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sobbing now. "Max Wendt told me if we don't find her within the first twenty-four hours, the chances that we ever will go way down," she said.
    Polly ought to have been crying too, but the cold, ugly truth was that she wasn't sad. She was as different from her mom as her mom was from her grandma. Her mom couldn't imagine the best possibility and Polly refused to imagine the worst. She'd had her vision and she was sticking with it: like Bronco, the husky, Brianna Greene had gotten away.
    ***
    The next morning, there were six policemen in the kitchen helping themselves to coffee. They stopped their talk of foul play when Polly entered the room.
    "Where's my mom?" Polly asked.
    As the men stared at their shoes, Polly heard voices in the yard. She hurried to the front door and found the lawn converted into an outdoor newsroom. Lights, reporters, and television cameras dotted the yard, and her mom and dad stood on a makeshift podium, arm in arm. Her mom was crying.
    "If anyone has any information on our daughter," she spoke into the camera. "Anything. We just want her back. Bree? If you're out there, we just want you back."
    A newsman kept snapping photos.
Click, click, click,
like a relentless woodpecker against the house. For the first time, Polly imagined what would happen if her sister didn't come back. At a certain point, they'd lock the door to Bree's room and no one would say her name anymore. Polly's mom's friends—the ones with children—would stop coming by, and Polly would no longer be Polly, but the sole child. The one who had to be so good and perfect that she made up for everything.
    She tried to be quiet, but she must have made some sound because her dad left the podium. When his arms came around her, she pressed her face into his chest. All the girls at school wished they were older, but Polly wanted to go back
in time. Back to when she was little, and her father could make everything right. But when her dad pulled back, his face straining to stay calm, she knew it was her turn to make things right for him. What he needed was a grownup—one daughter he didn't have to worry about at all. And because Polly would have given him anything, she smiled and told him she was better now. She didn't cry one drop.
    ***
    Polly's dad didn't go home to his cabin. He set up his blankets on the couch, but mostly he prowled the streets or went door to door handing out flyers. They created the handout on the computer, using an old picture of Bree because she hadn't allowed anyone to photograph her in the last few months. In it, she was tan and smiling, still with some flesh on her cheeks. No one knew her weight now, so they guessed.
MISSING 9/28/07: GIRL , 16, 5'5". AROUND 100 POUNDS .
SHOULDER-LENGTH BLOND HAIR. BLUE EYES.
MIGHT BE WEARING A DARK BLUE JACKET. REWARD FOR
ANY INFORMATION! CALL (208) 555-4301.
    That first weekend, Polly's mom bombarded the police with calls. She wanted round-the-clock search parties and updates on every lead. When divers pulled nothing but a rusted Jeep from Miller's Pond, she stared blankly at the water as if
it had denied her its secrets. When the police tried to take her home, she ignored them and sat on the sand. She refused to talk to anyone, and by morning, when Polly's dad retrieved her, she was pale and silent as a ghost.
    on Monday, there was no mention of school or work, and on Tuesday it was the same. By Wednesday, the visitors had stopped coming. Neighbors had done what they could, and the news must have gotten out that it was beyond grim in the Greenes' house. Polly remembered someone saying that it took three days for a spirit to rise. In their case, it took three days to turn their house into a tomb. The blinds were drawn, no one spoke above a whisper, and people turned their heads when passing on the street. Polly spent most of her time in her room, thinking that if she stood at her window and looked really, really hard, she could see a red light flickering in the boughs