It wasn’t just me he’d been missing all these years later . . . it was him.
He was no longer the same man I remembered from our fight over which college scholarship I should pursue. This man, this dad, was a bedraggled version of that one.
His eyes were what I noticed first. Where my mom’s had been tense and drawn, his were red rimmed and vacant. Hopeless.
Unlike with my mom, however, there was no awkward hesitation. He was running toward the house the moment he stumbled from the beat-up van he’d parked haphazardly at the curb, the door still dangling wide open. I met him on the lawn, barely registering the fact that I was pushing my way past my mother and her new son and husband, past Tyler and his mom and his father, who was planning to meet us at the hospital—something my mother was insisting on, that I be checked out.
Gary Wahl—Austin and Tyler’s dad—would take my official statement there. I was pretty sure that because I was twenty-one, and no longer a minor, I could make some of these decisions on my own, but I still had to answer questions about where I’d been, or at least about what I could recall . . . which was pretty much less than nothing.
But none of those things mattered now. I didn’t care that we had an audience or that my dad smelled of whiskey or gin or some noxious combination of the two and that he probably shouldn’t have been driving in the first place. He was here, and that was all that mattered.
“I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry . . . ,” I mumbled at the same time he did.
His shirt smelled stale and warm—like him, but not. He was fatter and softer than I remembered, and my arms had to reach farther to find their way around him. The scruff of his chin against my forehead had gone past grizzled and grown softer, like a beard, even though it was patchy and, from what I’d seen of it before he’d grabbed me and clutched me to him, grayer than I thought he should be.
I felt a hand on the small of my back, a light touch. “We should get going,” my mother said softly. “We can take my car.”
I glanced up at my dad, feeling like this might be too weird for him, but not sure which of us I was more worried about, him or me. He just shrugged, as if he didn’t care about her or who drove, but his grip on me remained the same. Firm. Secure. Like an anchor.
We followed her, and I didn’t look back to see if her new family followed us.
The inside of her car was cramped. Or maybe it was just me, sitting in the passenger seat feeling all awkward with my parents, who were now eyeing each other warily, like they were complete strangers.
My mom sat beside me, fumbling with the ignition and her seat belt, and then some more with the seat belt, pretty much anything to avoid looking in the backseat, where my dad was straining to lean forward, trying to be as close as he could to me.
Finally, when we were away from Austin’s house and from the new husband and the house I’d grown up in, away from everything and everyone that should have been comforting and ordinary but made me feel as out of place as I did sitting here trapped between my parents, my mom broke the silence. “Can you remember anything, Kyra? Even the tiniest detail so we can try to figure this out?”
But it was my dad who answered as he slumped forward, his elbows on the center console and his fingers slipping through his greasy hair. “It was the light. How many times do I have to tell you? It was the goddamn light that took her.”
They argued the entire drive, and I just sat there, listening mostly, because I didn’t have anything to offer.
“Do you remember the light?” my dad kept asking.
I’d already answered his question. Of course I remembered it. How could I not? It was bright, blinding, brilliant.
There was the light . . . then . . . nothing. Not a single memory.
“How many times do we have to go over this? How many times?!” My mom’s voice bordered on hysteria as she clutched the wheel, and I knew why. He was repeating himself—maybe he had been for years. Maybe this was the same argument she’d been hearing from him since the night I’d vanished.
I knew what she was thinking: how could he possibly blame a light for my disappearance? It was . . . well, it was insane to say the least.
But my dad didn’t see it that way. He was convinced. And not just convinced, but the way he talked about that light—all reverential and crazy eyed—reminded me of those guys who made tinfoil hats or pulled out all their fillings so the government couldn’t read their thoughts through radio frequencies.
That kind of convinced.
He didn’t actually say the word aliens, or even abduction. Instead he talked about internet message boards and government cover-ups, and he’d even mentioned crop circles at one point, so it wasn’t exactly like he was being subtle either.
Aliens. My dad thought I’d been abducted by aliens. Awesome.
I guess it sort of explained the nonshowery look he had about him and the stench of booze he wore like cologne. And I was starting to also-maybe-sort of see why my mom had kicked him out.
But from where I sat, he was still my dad, and the sense of guilt that this was all somehow my fault was overwhelming. If only I hadn’t argued with him. If only I hadn’t forced him to stop the car. If only I hadn’t gotten out in the middle of Chuckanut Drive.
If only . . .
It was a terrible game to play. One he’d probably played a million times over.
I twisted around in my seat, and put my hand on his. It was like a role reversal of all the times he’d squeezed my hand, silently reassuring me with his touch that everything would be okay. I wanted to convey that too. To let him know I was here now. That I wasn’t leaving again.
His bloodshot eyes found mine and stabbed my heart. “They work like that, you know? They just take people.”
I tried to shake my head, to deny his words. I might not have my memory to rely on, but I was certain it hadn’t been little green men who’d come down in their flying saucer and whisked me away to probe me for five years, only to bring me back and deposit me behind a Dumpster at the Gas ’n’ Sip.
“Ben,” my mom said when I didn’t seem to be able to come up with anything useful to add. “Maybe you should go home and get some sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
My dad shook his head violently, vehemently. “Nuhuh. No way. I’m staying with Kyra.” His hand flipped over and squeezed mine. “No way I’m letting you outta my sight again,” he vowed.
The emergency room is never the kind of place you want to hang out. The last time I was here the whole team had shown up to check on our shortstop, Carrie Dreyer. She’d come barreling into second and hit the base weird. When she went down screaming and everyone gathered around her, we realized that her bone was sticking clean through her skin. It had been a compound fracture, and she’d needed two surgeries and a titanium rod, and couldn’t come back that season.
And now, because I’d disappeared, I had no idea if Carrie had ever played again.
The ER was slow when my mom and dad walked me inside, so we didn’t have to wait long. It was strange to fill out my own admission forms, or any forms for that matter, since I’d never done that before. But now that I was an adult—which was even stranger—my parents were no longer allowed to sign for me. They also weren’t allowed to make decisions on my behalf. The staff made a point of speaking to me instead of to them, and I had to give permission for them even to be in the room while I was examined.
It was as if I’d suddenly been emancipated, something I’d heard other kids at school talk about before, about how cool it would be to make their own decisions and not have to answer to their parents anymore.