We’d been driven there in golf carts, since time was of the essence here and nobody had twenty minutes to hike down it. When Wylie hadn’t been able to find Andy anywhere in the house, he’d come to ask us about it—which was when Montana realized that she’d accidentally left the door ajar when she went to get Priya for Fishbowl.
Everyone had fanned out across the yard, and when Connor saw a gap in the hedge on the border of the Sanders house, he realized that Andy was probably running around somewhere in the neighborhood. This was when all the searching had taken on a new, more serious level, as Kendrick handed out flashlights and Wylie assigned people roles. We would all take a different area of the neighborhood and search by foot in teams of two. Kendrick and Bella would search by golf cart—faster, but not so fast you couldn’t spot a small dog. We needed to try and find Andy as soon as possible—before he wandered too far to be able to find his way home again, and before he could possibly run into a coyote.
So we’d gathered up the search party. Chloe and Paula stayed behind—so they could watch the sleeping kids, and also so there would be someone there in case Andy found his way back.
“We’ve got them,” Connor said, holding up his flashlight. The happy, joking group from the couch was gone—everyone standing around the base of the driveway was serious, their faces grave and worried.
“Great,” Wylie said, nodding. “Let’s check in with each other in thirty minutes, if we haven’t found him by then. Hopefully he hasn’t gotten far.”
Kendrick pointed a clicker at the huge black WS gates and they started to swing slowly outward. We all walked through, and as we did, it hit me that this was the first time I was going through them—I’d flown here, as crazy as that still seemed to me. So since I hadn’t seen this road—or the rest of the neighborhood, except from the sky—I didn’t know what I’d be walking out into.
But it was just a dark street—there wasn’t a line painted down it, or many streetlights that I could see. There didn’t even seem to be a house across from Wylie’s, just a wall of hedges.
The second we’d made it out to the street, people started to organize themselves into pairs, mostly the couples—Montana and Priya, Kenya and Doug, Sydney and Connor. It wasn’t until I saw Wylie clap Wallace on the shoulder that I realized it left me and Russell to pair up. I knew this wasn’t a crazy assumption for everyone to have made—that Russell and I would want to be paired up. After all, I’d arrived with him, had been introduced as his friend—he was the only reason that I was even there. And frankly, everyone was probably too worried about the missing dog to give this much thought at all.
Russell seemed to realize this at the same moment that I did, turning his head as everyone else dispersed, flashlight beams bright against the blue-black night.
The golf carts pulled out of the driveway, each turning a different direction, and a second later, they were gone.
“You can go back to the house,” Russell said, nodding at the gates. They were starting to close, with the W and the S coming closer together—but slowly, taking their time. “I didn’t… I mean, I can go on my own.”
“No, I want to help.” And I did—even if that meant having to walk around with Russell.
“Okay,” Russell said. The flashlight beams of his family were fading as they started to cover more ground, getting farther away from us. If you squinted, it was almost like we were back in Jesse—when it felt like we were the only two people on Earth. When it felt like we had all the time in the world.
“Which way?”
Russell pointed, and we started walking. “This is a gated neighborhood. So hopefully he’s just on the street, or in someone’s yard, and hasn’t made it onto the main roads.”
I nodded, pressing my lips together as I swung my flashlight beam over the hedges. I was determined not to speak first. Sometimes we’d hear faint calls of “Andy!” but aside from that, it was just Russell and me, walking along without speaking.
But after a few minutes of silent walking—and no dog in sight—my curiosity got the better of me. “So are these other houses… like your dad’s?”
“I guess,” Russell said, glancing over at me. “Why?”
“I was just wondering why we hadn’t—you know—seen any.” There would occasionally be a house I could see, set way back from the road. But mostly it was just fences or high hedges or gates.
