by Phoebe North
“Like Jamie?” I asked in confusion.
My father sighed. “James,” he said. “Yes. But I really meant school.”
With that, my dad turned around to leave, and when he did, he shut the light off out of habit. I sat in the dark, feeling like I wasn’t even there.
I didn’t want to hear what my dad had to say, but I’d heard it, anyway. All through dinner, while Jamie stared at his plate and my mom fussed over him and Elijah, I thought about Gumlea. How hard I had tried to hold on to it, and how quickly it had slipped through my fingertips. I still felt as tethered as I ever did to Jamie, but I had to admit that Gumlea was no longer what tied us together. When I looked at him, giving him our old, secret smile, the Band-Aid wrinkled up and pulled at my skin and hurt and he only looked away.
After dinner, I cleared my plate, told my mom I had homework, and shut the bedroom door behind me.
The walls were covered with my drawings. There were thousands of hours of work there, my entire blood supply poured out over every single page. There were the white cliffs and the beacons on the edges that Emperata Annit had built. There were the trade routes of the pirate ships, and the place that the Nameless Boy had been hauled on deck by pirates. I’d lived these stories once, knew them as well as I knew my own heartbeat. I had been the archivist, holding them all close. Caring for them.
Now they didn’t matter. I was missing out, Dad said, on real life. Let it go, Jamie had said.
I didn’t want them to be right. Dad. Jamie. I wanted to fight for it. To keep fighting. But . . .
I reached up and touched the Band-Aid and felt the throbbing split in my skin beneath it. I thought of Miranda, and everything we’d never said to each other. My lonely days in the forest, which had brought me nothing but misery. The things I felt when I thought about Vidya.
What would happen if I let that go? Would I have space in my life for something else, then? The idea tugged at me. I saw my future stretch out. Clean. New.
I knelt on my bed and began to take the pages down. The wallpaper was faded bunnies, brighter where the taped-up pages had protected the ink from sunlight. I put all of our maps in a stack, and then tucked the stack into a binder, and then wedged the binder into the bottom of my desk drawer, along with ancient yo-yos and toys from Chuck E. Cheese that I’d kept for reasons that were beyond even me. I didn’t throw any of it out, but I told myself that Gumlea belonged with all of that. Childhood garbage, worth saving, maybe, but hidden somewhere dark and forgotten.
After, I lay on my bed and watched the sunlight set over the strange shadows in the colorful wallpaper. I told myself that it was good. Healthy. Normal. I told myself it was okay that there was no more magic left in the world.
17
THE PIRATES HAD FILMY EYES, red-rimmed at the edges. The pirates were missing hands, legs, fingers, teeth. When they walked toward the Nameless Boy, they smelled like urine and body odor, the stink that boy had scrubbed off himself at the end of the day, the sour perfume that none of the other children wore. He looked up at the pirates as he wheezed and panted and dripped down on the deck.
“Stay away from me,” he growled. The pirates all looked at one another, bushy eyebrows lifted in surprise, and they laughed and laughed and laughed.
It was a Thursday, an ordinary day. I ate a yogurt for breakfast. Jamie argued with Dad about whether he could have a cup of coffee, until Mom got tired of the yelling and made him a cup of black tea instead.
I went to the bathroom while Jamie stood over the kitchen table, texting someone. I wouldn’t even remember this detail except that the police asked me about it over and over again later: Did James often text his friends in the morning? Do you know who he was texting?
But no, I didn’t know. My brother stared down at his phone, his brow furrowed, and I left him there and went to pee and then, wordlessly, we headed out for the bus together.
It was September 13, but it still felt like summer. Blue sky, the leaves green but just starting to go gold at the edges. The morning was clear and beautiful, like something from a dream. We stood on the curb and waited for the bus, not speaking. But we never talked while we waited for the bus anyway. Jamie’s phone buzzed in the pocket of his hoodie again. He took it out and began to answer. Nina wandered out of her house, her hands hooked into her backpack straps. She kept stealing glances at my brother, like she hoped he would speak to her. But he didn’t.
The bus arrived. We trudged up the steps. If I’d known what I know now, I would have buried Jamie in a hug. I would have made it so my arms could keep him there, in our bubble of suburban safety. At the very least, I would have said goodbye.
But Jamie went to the back of the bus, where his friends sat making trouble, and I sat next to Miranda and said good morning, and turned my eyes to the road. When I tell this story, when I think about this moment, I think: Turn around, stupid. Look at him. You’re never going to see him again like this.
But I didn’t. I kept my eyes to the woods. And I’ve been told that I couldn’t have known, that it wasn’t my fault, but it’s a weight I carried for a long time: the last time I saw my brother for certain, boarding the bus that morning of Thursday, boring stupid Thursday, September the unlucky thirteenth.
Sometimes Jamie was home after school. Most days, though, since last year, he wasn’t, off smoking G-d knows what with Neal, or making out with Vidya, or whatever. I liked the days without him better. On those days, I’d have forty-five minutes to myself before Mom came home and Elijah’s bus arrived and then Dad finished with work, too, and Jamie finally came home, grumbling like an overworked motor. Forty-five minutes with the house empty and comfortable, when I could draw or write or imagine all to myself, when I could eat potato chips and stream The X-Files endlessly for the millionth time and be by myself, my full self, my true self. Once I’d been able to share her with Jamie. But now she was a secret, one that I told no one. Now she only lived when I was alone.
On that Thursday, no one was home. I went inside and locked the door behind me. I turned on the television, threw my bag down on the sofa, then went to the kitchen to make myself a snack. Crackers and cheese, carefully arranged. Apple slices. A jelly jar of diet soda. I was standing at the counter, pouring, when my gaze drifted out the kitchen window.
I still don’t know if what I saw was real or some sort of delusion. All the evidence points to the latter, but in the moment, it seemed completely real, if unbelievable. There was Jamie, standing by the woods in the back of our yard. I thought, He must be going to meet Neal. I sipped some of the foam off my soda, cringing at the thought. Pot. It was so ridiculous. We’d once agreed that drugs were stupid, a waste of time. We’d promised each other we would never try them. Guess he’d changed his mind. Or lied about it, way back when. Neither would surprise me. Nothing did with Jamie, not anymore.
And then I saw something that made my breath catch. Jamie was stepping backward into the woods. He was walking into Gumlea, something he hadn’t done in longer than I could remember. I saw him disappear between a thorny mess of bushes.
A small voice inside me said, Go to him. A small voice inside me said, He needs you, Emperata Annit.
Instead, I put the lid on the bottle of soda, tucked it into the fridge, and wandered off to watch TV.
Mom came home, then Dad with Elijah in tow from their Tiger Scout meeting. Dad was going to make stir-fry for dinner. He was in a good mood. They all seemed to be. They were in the kitchen, laughing and cutting vegetables in the yellowing evening light. I was sprawled out on the sofa still with my homework. My X-Files episode, “Small Potatoes,” ended, and Mom put on the news. The house was filled with the smells of garlic and soy sauce. Years later, every box of Chinese takeout I smell still turns my stomach.
The newscasters were talking about household cleaners that might kill you, and then the weatherman came on and predicted storms for the rest of the week. That’s when Mom came in, a dish towel over her shoulder, and asked, “Hey, kiddo, have you heard
from Jamie? He doesn’t usually stay out this late.”
18
ONE OF THE PIRATES HAD a young face, the kind that made it difficult to guess at an age. He could have been thirty or twenty-five or sixteen. He could have been forty-five or sixty-seven. He had a patch over one eye. The other shone like a blue marble. When he walked, he swaggered, and the sea wind whipped up his clothes.
“This one’s my catch,” he said, and before the boy could react, the pirate reached down and hefted the boy’s soggy body over his shoulder.
The ship was a living creature. Though from afar, it looked as if her mouth was nothing more than paint on boards, now inside, he could see the light squinting between teeth, each one as big as he was.
When the pirate walked, his boots sank into something pink, viscous, alive. A tongue, the boy thought with horror as the pirate threw his body into one of the many beds that were nailed into the flesh of the ship’s cheek.
I told them that he was in the woods. I’d seen him, after all, or thought I had—strange though it seemed that Jamie would step backward through the Veil after all this time. But when Mom texted him, then called, he didn’t answer.
Dad was plating up dinner. Elijah was setting the table. I sat down, my notebook still in hand. It was no big deal, I figured. Maybe he’d forgotten to charge his phone. He’d be through the door any minute. He’d let it slam behind him, and then would sit down at the table like an argumentative little storm cloud. Everything would be terrible, but normal.
Instead everything was terrible, but broken, too.
When Dad saw the look on Mom’s face, he turned off the burners, grabbed his coat, and headed out into the backyard. Mom went into the kitchen to call Neal’s mom. I heard her voice, low and worried. Elijah pulled himself up to the table beside me. He picked at the oily peppers but didn’t eat.
“Is Jamie okay?” he asked at last.
I shrugged. “I’m sure he’s fine,” I said. And I was sure. He was in the woods. Dad would find him soon.
Mom came back and sat down across from me. She wore a strange expression on her face, like a question she couldn’t quite bring herself to ask. “Andrea said Neal hasn’t seen him. He wasn’t in any of his classes after lunch, he said. The school should have called me.”
“He was on the bus this morning,” I said.
Mom shook her head. “It’s not like him to cut class.”
“He’s fine. He’s in the woods. I saw him.”
When Mom looked at me, her eyebrows were all wrinkled like one of those curly brackets turned on end. Eli was glancing between Mom and me, and I had the feeling that I was supposed to say something, so I did.
“Maybe he’s with his girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend?” The curly bracket frown deepened.
He’d been hooking up with Vidya for a year; I knew she hadn’t been over to our house or anything, but had Mom really not noticed? “You know, that girl he danced with at his bar mitzvah? Vidya. She’s in chorus with me. They hang out together at Neal’s a lot. I bet she knows where he is.”
Mom looked like she’d been hit by something heavy. I could almost hear her thoughts: How could I not know Jamie was dating someone? Suddenly, I regretted saying anything. I wondered if Jamie hadn’t been the only one to keep his relationship with Vidya a secret. If our parents didn’t know, maybe hers didn’t, either. Mom didn’t know a lot of things about Jamie. She stood up again.
“I’ll have to call Andrea back, see if Neal has her number.”
She disappeared into the kitchen just as Dad came in through the screen door. He was rubbing his thick hands over his eyes.
“It’s getting dark out there. There was no sign of him.”
Mom came back. She stood in the doorway, one hip on the doorjamb, her phone tucked against her cheek.
“Andrea’s getting the number for me,” she whispered.
Dad frowned. “What number?”
“Annie says he’s dating someone. Vida—”
“Vidya,” I corrected her, then offered, “Maybe her parents are hippies.”
Dad shook his head like he didn’t know what to say to that. “I’m calling the police,” he said, and walked off to use the landline in the office, leaving the three of us alone there, our dinner getting cold on the table.
Two police officers came to the door, a young woman with breasts that looked smushed under her uniform and an older man with a smiling face that I didn’t quite trust. The older man put his hand on my mom’s hand and listened closely and nodded admiringly at the picture of Jamie that Mom handed him right off our wall, my brother in his bar mitzvah tallit, looking handsome and clean cut.
“When was this taken?” the female cop asked, and when Mom said, “Last year,” she asked for a more recent picture. Mom hesitated a moment before she took out her phone and found a recent photograph. Jamie at Gram’s house, wearing a too-big sweatshirt, his curly hair in his eyes, his mouth flat. You couldn’t see his hands in that picture. They were tucked into his sweatshirt like he was trying to hide something. When the police looked at the photo, everything changed.
“You can put out an Amber Alert, can’t you?” Dad asked.
The cop drummed her fingers on the tabletop. “Only if it’s a confirmed abduction. Kids like these . . .” The way she said these was pointed, deliberate. Mom winced at the phrase. “. . . they run off sometimes. We’ll talk to the girlfriend, put out a missing persons alert. Chances are, he’ll be back within twenty-four hours. Kids end up at a bus station somewhere, realize their birthday money won’t take them very far. Call a friend for a ride home.”
“He’s not at a bus station,” I said. “He’s in the woods. I saw him go into Gum . . .” I let the word trail off. “I saw him go into the woods.”
“Your father checked, sweetie. He’s not there,” Mom said soothingly. It was strange. She never called me sweetie, not normally.
But the rest of them weren’t even listening to me. Dad leaned forward on his chair, setting flat hands on the table. “I feel like you’re not taking this seriously,” he said. “He’s only thirteen! He’s a child.”
“He’s almost fourteen,” the female cop said, as if that helped anything. The male cop set a hand on Dad’s shoulder. It looked big and fleshy and useless, sitting there.
“We’ll do everything we can, you have my personal word. This is the best number to reach you?”
Dad gave the cop his cell number, but from his expression I could almost read his thoughts. They weren’t going to call, not tonight. They weren’t going to do anything. They left us at the dinner table with our supper, cold and filmy. We hardly ate.
I went to bed early and didn’t dream.
I woke before the dawn had even begun to crack. When I went into Jamie’s room, it was still empty, filled only with autumn’s chilly breath. The gently curled, yellow, ancient papers on his walls made it appear as if my brother had been gone for months, not only hours. I suppose, in a way, he had.
“You can’t sleep, either, huh, sweetie?” came Mom’s voice at the door. Sweetie, again. I looked at her, and before I even knew what was happening, I began to cry.
She held me in my dark room. She didn’t tell me to be quiet, that I would wake my little brother down the hall. She didn’t tell me it would all be okay. Instead she said only this:
“I hear you. I know.”
When I finally pulled away, a lifetime later, I saw that her eyes were bloodshot. “I can’t wait around all day,” she said. “Every minute that passes is . . . It feels like a minute he gets farther away. What do you say we go out and find him?”
My mother smiled, strong for both of us. For a moment, I felt my body fill to the brim with that impossible, illogical, irrational emotion: hope. We went downstairs, and she wrote a note for Dad and Eli and hung it from the refrigerator with magnets. Then we grabbed our coats and trudged out into the dawn.
The sky was soon shot with streaks of purple and gold, then a blue so bright you
almost couldn’t believe it. It promised to be a beautiful day, more summer than autumn, still. We drove from bus stop to bus stop to train station to bus stop, looking for Jamie, showing his picture to all the bored clerks behind the Greyhound counters and every stern conductor, too. We had breakfast from McDonald’s, greasy hash browns that made our chins and unwashed hair oily. It didn’t matter. We were going to find Jamie.
The day wore on and on, brighter still. Mom called me out of school and fought with Dad over the phone about it while I sat on the hood of the car and pretended not to listen.
“I need to find him, Marc. Go to work. Pretend this isn’t happening. I don’t care.”
Then she called the police for a third time, a fourth time. Asked what they’d heard, which was nothing again. The circle that Mom was driving in was tightening more and more around our house. We stopped at the mall and looked in Barnes & Noble and the food court and the Regal lobby. We drove to Kirky’s, the convenience store where he and Neal had once been caught shoplifting. The clerk said he hadn’t seen him, not since the day before yesterday, even though he usually stopped by every day after school.
Mom pressed her lips together, tried not to look worried—for my sake, I suppose—and said, “Thank you.”
By this point, it was almost three in the afternoon. Mom drove into our neighborhood. But instead of pulling into our driveway, she went straight to Neal’s house and went out and rang the doorbell three times while I waited by the car. No one answered, but when she went to ring it a fourth time, I saw Neal walking up the road, his shoulders hunched.
“Neal!” I called, and Mom whipped her head up, and we both pounded the pavement to get to him. He looked like roadkill right before impact. Like he’d been caught. For a fleeting moment, I wished Mom wasn’t there. There was no way he’d tell us anything true or helpful, not if he thought he was going to get in trouble for it.