Essential Maps for the Lost Read Online Free

business is her mother’s livelihood. What would happen if she lost it? Disaster, that’s what. Here is the ticking clock: The partnership papers were drawn up sometime in Madison’s junior year, ready to be signed the minute she passed the licensing exam. The cap is off the pen. Feet are impatiently tapping; fingertips are drumming on tabletops. Mads graduated early for this. She ditched her friends in what felt like the middle of the party. Last year at the attorney’s office, the lawyer, Mr. Knightley, didn’t listen to Mads’s (admittedly muted) protests. He said things to Mads like You can make a real difference here and What would your mom do without you , and thus sealed Mads’s fate.
    The problem is—and Mads would never confess this to anyone, even now consider this a whisper, consider it something you can barely hear—the classes, the papers, the signature . . . They fill her with a despair she senses she is no match for. Ever since she and her mother sat across from Mr. Knightley at his desk, a long shadow of sorrow has slipped over her like an eclipse. When people notice the half-moons under her eyes (sorrow keeps you awake), or the slow weightiness in her step (sorrow grabs your ankles), they say things like Cheer up! And Look on the bright side! These words are only sweet flowers that the dark ogre of depression eats in one bite.
    She tries the “pep talk” (awful, awful, utterly useless phrase) on herself, too. Who, after all, is handed a business right out of high school? A mostly-paying-the-bills business! She could be set up for life! And she and her mom get along great, they do! Maybe later, she could try something different. Even her father, who is pissed she’s not going to college, has occasionally said It’s not the worst thing, I guess and It will give you work experience, anyway. Mads is not ungrateful. (She hates that word. Even saying ungrateful makes her feel ungrateful.) It’s just that the idea of it all is like being in one of those horrible stories where people are buried alive. There’s the crush of earth and the last squeak of oxygen. Still. She can’t say no. You might not understand this, but she can’t say no. Her mother would be furious. And she can’t let her down. The guilt would kill Mads. She’s the kind of person guilt could kill. It’d barely have to try.
    Either way, her own self will be swallowed up, gone. Already, she is slowly disappearing.
    As she drives to school, her required textbook, Mastering Real Estate Principles , 7th Edition, sits on the seat beside her in Thomas’s truck. She has her completed homework assignment on valuation, too, which is tucked inside.
    But something strange happens as they crest the hill where the school sits. It’s as if Thomas’s truck has a mind of its own. It speeds right on past the campus. The campus shoots by like Harrison on his bike, when he pedals so fast the wheels blur. Thomas’s truck screeches a loop. It goes straight back over 520, into Seattle. Mads attempts to talk some sense into it, but that truck is having none of it. She may be confused and despairing, but that truck isn’t. It knows exactly where it wants to go.
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    The night of that horrible swim a few months ago, the woman was oh-so-briefly on the news. There was a small article in the Seattle Times the next day, as well, with a picture of the park. Half of Mads was in it—her arm, her leg, the right side of her face—in the distance. And then, after that, there was nothing. Nothing! The story was over. How could that be? Shouldn’t there have been more ? Shouldn’t there have been why ? Shouldn’t everyone know the woman’s past and what happened to the people in her life after ? How could people just go on as if nothing monumental had occurred? Mads realized then how often she herself had gone on, after