The Lost and the Found by Cat Clarke

Author:Cat Clarke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2016-09-13T04:00:00+00:00

Laurel steps in front of the three-way mirror and examines herself from every possible angle. Mom has tears in her eyes; the personal shopper has dollar signs in hers. You’d think she was trying on a wedding dress, the fuss they’re making. The dress is nice—there’s no denying it. It’s red and short, but not too short, and the fabric clings in all the right places, but in a classy sort of way. Still, it’s not worth five hundred bucks. No dress is worth that much.

“Doesn’t she look wonderful, Faith?”

I smile and nod. She does look amazing. Mom suggests Laurel take her hair down, so she shakes it out of the ponytail, and it’s almost like a slow-motion shot from a commercial.

“Oh yes!” says the personal shopper.

Laurel giggles and twirls around. The Laurels in the mirror giggle and twirl, too.

“It’s too much,” Laurel says when she’s stopped twirling. “I can’t…”

“You can and you must!” says Mom emphatically, as if we’re talking about something really important here. My suggestion that Laurel buy a laptop with her money didn’t exactly go down well. I should have known. Mom said that today isn’t about buying things we need—it’s about having fun, apparently. She said there would be plenty of time—and money—for boring things like computers.

The personal shopper (who seems to think that Laurel looks amazing in everything, even the things that really don’t suit her) says that she sold the exact same dress—in the same size!—to a basketball player’s girlfriend last weekend. When Mom asks which one, the personal shopper says a name and Mom pretends to know who she’s talking about.

The dress is wrapped up in tissue paper and carefully placed in a shiny black bag with ribbons for handles. Laurel hugs Mom and thanks her. Then Mom turns to me. “It’s your turn now, Faith!”

The personal shopper looks about as happy as I do at the prospect; Laurel clearly makes a better mannequin than me.

—

We spent a fortune at the sushi place, piling up the plates. Laurel was a bit dubious about raw fish to start off with, but she soon got over her squeamishness. She loved the conveyor belt, just like I thought she would. That was the main reason I’d suggested we go there for lunch. She couldn’t stop staring as the dishes went by. “And we can just take whatever we want?” she said, shaking her head in disbelief.

I kept on expecting Mom to ask the question, but she kept on not asking the question. In the end, I had to do it. “So…Laurel…what did you do this morning?”

“Nothing much. I just wandered around.” She took the last slice of miso eggplant—the one that I’d had my eye on.

“For four hours?”

She shrugged. “I went to a café, too.”

“Which one?”

Mom gave me a sharp look, but I pretended not to notice.

“I can’t remember. Starbucks, maybe?”

“They all look the same, don’t they?” Mom says helpfully.

“So you didn’t go to Blaxford, then?”

“Why on earth would Laurel go there?” Mom laughed as if it was the most absurd idea in the world.

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