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Theo moves around the hood of the car to the passenger’s side, his feet sliding over the wet snow. “Wherever you’re going, I’m going with. We can head to the mall. Maybe a friend’s mom picked her up.”
“You coming?” Andrew asks. He glances at me, the worried look in his eyes surely reflecting my own.
I consider it.
But I shake my head, knowing we’ll be more productive if we split up. “I’ll search on foot. She could’ve wandered off to the park or the sledding hill.”
A nod. “You have your phone? Keep me posted.”
“Yeah, I will.” I give the top of the vehicle a pat, then step back while Andrew does a three-point turn and drives off toward the mall.
Cold wind whips me, shooting a chill down my spine. I tug my hat down further, rub my gloved palms together, then start walking.
McKinley Park is only a few blocks away, and June would ride her bike there frequently when the weather was milder. I’d go with her on occasion. Even when my high school friends were out partying and socializing, I’d be at the playground with June, shooting hoops, roller blading, or tossing a football back and forth.
That’s always how it’s been, though.
When she calls me, I’m there. If she needs me, I’m hers.
I was the one who missed the school’s homecoming dance because it fell on the same night as June’s dance competition.
I was the one cheering the loudest in the stands when her team scored first place in the regional division.
I was the one who took her out for ice cream to celebrate that night, then walked with her to the park where we sat on the swings and sang “Over the Rainbow” together beneath a sky of stars and moonglow.
And I’m still the one singing her lullabies.
I will be until she outgrows them.
My heart skips as I pick up speed, dodging mud and slush as tires whiz past me.
Where the hell are you, Junebug?
She knows better than to just take off in the middle of a blizzard.
But she’s twelve, and I suppose twelve-year-olds don’t always consider the consequences.
Not all adults do either.
My boots march through the accumulating snow until I veer off to the left and find the entrance of the park. When I round the corner, past the giant mound of snow that doubles as a sledding hill, past the clusters of squealing children and bundled-up parents…
I see her.
I see her. I found her. She’s okay.
Junebug.
Her cheeks are windburned, her long, light chestnut hair fluttering beneath her earmuffs. She brushes snow from her blue snow pants as she watches a group of kids skip stones across the surface of the frozen pond. Her Grams had bought her those same snow pants in purple for her birthday…but June knows I hate purple.
So she begged her mother to take her to the department store to exchange them for a different color.
Just the image of her wearing them for the first time causes my heart to stutter.
I take a moment to catch my breath, bending over, hands to my knees. The relief of finding her alive and well is overwhelming and nearly cripples me.
But that relief is quickly replaced by niggling alarm when I notice who the other kids are—or rather, the fact that they’re not really kids at all. She’s surrounded by a bunch of seventeen and eighteen-year-olds, most of them unsavory.
One of them the worst of the worst.
