Sara Lost and Found Read Online Free Page A

“Humans,” he would say, and bubbles would blub up to the surface. Only underwater it would sound like “Who-moos,” which is what we’d be called if fish named us.
    Ben already has cocoa set at our places at the table. I take one sip, and the warm chocolate covers my tongue and slides all the way down my throat. Warm cocoa is what safe tastes like.
    *  *  *
    â€œSing a song,” Anna murmurs. We’ve taken a bath, put on the soft flannel nightgowns Rachel saved for us, and been tucked snug in bed. I bury my nose in the sleeve of my nightgown and breathe in the sweet scent of flowers. That’s what Rachel’s soap smells like: flowers. The bed is big, with a post at each corner—not just a mattress on the floor, like at our real house.
    A few months ago, when we last stayed with the Silvermans, Anna and I slept under the bed so scary things had no room to hide. Rachel screamed when she came into the room and found us gone. She thought we had run away again.
    When we slid out from under the bed, she said, “What under the bed are you doing?” Her sentences get more mixed up when she raises her voice.
    When I told her how scared we were, she had Ben put a little light under the bed, and we all slept better.
    â€œSing a song,” Anna pleads again. I open my eyes and look at the shadowy face leaning close. Her breath smells like Ben’s toothpaste.
    â€œA song?” My voice tries to whisper. She’s so close, I feel her nod.
    â€œDaddy’s song.”
    â€œWhy? Are you worried about having another nightmare?”
    Anna nods again, planting her hand over the spots on her arm. I rub my eyes and sit up. Too bad Daddy isn’t here to sing it himself. I swallow back the hurt. Thoughts of him and Mama turn over and over in my head. When will you be out of jail? When will the judge let us go home? Where are you, Mama? When will you come home? I flick on a small flashlight that Ben saved for me.
    â€œSing!” Anna insists.
    I hold back. I know the song she wants. Daddy wrote it just for me—or so he said when he sang it to me on my last birthday. And even though I heard him tell Mama he had written it for her, and then told Anna the same thing when he sang it to her on her birthday months later, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he wrote it and that I knew the whole song by heart.
    It’s not that I don’t like to sing. I do. Singing is my most favorite thing in the world. Daddy says I sing like a songbird—that when I grow up, we’ll sing together, him and me. But I also know that singing a song this late might wake up the Silvermans. We’d already woken them up once. I didn’t want to push our luck.
    â€œPlease?”
    â€œOkay. But I’ll have to sing soft, so listen up.” I snuggle close to Anna and take a deep breath. But just as I’m about to start, a noise stops me.
    â€œQuick! Under the covers! Somebody’s coming!”
    What if Mrs. Craig changed her mind and came back to get us? Or worse, the police come and take us away? I flick off the flashlight and cram it under the sheet. Anna starts to tremble. Sometimes being scared makes me breathe so fast, I feel floaty in my head. Other times, it can take the wind right out of me till I think I can’t breathe.
    I’m not sure which noises are good ones and which are bad ones in the Silvermans’ house. The Silvermans are old. They probably wouldn’t even hear a burglar sneaking around.
    â€œPretend to be asleep,” I say in a muffled whisper. Under the covers I must sound like fish talking underwater.
    â€œI can’t,” Anna squeaks. “Scared.”
    â€œYou can, Anna. Just do like we did when Mama and Daddy were fighting. Close your eyes until the scary stuff goes away.” It’s the same thing I’ve told her maybe a hundred times before. Too bad we couldn’t close our ears, too.
    â€œStill