“If you tell,” he said, pointing at Andy, “if I hear from a single person that you told… I’ll find you. I’ll fucking kill both of you.”
Andy nodded. “I won’t tell. Ever. Now go back in there. Go on. You go your way, and we’ll go ours.”
It wasn’t until that moment, as I dared to step closer, back to my brother’s side, that I saw an amazing sight. There were tears on Barnett’s cheeks. He wiped them away with a tired hand, skulking into the gloomy dark, utterly defeated. Just as we turned to walk away, the sky finally opened, and the rain began to trickle down, slowly at first, then in heavy waves. We sprinted the rest of the way home, and once we were safe inside, I turned to Andy.
“What was that?”
“Nothing,” he said as he shrugged off his backpack and dropped it by the door. I followed him to his bedroom, where he stripped off his soaking-wet shirt.
“Seriously,” I said. “What happened back there?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said as he used the shirt to towel off his wet hair.
“How can you tell me not to worry about it? He could have killed you.”
Andy stepped past me and slammed the door to keep Dad from hearing, and I assumed he was getting ready to spill it.
“You’re right,” he said. “He could have killed me. And you too. And for a second, I thought he was going to. That’s why you need to let this go.”
“But—”
“No,” he said with finality. “I saw something that he didn’t want me to see. That was that. I’m never telling anyone, and you know why?”
“Andy…”
“Do you know why?”
I shrugged. “No.”
“Because if I tell anyone, even you, he’ll kill us both. That’s all the answer you’ll ever get.”
Unlike me, Andy had a tendency to keep his word. He never did tell me what he saw through those woods, but I have some hunches. I remember seeing Barnett a few weeks later, hanging around the block with a few of his friends. I watched them from the yard, me pretending to play in the dirt as I spied on them smoking and telling jokes with each other, passing the time until the streetlights came on. He was particularly close with one of the friends, a boy I recognized and whom I pegged as maybe fifteen or so. You could see it in their body language, the way they looked at each other, and I think, on some level, I understood. When I got up to go back inside, I noticed Barnett staring at me. The two of us shared a glance that lasted a few beats too long, but he never said a word. If things had gone differently, I might have been afraid of that stare, might have taken it as a preemptive strike, like him and his boys were casing our house. But I had seen worse than Barnett by then, and I knew there were other things to be afraid of.
“So, I’m thinking we get started earlier tomorrow. If we get at it before lunch, we should have plenty of time to check everything out. I’m thinking we go around the back of the Trails. I’ve never actually been back that far, but I’m pretty sure there’s some—”
“Jack.”
Once we’d dried off and the sun was down, I had walked back into Andy’s room and just started prattling without taking a breath. He was sitting on the floor, staring at the TV, and in my excitement, I hadn’t even noticed it wasn’t on.
“Hold on a second. I was saying, there’re some houses over on one side… I think it might be the back side of Mayer Street, but over on the right, waaayyyy past that field is where the old quarry is. That’s what Robbie said, but of course, he never actually went back there himself. I’m not sure if I believe him about much of anything…”
“Jack,” he said, standing up.
“…but a flooded quarry, now that’s a good hiding spot. Nobody goes back there, and if I was a monster that steals toys, that’s probably where I’d—”
“Stop!” he screamed, staring me in the eyes.
“What?” I said, hand on my hip.
“It’s over.”
My brain didn’t quite process the words.
“What is?”
“This. All this. I mean, jeez, we almost got killed by Barnett today, and he’s just some dude. What’s next? What if we actually find the damn thing? Do you think it’ll just throw up its hands and give your bear back?”
His voice was getting louder, angrier, and he was scratching at his back vigorously, as if he had poison ivy.
“It’s not just about the bear,” I said.
“Of course it is!” he snapped back. “It’s about you. It’s always about you.”
“Andy, I—”
“What, did you think you were helping me?” he asked as he crossed the room toward me, crowding me back against the door. “You’ve never helped me. Never helped anyone. If I have a problem, I deal with it myself. You get someone else to do it for you.”
A look of pain was growing across his face, clouding his eyes as he dug away at the sore patch on his back.
“And another thing,” he said, pointing his finger in my face. We both gasped at the sight of it, the scabby, old blood that he had scratched free, as if he had just killed something with his bare hands.
“Just… just leave me alone,” he said as he pushed past me, throwing open the door and ducking into the bathroom.
I thought back to that afternoon, less than an hour ago, thought of the way he’d stepped in front a rampaging, desperate man to keep me safe. Why was he acting like this? He was always sullen, always just on the edge of some glib comment or outburst, but he loved me. I knew he did. And this thing between us, this secret that had sprung up from thin air, it was important. It meant more than just a teddy bear or a plastic superhero. The Toy Thief was threatening the last shreds we had left of our mom, and so it mattered.
I knew those things then as I do now, but I didn’t have any fight in me. I was drained, wrung out, and I couldn’t keep up this pace for much longer. So instead of waiting for him in his room, forcing him to see things my way, I dropped it. Tomorrow, the world might look different, as it often did after a night of sleep. I trudged to the kitchen and ate something, I couldn’t tell you what, and before the clock struck eight, I was asleep, curled up in my bed, the dull pocketknife clutched in my left hand.
“Jack.”
Confusion.
Dad shaking me awake.
“Wake up, Jack.”
Sun streaming in.
Couldn’t be. Just went to bed a few minutes ago.
“I said, wake up,” he said, his voice growing harder, less patient.
“What?” I said, bleary as I sat up in bed, my eyes still closed.
“Have you seen Andy?”
“In his bed,” I replied as I flopped back down onto the covers. Dad yanked them away, and when he spoke again, I heard an urgency in his tone that was so foreign it felt like a different language. He never sounded like that – so very afraid.
“I said… get… up.”
Again, I sat up, and when I found the will to open my eyes, they found his eyes inches away. His fingers, like bands of iron, locked onto my shoulders as he stared at me.
“Andy,” he said slowly. “Do you know where he is?”
“He was in his bedroom,” I replied. “Last night.”
“You haven’t seen him?” he asked.
“No. Why?”
He closed his eyes and let out a deep, slow breath before saying another word.
“Your brother’s gone.”
Chapter Eight
We used to play a game in the neighborhood called capture the flag. The rules were pretty simple. Two teams would divide a section of the neighborhood into two more-or-less equal parts. Each team had a flag, usually an old towel or a t-shirt. Didn’t really matter as long as it was white. Then the teams would split up and hide the flag somewhere on their half of the playing field, making sure that the entire flag was actually visible. No stuffing it in a trashcan or anything. After both sides were ready, the game began.