Home Field (31 page)

On Monday morning, with everything carefully packed, Dean had the idea to put Bryan on the bus and drive Robbie to school by himself. They would talk in the car. With the familiar road ahead it would be easy to assure his son that they were still a family, and that he thought often of his mother. That none of the rumors he'd heard were true.

But when they got into the car, Robbie turned on the radio and started to sing along. Then, when Dean brought up the subject of play practice, thinking this would be an easy way to segue into a discussion of any overheard gossip, Robbie began to talk about the play, about how they were in tech rehearsals for the week, and how, when he got back, it would be time for dress rehearsals. He was excited to see himself in all the various costumes: munchkin, poppy flower, flying monkey. He talked so animatedly that Dean couldn't bring himself to interrupt him. It even crossed Dean's mind that Laura might be wrong about Robbie, and that perhaps
she
was the one who was angry with him and offended by rumors.

When they arrived at school, Dean kissed him good-bye on both cheeks (Robbie allowed this!), and then he watched as he boarded the charter bus hired for the occasion. There were dozens of parents on the curb, some of them crying. Dean thought of Nicole's sadness at the beginning of every school year when the kids would be returned to their schoolyard kingdoms. Then he drove over to the high school to begin his day.

R
obbie checked his compass, which hung from a lanyard around his neck. All week long, he'd been learning about orienteering. He'd learned about tribes in South America where kids didn't have words for left and right. Instead they learned north, south, east, and west. During that lesson, Robbie raised his hand to ask how people knew their left hand from their right hand and everyone laughed and the teacher thought he was being a smart aleck. But he honestly wanted to know what they said. He was fascinated by the idea that certain words could exist in one language but not in another. He was fascinated by lots of things, but he was constantly being told that he was “off topic” or that he “had tone.” No one had ever told him these things in elementary school. But now, in middle school, he was getting a reputation for being mouthy and difficult. It had started with his teachers, and now it was drifting down to his friends. He felt strongly that nothing within him had changed. The only thing that was different was that his mother had killed herself. But he wasn't allowed to talk about that; he wasn't even allowed to repeat things his mother used to say, because when he did, people thought he was an even bigger weirdo. It was like he was sup
posed to pretend that he'd never had a mother at all. Even his father went along with this new reality.

It had been nice to be away from home for a week. Robbie could admit that, here, in the quiet, bare woods. The fallen, dried leaves made shushing sounds as he walked. They faded more and more each day, from red and gold to auburn and yellow to brown and brown. Above, the sky was overcast, matching the pale gray bark of the trees.
Monochrome
was a word that Robbie had recently learned, and which he liked. He made up his own word from it:
moonchrome
. This was the color that moonlight gave to trees and leaves and grass and houses.

He and his mother used to make up words:
iceslip, ponins, delicatessies, lemonstone, snarfle.
His mother told him he had been slow to talk, but once he'd started talking, it was in fluent sentences. She used to call him Robbie-robin-red-breast. He had no idea why, it was just something she said.

He and his mother had their own language, and now he was the only remaining speaker.

Robbie could no longer hear the voices of other kids nearby. He had deliberately gone in the opposite direction of where he knew he should go, leaving his buddy group behind. They were supposed to find their way back to the school by themselves. It was the final orienteering challenge before they went home tomorrow. But Robbie didn't want to go home.

His original plan had been to sneak off the bus going home. As long as his name got checked off during attendance, he would be in the clear. He was pretty sure he could get past the bus monitor; he could say that he had to use the bathroom and
never come back. His friends wouldn't notice—or care—that he was gone.

But then the teacher announced there would be an orienteering test on Thursday afternoon, and he realized that was the better time to go. He was disappointed to miss the Halloween campfire, but maybe they wouldn't have one, anyway, because of what had happened at last night's campfire. The school director was pissed with them because they had laughed when he tried to teach them “Blowin' in the Wind.” They had laughed because the questions were like something from a kid's book—
How many seas must a white dove sail?
—and because the face the director made while he was singing was so hilarious, like he was constipated. And they had laughed because they wanted to laugh, because they were making s'mores and the moon was out and for a whole week they didn't have to go to school. But the director wanted the campfire to be more like school.

He chided them: “This is protest music! I guess you're not mature enough for this.” Robbie wanted to raise his hand and say,
I am, I love music, I know about Bob Dylan
. But instead he had turned to his best friend, Kyle, and said, “I liked that song,” a sentiment Kyle had then conveyed to everyone sitting nearby, and everybody cracked up as if he'd confessed to liking Barney the purple dinosaur.

And then the school director thought it was Robbie's fault that everyone was laughing at him, that Robbie had been the one to say something sarcastic. And Robbie hadn't even bothered to defend himself, because he knew there was no point.

His legs were getting tired. He sat down on a rock and
gazed up at the trees. The branches at the top were so spindly, they tapered sharply, like pencil tips. He imagined the trees writing letters on the air—to whom? This was the kind of question he would share with his mother, to amuse her, to make her smile. He knew the kinds of questions she liked best, the ones that would get her talking. She would ask him for a word for tree letters.
Leaflets,
maybe—except that was a real word. Maybe
Leaflins
. Or should he start from tree?
Treescrolls.
A girl at school was named Sylvia, and she said her name meant “woods.” It was from Latin, she said. He liked talking to Sylvia; she had a round, calm face, and when she walked through the hallways, it was like she was floating gently down a river and everyone else was hiking uphill. But she was only in school in the mornings, because she was studying ballet. She left every day at lunch to go to a studio in Frederick. She had to get special permission from the school board. Robbie wished he had some special reason to leave early. He'd seen her going a few times, climbing into a car with her duffel bag over her shoulder. Her mother picked her up.

Once, Ms. Lanning had asked him what he liked about sneaking out of school. He said, “Sneaking out of school.” And she had laughed.

He didn't tell her about the way his mind could drift in the direction of fear, the sense he would get of a storm coming, darkening all his thoughts. He would get a cold panicky feeling in his bones and he would have to escape. He would concentrate on planning his escape if he couldn't leave right away. Once he got out, he would instantly feel better.

The only time he didn't worry about that feeling coming on was during play practice, when he stood under the lights
or in the wings looking onto the stage, that flat empty space that every afternoon became full of life, a little pocket world within itself.

His favorite person—after Sylvia—was Seth. Seth played the Cowardly Lion and everyone liked him. He had shoulder-length hair that he wore in a ponytail and he played the guitar. There was always a group of people around him between scenes, and he would let Robbie listen in on his conversations. Afterward, he would explain anything Robbie didn't understand. Robbie kept the new words filed away for future use:
weed, hottie, forty, douchebag, blow job, Deadhead, shrooms
. There were bands to learn, too. Seth made him a mix for Outdoor School called
Happy Camper Tunes
. Robbie listened to a few songs every night before he fell asleep, sneaking his Walkman into his bunk. Then he switched tapes and listened to
Les Mis
. He had to hear “Castle on a Cloud” before he fell asleep. He loved the sweet way the little girl sang it.

The first time Robbie saw Bryan standing on the altar at church, chin tipped up, tears streaming, he thought Bryan was an actor, too. Someone who needed a stage. He told Seth about it, one day after school, and then Seth told him his theory of religion, how it was a made-up world for people to pretend in, and how if you were going to live in an imaginary world, you might as well pick one that didn't make you feel guilty all the time. Seth was going to be an actor when he finished school. If he didn't get into his first-choice college, he was going to cut his hair and move to California. He liked to say that when something annoying happened:
Fuck it, I'll just cut my hair and move to California!
Sometimes Robbie said it, too. It always made Seth laugh.

Robbie wanted to be an actor, too. His plan was to call Seth when he graduated. Seth would be famous by then and would help him get his start. It wouldn't matter that he and Seth were six years apart, because when you grew up, you were allowed to hang out with people who were older than you and it wasn't strange.

Robbie's hands were getting cold, even with his gloves on. He put them in his pockets and retrieved one of the two Snickers bars he had secreted there. Aunt Joelle had sent them to him, along with some raisins, gum, and a word find from some lame Christian kids' magazine. He didn't even do word finds anymore. He had moved on to cryptograms. Still, he was grateful for the package. His dad hadn't even sent him a letter.

He bit into the candy bar, trying to savor each layer. It was close to four thirty. His classmates had probably already made it back to the school. He wondered how long until they began to search for him.

T
HE GIRL DRESSED
as Glinda—her name was Lacey, Stephanie was pretty sure—had an illegal pet bunny who everyone agreed could serve as Toto. Stephanie coaxed the large, sleepy black rabbit into the small wicker basket she had found at Goodwill.

“He's a very chill bunny, don't worry,” Lacey said. She adjusted the puffed sleeves of her straight-from-the-eighties Laura Ashley gown. “I think I need more glitter.”

“You all need more glitter!” someone yelled from the hallway. Stephanie invited her inside to join the preparty. She was uncostumed, save for a pencil-thin mustache, drawn with eyeliner. “I'm John Waters,” she said. “From Baltimore?”

“I'm from Baltimore—sort of!” Theresa called from the
corner, where she was applying her Tin Man makeup. Her ensemble was a cleverly constructed mix of tinfoil and spray-painted cardboard. Nearby, Gabe was the Cowardly Lion, his golden curls perfectly playing the part.

“Come on, everyone, let's get a photo,” Stephanie said. “We have to take one to show my little brother.”

John Waters took the photo, taking turns with everyone's cameras. Stephanie enjoyed the moment self-consciously. It was like she had to keep checking in with herself to see if she was actually having fun. She was, she was. And if she wasn't happy—she wasn't quite—she felt the possibility of happiness shimmering at the edges of her life. She felt pretty and feminine in her blue dress. On her feet were her red cloth Mary Janes, decorated with red sequins. They were the reason she got to be Dorothy—that and her dark hair. She'd dyed it again, for the night, a deep, semipermanent brown.

People started coming into their room, helping themselves to red Jell-O shots quivering in Dixie cups. It was Halloween and there were parties all over campus, culminating in a dance at the campus center. Stephanie and her roommates were hoping to win best group costume. The prize was a month's supply of cookies from Sugar Rush, a local bakery. The wholesomeness of the prize pleased Stephanie. It was the kind of thing Raquel would never want to win. She had run into her old friend earlier in the day, at the library. When she asked Raquel what costume she was planning, Raquel said she wasn't going to bother, that costumes were for people who needed an excuse to dress up. Stephanie walked away from the conversation thinking that Raquel really had no sense of fun.

She and Gabe had invented drinks for each of the charac
ters. The “Cowardly Lion” was ginger ale and whiskey; the “Tin Man” was any kind of canned beer; the “Scarecrow” was Boone's Farm; the “Glinda” was champagne; and the “Dorothy” a.k.a. “There's No Place Like Home” was a red Jell-O shot.

Stephanie stuck to the “Tin Man,” hoping her natural aversion to beer would help her to follow her grandmother's advice about drinking: one drink per hour and no more than three drinks in one night.

“Stephanie!” Theresa called to her. “You have a phone call!”

Stephanie hadn't even heard any ringing, that was how noisy their room was getting. “Who is it?”

“I don't know. A kid.”

Stephanie's first thought was that it was Robbie. She'd gotten an unremarkable letter from him that morning, postmarked from the Outdoor School. Maybe he was getting lonely. She remembered calling her mother from the Outdoor School pay phone. You had to sign up for it and then you only had five minutes to talk. Some kids would start crying as soon as they heard their mother's voice. But most kids were like Stephanie, calling only because their mothers had insisted on it.

“Stephanie? It's Megan.”

“Megan?”

Before Stephanie could say anything else, Megan started talking. “Your dad told me to call you. We were at practice, and one of Robbie's teachers came running over from the middle school to say that Robbie is missing. And then Uncle Dean said I should call you from his office. He's driving to the Outdoor School right now with Bryan. He didn't want to wait. He said he'll call you when he gets to the Outdoor School.”

“Wait, what do you mean Robbie is missing?”

“I don't know much,” Megan said. “The lady from the middle school said he got lost on some hike? Or something? I don't know. But now it's dark, and they're getting worried about him being all alone out there.”

The rabbit started moving in Stephanie's basket, reacting to the way her body was shaking. She had to put the basket down and as she did, the rabbit hopped out.

“Hey, watch out!” Lacey hurried over to her, her Glinda skirts swishing. “You can't let him jump out, he'll run off—hey, what's the matter?”

“My brother's missing,” Stephanie said. She began to cry, and everyone turned toward her. Just when life was getting better, she was plunged back into loss.

T
HE MOON ILLUMINATED
the bare branches and the pale undersides of newly fallen leaves. The soft blue light made the woods less frightening, but also more cinematic, adding to Dean's sense that what was happening was not really happening. A half mile away, Robbie's classmates were gathered around a campfire, toasting marshmallows and telling ghost stories; Dean could smell the smoke on the breeze. They all knew about Robbie; they all knew and had been instructed not to worry, their teachers accomplices in this fiction, handing out chocolate bars and graham crackers. Why weren't they all out here with flashlights, an army of children to find his son?