I had a phone, but I was only supposed to use it for emergencies. This was an emergency, but the only person I wanted to call about it didn’t have his phone.
We kept watch. There was always someone awake. Just in case there was a call. Just in case there was a knock at the door.
We made sure the doors were locked, fearing intruders. You had to knock or ring the doorbell for someone to let you in.
That ended up being important.
* * *
—
Are you sure you can’t think of anything else?
* * *
—
One day turned into two days.
Two days turned into three days.
I didn’t go to school. Mom and Dad didn’t go to work. Mom tore at napkins and paper cups. When she was through, she would look at her lap as if the pieces had fallen there from the sky. Dad kept searching, even if it was in the same places that had been searched a hundred times before by a hundred different people. “We have to be missing something,” he kept telling us, and finally Mom shut him up by saying sharply, “It’s Aidan, Jim. We’re missing Aidan.”
People kept coming by. They put up signs everywhere.
Missing. That word again.
I didn’t know whether it described what Aidan was or how we felt.
He was missing, and it felt like every word we spoke, every move we made, every thought we had was an act of missing him.
* * *
—
Think, Lucas. Think hard.
* * *
—
Glenn asked me if I wanted to go over to his house, to play some games. I didn’t think it was his idea. I didn’t want to leave, but the fact that I didn’t want to leave made people think I should get out of the house.
“It’ll take your mind off things,” Dad said.
What he meant was that it would take their minds off of me for a second. So I went. Glenn tried to get me to play all the games Aidan would play, the ones Aidan was good at. I sucked at them because he always beat me and I always gave up. Now I was playing Aidan’s games with Aidan’s best friend in Aidan’s best friend’s house and that didn’t take my mind off things at all.
“You have no idea where he is?” Glenn asked as he doused Nazis with a flamethrower.
“No,” I said, not taking my eyes from the screen. “You?”
Glenn just shook his head, killed more Nazis.
When I told Glenn’s mom I wanted to go back home, Glenn didn’t look either disappointed or surprised.
I’d never been as much fun as my brother.
* * *
—
Three days turned into four days. Four days turned into five.
They wanted to dredge the pond. What if he’d fallen in? What if that was why they couldn’t find him?
I noticed the difference: They weren’t talking about finding Aidan. They were talking about finding Aidan’s body.
My parents didn’t want to hear this. When Aunt Brandi called from her vacation in Peru and told my mother she was coming home because they had to start preparing for the worst, Mom told her not to say another word, that nobody was going to talk about Aidan as if he was anything other than alive. He was missing. That’s all.
I didn’t think he was dead. I felt that if he were dead, I would know. The same way I’d know if one of my arms was missing or if my house had burned down. I said it to myself, “He’s not dead. I know he’s not dead.” I made sure no one else was around when I did this.
Mom has family pictures in every room of our house. I kept looking at Aidan’s face in those pictures, kept asking him where he was. I was scared that he’d be frozen in those photos forever, never getting any older.
I didn’t sleep much. I listened for any sign, any signal.
I felt guilty whenever I fell asleep.
When I woke up, there were only about five seconds when I was okay, when it felt like morning on a school day. Then I’d remember what was happening, and all the fear would descend.
You’re not dead, I said to him in my mind.
Then I waited for a reply.
* * *
—
The fifth day turned into a sixth day. The sixth day turned into a sixth night.
They expected me to go to sleep. Sleep: the scene of the crime.
Our house is two stories and an attic. Mom and Dad and some other people were downstairs. When I went to bed, everyone was trying to convince Mom to go to bed too, but she wouldn’t listen. She was still down there.
I was upstairs, kept awake by every single time I’d wished to have my own room, so I wouldn’t have to share one with Aidan. This is not how I want to get it, I told the universe, but the only response I got was from Bentley, Aidan’s old teddy bear, who Mom had taken from the shelf and put back on his bed.
Bentley stared at me, as if he was telling me, This is all your fault.
I heard something fall. Above me. In the attic.
I don’t know why I didn’t call for my parents. I don’t know why I didn’t run downstairs.
I told myself it was the wind. A raccoon. A ghost.
But I had to know for sure.
So I walked to the end of the hall. I opened the door that’s smaller than all the other doors, bent my head a little to squeeze through, and walked up the stairs.
At the top of the stairs I pulled the string that turns on the light, and the moment that bulb went on, I saw him. Aidan. On the floor, still in his pajamas. Wincing at the light. Face down, like someone had pushed him.
I said his name. He looked up at me as if my appearance was the unexpected one.
“Lucas?” he asked.
He pulled himself up. And instead of turning to face me, he looked at the tall dresser that had been hovering over his prone body, its two wooden doors spread wide like outstretched arms.
“Where is it?” he asked. “Where did it go?”
I looked over his shoulder, into the dresser. Normally it could fit dozens of hanging suits or dresses. But now…
“It’s empty,” I told him.
“No,” he said. “It can’t be.”
“Aidan.”
I said it like I had to remind him what his name was. I said it like his name would finish the job of bringing him back.