“Are you sure you don’t wanna come this year?” Nora asked Zadie, who was watching TV upside down, her legs slung over the back of the couch.

“Nope.”

“Zadie hates fun,” Finn said.

“No, I just hate chili.”

“Well, if you change your mind,” Nora continued, guiding her younger child toward the front door, “we’ll be in the chili tent, eating our body weight in beans.”

“Gross.”

“Love you.” Nora took a moment to blow her daughter a kiss before leaving the house.

Ever since their trip to the beach, Zadie and Nora had been in a good place. It helped that Nora had been acting more like her old self. Her eyes were clear and they made Zadie feel seen. It felt like they’d turned a corner: that maybe whatever it was that had made her mom act so strange was finally over.

That is, until two hours later when she got a call from her sister. “I need you to come pick me up.” Finn sounded annoyed.

“Why? Where’s Mom?”

“I don’t know. She’s not answering her phone.”

Zadie kept her voice even. “Where are you now?”

“I’m at the security tent. They tried paging her, but she probably didn’t hear it. It’s pretty loud.”

“Okay. Stay there. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

Through the bustling crowd, Zadie spotted her sister sitting on a bench outside the security tent, absentmindedly swinging a bag of kettle corn between her legs. “Finn!” Finn looked up as she approached. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“Still no sign of Mom?”

“No. She’s probably looking for me, too.” There was an anxiousness in Finn’s voice that broke Zadie’s heart. How could Mom do this? Forgetting to give your teenager a ride home was one thing; leaving your twelve-year-old alone at a busy festival was another.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” she answered, trying her best to disguise her anger. “Come on. I’ll walk you home. Then I’ll come back and see if I can find her.”

“Why don’t we just look for her now?”

“Because…” I don’t want you to see Mom that way. “I think I left the door unlocked. I want to lock it before Mom gets home.”

How hard could it be to find someone with blue hair? As it turned out, very hard. Zadie searched every booth, every tent, every bathroom line, but Nora was nowhere to be found. There were fleeting moments when she would worry that something had happened to her. But then she would remember the anxious look on Finn’s face and the anger would come rushing back. After she had spent an hour wandering the festival grounds, the anger was all that was left.

The one place she had yet to check was the event stage, where a corn-fed rock band was in the midst of a harmonica solo. A sea of mostly middle-aged spectators was grooving along on a grassy slope, sipping from their beers as they danced. This wasn’t exactly Nora’s scene, but Zadie scanned the crowd for her anyway.