Stutter Creek by Ann Swann

that Amanda had said on the phone. She also told her she would go to the police station if necessary. Her voice trembled as she spoke.
     
    After they hung up, Kami called the Pine River Police Department. The tremble in the other girl’s voice frightened her badly.
    The officer on phone-duty took down her name, and Mandy’s name. Then he advised her to make the trip to the city the next day if they still hadn’t heard from Mandy. “We can’t report an adult as missing until twenty-four hours have passed—unless we have extenuating circumstances. ”
    Kami relayed the conversation Myra had told her about, especially the part about Mandy picking up a boy on the highway. That seemed to make him take her a bit more seriously.
    “You say she was on her way to work when this occurred?” he asked.
    “Yes,” Kami replied. She exhaled, relieved that he was beginning to see the urgency. “And she hasn’t been heard from since.”
    After a few beats of silence, the officer said, “And I don’t suppose she was in the habit of picking up stray men, er, boys. Right?”
    Exasperated, Kami blew her bangs out of her eyes and forced herself to remain calm before she answered. “She was valedictorian of her class, first in our family to go to college, she was doing great. She had never missed even one day of work so far—”
    “Okay, okay,” he said. “I’m getting the picture. Which reminds me, when you come in, bring a good picture. We’ll get it on the air ASAP, provided she doesn’t turn up before then. She could’ve just had car trouble, you know. Could be walking into town as we speak.”
     
    The officer’s voice held no conviction. The fact that she apparently had a cell phone and didn’t call to report a flat or other car trouble didn’t bode well as far as the he was concerned. And that part about picking up a boy . . . that sounded like a bad joke. He would have to get a statement from the friend, but first, he was going to contact the Highway Patrol and get a duty report from the unit responsible for that stretch of highway. Maybe the trooper had seen something, an abandoned car, perhaps. “First things first,” he muttered to himself, “that’s what my mama always said. First things first.”
     
    ***
     
    Beth was so glad to finally be at the cabin. It brought back so many great memories, especially the memory of John, a huge young bear of a man. He had been wandering close to their cabin when her dad had spied him and called him over. His hair was dark blond hair and his eyes were the color of seawater.
    Thinking of those eyes now made her recall the protective way he would “spot” her every time she was about to do something daring, like swinging from the ancient knotted rope out over the lake. She hadn’t even known it was there, but when he showed it to her, she’d clambered up onto the giant boulder to reach it before he could test it first.
    Remembering the way he’d stood, arms crossed over his bare chest, waiting for her to let go or return to the bank—poised to leap in and pull her out if necessary—those were the memories that had brought her back each and every year until she’d met and married Sam.
    Beth rubbed her arms and put away the past. John had been eighteen and she barely fourteen. He had been like a big brother to her, gentle but annoying. They had fished with her dad and camped out in the woods. They’d built shelters and climbed mountains, all things tomboy that Beth had loved back then. It had been absolutely . . . magical. And then he had simply disappeared. He’d never known how her feelings for him had changed over the course of that summer. They’d gone from platonic to knight-in-shining-armor crushy, and she had never told him.
    The next trip to Stutter Creek, a few months later, she had cajoled her dad into taking her all the way up the mountain to John’s cabin, but it had been deserted. He obviously hadn’t been there in a long time. She never saw him