Essential Maps for the Lost Read Online Free Page A

hearing news like that. How she’d just got up and made some popcorn, or changed the channel, or went back to her biology assignment.
    But something important was revealed, even in the brevity. From KING 5 news at five, Madison learned this: Her name was (is?) Anna Youngwolf Floyd. And she jumped off the Aurora Bridge.
    Since then—the body, the name, the jump—Mads sees Anna Youngwolf Floyd every time she shuts her eyes. No, wrong. She doesn’t even need to shut them to see her. Anna is just with Mads all the time now. She is not a ghost who bangs doors and flutters curtains. She is just a thought that won’t leave. She is a gnawing question. This is the most insistent kind of ghost of all.
    â€œWhat is that, Mads?” Claire asked late one night, not long after the swim. Well, sure, she’d want to know, especially after Mads slammed the lid of her laptop down so she wouldn’t see.
    â€œI’m sorry. Am I keeping you awake?”
    â€œIt’s late, honey,” Claire said. She leaned against the doorjamb of Mads’s room. “Really late. It’s, what, past one?”
    â€œI’m done now. Homework,” she lied. She’s a terrible liar.
    â€œHomework, huh? You’re on that thing all hours lately. Mads, was that her picture? That woman?”
    Mads said nothing. Aunt Claire didn’t deserve to be deceived, anyway. She’s a nice person, same as Mads. She does yoga. She’s the nice sort of yoga person, not the superior kind of yoga person. She wears yoga person skirts, and yoga person woven things, and she has longish, rust-colored hair. She tries to feed Harrison organic stuff, which is thankfully, what a relief, balanced out when Thomas sneaks him Doritos. Mads feels bad that Claire has gotten stuck with her all spring and summer. Thomas probably felt obliged, given that his brother, Mads’s father, ditched them to work in Amsterdam, fleeing Mads’s mother like she was the wreckage of a burning plane.
    Aunt Claire sighed. She shook her head. “This isn’t healthy,” she said finally. “I know what you’ve been doing all these hours on the computer, Mads. Trying to look her up . . . And you’re not sleeping. Not eating . . . This whole thing . . . The other day, when you heard the water running—that’s a flashback , Mads.”
    â€œI’m going to go brush my teeth,” Mads said.
    â€œShe was just a woman. Probably mentally ill, you know that, right? There aren’t always real explanations when people do stuff like that. Except that one.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œIf mental illness made sense . . .”
    Mads waited. She hoped and hoped Claire would finish, because it might give her some sort of an answer. Oh, please , she thought. Come on, Claire! But Claire just waved her arms a little, luckless branches riding a sudden wind.
    â€œAre you sure you wouldn’t like to go see someone? A therapist? I don’t want to keep bugging you about it, but I really think it might be helpful. I mean, you were already struggling, you know, um . . . depressed? And now this. Not to put a label on you, or anything! I mean, after something like that, it might all just be . . . too much, right? An expert seems important.”
    Mads snorted. She’d lost belief in that kind of thing a long time ago. Still, Claire and Thomas had been asking her this daily, watching her endlessly, looking for signs that she might be the one to jump off a bridge next. Even her mom was suggesting that Mads come home for support .
    â€œDo you know how many psychologists and psychiatrists and other ists Mom has been to?”
    â€œYou’re not her.”
    God. She hoped not. It sounded unkind, and she didn’t even want to think unkind, but wow. That idea could make a person nervous. She loves her mother. Her mom is sometimes her best friend, the way they talk