Evidence of Things Not Seen (6 page)

JAMES

The last time I saw Tommy? Ten days ago. Friday. Physics class. It was the end of the day. He was sitting next to me doing his pencil-tapping, leg-jerking thing. He always did it at the end of class, when McCloud was droning on about due dates and the final. Tommy thought he could make time speed up. Like the force of his energy jerking in space would compress the minutes or make McCloud speed up. Drove me nuts. I’d point at my watch and tap it at the same speed as seconds ticking, like I was counteracting his energy force. Drove him nuts.

No idea where he was going. Tommy didn’t do “see you later” or “I’m going to the Stillwell Ranch, wanna come?” He just went. The bell rang and he was gone.

Well, that’s where they found his bike, right? Wait. Are you suspicious of me because I told you what everyone already knows? Whoa. Back off, Officer Krupke. I mean, Sheriff Caldwell. Sorry,
West Side Story
. Musical theater reference. You probably wouldn’t get it.

Tommy and I did not hang out. Yeah, I’ve known him since elementary school but Tommy didn’t do hanging out. He was too intense. We’ve always been in the same science classes and he’s always been my lab partner. Always. He’s the only one who could keep up with me. Have you ever had a bad lab partner? They’re really good at saying, “Whoops, I forgot to keep the control clean.” Or “I didn’t chart the second step. Was I supposed to?” Bad lab partners are a pain. Tommy was meticulous. Obsessed. I loved that. But we weren’t friends.

He’s always been intense. Not in a sick way. Like he didn’t catch bugs, deprive them of water, and chart their demise. It was more like when he was interested in something, that was all he could think about. Seriously. Pokémon cards when he was six. Daggers when he was ten. Genetics when he was fourteen. Particle physics now. He couldn’t be normal about liking something. He had to collect every Pokémon card ever made. He had to draw every style of dagger since the beginning of time. He had to know every possibility of gene combination with recessive and dominant traits in order to figure out when blue eyes would show up in a predominantly brown-eyed family. Now he’s obsessed with quantum theory. McCloud went off on a tangent about particle physics and Tommy got all supernerd about the subatomic world and how the rules are completely different from the world we live in. It’s kinda cool. How all possibilities exist until one is observed. But Tommy went off the charts about it. It was all he could think about. But that’s how Tommy is. It’s like he goes into a different dimension when he’s interested in something.

Girls? No way. Not interested. Yeah, of course he knew Rachel and Izzy. They’re part of the famous nerd squad in our class. They’ve managed to keep up with Tommy and me in every AP science class. He might have even noticed they were girls. But as far as dating girls or being attracted to them or doing the whole mating ritual, no way. It’s way too social sciences for Tommy. Too nebulous. Too gooey.

Rachel sort of acted like a mother hen with Tommy. Or like Miss Manners. Whenever Tommy would bolt at the end of class, she’d stop him in the doorway and ask him if he was leaving and he’d look up, down, and around like he was noticing where he was and then look at her like, well, I seem to be in the doorway and class is over so I must be leaving. He wouldn’t say a thing. And she’d say, “Now is when you say good-bye, Tommy.” And he’d say, “Bye,” like he was parroting back some foreign language, and then he would disappear. Poof. Gone.

Personally, I think Rachel had a thing for Tommy. You know, a crush on him. She might have asked him to the prom. I think she wanted to. Or was going to. Before he disappeared. Me? No, I didn’t go to prom. Let’s just say the person I wanted to go with asked someone else.

No way. No one hated Tommy. I mean, he said inappropriate stuff, like one time this huge guy—his name is Robert—he wandered into our class by mistake and Tommy bumped into him or something. When he looked up at this huge guy, Tommy said, “You look like foreign matter.” Everyone laughed. Even the big guy. That was Tommy. He said nerdy stuff like that. Nothing antagonistic.

Oh you heard about that? Yeah, I took some hits for that superior intelligence thing I wrote. I was calling it the way it already is. People don’t like to admit it but they seek their own level. Like water. We think we are more inclusive but we’re not. Cheerleaders are as narrow-minded as I am. I am just smart enough to admit it.

Tommy didn’t have a group. He was random. I mean, you could say he was a science geek but he didn’t really hang out in the lab or with any other geeks. He was in his own world.

Look, I’m smart but Tommy’s like expanded smart. His brain could wrap around all the possibilities. In all ten dimensions. He had the kind of brain that could handle simultaneous realities. Like most people have to prove that there is only one right answer or one right way to be. Not Tommy. That’s why quantum physics and the superposition theory switched him on. If all possibilities exist, how does one right answer help us understand the problem? Does the problem still exist when we find the answer?

Like if you were asking Tommy where he was, he’d tell you he was riding his motorbike
and
walking across the field by the pull-out
and
looking for his notebook
and
going through a fold between dimensions
and
whatever else might be a possible reality. If we find out where he is, all the possibilities collapse into one observable reality. In a way, answers to problems are way less interesting than the problem.

I’m not upset, because I think he’s out there. What? You think I’m not upset because I stashed him somewhere? What for? So he could give me the answers to the final? Yeah, right. I’ve known Tommy for a long time. He’s out there. He wanders. He forgets where he is like he forgets his notebook, which is like his blankie. Most of us know not to loan him stuff because he’ll get distracted and set it down and forget it. That’s how he is. Maybe somehow he lost himself and he’s landed where all our lost stuff is and he’ll come wandering back with my Rubik’s Cube from third grade and that set of superstrong magnifying lenses I had in sixth grade. Man, it was a pretty good thing he lost those. I was way too into making things spontaneously combust back then.

Yeah, I was there for every search. Actually it seemed like it was one big search for four days. I went out there a lot. The whole town was out there, walking side by side. I didn’t think we’d find him. Like I said, I don’t think he’s dead.

Finding Tommy is going to be random. He was a random guy. That pull-out is a random place. I mean, it’s a dirt patch on the side of the road but it’s been there forever. People call it the Stillwell pull-out because it’s been there as long the ranch. Maybe longer. Someone started stopping there a long time ago and it kept happening. Why? Because the tectonic plates shifted in such a way that there was a hill on one side of the road and a field on the other? Because of the way the road curved around the hill and still left a big stretch of dirt? Because a couple of trees grew up around that dirt so people could stop to pee in privacy? Who knows? People started stopping there. To sleep. To sell shit. All kinds of people stop there. Tommy could have been snatched. He could have willingly gotten into someone’s car because they asked him to. He’s out there. Somewhere. We haven’t figured where to look.

MAY 16 . TWELVE DAYS MISSING

THE SMYTHES

Mrs. Smythe: Sheriff Caldwell! What are you doing here? Tom, the sheriff’s here. Have you found Tommy? Have you heard something? Tom, hurry! He won’t talk to me until you get here.

Well, at least you aren’t interrogating us separately like you did before. That was awful, Sheriff. As if we did something to hurt our Tommy. I don’t care if it’s policy. You should apologize. Thank you.

Tom, what are you doing? Sheriff, can’t you talk to me? He’s up to his elbows in grease trying to fix an irrigation pump. He’ll be in shortly.

Tell me, Sheriff. Has something happened?

You want to search his room again? What for? You have his computer. You’ve taken all his schoolbooks. There’s nothing else in his room except his clothes. Did you want to take those?

Of course he had a library card. We could hardly keep him in books. Tommy was a very bright boy. Why do you need to see what he checked out of the library? This is ridiculous. How will that help you find him? How is looking at all the books he checked out of the library a possible lead?

Notes in the margin? Physics experiments he was interested in? What are you thinking? That Tommy did some physics experiment and disappeared? I can’t believe you’re listening to those kids.

Sheriff, you may look in every book in this house and in every library in Texas. But this so-called lead tells me you have no idea where he is. That’s the real reason you’re here, isn’t it? To tell us there’s no place else to look. That you’re done.

Of course I’m crying. Our son is missing. If you give up, how are we going to find Tommy?

I know you don’t have the resources to keep doing on-the-ground searches. I know the horseback search teams walked along Highway 281 for twenty-eight miles. I know we had over six hundred volunteers searching Hallie’s ranch for four straight days. But, Sheriff, Tommy’s still missing. We have to keep looking.

What about using dogs to search the ranch?

What about the FBI? Have they found anything?

What about—?

This is all our fault. We didn’t contact you soon enough. We should have called on Friday afternoon. We should have made Tommy come right home after school every day. But, Sheriff, Tom said he needed his freedom. He said, “Tommy’s sixteen. We need to loosen the reins.” But we waited too long. I wanted to call at dinnertime when he wasn’t home. But Tom thought maybe he was out with Rachel. He wanted to believe that Tommy was out having fun on Friday night. But Tommy didn’t have a social life. He was shy. Awkward.

We should have called right away. I shouldn’t have had a glass of wine at dinner. But Tom kept saying that Tommy would be away at college soon and we needed to get used to being a couple again. We never drink wine but we did that night. Tom cooked some steak and we had a nice dinner. I tried not to think about Tommy so I think I drank more wine than I should have. That’s why I fell asleep. That why we didn’t call that night. That’s why we can’t find him now. We were too late.

But calling you at eight a.m. on Saturday morning is twelve hours after I should have called you. It’s all our fault.

Do you realize we wouldn’t even know where to start looking if that Travers boy hadn’t found his motorbike in the pull-out that morning? At least we know he was there on Friday afternoon after school. But there’s been nothing else. Nothing from the Amber Alert. Nothing from the highway patrol. Nothing. All we’ve found on Hallie’s land is a dump and a Mexican girl with a toddler.

It’s not your fault, Eugene. It’s ours, isn’t it, Tom? Of course you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel for leads. We called you too late. You can search whatever you want in our house. Excuse me. I need to get some water. Would you like some?

Mr. Smythe: I think you understand, Sheriff, Tommy is our only son. Between the worry and guilt, it’s more pain than she can bear.

So you really don’t have any more leads? Did you check with the Gladney home in Dallas? And Tommy hasn’t contacted them? I was hoping that would lead to something. It didn’t seem like finding his biological parents was a burning desire but he was curious about it. Tommy could definitely be insistent if he wanted to know something.

Well, we didn’t hide the adoption from him, if that’s what you mean. Matilde wanted to wait until he was older. She was more sensitive than I was about not being able to have kids. She worried Tommy would want to run off and be with his biological parents if we told him too soon. Or that he’d run off to find them the first time we told him he couldn’t do something. It was silly stuff but I kept quiet like she wanted me to.

It was a few years ago. As soon as he took that genetics elective in middle school, I knew it wouldn’t be long. Sure enough. One Thanksgiving dinner with relatives from both sides of the family sitting there, Tommy figured it out. Mattie was bringing out the pie when he asked the whole table. “Am I adopted?” Dead silence. Mattie nearly dropped the pie. I said, “Yes, son. We met you when you were three hours old and if we could’ve gotten there sooner, we would have.”

Well, you know that joke when the little boy asks his momma where do I come from and she thinks he’s asking about the sex act so she’s hemming and hawing about how to answer, and little boy says, “Johnny says he’s from Ohio so I was wondering where I came from.” I could see Matilde tearing up over the pie as if Tommy might walk away from the dinner table because he was adopted and never come back. No one was saying a word. Then Tommy says, “I thought so because I’m the first Smythe to have blue eyes or a cleft chin. Those are both recessive gene traits.” That was that.

Afterwards, we talked about the adoption some. Me and Tommy. Mattie didn’t like talking about it. Tommy was curious about who his biological parents might be. But not in the way he could usually get about wanting to know something. He knew he had to wait until next year when he turned eighteen. He seemed fine about that. Ask Matilde.