Read Online The Summer Experiment by Cathie Pelletier - Free Book Online Page B

we’d go across the meadow, making all the frogs jump into Frog Pond.
    As it stood now, the only thing I had my arms wrapped around was the extra pillow on my bed. When the show finished at ten o’clock, I saw that the rain had stopped. Through the curtains in my window I could see the planet Jupiter and almost make out a few of its moons. With binoculars, I can find three of the moons. It gave me goose bumps sometimes to think of how big and wide our own galaxy is. Mrs. Dionne, our science teacher, says that most astronomers don’t question if there is life elsewhere in the universe, only where it is. That’s pretty awesome.
    ***
    â€œRoberta Angela?”
    My mom was knocking on my bedroom door and sunshine was spilling in through the windows. I squinted at my watch. It was almost eleven o’clock. I’m usually up long before this, but with school out, I guess my body was catching up on sleep.
    â€œWhat is it?” I asked.
    â€œCan you come downstairs, please?”
    Mom doesn’t use my middle name very often. She usually does it when she’s sad or has something unpleasant to tell me. Maybe she’s just heard a song on the radio by some guy named Bruce Springsteen, and it reminds her that her youth is slipping away. Or maybe the person she is cheering for on some reality show just got kicked off the island. Or she’s just watched that same old, sad movie where Ingrid Bergman gets on the airplane and leaves Humphrey Bogart behind, wearing that dumb hat he wears. I can almost recite that stupid movie by heart.
    â€œRoberta Angela?”
    â€œI’ll be right down,” I said. I dressed in jeans and a yellow shirt. I knew what to do if it was Casablanca again. I’d sit next to her on the sofa and pat her on the back. “Listen, kid,” I’d say. “If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not on it, you’ll always regret it. Remember, we’ll always have Paris.” That makes her laugh out loud. But it also means she will then have to hug me and say how much she loves me and how happy she is to be a mother. Wow, Mom, write it down and e-mail it to Hallmark . Let them put it on a greeting card . I don’t say that to her, of course. I’m patient with my parents. They’re human too.
    But this time, Mom’s face didn’t look like any of those things I mentioned.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” I asked. She came and put her arms around me.
    â€œHoney,” she said, “Marilee is missing.”
    When the room quit spinning around, I asked Mom some questions. Marilee had disappeared, or so I learned, sometime before 8 a.m. that morning. I remembered her instant message of the night before. I hate her . When Mr. Evans knocked on her motel-room door to wake her, she wasn’t there. The bed had been slept in, however, so he assumed she stayed in the room last night.
    â€œHis hope is that she went shopping and will turn up at any moment. He called to see if you had talked to her lately.”
    I shook my head and said nothing, not yet, about the message or her feelings about the wedding. I knew she hadn’t gone shopping. Marilee and I aren’t the kind of girls who can spend hours at the mall trying on clothes we won’t buy. And where would she shop at 8 a.m.?
    ***
    By noon, when there was still no sign of Marilee, her parents contacted the Fort Kent Police Department and began driving the streets, hoping to find her walking around town. Since it was also possible she had found a ride back to Allagash, it was decided that Mom, Johnny, and I would search here. Dad had already gone to work. So we spent the next few hours searching everyplace we hoped she might be. The library. The school gym. Our two favorite rocks by the river. Her mom’s toolshed, her mom’s cellar, her mom’s attic. I even rode the four-wheeler over to Mr. Finley’s barn and asked if I could climb up into the hayloft and search