Dead to You

by Lisa McMann

  Things flash by the window and in my head: sleeping in doorways, the group home in Nebraska, and how I got there . . . and Ellen. . . . My throat hurts. I stare outside into the darkness, watching glowing snow and bare black trees whiz by.

  “Um, so, what else do you remember, Ethan?” Blake asks after a while, still not quite looking at me. His voice is nonchalant, but I know what he’s really asking. He’s asking, Do you remember me?

  CHAPTER 4

  Instead, I ask him. “Do you remember me? You were just a little kid.”

  His smile is wary, as if he’s still unsure of me. “Sure. You hogged the bed. I kicked you all the time under the covers, and Dad would always blame you because you were older.” Blake laughs a little and his voice cracks—he must be going through the horrible voice-change thing.

  I smile. “I remember that,” I say, even though I don’t. Stupid nerves. “I wanted my own bed so bad.” I don’t know what I’m saying.

  Now I just want a bed. I don’t care if there are seventeen people in it. I need a soft place to rest. My body aches. I’ve been walking and hitching rides for days. I’d lie on a pile of garbage right about now if it was soft.

  I look at Gracie. I’d noticed in my peripheral vision that she was staring at me with her big cow eyes, but now, when I look directly at her, she drops her gaze. Do you know why they had you? I want to ask. But I’m not cruel like that. I just stare at her instead, until she hides her face behind Dad’s arm.

  What else can I say? I’m grateful for Mama, who chatters about the grandparents. Mama’s father, Papa Quintero, died about a year ago, which I knew from reading the family message board. I try to feel sad, but he’s so distant from me. Besides, he lived in Mexico.

  After a while, we are all quiet. Gracie sleeps. Mama says our train ride is about two hours long, and it was already after nine when we left the Red Wing station. I pretend to doze off so I can wrap my head around all of this. All of this newness. Coming back to a family I don’t really remember. A pang of . . . of homesickness, I guess, hits me in the gut, and I realize just how badly I want those memories back.

  In Belleville we disembark and walk through the parking lot. Blake drops in step next to me, his eyes level with my chin. “You look a little different to me, kid,” I say. “I mean, obviously you’re a lot bigger. Your hair is darker than it was.”

  “It always bleaches blond in the summer,” Blake says, more talkative under the cover of darkness. “You disappeared in the summer. That’s how you’d probably remember me, right? We were outside playing on the sidewalk. Drawing with chalk. I remember it,” he says, looking up at me. His eyes narrow a fraction. “I remember the car.”

  I look sharply at my brother. “You do?” I whisper, but we are at the minivan now, and our conversation ends. I really want to know what my family did in those moments and days after it happened.

  We drive home. Home to the white house with black shutters and a big picture window on the corner of Thirty-fifth and Maple. When Dad turns onto Thirty-fifth and slows the minivan, the house looks just like it does in the pictures on the website, only now it’s softly lit by the glowing reflection of the moon on snowy ground.

  In the front yard stands a weathered family of snowmen:

  A man

  A woman

  A boy

  And a girl.

  It’s them, the four of them.

  I am not represented by snow.

  Stupid hot tears attack the corners of my eyes, and I feel so unstable. I know it’s unreasonable, but I wonder, why didn’t they build one for me before they picked me up? Why didn’t they just smash them all down so I wouldn’t have to see them going on with life without me? As if I didn’t matter. As if I didn’t exist.

  I burst out of the vehicle, breathe in the cold night air to stop the crazy laughter from boiling up, and suppress the urge to run.

  CHAPTER 5

  Dad ushers me in first. A fat, orange blob of a cat darts around the corner when I open the door. Inside the house it smells like stew. “Does it look familiar?” he asks anxiously.

  “Yeah, a little,” I say. But I don’t remember any of it. Not this mudroom, not the smells. I thought I’d remember the smells. I try harder, and then I think, yes, somewhere deep down in my brain, suppressed, there it is. That carpety, freshenery, stewy, tiny-bit-of-musty house smell. I assign it a name—home. That’s it. That’s Home. Everybody starts taking off their boots and hanging their coats on hooks like we do this every day together. But there are only four hooks.

  “Oh, goodness,” Mama says, realizing it. “I’m sorry. I’ll get another hook up tomorrow.” She reaches out her hand.

  I stand there, unsure I want to let go of my coat, sock-footed on hard little balls of snow, feeling the cold wetness seep through. “You can use my hook,” Gracie says, her shyness having dissipated into the walls of familiarity. She ceremoniously drops her coat and hat on the floor and grins all naughty-like. Like she knows she is in control of this family because of her unique position. I let go and Mama takes my coat from me and hangs it up, and then hangs Gracie’s coat over hers.

  Two steps lead up from the mudroom to a door to the main part of the house. We walk in, everyone crowding behind me. “You guys go first,” I say. I let Blake, Gracie, and Mama scoot past me, and I follow them. I don’t need the pressure of them watching me right now, I really don’t. I feel like I’m going to crack. Like my head is made of stone.

  The kitchen has a few dirty dishes piled up in the sink, and there are bowls with food in them still sitting on the table. But the rest of the house is so clean.

  “We left in a hurry,” Mama says, apologizing. “It’s a bit of a mess, but when we got the call that you were down in Red Wing, well.” She sweeps her hand around the room. “You can imagine. Do you want some food? Are you hungry?”

  I shake my head. “The lady got me some dinner.”

  Mama turns to my brother. “Blake,” she says in a firm, quiet voice, “can you clear this up, please?” She turns back and beams at me, and then looks upward. “Dear God,” she says reverently, clasping her hands together, staring at the light fixture, and shaking her head in wonder, “is it really our Ethan? After all these years . . .” She comes over to me and hugs me again tightly, and then she shoos Gracie to her room to get her pajamas on.

  When we hear Gracie’s door click shut, Mama gives Dad a meaningful look. Dad nods and beckons for me to follow him and Mama into the living room, so I do.

  “Gracie doesn’t really know what’s going on,” he says in a low voice. “She’s a little too young for us to explain what happened to you. You understand?”

  I feel something twist in my gut. “Yeah, sure,” I say. My voice sounds thin in my ears.

  “She knows you’re her brother and that you are the boy whose picture is on the wall,” Mama hastens to add. “We just didn’t tell her any details about the abduction. She’s only six. We’re going to try and make your return as normal as possible for her—for all of us—and send her to school tomorrow as usual. Blake, too. Give you a chance to settle in before the weekend.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. I know it’s not Gracie’s fault. Still, I feel upset about it. “So, if she asks me about things, what do you want me to do, just sort of lie?” I laugh nervously and it comes out like a hiccup. It’s a bad habit of mine, laughing at weird times. Somebody could up and punch me in the stomach or say something really horrible to me and chances are I’ll just start laughing hysterically, even if it hurts like hell.

  “Maybe just be vague,” Dad says. He scratches his five o’clock shadow. “I’ll bet you were surprised to see her,” he says.

  “Yeah, a little,” I lie. I knew all about her. The website has more pictures of her than anybody else. I just feel bad. I do. I feel bad for having had to relearn everything about them from our little family website—all those years I missed. And I feel bad that I don’t remember them—like I didn’t care enough or something, you know?
There’s so much stuff to know. I’ve been gone for more than half my life.

  “There’s a lot of things different, I’m sure.” Dad smiles. “We’ll have time to catch up. We have the rest of our lives now,” he says, a little overdramatically. It feels like we’re in a movie. He puts his hand on my shoulder and it sits there like it’s a parrot, and I’m a pirate, yarrr. I shake my head, trying to concentrate. So tired.

  Dad gives me a tour of the house to help me get reacquainted. In every room he asks, “Do you remember this?”

  Remember this? Remember that? They want me to remember so badly. Sometimes I say yes, sometimes no. Mostly no, because the yeses give him so much hope. It’s hard to watch. Can’t stand the pressure of that much hope.

  I’m grateful when we return to the living room and Mama has photographs to look at. Me at Christmas in my red footie pajamas. Me at my sixth birthday party, surrounded by children I don’t recognize. On Halloween, dressed as Superman. At a lake, wearing a blue swimsuit. I stare at my overexposed face as Mama reminisces.

  Blake passes by the entry to the living room, where we sit. He pauses, and then instead of coming in, he walks down the hallway, and I see my chance to talk to him. “Is it okay if I go?” I ask, and I slide out from under my dad’s arm and follow Blake, not waiting for an answer. Not looking back.

  “Hey . . . ,” I call out, trying to catch up with him. I pretend that Dad hasn’t just shown me the room, so that I have something to talk about. “So, uh, is our room the same as before?”

  Blake snorts. “No. Choo-choo trains? I got rid of that wallpaper a long time ago.” He turns into our room and I follow. “I’m not sure what’s going to happen now,” he says, and I don’t know what he means, until I realize he’s talking about the furniture.

  There’s his twin bed, a dresser, a desk, and a chair. It’s a small, messy room with clothes piled on the floor. The walls are simple, painted blue. The orange cat I saw earlier has made its way in here and is curled up on the foot of Blake’s bed. Blake starts to pick up some of his crap, and I wander to the dresser, which is topped with a variety of books, papers, and mutilated action figures in inappropriate poses. I stare at a framed picture that is semi-hidden behind the clutter. It’s a photograph of two boys sitting behind a lemonade stand. I think it’s him and me. “Is this us?” I ask.

  Blake looks at me curiously. “You don’t remember that?”

  “No,” I say.

  “Yes, Ethan. It’s us.” Blake frowns.

  “I figured,” I say. Embarrassed. Feeling like I should apologize for my memory. This is going to be awkward, all of this “getting to know each other” stuff.

  I’m quiet and Blake is still looking at me, working his jaw. He moves to the door and closes it, and I start to get a weird feeling.

  “I remember,” he says, his voice low. “The car. You went right to it.”

  I just look at him. My eyes get wide and I can’t stop them.

  “Why did you do that?” His voice is strained.

  I don’t know what to say. I see him winding up, his lips twitching, and I am not ready for this.

  “You went right up to those strangers and you got into their car.” Blake’s face twists and turns red. “You were seven years old, a second grader. You should have known better! You should have known not to go up to strangers. What the heck was wrong with you?” Blake sniffs wildly and presses his fingertips into the corners of his eyes to stop the drips.

  “I . . . ,” I say. But instead of answering, I go to the door, open it, and slip out, closing it behind me, and I walk slowly past the bathroom, past Gracie’s bedroom, down the hall, and through the dining room, to the living room, where Mama and Dad sit, talking quietly. Dad has his laptop out and he’s typing. They look up and stop talking when I come into the room.

  “We’re emailing some more relatives and friends now, but we’ll wait until morning to call the rest and let them know you’re back,” Dad says. “It’s late.” He goes back to his typing and adds, “Give you a good night’s rest and some time to settle in. Then we’ll have everybody over to see you tomorrow night. All right?” He looks up and smiles, and it’s such a warm smile.

  “Yeah, okay,” I say. More people.

  Mama pats the sofa cushion next to her, so I sit down. “We’ll have Blake sleep out here tonight, at least until we can get another bed for his room—your room, I mean, the both of you.”

  “No, Mama, really,” I say. I remember crying out for my mother, vaguely, a long time ago. She loves being called Mama, I know it from one of her stories on the website, so I do it, even though it sounds a little babyish for a sixteen-year-old. “I don’t want Blake to sleep out here. I’ll sleep here. Trust me, the sofa is about a million times better than where I slept last night.”

  “Are you sure?” she asks, uncertain.

  “Yes, I mean it.”

  She sighs deeply. “I can’t believe it’s really you,” she says. “It’s amazing. . . . We thought we’d found you so many times over the years, but the leads were all dead ends.” She shuffles through the pictures of me, putting them into a neat pile on the end table. She looks at me and hesitates. “Do you feel like talking more about that? About how you got home?” Her skin looks so anxious, all crinkled up by her eyes.

  “Not really,” I say, sorry. “Not right now. I’m so tired.”

  She pats my hand. “It’s okay. We have lots of time to talk.”

  Later, after midnight, when all the lights are out and I’m lying on my makeshift couch bed, exhausted, I can’t sleep. It’s too quiet, too . . . too nice. I stare through the moonlight at the framed school portraits on the living room wall. Blake looks like the oldest kid in the family. The Replacement Kid is angelic and perfect. And I am toothless and dumb-haired, perpetually stuck in second grade.

  CHAPTER 6

  During the night the phone rings. Twice, three times. I hear somebody scuffling around, but I’m gone from the world.

  In the morning I wake up to strange noises and smells, and for a minute I don’t remember where I am. I crack open an eyelid and there, staring at me, just standing in the living room all dressed in a freaking snowmobile suit and snow boots and carrying a Dora the Explorer lunch box, is Gracie. She looks like an elf.

  “I’m going to school now,” she says. She doesn’t move.

  “So what,” I mutter. I remember the other kids in the group home. Sixteen of us, all ages. The head dude had a bratty daughter about the same age as Gracie who always came to the home for lunch after morning kindergarten. Kimberlee. Couldn’t stand her. But there was an abandoned kid who wasn’t bad—really shy. I liked getting him to laugh. You never know with little kids.

  I struggle to lift my head. My body is stiff. Everything hurts, but it’s good, sort of, like the worst ache you feel right before the healing begins. My throat is sore, though, which is making me cranky, and my voice comes out hoarse. “What’s in your lunch box?”

  Gracie narrows her eyes. “Nofing.”

  “Seriously?” I laugh a little and then erupt in a short coughing fit. “Come on,” I say. “Tell me. I’m not going to steal it.”

  She stares at me a minute more, all round cheeks and pouty baby lips, surrounded by a mop of brown curls that bounce when she shakes her head.

  I try again. “Do you go to all-day school? So that’s your lunch?”

  “No. I go to kindergarten. It’s half-a-days.”

  “Hmm, I see,” I say, still pretending to figure out what’s in the box, but I’m getting tired of the game now.

  “Mama said to wake you up and tell you to take a shower. She put some clean clothes in the bathroom for you. Grandpa and Grandma De Wilde are coming later. And the newspaper people are here.” Only she says it like noose paper, and I picture an animated rolled-up paper with those moving black eyes and eyebrows, a big old rope around its neck, or whatever, hanging from a tree and choking to death.

  “Noose paper,” I say softly, trying out the l
ocal accent. “Wait, what? You mean reporters, or the delivery guy?”

  Gracie just stares at me. Shrugs.

  “Okay, uh . . . where’s the washer and dryer?”

  “Down the basement,” she says, and puts a hand on her hip, too big for her britches.

  “And . . . what’s that cat’s name?”

  “Russell.”

  “Rustle? Like what leaves do?”

  “What? No. Like . . . Russ-oll .”

  “Oh. Is Russ-oll in your lunch box?”

  Gracie scowls. “You’re dumb. Any more questions?”

  “Besides ‘what is in your lunch box?’ No, I don’t think so.”

  “It’s my private property, Efan.”

  I laugh. Precocious little lisping brat. “Okay, well, have a good day at school, then.”

  She turns to go. “Mama says you’re going to school Monday. She has to unroll you first today.”

  “Oh,” I say, and her cuteness is lost on me for the moment.

  School.

  CHAPTER 7

  I roll over on the couch and watch the morning activities from my dimly lit corner of the living room.

  Mama rushes around the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel and grabbing her coat and purse. “Come on, Gracie,” she says, and they go out through the mudroom. “I’ll be back in a bit, Ethan. Blake’s still here and Dad’s in the shower. Don’t answer the door for any reason, okay? Reporters are starting to show up. . . . I should have known word would leak . . . but don’t worry. Back soon.” The door slams shut.

  Blake, his hair wet, rounds the corner from the hallway and glances at me, and then heads for the kitchen. Stares out the window for a minute, then grabs waffles from a box in the freezer and puts them in the toaster. “You want some waffles?” he says. A peace offering, maybe.