Free How to Be Lost by Amanda Eyre Ward Page B

on the World,” said Anthony, his voice catching. “Jennifer. I met her at Cornell. The plan was to save for a few years, then open our own place somewhere…amazing. At night, we’d look at maps, trying to pick the spot. It was going to be called Sorrento’s by the Sea.”
    “I’m so sorry,” I said, “I didn’t know.”
    “She was at work on the eleventh, as usual. When the first plane hit, she called the store, but I was in the back. My brother Danny took the message. She said she loved me. By the time I called back, it was…there was no answer.”
    “Jesus,” I said. I reached toward Anthony, but did not know where to touch him, and I let my hand drop. He was looking at his napkin, tracing one of the plaid squares. I sipped my beer.
    “Some date, huh?” he said, sitting up and wiping his eyes.
    “It’s a perfect date,” I said. He leaned toward me, and I kissed him. His lips were soft, and his mouth tasted of beer. He took my face in his hands as we kissed, then ran his fingers down my neck to my breast. He unbuttoned my mother’s coat slowly, kissing my eyelids, my cheeks, my lips. He moved his warm hand underneath the ridiculous sweater set. A thick shock ran through me, and I felt small and light in his arms. He wrapped himself around me, his mouth on mine, and until he stopped, pulled back, it was as if we were one person, tangled in wool and hot breath.

FOURTEEN
    “W HAT THE FUCK ?” I said to Madeline, when my mother told us she was heading to bed at four in the afternoon. Madeline shrugged. We were watching television in the kitchen. It had been a year since Ellie’s disappearance, and my mother had worn a bathrobe for most of it.
    My new motto was “What the fuck.” I wrote it on all my notebooks, which were in my school locker. I had not been to school in weeks. By taking whatever drugs they gave me and paying for them, I had gathered a group of friends around me. We went to each others’ houses and ate mushrooms in our parents’ wood-paneled basements. We snorted lines of Ritalin, cutting it with our fathers’ razorblades on our mothers’ decorating magazines.
    That night, I went out on Hugh King’s boat. I liked the way the boat slapped against the water as Hugh drove it too fast. I liked the warmth of Hugh’s father’s Glenfiddich in my mouth. Hugh dropped me off late, and I walked around to the side of the house, planning to slip in the sliding glass door. Usually, my parents were both dead to the world by then, but that night, they were awake. I was walking past the den window when I heard them talking. I slid down to the grass, crossed my legs, and listened.
    “I have one question for you, Isabelle.” My father’s voice was slow and slurred.
    “What?” said my mother. She sounded empty.
    “Was she even mine?”
    My mother said, “Of course! Joseph, my God!”
    Again, there was a silence. Suddenly full of energy, I stood and ran across the lawn. I cartwheeled, and landed with my cheek to the grass, breathing hard. There were no stars in the sky. I said, I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care.
    The next night, I went to a party in a hotel room in White Plains. There was a game, and when you lost, you drank a shot of vodka. Vodka didn’t taste like anything. The nothing taste slipped down my throat. I went into the bathroom, a hotel bathroom with a thick bathmat to rest my head on. I woke up in the hospital.
    My ribs hurt; the paramedics pounded hard enough to start my heart. Soon afterward, I was sent to boarding school, where I learned to dip tobacco and give blow jobs.

FIFTEEN
    from the desk of
AGNES FOWLER
    Dear Louise,
Thank you for clarifying your relationship to my departed father. He certainly did love shopping at Rockin’ Rudy’s Record Store. I plan to keep his collection as it is for now. I like to listen to his records and think of the way he’d sing along. I sang along, too, and sometimes he’d stop singing and just look at me. Did I mention how