The Lost Girls by Heather Young Page B

claimed. Its closet and drawers were bursting with Lucy’s elastic-banded pants, polyester blouses, broad-bottomed underwear, and nylon stockings. The thought of clearing it all out was too much, so she left her clothes in her duffel bag.
    The next day they drove forty-five miles to the Bemidji Walmart, which sprawled like a cow patty across from a snow-covered field and a Burger King, and Justine bought each girl two pairs of jeans, three sweaters, and a pair of rubber snow boots. As they headed for the cash registers they passed an aisle stocked with backpacks and lunch boxes. Angela stopped in front of a pink backpack with zebra trim. She fingered the strap and looked hopefully at Justine.
    â€œThe one you have is fine,” Justine told her.
    â€œIt has a tear in it.”
    Her backpack did have a tear in the front pocket; she’d had it for two years, and Melanie had carried it before that. It wasn’t a big tear. Not so big that it needed to be replaced. But Angela stood on the scuffed linoleum beneath those horrible Walmart lights that made every color too bright, and in two days she’d go to a new school where a rip in your backpack could tell everyone exactly who you were and who you were not, and she was so small, and so worried, and so perfectly made that Justine said, “Do you like that one?” Then she let both girls choose new backpacks and new lunch boxes. It was a spree compared to the stinginess of their San Diego lives, but she would have liked the same, once or twice, when she was their age. On the way out she picked up an employment application.
    Back at Lucy’s, she pulled out the chocolate chips she’d smuggled into the Walmart shopping cart and announced they were going to bake cookies. Melanie’s eyebrows shot up so fast that Justine laughed. “It’s a starting-over time,” she told her, “and that requires cookies.” The girls sat at the table, Angela bouncing in delight. Justine was a little giddy herself. New clothes and homemade cookies surely would make them forget the cold, shabby house and the grim school.
    She’d never made cookies from scratch. When she was young, Maurie would buy a refrigerated roll of cookie dough and they’d slice it into hockey pucks they ate right out of the oven. It was a real treat, Maurie said, but Justine was secretly disappointed in the cookies’ perfect roundness and the overblended texture that tasted of cut corners. She’d sworn she would bake from scratch when she was a mother, but she’d never found the time. She had a moment of panic in the pantry, but the dry ingredients were there, and they had the eggs and butter from Matthew Miller. As she lined up the ingredients, she felt she was keeping a promise.
    She turned the oven to 375 degrees and read from the recipe on the back of the bag of chips. “Start with the flour. Two and one quarter cups.”
    They needed a separate bowl for the butter, eggs, and sugar, so Justine pulled one out and got the butter from the refrigerator. She dumped two sticks in the bowl, then Melanie and Angela cracked the eggs and the yellow hearts slid around the butter. The girls watched them silently. Justine made a mental note to get a radio. She could put it on the counter, next to the microwave.
    She couldn’t find a mixer, but she did find a sturdy, wooden-handled whisk. “This is what people used before they had electricity,” she said. She expected an eye roll from Melanie, but Melanie just took the whisk and began to stir. The butter was hard, so she pulled the bowl into her lap and pounded it until it was the texture of tapioca, her face determined. When she was done she set the bowl back on the table, and she and Angela added the dry ingredients. Finally Justine opened the chocolate chips with a flourish and poured them on top. She was proud of herself, not just for the cookies, but also for how well she was managing things.