This Side of Salvation by [email protected]

Author:[email protected]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2013-06-12T16:00:00+00:00

NOW

M

ara grabs my arm before I can leave John’s room. “What are you talking about?” “Remember when we left my phone in Dad’s car and he drove to upstate New York with it?”

Mara gasps. “Do you still have the coordinates?”

“They’re in a notebook. You guys stay here.”

I run into my room, which fell into such a state of chaos during

the past few weeks that I’m embarrassed for Bailey to see it. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t drag her to my bed a few minutes ago. (Well, maybe not a good thing.)

Last semester’s notebooks are piled in my desk drawer. I grab the one for English composition class and dash back to John’s room, flipping to the dog-eared page from November. “Got it!”

“Mara just explained how you did this.” Bailey takes the notebook and slaps the page. “So you guys knew your dad was traveling to this place in upstate New York, and it’s just now occurring to you that that’s where they are?”

Mara snatches the notebook from her. “Hey, when your parents disappear into thin air, let’s see how clearly you think.”

Bailey crosses her arms, chastened. “Good point.”

Mara turns back to me. “We can’t just drive up there without knowing what we’re getting into. We need more information than just a set of GPS coordinates.”

“True.” I sit on John’s bed to think. “We should go through every inch of Dad’s office and their bedroom.”

“I don’t know, guys.” Bailey sits beside me. “If your parents didn’t want to be found, wouldn’t they be careful not to leave any clues?”

“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look.” Mara holds up her phone. “After all, Mom texted me. If Dad left his phone here, she was probably told to leave hers, too. If she disobeyed that order, she might disobey others.”

“Like an order to leave no evidence,” I finish.

“I guess.” Bailey unties her loose braid, which came partyl undone while we were rolling around on the floor a few minutes ago. “Except, she disobeyed at the last second, when you guys weren’t with her. Maybe she sensed something was wrong with the escape. But when she was destroying evidence, she was thinking you guys would be going. She’d want to protect you by following all of Sophia’s rules.”

“Ugh, you’re probably right.” Mara stares at her phone. “Maybe she’ll send another text.”

“Either way, we still need to search their stuff.” I usher the girls out ahead of me, then reach back to close John’s door.

Something makes me stop and open the door wider. When I walk away, his room is open, letting out the light.

I splurge on delivery pizza for me and Bailey and Mara, figuring we don’t have time to cook, and because our parents aren’t there to tell me not to have pizza two nights in a row.

We eat while we work in Dad’s office, no longer being careful to put everything back in its place. Juno and Tod wander in and out, thrilled to explore previously forbidden territory.

“Stop chewing that.” Mara tugs the corner of a credit card statement from Tod’s mouth.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.