The Space Between Lost and Found by Stark-McGinnis Sandy

Author:Stark-McGinnis, Sandy [Stark-McGinnis, Sandy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mg contemporary
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

I don’t know how long we stay out by the canyon, but I want to get back before Dad’s home. Bailey and I slip our feet inside our shoes, and I help Mom with hers.

At home, I grab three bottles of water from the fridge and hand one to Bailey. “We haven’t done much drawing,” I tell her. “Maybe we can get together at your house? I mean, if we don’t finish it at school.”

“That’d be good.” Bailey says, and we go out to the living room. I twist open the water bottle for Mom.

“It’s like you’re the mom, huh?” Bailey asks.

I forget how much Bailey notices things, how much she understands. “Yeah, it’s been like that a lot more.”

As we walk back to the kitchen, we stop in front of the broken frame.

“When I said you could replace it, I didn’t mean forever,” Bailey says.

“No, I knew what you meant, like maybe it’s time for something new.” But I’m not sure I’m ready for that.

“You can still have this one. All you have to do is get a new frame.”

She’s right. The actual sketch isn’t damaged at all. “Yeah, I can fix it.”

But I don’t want Dad to see it before I tell him what happened. I take the broken frame to my room and slide it under my bed.

“I thought it was your mom who liked ocean stuff?” Bailey stares at the ocean poster and at the ceiling over my bed where a dolphin poster hangs. It’s a photograph of a real one, with just its head poking out of the water.

“In every picture I’ve seen of dolphins,” Bailey says as she sits down in front of my desk, “why do they always look like they’re smiling?”

“My mom would say it’s because being a dolphin would make you happy pretty much all the time.”

“Is your mom the reason you wanted to paint the ocean mural?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” And then I say, “It’s weird to be around someone losing her memory.”

“I’m sorry,” Bailey says. I guess it’s her turn now.

I stare up at the word “dream” on the bottom of the poster. “I’m always wondering now—what her dreams are like. You know how a regular person’s dreams are filled with images of what happened to them that day or what happened to them last week or last year?”

I sit down on my bed. “Since those images are unreachable for my mom, I think her dreams are filled with the ocean. The whole time she’s asleep, all she sees is ocean life or a dolphin breaching the water, swimming for miles and miles. It’s kind of like those videos of a fireplace people have on their TVs or tanks with colorful fish swimming, trying to create a feeling of calm.”

Bailey and I both stare up at the poster, like I do most nights. It makes it easy to fall asleep, knowing that maybe that’s what Mom sees, too, when she closes her eyes.

Someday I’m going to take it down, though.

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