Introduction

"Going missing was the only interesting thing my brother had ever done." Even a decade later, the memories of the year Lydia Pasternak turned sixteen continue to haunt her. As a teenager, Lydia lived in her older brother's shadow. While Danny's athletic skills and good looks established his place with the popular set at school, Lydia's smarts relegated her to the sidelines, where she rolled her eyes at her brother and his meathead friends and suffered his casual cruelty with resigned bewilderment. Though a part of her secretly wished for a return of the easy friendship she and Danny shared as children, another part of her wished Danny would just vanish. And then, one night, he did. In the year following Danny Pasternak's disappearance, his parents go off the rails, his town buzzes with self-indulgent mourning, and his little sister Lydia finds herself thrust into unwanted celebrity, forced to negotiate her ambivalent--often grudging--grief for a brother she did not particularly like. Suddenly embraced by Danny's old crowd, forgotten by her parents, and drawn into the missing person investigation by her family's intriguing private eye, Lydia both blossoms and struggles to find herself during Danny's absence. But when a trail of clues leads to a shocking outcome in her brother's case, the teenaged Lydia and the adult she will become are irrevocably changed, even now as she reluctantly prepares to return to her hometown. Relentlessly gripping, often funny, and profoundly moving, The Local News is a powerful exploration of the fraught relationship between a brother and sister and how our siblings define who we are.

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Excerpt

Drifters
1.
After my brother went missing, my parents let me use their car whenever I
wanted, even though I only had a learner's permit. They didn't enforce my
curfew. I didn't have to ask to be excused from the dinner table. The dinner
table, in fact, had all but disappeared, covered with posters of Danny, a box
of the yellow ribbons that our whole neighborhood had tied around trees and
mailboxes and car antennas, and piles of the letters we'd gotten from people
praying for Danny's safe return or who thought they saw him hitchhiking along
a highway a couple states away. I didn't have to do any more chores.

Years later, I joined a support group for siblings of missing or exploited
kids. It was amazing how a group of like-minded individuals could make the
most singular and self-defining of circumstances feel simply mundane. I
suppose for some, such a thing would be normalizing, since everyone in the
circle of couches and folding chairs had experienced equivalent tragedy. For
me, it was deeply disconcerting. I had no idea how to compete with other
people's misery. It was in that group that I heard about the two types of
parents: clingers and drifters. The clingers became micromanagers and wildly
overprotective, tightening the reins, imposing new rules, smothering their
kids with unwanted attention, buying gifts like a canopy bed or a new stereo
system. The drifters, on the other hand, lost themselves to some mysterious
netherworld, existing on coffee and crackers and minutes of sleep per night.
They forgot to take the garbage out. They let the kitchen floor grow sticky.
They looked like they were listening when you spoke (they became expert at
empathetic nodding), but really they were staring just past you, glassy-eyed.
The concerns of the corporeal world became incon_sequential to them, except
for the fine, red-hot point of finding their child (not you; their other
child). Aside from that, they, well, drifted.

My parents were drifters.

We couldn't keep the refrigerator stocked; its contents dwindled to bread
heels and condiments in a matter of days. My mom started smoking again, years
after having quit. Her energy was both frenetic and focused: she designed
posters, concocted overly elaborate phone trees to recruit people for the
area sweep searches, and added to her steadily growing stack of index cards,
each one scribbled with a "clue" to help the police. Allergic to penicillin,
she scrawled on one. Capricorn, she wrote on another. Born on night of a full
moon. My father became quietly obsessed with the TV news--local, national,
international, as if he couldn't rule out any possibility. Maybe Danny was
part of the throngs of Bosnian Serb refugees; maybe he'd been victim to the
floods in the Philippines. Dad could go days without speaking. He could sit
for hours (six and a quarter, I counted one day) in his sunken chair without
once getting up. And we kept running out of toilet paper. Over and over again
we had to use tissues instead, until those ran out too and we moved to paper
towels, which quickly clogged the pipes. I'd never before had to think about
the supply of toilet paper in our household. It had always simply been there.
I was fifteen. Up to that point, I'd believed that the world more or less
worked--toilet paper sat on its roll, dinner was served hot at the table,
everyone came home at the end of a day--simply because it was supposed to and
it always had.

"There's no proper or improper way to grieve," the woman who ran the support
group would say. I did not return after that first visit; the impulse, it
quickly became clear, had been a mistake. The woman's face was chalky with
powder, her cheeks too bright with rouge, her eyelashes clumped with mascara.
The collar of her blouse rose up around her neck, tied into an improbably
flouncy bow. The look of her offended me. She was all wrong; how was I
supposed to take her as an authority? Other participants hunkered down low in
their chairs, weeping appropriately into soggy tissues. Or nodding
appreciatively. Or wringing their hands. They had the raccoon-eyed,
red-veined look of the haunted.

Finding myself backed into the overly familiar terrain of heart_ache and
desperation brought out the worst in me. I was cornered, wanting to scream or
kick my chair over or run my nails along the chalkboard where the woman had
made us brainstorm a list of feeling words about our siblings (love,
confusion, fear, sadness, the list began, predictably). I wanted to reel off
my own list of shitty things Danny had done to me when we were teenagers
(calling me the titless wonder, mashing my face in a pillow once until I
couldn't breathe, ignoring me in front of his friends). I wanted to be
irreverent and inappropriate. I wanted to shake up the righteous anguish.
Going missing, I wanted to yell from some deep, dark pit in the middle of me,
was the only interesting thing my brother had ever done.


2.
In the first weeks after Danny's disappearance, I drove. I would spend long
minutes in the garage before starting the car, adjusting the rearview and
side mirrors, moving my dad's seat up and down and backward and forward until
I had just the perfect view of the world behind me. I'd practice looking over
my left shoulder to see past my blind spot, imagining that the bushy maple in
our yard was a semi trying to barrel past me. Finally I'd back down our long
driveway, my head out the window, the warm summer air making my cheeks feel
blushed.

The whole act was fraught with a particular anxiety. Aside from being not
strictly legal, I could never forget the smallness of me compared to the
bigness of the car and the gaping margin for error created by the contrast.
One wrong move and I could easily swerve into the oncoming lane or plow
through a red light into a bustling intersection. The very act of
driving--the successful negotiation of feet on pedals and hands on steering
wheel and eyes in mirror--felt death-defying.

But I kept going back to it, night after night, and not just because it was a
way to get out of the house and away from my parents and whichever
well-meaning, wet-eyed neighbors or family friends were visiting. Even with
the nervous thrum in my belly, driving managed to calm me down, focusing my
attention on palatable, bite-sized fragments of data--two yellow lines, a
green arrow, a bright red taillight. I had just finished the summer-school
offering of driver's ed the month before and my stops were still jerky; I
often overestimated how much gas I needed and regularly peeled out from
stops; I scraped the curb on the few occasions I tried to parallel park. I
was drawn to it in the same nagging way I was drawn to anything I wasn't yet
good at, like when I'd spent the summer before eighth-grade algebra learning
polynomial and quadratic equations, or when I'd spent weeks memorizing every
strait in the world after losing the middle-school geography bee (Joshua
Belson had beaten me, knowing that the Naruto Strait connected Awaji Island
and Shikoku in Japan).

So each night, after my parents absently nodded in my direction and the
raspy-voiced neighbor or family friend leaned in to hug me or place a
sympathetic hand on my shoulder, I slipped out to the garage and into Dad's
car. But I didn't have anyplace to go. I'd spent the bulk of my life up to
that point either in school or in my room studying or in my best friend David
Nelson's den paging through books and listening to music and generally
lolling around. Most nights now, I'd deliver stacks of Missing Person posters
to the ring of businesses surrounding our city. In the beginning, the
sympathetic attention of strangers was still intoxicating.

The lady in the Kroger made an ohhh noise as she promised to hang it on the
community bulletin board at the front of the store. The manager at the
Blockbuster called me sweetheart and offered me a coupon: rent two, get one
free. The kid who scooped ice cream at Baskin-Robbins said he'd take two
because he worked another shift at the store in Belvedere. He looked,
honestly, like he could cry. It was months--sixty-three days,
actually--before anyone told me no. The guy behind the counter at the Texaco
Mini-Mart just shook his head and said, "Sorry, ma'am." He couldn't post it
in the window. Company policy.

"What company policy?" I asked, pointing to the poster for Once Upon a
Mattress at Jefferson Middle School and one for the Red Cross: Give Blood.
Save a Life. He repeated his line about manager approval in his thick,
mumbling accent. His dark face was drawn, with wiry bits of hair growing in
uneven patches across his chin. He was yellow around the eyes, which made him
look sick.
His name tag said Kito. East Asian? African? Middle Eastern? I couldn't tell
from his bland, bored features. It seemed like he could be anything. I
assumed his bad attitude came from all the Franklin High jerkoffs who'd come
in here before me, making What up, Apu? jokes or calling him Mohammed. But I
was capable of talking to Kito like a normal person. I was capable of
discussing the Oslo Accords or the Indian-Pakistani conflict over Kashmir,
and not just because I could regurgitate facts from Mr. Hollingham's AP
history class--which I could--but because I took a particular pride in
actually reading newspapers and listening to the radio.

The fluorescent lights buzzed loudly above me. "Can't you take this now and
get manager approval later?" I asked, sliding the poster across the rubbery
mat on the counter. Danny was posed in his football uniform, down on one
knee, a football socked in one armpit, his face broad and unobjectionable as
a meatloaf, smiling as if Santa Claus himself had snapped the picture.
Beneath the photograph in bold, blocky letters it said, LAST SEEN 8/2/1995.
There were other details scattered in a bunch of contrasting, discordant
fonts and sizes and colors, because my mom, its designer, was a leaky
container for panic. In italicized blue Courier, it listed what Danny had
been wearing (Reebok gym shoes, shorts, gray T-shirt, Tigers ball cap); in
huge red Times New Roman, how much my parents would reward someone for
information leading to his whereabouts ($25,000; up another $10,000 from the
last poster); in bolded Arial, where he was last seen (two miles from our
house, leaving the basketball courts at the Larkgrove Elementary School
playground, where he'd just finished a game with his musclehead friends, Tip
and Kent). It didn't say musclehead on the poster, didn't even mention Tip
and Kent.

Kito (Kite-o, I wondered, or Kee-toh?) told me no. No manager tonight, he
said.

"Can't you hold it somewhere in the back until a manager arrives? Leave it on
the manager's desk? Maybe put a note on it?" I was trying to stay reasonable,
but I could hear my voice getting loud. A couple of guys had come into the
Mini-Mart, one opening and closing the cooler doors, the other standing right
behind me. I could smell the faint odor of gasoline coming off him, but I
didn't turn around. "Please," I said.

Kito looked at me, yellow and expressionless. I was sure he had not the
highest opinion of Americans, as most probably came in here for a six-pack of
Bud or Marlboro menthols or a whole strip of lottery tickets with their
Slurpee. Still, I wasn't used to strangers unmoved by tragedy.
"Listen," I said, speaking slowly and evenly. "I am not asking you to hang
this poster immediately. I will leave it here to get whatever approval you
need."

He called me ma'am again, even though he was old enough to be my father, and
told me Sorry. "Sir, I can help you?" he said to the person behind me.

I curled my fingers around the rickety wire rack that held local maps, not
quite sure what to do with myself. I wanted to tell Kito to go screw himself,
but adults, even adults manning a gas station counter, still held relatively
unassailable sway with me, so I chickened out and instead flicked my hand in
his general direction, an insane motion, as if I were sprinkling fairy dust
on him. For a second he opened his sick eyes a bit wider and I thought maybe
I was starting to get through, but then, still, nothing. I left the poster on
the counter, just to make a point, though I pictured Kito almost immediately
throwing it into the metal wastebasket beside him, already overfilled with
Snickers wrappers and Doritos bags.

The man behind me called over my head, "Pump eight." Kito started pressing
the keys of his cash register. I opened the door hard on my way out, the
bells on top clinking loudly and also, I hoped, angrily and indignantly and
ultimately pityingly, for Kito and his sad little life there inside the
Mini-Mart.


I dropped off posters at Wendy's, Arby's, Valu-Rite, and the Chev_ron. The
car wash, the dry cleaners, and the Comerica branch were all already
closed--it was nearly nine on a Tuesday. I scanned the radio for news. An AM
host talked fuzzily about fallout from the O. J. Simpson verdict with a lady
who yelled about how it was open season on battered women. On another station
there was a story about riots in Lyons that broke out after the police killed
a local bombing suspect. Bad news was soothing, as if at least it was the
whole world that was screwed.

The lights of the A&W were still bright, the booths half full. In_side, there
was a flash of purple-and-yellow letter jackets, which gave me a quick,
instinctual stutter, a chill up the back of my neck. My new therapist, Chuck,
would've told me the feeling was a grief response. Chuck thought everything
was a grief response. And sure, you could have interpreted the jackets as a
reminder of Danny, who likely would've been in there with the rest of them,
eating burgers and slurping root beers and burping words. He'd be
play-punching his friends on the arms, except his play punches would be hard,
and soon two or three of the guys would end up in a dramatic little scuffle,
Danny in a headlock, Tip or Kent with an arm around Danny's neck, tousling
Danny's hair and saying, "What you want, pretty boy? You want to throw down?"
and everyone would be laughing, even Danny, and maybe he'd spit burger out of
his mouth or root beer would come flying through his nose. The whole crowd of
them would make a huge racket, disturbing all the other A&W customers without
even noticing or, if they noticed, without giving a crap.
... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

1. In the first half of the book, what do you think Lydia believes happened to Danny? Based on her actions and attitudes, what might she think is the cause of her brother's disappearance?
2. What is your opinion of Danny's friends - namely Tip and Lola - at the start of the book? Does your opinion of them change by the end? In what way?
3. What are Lydia's motivations for getting involved in the investigation of Danny's disappearance? Why is she so drawn to Denis?
4. What is the significance of the title? We see a newscast with Kirk Donovan early on in the book. Are there other meanings to the idea of “The Local News?”
5. How would Lydia's story have been different if her parents had been “clingers” instead of “drifters?”
6. Through the Saturday searches, the school assembly and shiva, among other times, we see the larger community respond to Danny's disappearance. How would you characterize the community reaction? And is this reaction a balm or a burden for the Pasternak family and for Lydia, in particular?
7. Lydia has three distinct best friends through her 10th grade year - David Nelson, Lola Pepper and Bayard. What does each of these friendships reveal about Lydia?
8. Danny left a strong impression on everybody around him. We see him, in turn, as a bully, a champion, a leader and struggling student. Who was the real Danny? How do all of these pieces of his personality fit together?
9. There is a twelve-year gap between the year Danny went missing and the reunion. What do you imagine Lydia's life was like during those intervening years? How did she fare during her final two years of high school? How successful were her college years? Her years in DC?
10. At the reunion, Lydia says the “real question” is who she and Danny would have been to each other as adults. Who do you think they would have been to each other? Would their relationship have changed or remained largely the same as it had been in adolescence?
11. The novel ends when Lydia is 28. Has she, at that point, “recovered” from Danny's disappearance? Has her mother?
12. What do you make of the last line of the book? What happens to Lydia the moment after the book ends? In the days and weeks after? How has returning home and attending the reunion affected or changed her?

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