LITMIR.BIZ

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lose, and I’m proud of you. You feel better, don’t you?”

      “Health-wise, you mean? Yeah, I guess.” She did feel better now that those pounds were off. She, too, was proud of that accomplishment, but she’d hoped for certain things that hadn’t come to pass. In fact, everything remained exactly as it was before. When you came right down to it, all that had changed was the number on Grams’s antique scale. Oh, and some of her pants were looser around the waist.

      “Call if you need me,” Julianna said. “I mean it, Court.”

      “Okay. Keep in touch about Dad.”

      “I will,” her sister promised.

      Courtney was grateful for her sister’s call. She wished they could talk regularly. Although Julianna was older and had been away from home for nearly three years, she was close to their dad. Caught up in her own woes, Courtney hadn’t spent enough time considering her sister’s feelings.

      Wednesday morning, eight days since her last communication with her father, Courtney didn’t feel like going to school. Grams said she understood, but encouraged Courtney to go anyway.

      “You won’t resolve anything sitting by the phone all day,” Grams said with perfect logic.

      After sleeping fitfully for two nights, Courtney had hoped to rest, but she knew her grandmother was right. While she might not have made a lot of friends yet, she was better off at school than hanging around at home, waiting and worrying.

      Mike, Andrew’s friend, picked her up to drive her to school. Courtney paid him ten dollars a week and appreciated not having to take the bus. The only problem was Mike himself, who seemed inordinately shy. He rarely said a word, either on the way to school or on the way home. At first she’d tried to carry the conversation, but after a week of minimal responses, she’d given up.

      Wouldn’t you know it? This was the morning Mike discovered he had a tongue.

      “Did you hear from your dad?” he asked as she climbed into his fifteen-year-old Honda.

      “Not yet.”

      “Are you worried?”

      “What do you think?” She didn’t mean to be sarcastic, but that was a stupid question if she’d ever heard one.

      “I think you’re worried,” he concluded.

      Courtney closed her eyes and leaned her head against the passenger window, just praying there’d be an e-mail from her father when she got home from school.

      “Are you ready for the English test?” he asked next.

      She straightened abruptly. “There’s a test?” Preoccupied as she’d been with her father, she hadn’t paid attention. “On what?”

      “Poetry.”

      She groaned. Perhaps if she showed up at the office and claimed she had the flu, they’d believe her and let her go home.

      Home. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t think of her grandmother’s place as home. It was Grams’s house, not hers.

      Mike parked and they walked wordlessly into the school. Once in the building, they went their separate ways, Mike to the left and Courtney to the right. She had, at best, five minutes to leaf through her book of poems and her English notes before the bell rang. Dickinson. Whitman. Who else?

      She stood outside her homeroom, leaning against the wall, as she flipped desperately from one page to the next.

      “Hi.” Andrew sidled up to her, books under his arm.

      Surprised, Courtney nearly dropped her own book. “I didn’t realize we had a test today,” she declared, her nose in the book as she tried to take in as much information as possible.

      “In what?”

      “English—poetry. Nineteenth-century American. I think.”

      He didn’t seem to know about it, either.

      “Mike told me.”

      “That explains it,” Andrew said. “He’s in regular Senior English, we’re Honors. Mr. Hazelton didn’t mention a test. I don’t even think we’re studying the same material.”

      A wave of relief washed over her. “Thank you, God.” She raised her head toward the ceiling.

      “And they say school prayer is dead,” Andrew teased.

      She smiled.

      “How’re you doing?” he asked.

      They stood there for a few minutes before going to their homerooms. Rather than discuss her worries about her father, Courtney merely shrugged. “How about you?”

      What a dumb question. She realized it as soon as the words were out of her mouth. Andrew had just been named part of the Homecoming Court, exactly as Shelly had predicted. As head cheerleader, Melanie had also been a nominee. On the afternoon before the big game, the king and queen would be chosen at a school assembly. Again according to Shelly, Melanie and Andrew would take the prize.

      “I’m fine,” Andrew said. He didn’t seem that excited about his nomination. “What about your dad?”

      “He’s still missing,” Courtney blurted out. She couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Andrew, I’m so worried! I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to my dad.” Tears sprang to her eyes and she tried to hide them by staring down at the floor.

      To her shock, he placed his arm around her shoulders. “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be all right.”

      “No, it isn’t,” she cried, sobbing openly now. “I need my father.” He, more than anyone, held the family together. He was her father and she’d already lost her mother, and if her father was dead she couldn’t bear it.

      “I know, I know,” he murmured.

      She looked up at him with wet eyes, unable to speak.

      “If anything happened to my mother,” he went on, “I’d feel just like you do right now, but I will tell you this. No matter what happens, you’ll find your way through it. Isn’t that what you told Annie?”

      Courtney sniffed and nodded. She grabbed a tissue from her purse and blew her nose, embarrassed by all the attention they’d attracted. It didn’t seem to bother Andrew, though, and she pretended it didn’t bother her, either.

      “That was good advice,” Andrew said. “Annie was close to losing it when you signed up for that knitting class with my mom. I’m so glad you did, because she needed a friend. She’s still got a few problems, but she’s so much better now, thanks to you.”

      Courtney was too stunned to respond.

      “I didn’t thank you properly, but maybe I can help you with your dad. Do you think it’d be all right if I came to your grandmother’s house after football practice?”

      It required a monumental effort to simply nod. The final bell rang for homeroom.

      “Gotta go,” Andrew said. “See you later.” He hurried down the hall.

      Courtney dashed into her own classroom, marveling that one person could experience so many emotions in such a short time.

      As soon as Mike dropped her off at Grams’s after school, Courtney raced upstairs to her computer and logged on.

      “Any word?” her grandmother shouted from the foot of the stairs.

      Her heart fell when she hurriedly scanned her in-box. Nothing from her father. “No,” she called back, dispirited.

      The phone rang and normally Courtney would’ve answered it, but she wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone. Not even Andrew. Despite what she’d said about getting through whatever you had to, she didn’t think she could. She couldn’t lose her father. There weren’t enough chocolate chip

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