Free What We Lost in the Dark by Jacquelyn Mitchard Page A

as the chopped steak, hot sausage, and pepperoni. For Jackie Kim, exercise and nutrition were sacred, like the Stations of the Cross were for my devoutly Catholic Grandma Mack. She wanted to instill her religious vegetarian fervor in her hedonistic daughter. No chance at that, though. I was born carnivorous and got meat on the street whenever I could.
    As we ate, Gideon Brave Bear, Gitchee’s owner, brought us underage draft beers and sat with us for a round. Except for Juliet’s funeral, we hadn’t seen him, since he’d fired a gun into the air in Garrett Tabor’s direction last summer after Tabor chased me from the cemetery right into the middle of town. Then, I thought he was trying to kill me. I still thought he was trying to kill me, but he was taking his time.
    “Are you doing good enough, Allie?” Gid asked me, exactly the right question in exactly the right way.
    “Good enough, Gid. Thanks,” I said, laying my shockingly white hand over his own.
    After Gid went back to the bar, I told Rob about the suicides and my mother’s typically overboard reaction. “I just said, no offense, but to me that kind of love is borderline.”
    Rob rolled the foam on his beer around the top of the tall glass. “No offense, Allie, but that was a pretty shitty thing to say.”
    At first, I thought I hadn’t heard him right. Then, I couldn’t believe that Rob would just cut me loose like that when it came to parents and their default smothering. “Shitty? Of me? It is obsessive! Your parents do the same thing!”
    “But why wouldn’t they? Of course, they’re obsessed with their kid, especially the way things are with us. Do you blame your mom for wanting to keep you healthy and to be with you every minute she can? You’re acting like she holds you down and she won’t let you out of the house.”
    “She wouldn’t let me out if she could get away with it.”
    Even I knew that was a lie.
    “That’s unfair, honey. We kind of owe it to them to cut them a little slack, Allie. Or the reverse of cutting them a little slack. They give their whole lives for us and it has to suck for them.”
    I sighed, and said, “Okay.”
    “You can be confrontational, Allie.”
    “I am not,” I said, getting up and getting ready to walk out on him. Which was pretty confrontational. “I guess … I guess I am. Lately anyhow. I didn’t used to be this way. I woke up tonight all freaked out, Rob. I don’t know why. I’m freaked out about free diving. I never felt like that about Parkour.
    “You’ll be fine. You’re letting it stress you out. It’s a head trip,” Rob said.
    “I’m also afraid of what we might find if we look around.”
    “Then, honey, let’s not look around. Let’s do something just for us.”
    “But we planned …”
    “I’m not saying never. Just how about not tonight? Let’s have conversations and activities that don’t involve death.”
    “Okay,” I said, trying to smile brightly, feeling my face stretch all the wrong ways as I did.
    Rob reached across the table and cupped my chin. “You’re going to think I have forgotten her, and I haven’t,” he said. “Okay. We’ll take a little look around. Remember, we don’t want to take any risks.”
    I knew, though, and so did Rob, how long two minutes could be.
    At least, I thought I knew.

9
INTO THE DEEP
    In a sturdy little inflatable Odyssey dive boat that probably folded up to the size of a can of tuna, with a motor that probably ran on vegetable oil, Wesley motored us out to the spot he remembered. Sure enough, his big headlamp picked up a reflector buoy instantly. Rob’s map was only insurance …
    It was cold, and I’d slipped on my parka and fingerless gloves. This was skiing weather, although everyone was complaining about the absence of snow and hoping it would show up for Christmas Eve in a few days. Going
into the water
in this weather defied all logic. To pass the moments, I asked Wesley, “What was your best dive