“No, no, no. I know, I’m not saying he kidnapped Brian. I’m saying maybe we can help find who did it. Graham talked a lot to the kid. Maybe he knows something or figured something out, some clue.”
I was thinking about this one time me, Becky, and Declan hitchhiked far out into the country and pretended we were lost and then knocked on people’s doors to ask them for directions. We weren’t lost. I don’t know why we did it. We were just curious about what the insides of people’s houses looked like. And as usual we were bored out of our minds.
This got me thinking about how the cops would be searching for Brian.
“Hey, that’s it!” I said.
“What’s it?” Becky said with a mouth full of Fritos.
“We’ll do the ‘We’re lost, can we use your bathroom?’ thing.”
“You really think this is the time to do something like that? God, Tate, stick with something. I thought you wanted to try to find Brian.”
“Duh. This is how I want to try to find him,” I said. “The cops can only cover so much ground and regular people aren’t allowed to snoop around people’s houses.”
“You want to go looking for a missing kid by walking into people’s houses? Why are you so crazy? I mean, really, do you even know why you are so crazy?”
“It’s not crazy, Becks. Better yet, we can be all like, Hey, I’m lost, can we use your computer to email my mom, and then we check what websites they’ve been on.”
“So okay, we’re going into the house of someone who may, like, molest or kidnap kids. That’s a place we’re trying to get into? And they’re just going to let us on their computers based on a really, really dumb idea.”
I said, “It’s worth a try. Otherwise we just sit around here feeling weird and freaked-out, and I am not about feeling weird and freaked-out.”
She sighed and drank more of the Coke and then looked again at the Missing picture. He was wearing his X-Men T-shirt in it and smiling. Becky’s eyes filled with tears.
I reached over and held her hand. “What is he like?”
She shrugged. “He used to come with his mom and hang out and read comics when she was cleaning. I remember he was really sweet. He came up to my room once and I showed him how to make things on the computer. We used to get him to talk about stuff because he had such a cute little voice. I dunno. I always thought he was a cool little kid, you know?”
“IS a cool little kid,” I said. “And we can help look for him.”
“Okay. Yeah.” Becky’s voice was hoarse and she wiped her eyes. “It’s better than doing nothing. Do you think Graham can really help with this?”
I nodded. I didn’t tell her about all the feelings I had about Graham or about the fact that he was already trying to get with Ally. My feelings about him were all mixed-up. But if there was a chance to help this little kid I was going to take it.
If there’s one thing I’m good at it’s taking chances.
We left the Laundromat and walked through the winding roads back into our neighborhood and headed to Declan’s. I remember feeling like we had a sense of purpose at last. Not just about finding Brian, but in general. I remember thinking that Brian going missing somehow revealed what our lives were really like. We generally didn’t do much. We listened to music and skated and went to school and got stoned. Sometimes my parents decided I should go sailing with them or go to a party.
I suddenly had this sense that maybe all the nothing we did wasn’t really our fault. The cutting class and doing nothing and sitting in the Laundromat or at the beach or out in the woods just waiting for whatever—waiting for our lives to begin. Those things weren’t entirely because we were bad kids. It’s just that there wasn’t much to do unless you were like Ally and got a kick out of baking muffins. There was a whole world out there that we were going to inherit and it wasn’t a very good one.
I know Ally saw the good in everything—even in the end she saw the good in everything. But me, I wanted to change things so that when I finally got out of Rockland and made my own way it would be in a better place. The problem was I didn’t know how to do it. And every time I felt like I might be figuring it out something came up that swept it all away. It might not be our fault we were like this, but we were the only ones who could do anything to change it. If we wanted things to be better we had to do it. We had to work together and do it. The AMBER Alert for Brian and everyone coming together made me feel something I had never felt before and that was part of a community. Part of a big group of people who look out for one another.
That evening with Becky and Declan, I felt like we were good people. Like we were the children of this town and we were trying to help other children in the town. The adults may not be doing a great job all the time and some of them were probably actually dangerous. But other people were doing so much and felt so touched and hurt by what happened. It was all one more thing that made me want to change. Made me want to understand Ally, made me want to do what Richards wanted. I guess when Brian went missing it was another turning point for me. Made me think in ways I never had or never had to before.
Declan was sitting on his porch waiting for us. His house was an enormous rambling Victorian with stained-glass windows, a porch swing, and several comfortable wicker chairs scattered about the overgrown lawn, which was full of wildflowers. As usual he was sitting on the floor on the porch surrounded by a pile of books, looking like he didn’t even notice us until we were standing right in front of him. And at that point he said, “Greetings, earth women. According to your eight texts, a Facebook chat, and five voice mails, we are endeavoring to discover some information from a handsome arty dullard about a sweet little boy.”
Becky rolled her eyes and shook her head. But when Declan looked up he looked serious and worried.
“That’s correct,” I said.
“Sadly,” he went on, “I am preoccupied with some reading for my AP history class, which I have not attended in some weeks. So I don’t know that I’ll be all that much help.”
“Of course you will,” I said. “Ditch the studying for tonight. We’re just going to go over and see if Graham has any movies of Brian that might help us out and then maybe go around and do the fake ‘We’re lost’ thing so we can get more information.”
“The fake-lost thing might be a challenge,” he said. “But I’m up for screening the handsome Art Dullard’s movies. Let’s go.” He grabbed his jean jacket off the back of the chair, slipped his bare feet into his black Vans, brushed his long black hair out of his eyes.
“Can you guys not call him Art Dullard?” Becky asked.
“Why?” we said in unison. Then, “Jinx,” which we also said in unison.
“Because he’s cool as hell, that’s why. And he’s going to help us.”
“Fair enough,” said Declan. “I’ll let up on the nicknaming until we have further information about his character and intentions.”
We walked through the neighborhood and even though we had a purpose and Declan had been trying to keep things light with his usual joking around, things felt terribly heavy and sad. I could tell Becky was having a hard time not thinking about Brian. And I knew the three of us had probably pictured some awful thing happening to him.
When we got back to my driveway, we expected to see Graham on the other side tinkering around in the garage with the Austin. But he wasn’t there so we rang the doorbell.
A tall very handsome old guy—Graham’s dad, David—answered the door. And smiled.
“Is Graham home?” I asked.
“Oh, hey, Tate, sure, just a minute.” He took out his phone and texted something, then asked us to come into the house. Apparently yelling up the stairs wasn’t done around here—or maybe Graham just wouldn’t be able to hear him. We stood in the front hall and looked around. As usual the massive weird paintings by Graham’s stepmom, Kim, seemed to take up all the space around us.