Vanished (Private 12)

“I’m glad it all worked out okay,” he said.

“Me too.”

“So … what do we do now?” he asked. “It’s already second period.”

“I don’t care,” I said. “Can we just stay here for a while? Exactly like this?”

“Absolutely,” Josh said.

Then he adjusted his arms to hold me a little tighter and I sighed contentedly. He was here. He was back. He was mine.

And I didn’t want to ever let him go.

Sun streamed through my windows on Wednesday morning, so bright my eyes stung when I opened them after a long, deep sleep. I groaned and turned my head to face the wall, wondering why I had pulled the blinds up the day before. Right in front of me was the poster of Sydney Crosby, the greatest hockey player currently on the ice, which I’d hung on my dark blue wall during the couple of weeks I’d been home last summer. It still hadn’t flattened out completely and the paper shone like it was brand-new, even though it had been up for almost six months.

I guess that’s what happens when the blinds are drawn and a room goes unlived in for so very long. I propped myself up on my side and concentrated for a moment, trying to figure out how many days, exactly, I had been home over the past year or so. Last summer I’d spent most of my time on Martha’s Vineyard with Natasha Crenshaw and her family, only pit-stopping here quickly before school

started. I’d been home for Thanksgiving, but not at all over Christmas, choosing instead to go to St. Barths with Noelle and her family, and then meeting my parents in New York for a few days before going back to Connecticut.

All told, I’d probably slept in this bed no more than seventeen times in the past year. Sadness filled my chest at the thought. Was it really so bad, being home? What was I running away from? And what the hell had I been running to all this time?

There was a light knock on my door and my dad stuck his head in my room. He’d taken the day off to hang out with me, which was just like him. Scott and I always came first.

“Oh, good,” he said. “You’re up. I made pancakes.”

“Then I’m definitely up,” I said. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and shoved them into my well-worn plaid slippers, then grabbed a Steelers sweatshirt out of my drawer and yanked it on. No point in trying to look fashionable for breakfast with the fam. Actually, this outfit would probably win best-dressed at Croton High anyway.

I padded into the kitchen, the strong scents of coffee and frying bacon leading my way. Scott was already sitting in his usual chair at the chipped Formica table, sipping coffee from a Hershey Park mug and scrolling through texts on his phone.

“Nice hair,” he said, looking up. “They let you walk around that fancy school of yours like that?”

“Nice face,” I replied. “The biology department at Penn State offered to study you yet?”

We grinned at each other. It was good to be home.

“OJ, anyone?” my mom asked, emerging from behind the open door of the fridge. I actually did a double take as I sat down at the table. My mom was already showered and dressed, her light brown hair grazing her shoulders in a perfectly chic cut. She was wearing low-rise jeans and a turtleneck and looked relaxed and happy. And beautiful. For so long she had been sick and depressed and self-medicated, some days never even managing to get out of bed, that I was still stunned to see her healthy and awake.

“I’ll have some,” I said.

“Please,” she corrected, rolling her eyes. She poured the juice into my glass, running her free hand over my hair. “It’s nice to have my kids home. Even if they are rotten.”

“So, Scotty, when do you have to get back?” my dad asked, dropping a plate of steaming pancakes in front of me. He was still wearing his flannel pajama pants and a sweatshirt, milking his day off for all it was worth. Brownish-gray stubble peppered his chin and his dark hair was slightly mussed. “’Cause it’s free puck night at the Igloo.”

Scott and I exchanged an intrigued look. The Igloo was the fans’ nickname for Mellon Arena, where the Penguins played.

“Seriously? You got tickets?” Scott asked, lowering his phone.

“We can buy them there. What do you guys say? Hot dogs, ice cream, maybe a good on-ice fight or two?” my dad said, wagging his eyebrows.

“I’m in,” Scott said. “Who needs a college education anyway?”

“Me too,” I said with a grin.

“Sweet,” my dad said. “If you’re good I’ll even buy you guys some cotton candy.”

I laughed and cut into my pancakes. Sometimes my dad still talked to us like we were kids. But I didn’t mind. Especially not today. This was exactly why I’d wanted to come home so badly. Things were just simpler here. Especially since my mom had gotten sober. As I looked around at my family, everyone but Mom in motley states of dress, all of us chowing down off time-worn ceramic plates, with a plastic bottle of syrup in the center of the table and a scorched coffee pot on a macramé place mat, I just wanted to laugh. Noelle and the rest of my friends would have probably been disgusted, or at the very least amused, if they could see me now. But this was home. This was where I belonged.

“Okay, okay. But it’s back to school tomorrow with you,” my mom said to Scott as she sat down next to him.