“Yeah, what a mess,” I repeated sarcastically. “Isn’t it a bummer that you’re going to have to deal with the fact that everyone stopped what they were doing in order to find you before it was, you know, too late? Such a shame that while you were riding unicorns or petting dragons or whatever, they were dredging the pond to look for your body and checking every single corner of this town for you. Sucks, right? The police kept asking me and Glenn questions we didn’t know how to answer, and each time, we had to wonder whether giving the wrong answer was going to lead to you never being found. What a mess! But hey—I guess this can be a learning experience for everyone. In particular, next time you go into a fantasy world? Do us a favor and leave a note.”
Aidan stood up then, rinsed out his cereal bowl, and put it in the dishwasher.
“You’re never going to understand,” he told me when he was done. “But that’s fine. I’d never expect you to. So let’s just follow everyone’s lead and pretend it’s a normal day, okay? Did anyone get my homework assignments while I was gone? I might as well catch up before I go back tomorrow.”
“Our teachers emailed our assignments for the past few days.”
“You didn’t go to school either?” Aidan looked surprised by this.
“Clearly I’m not the only person who’s never going to understand,” I said.
Then I left him alone with his missing poster.
16
I wasn’t sure whether it was deliberate or not, but a lot of the time that day, when Mom was on the phone, we could hear what she said. People were calling to see how Aidan was, how all of us were doing. And once Mom told them we were fine, doing well, the natural next thing was for them to ask her what had happened, if the mystery had been explained.
“We’re just focusing on the present,” she’d tell the person on the other end of the phone, whether they were a relative, a neighbor, or a friend.
From Mom’s end of the conversation, it was clear that most people were okay to stop there. But a few persisted. I imagined them saying, You don’t have to tell us what happened—just tell us where he was. We looked so hard for him. Where did we miss? Because Mom’s answers were:
“It’s complicated.”
“No, he wasn’t anywhere we thought to look.”
“No, it was just him. Nobody else. He was on his own the whole time.”
And, most often, “We’re just happy to have him back.” Over and over again.
I could hear her from the bedroom and I was sure Aidan could hear her from the den.
There were also Dad’s calls, checking in. “They’re doing homework,” she told him. “It’s like nothing happened.”
But that didn’t make any sense. The fact that Aidan was quietly doing homework was total evidence that something was off. Ordinarily on a day home from school he’d be texting his friends nonstop—they had this game they’d play where three of them would email a word at the same time, and then they’d Google the three words together—badger Halloween cloud, for example—and see what the funniest result was, usually a really weird video. Or he’d find a multiplayer game where he could dial in and stave off zombies with other players from time zones where school wasn’t in session, whether it was Tokyo or Berlin. At the very least, he couldn’t sit for more than an hour without getting up for a snack, usually stopping by wherever I was to mess with me.
But Aidan didn’t want to talk to me now, or to anyone else. He didn’t even snack.
Couldn’t Mom see that?
* * *
—
I kept waiting for Aidan to sneak up to the attic. I left my door open in hope of catching him.
When he didn’t go up there, I went myself. Walked to the dresser. Felt for a wind. Opened the doors and found nothing but air and wood. Closed the doors. Opened them again. Pretended to walk away, then quickly turned back and opened them a third time.
Nothing. Just a dresser.
When I got back to our room, Aidan was there, getting some books from his backpack.
“Find anything?” he asked casually.
“Nope,” I told him.
He went back downstairs.
* * *
—
The only person who asked to talk to me and Aidan on the phone was Aunt Brandi. Mom passed it over to me first, then left me alone when I made it clear I wasn’t going to talk until she stopped hovering.
“How’s it going over there?” Aunt Brandi asked.
“Great,” I said. It was kind of an automatic response.
“Is that so?” Aunt Brandi’s low voice didn’t seem to believe me. “I know you’re excited to have Aidan back, but I can’t imagine it’s an easy time.”
“It’s okay.”
“Mom told me where Aidan says he was. That must be a lot to take in.”
“It doesn’t really matter what he says, as long as he’s back.”
“Of course. But it’s okay to think it’s a little strange. You know that, right?”
“Sure.”
“And are your parents behaving themselves?”
This was something that Aunt Brandi always asked me when she called.
“Well, Mom’s mad and Dad’s at work.”
“That’s my assessment too. Listen, Lucas—will you do me a favor? Can you take care of your brother and try to help him out however you can? I’ll come down over the weekend to help out too, because no matter what Aidan says, he’s going to need us in his corner now. Especially with you going back to school tomorrow.”
“There’s no way of getting out of it, I guess.”
“Nope—school’s the plan. But, believe me, that’s much better than sitting around on pause for any longer. Anyway, can I talk to Aidan? Is he there with you?”
“I’ll go get him.”
“Thanks, Lucas. You know where to reach me, anytime.”
I walked down to the den and passed the phone over to Aidan. Just like I hadn’t really started talking until Mom left, he didn’t really talk until I left.
I wondered if Aunt Brandi would be able to get the truth out of him. She was Mom’s youngest sister by a stretch, halfway in age between Mom and us. She lived in the city and worked as a graphic designer for a T-shirt company. This meant Aidan and I were always getting free T-shirts with random slogans—my favorite was a penguin standing in the middle of a crowded street asking, “Where can I get some ice?” while Aidan loved one that showed a snail trying to swipe a phone twice its size.