Small as an Elephant - Jennifer Richard Jacobson [8]
But he didn’t.
He didn’t tell them because a car accident was not the likeliest of all the possibilities. The likeliest possibility was that she had just gone off — again.
The last time had been at home, and he had just stayed in the apartment, and there was food, and there were things to do, and he hadn’t told anyone, and she had come home, and no one had to get involved, and no one asked too many questions, and no one had tried to take him away.
So Jack didn’t tell Aiden’s parents. But he made a promise to himself: he would look for her, and if he didn’t find her on the island, then he would tell someone. Or at least he would think seriously about telling someone.
He was relieved when the bus pulled into the little parking lot at Echo Lake. There wasn’t anything he could do now — not if he wasn’t going to tell anyone — so he decided he might as well enjoy the few hours they had here.
They walked down a boardwalk to a small, sandy beach. Aiden’s family gravitated to the far left, at the trees’ edge, where rocks formed a cozy nook and there was shade. Aiden’s dad set up two small beach chairs he’d been carrying. Aiden’s mom spread out a blanket on the sand and unzipped a soft cooler of food. “Would you like something to eat, Jack?” she asked.
Jack suddenly realized he’d been staring at the cooler and felt his face go warm. His stomach was cavernous, demanding more than a few slices of cheese and salami.
“Let’s swim first,” said Aiden, turning and running into the water.
Jack followed reluctantly.
When they tired of swim races, jumping off rocks (ignoring the KEEP OFF THE ROCKS sign like everyone else), and trying to do backflips in the water, they staggered back to the blanket. Aiden’s mom had spread out tuna fish sandwiches, grapes, apples, carrots, chips, pickles, and double-chocolate brownies. Jack couldn’t remember a time when food had tasted so good. She slipped another sandwich onto his plate without even asking.
By the time he got to the brownies, he was feeling full, but no way was he going to refuse these. He took a bite and lay back in the sand, letting the chocolate melt in his mouth.
“There’s a herd of elephants,” Jack said, pointing straight up.
“Huh?” asked Aiden.
“In the sky,” Jack told him. “A herd of elephants.”
“I see one there!” said Julie. “Look, there’s its trunk!”
Everyone tried to see where Julie was pointing.
“I see it!” shouted Aiden’s mom.
“There’s an elephant stretched out on its belly!” said Aiden.
“That’s so weird,” said Aiden’s dad. “If you think about elephants, you see them everywhere.”
Jack smiled. He and his mother could point out elephants for hours. Sometimes they even found them alphabetically: Airy Elephant, Balloon Elephant, Curly Elephant . . . He missed his mom so much at that moment, that moment of cloud watching, that he could almost feel his thoughts traveling to her, and finding her, and making her pick up her phone.
“Excuse me,” he said suddenly, jumping up and walking back up the boardwalk, in the direction of the restrooms. He didn’t stop. He walked right past them and ducked into the woods. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, his heart pulsing with hope, and —
“No!” he shouted. No! No! No! How could he have been so stupid? He had forgotten. Forgotten that his phone was in his pocket. Forgotten and gone swimming! The phone was totally soaked. He pushed a few buttons, but it didn’t even make its familiar beeping sounds. He held the On button for what seemed like three minutes with no luck at all. Totally soaked and totally dead.
The battery! He remembered that cell phones have a patch that tells whether they’ve been damaged by liquid. Whether the phone can be saved. He turned his phone over and slid his battery out. The patch