Page 22 of Lost
“So, Lysander.” Eliza Beth drew his name out slowly. He turned to her again, watching as she nibbled on the lid of her pen before she asked, “That name comes from Shakespeare, right?A Midsummer Night’s Dream?”
He grimaced. “It does.”
“Are your parents English teachers or something?”
“No. My mother was a nurse. She just liked the name.”
Jack glanced up at the words — just a quick look to make sure that his friend was all right — and then went back to his writing.
“What about your dad?”
He thought back to the previous afternoon, sitting with Zack and Brendan while the former prepared to tell the world he’d become a father. Lysander hadn’t been ready for the world to know who he was then, and he wasn’t ready now — even if the world in this case was just a couple of kids in his English class.
“He’s a musician or something.” He added a shrug for good measure, hoping he sounded uninterested.Sorry, Dad. “What about your parents? What do they do for a living?”
“Oh. My mom’s the principal at the elementary school. My dad’s not around.”
There was a finality in her tone when she mentioned her father. Lysander made a mental note to never bring the man up again.
“You have really nice eyes, you know?” she went on. “They’re like...oceans.”
George raised an eyebrow at her words. He didn’t need to speak for Lysander to know what he was thinking —typical girl thing to say. Dakota would have blushed at the compliment if a guy had thrown it her way. Lysander smiled. He wanted to tell Eliza Beth that she had beautiful eyes too, but he didn’t want her to think that he was only returning a favour. It would have to wait for another time.
He was saved from having to respond by Ms. Lowe calling the class to attention.
“Ambition,” she said, gesturing to the questions she had written on the board. “Whose ambition is the driving force ofMacbeth?” She scanned her students, found a victim, and narrowed her eyes. “Kelly?”
Like the rest of his class, Lysander turned to look toward the girl who had been called on. Kelly herself was only two desks away from him, and he’d located her just in time to see her hastily shoving her cell phone back into the pocket of her denim shorts. She seemed surprised to find so many eyes on her and blushed, knowing she’d been caught in the act of not listening.
“I, ah…”
She trailed off and gave a barely noticeable shrug before lowering her head. Her two friends, sitting directly across from her, could barely contain their giggles.
“Anybody?” Ms. Lowe asked, casting her eyes around the room. Not a single person raised a hand. Shocker. As if she’d known all along that it would come to this, she turned to Jack and prompted him with a knowing, “Mr. Avery?”
“Lady Macbeth’s,” Jack said confidently. He was beaming. In his zone. “If it hadn’t been for her, Macbeth probably never would have killed King Duncan, and the plot wouldn’t have moved forward.”
He had to be right. And even if he wasn’t, he said it with enough conviction that only an expert on the subject would have questioned him. Thank whoever was out there that he had Jack to help him study for these tests. Maybe this year he would actually get a decent mark in English.
From the right pocket of his jeans, he felt his cell phone vibrate once. A text message. His heart skipped. This could be news about Dakota. Had she been found finally? His hand itched to reach for his pocket, but the manners his mother had drilled into him for fifteen years held him back. He glanced at the clock. He could hold out until the end of class. Zack would have called if it was anything major, right?
Class dragged on after that, as if time itself knew how eager Lysander was to check his phone. He tapped his foot impatiently, unable to focus on Ms. Lowe or Jack as they went on telling the class about the play. His eyes hardly left the clock, and by the time Ms. Lowe finally dismissed them, he’d come to believe the thing had stopped working entirely.
The class moved as one, packing their belongings in a flurry of activity. Lysander was one of the few to remain seated as he tugged his phone from his pocket and looked to the screen. A breath hitched in his throat when he saw that it was from an unknown number.
Finally got a new phone,the message read.Call me tonight? Been a while. – K
Lysander’s heart sank.K. Not Zack. Not news about Dakota. Instead, a message from a friend back home, the best friend that Lysander hadn’t seen or spoken to since the day after his mother died. He felt suddenly guilty for it.
“Everything okay, Columbus?”
Lysander looked up. Lost in his own world, he hadn’t noticed that half the class — including Eliza Beth and George — had already departed, and the other half were well on their way to joining them. He was the only one who had failed to pack his things, which earned him a few strange looks as people passed.
“Everything’s fine,” he said. “Just got distracted for a minute.”
Lysander hastily shoved his things into his bag and slung it over his shoulder. He had Geography next; there would be plenty of time for feeling guilty there.
After school, he would call his best friend. He would apologise for being so distant. For having lost himself in his mission to get to Zack for help. He would make sure that everybody back home was doing all right. After all, he wasn’t the only one who had lost Dakota. He wasn’t the only one who missed her.
