Page 11 of Lost and Found

Always.The word lands like a boulder.

Can’t be. I had my always person, and now she’s gone.

“Good night, Si. Thank you again,” I tell him before I haul myself inside.

CHAPTER 4

One Night, Twelve Years Ago

Bea

It’s dark and loud in the gym. The oscillating strobe lights streak across my vision, and heat pours off the gyrating bodies around me.

“I need water!” I yell to Merritt over the thump of “Like a G6.”

“I gotta pee!” she shouts back.

I put my palms together and stick them above my head like a shark fin. She grabs my waist from behind and follows me through the hormone-addled waters of our fellow grinding teens.

“Your ass looks unreal in this dress!” Merritt hollers over my shoulder.

I wiggle my hips side to side. “I know! Your boobs look fake in yours!”

I can barely make out her bubbly laugh above the din. “You always know just what to say!”

We reach the edge of the crush, and I let out a dramatic sound of relief when we hit fresh air.

“Drink table’s that way,” Merritt says, pointing off to a corner. “But I gotta go now, and I saw a line. I’ll meet you over here when I’m done.” She starts walking backward in the direction of the bathrooms and does a shimmy at me. I wolf whistle back.“Unless Ian grows a pair and asks you to dance!” she calls out in singsong.

“Merritt!” I yell, my head whipping around to the side to make sure he wasn’t in earshot of that. One month ago, I made a passing comment about Ian Carver being cute, and since then, she’s had her mind set on fixing me up with him. I’m not interested and have said as much, but she seems to think I was kidding and continues bringing it up. I think she imagines that if I get with Ian, she’ll naturally get together with his best friend, Silas. We already hang out with them all the time, and nothing has progressed beyond flirting, and we flirt with everyone. Merritt is especially adept at it. The only flirt bigger than she is is probably Silas himself. He and Ian are a grade above us, but Spunes kids always seem to stick together.

I am also actively avoiding this conversation since I have been hiding the fact that Silas asked me to this very dance a few weeks ago.

“Go to prom with me, Marshall,”he’d said, leaning against my old Tacoma after school one sunny day. He’d been covered in fresh grass stains and smelled like spring. Gold chain around his neck. I heard he managed to convince the athletic director to let him mow the fields for extra credit in history. No one bats an eye at him charming his way into special treatment.

I anxiously scoffed before I recovered myself.“I—can’t.”

His head cocked in surprise. Silas rarely hearsnoabout anything, I imagine. He is the hottest guy in school and has the audacity to be smart and funny and, worst of all, generally decent. He is also extremely aware of this and manages to limit his arrogance to a level that can still be considered charming.

“Can’t?”he’d said, taking a step closer.

“Can’t,”I’d confirmed.“But we should . . . Actually, Merritt and I were talking about us all going in a group together, anyway.”

Another head tilt. A chuff and a grin.“So, what you actually mean is youwon’t.”

Merritt was at soccer practice, but I looked around, anyway. She has pined for Silas Byrd in one way or another for as long as I’ve known her, and this would’ve killed her if she heard.

“I mean I can’t, Si.”

“How come?”

“You know why.”He had to know. It wasn’t my place to lay it out for him, to expose Merritt’s feelings. But he knew.

He looked down at his shoes. Rubbed a veiny hand over his chin. No boy should have those forearms at seventeen.

“We’re friends,”he’d said, and I knew he was referring to himself and Merritt.

He could’ve asked anyone. Any of the seniors. Anyone else in my class, too. That one track star who was rumored to have a full ride to U of O, who told everyone that he gave her her first orgasm last fall. He could’ve asked Merritt, the most beautiful girl in the entire school. Anyone but me.