Dead to You (6 page)

She laughs again and says, “Mine’s green. Yours used to be red. What do you like to do for fun? Do you ski?”

“I don’t know how,” I say. “I’m not really accustomed to this perpetual snow thing . . .” I run my fingers over the carpeted step between us. Brushing it one way, then the other, seeing the color change slightly.

“Skateboard? How about music?”

I look up at her. “Nope, never tried it. Music is nice, I guess.”

“Rock, emo, screamo, ska? Punk? Pop? Not country, I hope.” She looks at me expectantly.

I feel like I know what I’m supposed to like, but I really don’t know that much about music, especially current stuff—just that canned music they play on downtown streets and at the zoo. I shrug. “I like all kinds. Not country.”

“Me too.”

“Cool,” I say. My tongue is in a knot. I’m so surprised she’s not asking me all the usual questions I’ve been bombarded with all night. All the tough questions. Like where the hell was I for the past nine years and what did the evil abductor do to me? Like how was it living in a youth home and on the streets?

“Did you go to school at all while you were away?” She pulls her hair in front of her shoulder and smiles at me. So easy.

I just look at her a minute, contemplating the question, and I feel myself smiling back—I can’t even help it. “Yeah,” I say. She makes it comfortable. “At first, I don’t think I did—I can’t remember. But then yes, some of the time. We moved around a lot, so I was always catching up.”

“I’m really glad you’re home,” she says. “And it’s cool to see inside your house again. It’s been a long time.”

“You haven’t been over? I thought you were sort of friends with Blake.”

She laughs. “Nah. We just ride the bus together. He’s just a kid, you know? I think he has a little crush on me, actually.”

The crowd noise increases suddenly and Russell shoots down the stairs like a gremlin. I look up. Blake stands at the top, glowering. “Mom needs you,” he says. He looks from me to Cami, then back to me, and slams the door. I look at Cami and her eyes are wide.

“Gosh,” she says. “I hope he didn’t hear that.”

I shrug. “Don’t worry, he probably didn’t. I think he’s mad at me. Besides, I don’t blame him.”

“For what?”

I stand up. But I don’t want to go. “Having a crush on you.”

Cami blushes and stands up too. Climbs the stairs. “I should go,” she says. “I’ll see you Monday?”

I bite my lip. “Yeah, I guess.”

She gives me a hug, and that freaking kills me. It really does.

Friday night doesn’t end until Sunday. The visitors
keep coming. Another newspaper and TV crew show up to do a story, and Mama makes them give us the questions first so we can approve them. Somewhere during that time, two uncles and an aunt barge into Blake’s bedroom to construct my bed.

By the end of it, when Dad finally closes down the circus and says “enough,” Gracie is cranky from too much attention and sweets, Blake is disgusted by being ignored and trampled, Mama is frazzled, and I’ve got a major headache from all the stress, noise, and stupidity. I escape to the basement for some privacy and hold my ears to stop the ringing sounds.

Later, after lights-out, Blake won’t even talk to me. I wish he would accept me, but I just lie in my new bed and feel like I’m taking up space.

Monday morning I’m wide awake at five, thinking about school. Wondering where they’ll put me. My chest is in a vise grip. I can’t breathe. I start wheezing, sweating, and I get out of bed so I don’t wake up Blake. Walk to the bathroom and just sit in there, on the edge of the bathtub, trying to get a grip. I drape a towel over my head and breath in and out, in and out. In. And out.

In the shower I think about Cami. That helps me calm down.

I’m ready for school two hours early, so I just sit at the dining table drinking about forty-nine cups of coffee. I watch, like I’m a security camera, the people moving through the house and sitting at the table for a few minutes to eat, then going on their way, first Dad, then Mama and Gracie, then Blake. If we talk, I don’t remember what we say. Mama gives me some papers and talks to me, a concerned look on her face. “You’re enrolled and you’re all set. Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you? Set you up with the school counselor?”

But I can’t comprehend right now. I shove the papers in my backpack. “No, I’ve had lots of first days at schools. I know the drill.”

“Okay,” Mama says, doubtful. “Come straight home after and tell me how it went.”

I just nod. “I’m good, Mama. I know what to do.” I am in a zone, a place I need to be to keep away the panicky things inside me.

Still, it’s been a while since I went to school. Like, a really long time.

At the bus stop, Blake stands off to the side, watching me. He calls out to a few guys who are near me. They ignore him. He pretends like he doesn’t care, but his face is hard, and I feel bad for him. I can tell he’s not a popular kid, and that worries me, because maybe I’m not popular either. I wonder how big the school is. Maybe I’ll be just a blip.

Cami is at the bus stop, and she smiles at me but lets the others crowd around me. I talk to them, but I stare at her until she blushes. I want to talk to her more. Have her ask me easy questions that don’t stress me out. And I want to know what everyone did, what things were like right after it happened. I want her perspective.

I want her.

She’s a fucking lake of beautiful.

On the bus, I shove into the seat with her. The other girls give sidelong glances and carry on stupidly, but I don’t care. “Hey,” I say.

She looks at me and blinks her ropey lashes. “What are you doing?”

“Why? Is this seat taken?”

“My friends . . . ,” she says.

“Tough,” I say, but I smile.

She laughs and gives in, shrugging to the other girls and moving her backpack from between us. “You nervous?”

The vise grip tightens on my ribs. “Nah. I’m cool.”

“Oh, I see,” she says with a lopsided grin. Teasing me. “I thought if you were nervous I could show you around, but . . .”

I slouch in the seat, stick my knee up against the seatback in front of us, and lean my head back. My heart races from all the caffeine this morning, and from the closeness of this girl. “So, what—you only show the nervous loser-type guys around, not the cool ones who used to be your best friend? What kind of person are you?”

Cami shrugs, takes her wool cap off, and smoothes her hair down. “I help those in need. You, apparently, don’t need anything.”

Oh, God. I need her.

In school, she walks with me to the office and pauses outside the door. “You’ll figure it out,” she says. “The layout is just two big squares. Numbers go up, clockwise starting here.” Her hair is staticky and I want to touch it. I want her electricity. But she just grins and leaves me there to fend for myself.

I walk up to the desk, where a woman sits with a pen and papers strewn around her, severe black glasses that look kind of artsy, and cropped black hair. A nameplate says her name is Miss Lester.

“Yes?” she says, still writing.

I clear my throat. “I’m . . . Ethan. De Wilde. New student.”

The woman looks up. “Oh. Very good. Welcome home. You’re that lost boy.” It’s not a question.

“Yes, ma’am,” I say.

She takes my paperwork and shuffles through it, then pulls one sheet out and hands it to me. “You’re going to need this—it’s your schedule. There’s a map on the back. Come with me. We’ll put you in classes for now and each teacher will assess you, do some testing, so we know if you’re in the right place.”

We meet the principal and the school counselor and then she walks me through my schedule. It’s easy and I’m really just anxious to get away from her. She walks me back to my first period, and thankfully I get a seat without too much staring.

I don’t know anybody in my classes. At lunch, I just sit alone in the middle of the cafeteria and people mostly come and go around me, but some of them say they know me. I tune most of it out and smile when I’m supposed to. Sometimes I pretend to remember something—it’s almost a sport now, after the weekend family disaster.

The teachers are decent enough not to make some big announcement about me being there, although one of them, Ms. Gibbons, gets a little gushy, calls me a hero and a survivor. In the hallways, a few people stop me and say stupid “I thought you were dead” things, but I try to stay low-key. I mean, how do you answer that? “Thank you”? Eyes on the ground or on the map, scowl on my face. Most of them either don’t remember because they were too young, or they don’t really care. Fine by me.

When the bell rings at the end of the day, I manage to find my locker again. I grab my stuff and take off to the bus, stuck behind foot traffic. The crowd shifts and moves as one huge mass. Finally, I bust through the doors to the bus line. My stomach twists when I see her long, black hair.

And the guy who’s touching it.

And then they’re kissing. He’s leaning back against
the bus and she’s leaning into him. And I—I’m suddenly doubled up in hysterics, laughing uncontrollably with a crowd all around me, feeling like a total psycho loser and unable to stop it, so I drop down to one knee. Start tying my shoe. Gasping and laugh-crying down at the snow-packed cement as people bang into me, their knees catching my kidneys and shoulders and digging in a little harder than they need to, because I’m there, in their way.

When I finally get it under control, I stand up, take a deep breath and let it out, and move past Cami and the asswipe. I get on the bus and sit up against the window, staring out at them.

I have no idea what to do when she climbs on the bus, alone, and sits with me.

“How was it?” she asks.

“How was what?”

“Your first day, duh.”

“Fine.” The bus chugs out of the lineup and we’re moving, heading toward the middle school, where we pick up the next load of students.

She just looks at me. “Is something wrong?”

I want to yell. Not at her. Just loudly. Scream, so the crap and buildup of everything can get out. I want to hurt somebody. Anybody. Seriously, I could beat the crap out of a little kid right now. I grip my knees and talk myself through it.

The feeling passes.

“Ethan?” She leans in, concerned, and I can smell her. Jesus. Baths together. Fuck.

“I’m fine,” I say, and change the subject. Blurting it out. “Tell me what happened after.”

“After school?”

“After I disappeared.”

She slumps back in the seat. “Oh.” She shakes her head. “Oh, that.” She takes a deep breath. “It was pretty terrible. Are you sure you want to know?”

“Yes,” I say, smiling through gritted teeth. “Please.” We come to a stop in front of the middle school just as the students start streaming out of the building. There is chaos as they load. They are so loud. I want them to shut up. Blake raises an eyebrow as he walks past our seat, but says nothing.

“Well, from what I remember, I guess Blake told your mom that you got into a black car. Then your mom called my mom, all hysterical. She asked if you were at our house. Of course you weren’t. So we all went out and started looking around the neighborhood for you, and Blake kept yelling about you getting into the backseat of the car. Then the cops came and I guess they got the word out to look for a black four-door, but that’s all the information they had.”

I am lost in the description. “It was gray inside,” I say softly, imagining it, but I have no idea where I get that from. I didn’t remember the abduction, but now, it sort of feels like I do, a little. Like hearing the story fills in a little piece of my life.

“The whole neighborhood was looking. We walked for hours, after dark with flashlights, and in shifts for days afterward. Calling out for you. But if you were in a car, I don’t know why we spent so much time in the neighborhood. I think maybe people weren’t sure they could believe Blake. He was really little.”

“Maybe that’s why he’s so pissed,” I say, looking out the window.

Cami shrugs. “I just thought he was so sad about what happened.”

I don’t know what to say.

“We searched for you for, like, three weeks. It was on the news every day.”

We sit in silence. I think about it all. Wonder if they would have found me if they’d just believed Blake.

“Hey, Ethan?” Cami touches my thigh.

“Yeah?” I stare at her hand. I think I can probably take the asswipe, once I get all my strength back and beef up a little. Maybe.

“My mom taped the news. When it happened, I mean. It’s on a video. You want to see? I think our VCR in the minivan still works.”

I nod and focus. “Yes,” I say. “Yes.”

We get off the bus and walk to her house. She gets the key from inside and starts up the minivan. “We used to take this beast on trips when I was little. I have an older brother, you know,” Cami says. “Josh. He’s in college now. We used to fight about what videos to watch.” I like how thoughtful she is, letting me know she has a brother without making me feel stupid about not remembering things. We sit in the middle row of the old minivan in her driveway. The engine is running, but the heat hasn’t choked its way out yet. Our combined breath fogs the windows, and I’m freezing. Cami leans forward and messes with the VCR, trying to get the tape to play. “I used to watch this over and over,” she says simply. “I had a really hard time letting you go.”

I think I am in love.

It’s a short clip, about four minutes. There are large photos of me, the perpetual toothless second grader, flashing as the anchor talks, with a 1-800 phone number to call. The news anchor looks a little bit fake in his concern over my well-being, but the coanchor looks on like she really cares. There is footage of a group of people tromping through the woods and calling my name—they sound frantic. Then the anchor shows a piece from a news conference on the steps of the police department. My parents huddle together behind a podium, crying, pleading for my return. And there’s Blake, four years old and scowling at the sun in his eyes. Mama begs for the abductors to bring me back, no questions asked as long as I’m safe. There’s even a reward.