“Promise you’ll call us if anything goes wrong,” Dad said.
“Uh, sure,” I promised. I was a little curious what Dad meant by “wrong”—Aidan running away from school? Bullies bullying his story out of him? Unicorns invading fifth period in order to get him back? But I also knew if I asked for clarification, I’d probably end up talking to them past the late bell, and I really wanted to get to homeroom and have my regular life begin again.
“Bye!” I said so loud and cheery it probably looked like I was auditioning for the school musical.
While I walked through the hallway, I could see a few people looking at me, but not too many. My best friends, Busby and Tate, found me while I was at my locker. Although they’d offered to have me over to their houses, I hadn’t really talked to them while Aidan was missing. Now I could see they were torn between playing it cool and asking me everything.
It was Busby who broke first, her voice barely a whisper.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “I mean, is Aidan okay? I know we’re not supposed to ask where he was…but I can ask if you’re okay, right?”
“And if you happen to want to tell us where he was, we won’t argue,” Tate added with a grin.
“We’re not really talking about that,” I said apologetically.
“No worries,” Busby said quickly. “At all. Everyone’s just glad he’s okay.”
Tate nodded. “Yeah. Both my mom and dad were part of the crew looking for him.”
“Mine too,” Busby said.
“So, yeah…we’re all just glad he came back.”
This would happen to me over and over throughout the day—kids telling me how their parents had looked for Aidan. Even some of the teachers told me they’d been part of the search parties. Other kids told me how much they’d prayed for Aidan’s return. Everyone said how glad they were that he was home safe…but I could tell that at least some of them were expecting more from me than thanks. They wanted to know what had happened. They felt they were owed an explanation. And I had nothing to give them.
Busby laid off at lunch, but Tate and another friend of ours, Truman, were relentless.
“You don’t have to tell us,” Truman said. “But if we guess right, throw a French fry our way.”
Then they started guessing.
“He ran away to Disney World.”
“He was abducted by Ms. Holt for science experiments.” (Ms. Holt was our not-particularly-friendly bio teacher.)
“He was abducted by aliens.”
“He’s been an alien all along and needed to visit his real parents in a galaxy far, far away.”
“Two words: time travel.”
“Two more words: witness protection.”
I kept my French fries to myself, and hoped hard that my friends wouldn’t actually guess Aidan’s story, because if they’d said, “He went into another world, like Narnia,” I wasn’t sure I could keep my expression neutral.
But they never got near it.
Eventually Busby told them to cut it out, and changed the conversation to weekend plans.
I gave her a few French fries in thanks.
19
Although I was thinking about Aidan all the time during school, I didn’t see him until the end of the day. Once again, we weren’t taking the bus—Mom had given us instructions on where and when to meet her, and she backed those up with a series of texts.
I met Aidan by his locker, which had been decorated with balloons and streamers, as if it was his birthday or he’d won a big prize.
He saw me looking at them and said, “They also made a big ‘welcome back’ banner for my homeroom. Ms. Geller made a really big deal about it. She gave this speech about how good it was to have me back. Then she made the whole class applaud and cheer. It was mortifying.”
“Was it better after that?”
Aidan did the combination for his locker and accidentally popped a balloon when he swung it open. “Not much. I think whatever Principal Kahler said to them in the assembly only made them more curious. For the most part, they left me alone…but I could tell they didn’t want to.”
“Yeah, I got that too.”
He stared at me hard. “But you didn’t say anything, right?”
“Of course I didn’t say anything.”
Aidan’s stare moved over my shoulder. I turned and found Glenn hovering there.
“Bad time?” he asked.
“Nah,” Aidan said, taking the last of the books from his locker and closing it fast enough that another balloon fell off. “Mom’s picking us up.”
“Cool. I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”
“Right.”
“Even though you’re grounded?” I asked.
Aidan looked annoyed with me. “Grounded means I can’t leave the house. It doesn’t mean Glenn can’t come over.”
I wasn’t sure about that—but I figured we’d find out soon enough. Neither of us had been grounded before. Not like this.
“Yeah, what do you know?” Glenn chimed in scornfully. Which I thought was unnecessary.
“I know more than you do,” I shot back, regretting it immediately.
“Stop,” Aidan said to me. Then he smiled at Glenn and said, “We’ll definitely hang out tomorrow. Just show up.”
“Cool. See ya.”
“See ya.”
Aidan started walking to our pickup point. Kids kept stopping him to say welcome back and that they were glad he was okay. Some girls even told him how scared they’d been when he’d been missing—I couldn’t tell if they were friends of his or not. He wasn’t unfriendly to anyone, but he also made it clear he didn’t want to talk about it. He kept walking. I kept following.
The phones buzzed in our pockets at the same time. Mom, already there. Mom, waiting.
When we got in the car, she asked the usual question—“How was your day?”—but it felt more loaded than usual. As if to confirm that, she added before we’d even answered, “And how did the talk with the counselor go?”
“It was fine,” Aidan mumbled from the back seat.
From the front seat, I could see that this answer wasn’t good enough for Mom.
“Aidan,” she said, trying to keep her voice light and only half succeeding, “when you disappear for six days, you forfeit the right to give brief, unhelpful answers. So let’s try again. What did you and the counselor talk about?”