Page 23 (1/1)

Standing a short distance away is a couple I recognize fro all day in a raind: his face is red, chapped, and bloated-looking The woripped, clawlike, on the shoulder of a blond girl standing in front of her Madeline’s older sister, Sarah Next to her is Kennedy, the best friend She has dark hair cut in a severe fringe across her forehead, and she’s wearing a bright-red tank top that looks surprisingly cheerful given the occasion

I arrived early, when the croas thinner, and a few dozen people werea careful distance fro off the scene of the disappearance We all had to sign in, like we’re guests at soh Law & Order to know the cops are probably hoping the pervert--if there is a pervert--will show up to get his rocks off and s smarter than the cops

Reflexively I fishNo further word from Nick No texts froet a little dip of disappoint over a hill too fast

"This is how it’s going to go We’re going to h to touch your neighbors’ shoulders" The cop holds out his ar to steady his balance on the line "Keep your eyes on the ground and look for anything and everything that doesn’t belong A barrette, a cigarette stub, a headband, whatever Maddie had a favorite bracelet--silver, with turquoise char it when she disappeared If you see soive a shout"

He hops off the concrete divider, and the crowd responds like a unifor apart into sroups The search party fans out across the beach, while cops shout orders and instructions and the caht look like we’re playing a coame, an intricate pattern of Red Rover, all of us spread out in a line and silently calling for Madeline to come over, to come back The sand is studded with the kind of trash that accuarette packs, plastic wrappers, soda cans I wonder whether any of it is i outside on Friday night, sipping a warhts in and out of the Big Scoop parking lot, watching two girls, Kennedy and Sarah, walking with their arlow of the ice-creairl huddled in the backseat

I hope she’s alive Even more: I believe It strikes me that that’s the point of the search party Not actually to turn up clues, but as if the power of our collective belief, our joint effort, will keep her alive As if she’s Tinker Bell, and all we have to do is keep clapping

At least it’s a little cooler e move doard the water, but theup fro is painfully slow, but even so,Every few minutes so at soers: a tattered piece of fabric, an empty beer can, the remains of so car The cops bag a silver bracelet, though I see Madeline Snow’s ether The beach is barely a quarter ht of either the parking lot or the houses and ine that anything bad could happen here, in this short strip of land, so close to the everyday churn of cars and restaurants and people sneaking outside to s bad did happen here Madeline Snow is gone Nick and I used to pretend that there were goblins waiting in the woods; she told

If you don’t watch out, they’ll grab you, she’d say, tickling me around the middle until I shrieked They’ll take you to the underworld and turn you into a bride

And just for a second, I i too soft for the rest of us to hear

"You’re Sharon Warren’s daughter, aren’t you?" the wo at nore her Her face is sugared with too-heavy e heels over the sand, wind her arms like she’s on a balance beam

I almost deny it but decide there’s no point "Uh-huh"

"I’ me to know her Of course her naht-pink lipstick and heels to search for a irl could possibly have any other na "I live in Soh when your randfather, too Greatme a secret--"at the funeral"

Last Decerandfather died He’d lived in Somerville all his life and, in fact, worked for two suot shuttered in the fifties Later on he coached Little League and even briefly got elected town chairman, a position he abdicated as soon as he, and the rest of town, realized that he didn’t give a shit about politics Nick and I called him Pa, and half of Somerville was at his funeral in January Everybody loved him