Gated Read Free Page B

the only thing keeping me out of that darkness.
    The first time he talked to me, I was spread out on the living room floor underneath the window, where the sun kept the carpet toasty. By then it was the only place in the house where I didn’t feel frozen—inside and out. I was drawing the same picture over and over, finishing what Karen had started. I had to. If I hadn’t wanted toplay hopscotch, if I’d only just decided to draw too, she wouldn’t be gone. I kept making my parents, my sister, and me, standing in a row on a thin green line of grass with our hands connected in an unbroken chain. I think maybe I thought that if I drew us this way enough, it would make Karen come back. She was there on the page. Our family picture was complete. She couldn’t be gone, not really, not for good.
    I’d never been very interested in drawing, not like Karen, but for days I did nothing else. I was hoping that maybe she was just mad and hiding, making me pay for leaving her all alone. If I could only draw enough, she might forgive me and come home. Besides, I couldn’t help look for her. My mom wouldn’t let me outside, not alone—and after the towers fell, not at all. My mom and dad spent most days on their phones or staring out the window at the sidewalk. It was like they didn’t see me anymore, or worse, saw Karen instead. Nothing was the same. I didn’t know what would happen if we didn’t find my sister. I just knew that what everyone needed most was for me to stay quiet and be good. By the time Pioneer showed up, I had filled four whole sketchpads with drawings.
    “What do you have there?” Pioneer asked on that first afternoon as he entered the living room and discovered me. He pointed at my pile of drawings.
    I studied the ground and shrugged. I liked him, but he was a stranger, which made him scary.
    “May I take a look?” he tried again, and this re n, and time held a hand out.
    My mom tapped me lightly on the shoulder. Her face was puffy from crying. It made her look scary too. “Go on, sweetie, let him see your pictures.”
    I took a breath and handed one of my notebooks to him without looking directly at his face. I concentrated on his hands instead. They were soft and his nails were shiny. It made me want to turn his palm over and see if the skin there was just as smooth.
    Pioneer held the notebook up in front of him for a while, flipping through the pages. His eyes got shiny and wet, making the light in them extra intense. He whistled softly and let the corners of his mouth turn up in a gentle smile. “Looks like we have a budding artist here. I bet your sister would love these. She looks exactly like she does in her pictures.” He pointed at the mantel, where my favorite picture of Karen and me was.
    I looked down at the black stick figure that was my sister with spirally yellow hair and no real nose to speak of and felt my lips turn up all on their own. Even I knew that my sister looked nothing like the twig girl I’d created, but somehow what he said made me picture her that way—less real missing girl, more smiley cartoon character. It made me want to laugh. It was like I forgot for just a moment that she wasn’t coming back. I bit my lip and my face twisted with the effort to smother a giggle, which made his lips turn up a little more.
    “Go ahead, let loose with that smile,” he said softly. “You are just too sweet to look so sad.”
    I scuffed a sneaker against the carpet and tried not to smile. It didn’t seem right, not when Karen being gone was all my fault. But then I just couldn’t hold it in anymore. I looked up at him and grinned.

These last days leave little room for fear.
Fear eats away at faith, and so it must be immediately rooted out and stomped underfoot.
—Pioneer
     

     
    My dad is on guard duty when we get back. He’s standing by the little one-room station just outside the front gate when we walk up. I concentrate on the wooden sign beside it. It says WELCOME TO