The Last Place on Earth (5 page)

Just like that, my mind went blank. I knew the code. I knew I knew it. But the sequence was jammed somewhere in the back of my brain, buried beneath pop song lyrics, important dates in medieval Europe, and the price of a Dr Pepper.

The Hawkings had paid extra to have a security system that would alert the local police in the event of a break-in. That meant that if I didn't come up with the code in—oh no, thirty-two seconds!—I was in huge trouble.

Thirty-one seconds … thirty …

Got it.
I keyed in the number sequence and held my breath. A tone sounded, and the red light turned green.

Heart thumping, I left the laundry room and went into the kitchen. The black granite counters were clear, and no dishes crowded the deep sink. I opened the dishwasher. Inside were plates and mugs and bowls: all clean. So they had taken the time to do dishes before leaving. That was good, right? They hadn't fled in a panic. They hadn't been abducted. Or, if they had been, their kidnapper was unusually tidy.

I opened the refrigerator. There was some salad dressing, butter, pickles, jam, and a package of individually wrapped slices of cheese. In other words: nothing that told me anything.

Next I checked the living room, which the family barely used, and the television room, which they used a lot. Nothing seemed out of place. Not that there was a lot to get messed up. Mr. and Mrs. Hawking did not believe in “nonessentials.” So they had couches and coffee tables, TVs, and a few framed family photos, but no books, art, souvenirs, knickknacks, or clutter of any kind. It was so clean, it was creepy.

Again, I thought about the sun-catcher in the front window, the one Gwendolyn's parents had peered at so intently. It had to mean something beyond “we have no taste.”

A closed, locked door led to the home office. I'd never been in there, and it didn't look like I'd start now. That left the upstairs bedrooms. The master suite was the first room on the right. It seemed wrong to invade Mr. and Mrs. Hawking's privacy, but hey—I'd already gone through their garage cabinets and broken into their house.

Their king-sized bed was made—not as precisely as I would have expected, but the olive-green spread had been pulled up. There were two shiny wood dressers, one tall, one short. The tall one had a wedding picture of Mr. and Mrs. Hawking. Henry looked like his mother when she was young. Immediately, I wished I could undo that realization.

Their walk-in closet, filled with clothes and shoes in subdued colors, all neatly arranged, appeared undisturbed. The bathroom was likewise tidy, dark green towels hanging stiffly from a rod.

There were two more bedrooms between the master and Henry's. One was used for storage and the other was supposedly for guests, though the family had had no visitors since I'd known them. School portraits of Henry lined the walls. No one else: just Henry. He had a few relatives in other states, but he never saw them. Not even on his walls.

Henry's door stood open. Weirdly, going in there felt like a bigger invasion of privacy than checking out his parents' bedroom. I'd been in this room so many times, but never alone. Henry would sit in his desk chair, spinning this way and that. I'd lounge on his bed, hanging my head over the side till the blood rush made me dizzy. We'd talk about school or music or movies or friends or teachers or where we wanted to live when we grew up or what jobs we wanted to have.

Well, I talked about jobs I dreamed of: children's book illustrator or film editor or travel photographer. Henry maintained that he was going to “marry well and be a kept man.” But we both knew it was a joke. Henry was brilliant. He just hadn't figured out how to channel his energies. But he would someday. Of course he would.

Henry's room was as tidy as the rest of the house, but it had more personality. Unfortunately, the personality was “eight-year-old boy.” His bedspread was blue-and-orange patchwork, dotted here and there with ball, glove, and bat appliqués. “Art” signs (quotes important) on the wall said
SLUGGER
and
HOME RUN
and
GO TEAM
.

Henry had never played baseball. He didn't even like watching it.

The biggest nonbaseball touch, Henry's guitar, stood in its usual spot, in a stand in the back corner of the room. For someone who'd never had a formal lesson, he was really good. Of course, he practiced all the time, especially on days when he was supposed to be in school.

If Henry had left for good, he would have taken his guitar with him. At once, I felt relieved and embarrassed. What would he think if he could see me sneaking around his house? What would his parents think?

Henry was fine. He hadn't been taken by aliens or invaders. His communications freeze stemmed from embarrassment over my reaction to his attempted kiss. He'd be back any day now. His family had taken one of their wilderness trips. Or, who knows? Maybe his father had to fly off somewhere for work, and he'd taken his family with him. The big black SUV could be in a parking lot at LAX. Henry could be in London or Paris or Hong Kong. It could happen.

A piece of paper lay on the middle of Henry's desk. I'd already invaded his privacy this much; a quick peek wouldn't hurt. And then I'd leave: set the alarm, sneak out through the garage, and wait, wait, wait till Henry came home to me.

I'd tell him about my fears. I'd confess to breaking into his house. We'd laugh. At least, I hoped we would. And then we'd talk about the thing that started all this madness: our almost-kiss in the murky darkness on that night next to the pond.

The paper had been ripped out of a spiral notebook, the edges rough and curly. In the center, in blue ink, Henry had written two words in his precise, tiny printing:
SAVE ME.

 

Seven

“I DON'T UNDERSTAND
why you're so worried,” my mother said, filling a pot at the kitchen sink. She hauled the pot over to the stove and placed it on a front burner. My mother didn't cook very often, and when she did her brow clenched in such concentration, you'd think she was about to perform an organ transplant.

“Henry's in trouble. Why else would he leave me that note?” Sitting at the kitchen table, I tapped a pen against a blank page of my English notebook. I had an essay outline due on Monday, but I couldn't focus.

“It wasn't a note. Henry wrote a couple of words on a piece of paper and left it on his desk. Could be anything. A song title, a poem…”

My mother turned a knob. The stove made a clicking sound but didn't light. “I thought this burner worked.”

“Nope,” I said. “Only the front left and the back right.”

She moved the pot and turned the front left knob. Immediately, a flame leapt up to lick the bottom of the pot. She jumped back as if shocked to discover that something in this house actually worked.

“I think we should call the police,” I said.

She turned. “And say what?”

“That we want to file a missing persons report.”

She shook her head. “You don't know that they're missing.”

“I know it in my gut.”

“That won't be enough for the police to go on.”

It was awful when my mother made actual sense. It didn't happen very often, and it always threw me. I swallowed hard. My eyes stung. At least she hadn't given me any grief when I'd told her about breaking into the Hawkings' house. My mother believes that anyone who installs an alarm system deserves to be broken into.

Softening, she said, “I can ask Randy for his law enforcement opinion.” Randy was my mother's latest Man-Fran. That was what Peter and I called her relationship objects, because when the parade began, I was too young to pronounce “man friend” properly.

“I thought Randy was a security guard,” I said.

“He is, but he attended the police academy. Applied, anyway—there were issues. But he understands how the system works.” She opened the pantry door. “Do we have pasta?”

“Peter finished it yesterday.”

“Oh.” She closed the pantry. “Huh.” She stared into space, increasingly baffled by the dinner challenge. Then she stared at the not-yet-boiling water, wondering what she could possibly put in it. “Maybe I'll just send Peter out for Mexican.”

I shrugged. Normally I'd push for burgers, but tonight I didn't care.

“Speaking of Randy,” my mother said. “He invited me to go on a cruise. Mexico. Leaves a week from Saturday.”

“That's kind of soon.”

“I know it may seem that way, but Randy and I have been together almost two months and—”

“No, I mean that's not a lot of time to plan a cruise.”

“Oh! Yeah, it was a last-minute bargain—leftover cabins sold at a huge discount. That's the only way Randy could swing it. You're okay with me going, right?”

“How would I get to school?”

“Peter will drive you.” When I raised my eyebrows, she amended, “Or you could walk. Or … maybe you can get a ride with Henry.”

“Henry is missing,” I reminded her.

“Surely he will be back by then. The universe will look out for him. Now … about dinner. Do you want Peter to get you a burrito or some tacos?”

 

Eight

PEOPLE WERE DISAPPEARING.
First Henry, then Gwendolyn. Now Mr. Vasquez, our history teacher, was gone. “I hear he is quite ill,” the substitute told us when we walked into class on Monday.

“Probably the plague,” someone joked.

The substitute frowned and pointed to the assigned reading listed on the board. I opened my textbook and flipped to the necessary page. Around me, people sniffled and coughed. It was too early in the year to be catching a cold. I slid down in my seat and tried not to inhale.

In math class, I looked around for the pinch-faced drill team girl, hoping to pump her for more information about Gwendolyn, but she was out, too.

Walking across the classroom, Hannah Branson caught my eye. If she wore a verb T-shirt, it would say,
GOSSIP
or
SUCK UP
. “What's the deal with Henry? He's been out forever.” Hannah was a good five inches taller than I was, plus she had this habit of tilting up her pointy chin, which meant I got a view up her nostrils that I could have done without.

“He's … I'm not sure.”

“Is he camping?” She tilted her chin up a notch higher. It bugged me that Hannah knew that Henry's family liked to camp, but then, pretty much everything Hannah did bugged me.

“I don't know. Maybe.”

She raised her eyebrows. “So … did you guys break up?”

I blinked at her. “We were never going out.”

“Really?” Her chin finally dropped, and her eyes popped a little.

“Truly.” I forced a smile.

“Everyone thought you were.”

“Everyone was wrong.”

“So … you're not going to Homecoming with him?”

“No. I'm not.” I had no intention of going to the dance with anyone, not that it was any of her business. Homecoming was the last thing on my mind right now.

“Oh.” Hannah pressed her lips together and flitted to her seat.

We had two schoolwide dances every year: Homecoming and Winter Formal. Last February, during biology lab, I was partnered with a small, intense boy named Rudy (verb T-shirt:
STUDY
) when the whole dance and dating thing first crossed my radar.

“You going to Winter Formal?” Rudy had asked. We were sharing a microscope. Examining bacteria. Love was not in the air. The only thing in the air was the smell of rotting leaves and hand sanitizer.

“Nah.” I squirted some goo on a slide. Going to the dance had never occurred to me. It would require tickets, a dress, shoes … all kinds of stuff that cost money. Plus, aside from a particularly gorgeous senior water polo player whom I worshipped from afar, no boys in this school interested me. And also, I didn't like being in large groups of, you know. People.

Rudy took the slide and stuck it under the microscope. He peered through the viewfinder and adjusted the lens. “I was thinking the dance might be fun. You want to go together?” His tone was super casual, like he was asking me to join a study group. He kept his eye on the bacteria.

“No, thanks.” I jotted down a couple of notes. “I'd rather just stay home. Watch movies or something.” I would have said no to a study group, too. I only liked doing homework with Henry.

It wasn't until Rudy looked up, his face bright red, that I realized that he had been asking me out. Like on a date. While examining bacteria.

“I thought he meant in a group of friends!” I later told Henry. He thought the story was hilarious. Of course he did. “Why does Rudy even like me? I hardly know him.”

It's not like I wanted to go to the dance, but I felt bad about being so rude.

“Oh, Daisy,” Henry said, still laughing a little. “You don't get it.”

“What?”

“You're cute. Guys notice you.” He kept his tone completely matter-of-fact, like he'd said,
You're right-handed
or
You have brown eyes
.

“All guys?” I asked.

He gave me what can only be described as a Dad Smile. “Only the ones with good taste.”

The Dad Smile actually made me feel better. If Henry thought I was cute, if Henry asked me out—ugh. It would be worse than awkward. I'd be out a best friend.

The day before Winter Formal, a Thursday, I was checking Netflix on Henry's smartphone. (He had a better phone than I did.… Well, he had a better everything than I did.)

I said, “We on for a Friday night movie? My turn to pick.”

“Can't do tomorrow. Let's say Saturday. And just so you know, I refuse to watch
Message in a Bottle
again.” (I wasn't going to make him watch
Message in a Bottle
for the second time. I was going to make him watch
The Vow
for the third.)