The Lost Story

by Meg Shaffer

“My entire childhood in pencil sketches.” Jeremy dug out a sketchbook that looked different from the others—thicker, beat-up pages sticking out from the binding at odd angles. “This is the one your dad ripped apart,” Jeremy said. He opened the book to a sketch of himself, aged fourteen, sitting on the front porch of his mother’s old house on Park. “Yeah,” Rafe said. Jeremy flipped through the pages. “Who taped it back up? You?” “Had to have been, but I don’t remember doing it.” “What’s the last thing you do remember?” Jeremy asked. “I don’t remember the day we got lost,” Rafe said. “I remember most of the day before, but…not all of it. I remember asking to stay the night at your house. Then all hell breaking loose.” Asking to stay the night at Jeremy’s had been a mistake. His parents had a strict no-school-nights rule, but Rafe had argued the next day wasn’t real school, just an end-of-year field trip to Red Crow State Forest. His mom had said yes. His father had said no. When Dad said no, it was no. So, Rafe had been sullen and silent during dinner, picking at his mother’s meatloaf. His dad returned this silence with surliness. “What do you do at his house that’s so much better than what you can do at ours?” Rafe knew better than to answer that. When he’d eaten as much as he could stomach, he’d taken his sketchbook out of his backpack to work on a drawing he’d started that weekend. “Son, stop doodling and help your mother with dishes.” Doodling? Rafe did not doodle. He dr...