Missing Pieces

by Carly Anne West

  “We don’t have one of those,” Aaron tells me when I relay my memory to him the next day. “At least I don’t think we do.”

  He says it so casually, I don’t think he realizes how strange it is that he could live in a house and not know where every door leads. At least, at first it seems strange to me. Then I learn that there are some places in Aaron’s house that are off-limits.

  “The basement’s kind of a wreck,” he says, but now he’s less casual about it. Now he seems uncomfortable. I think back on the boarded-up door on the side of their house, the one I thought led to a root cellar.

  Aaron doesn’t have white hair, as it turns out. That was a trick of the flashlight, just one of the many weird aspects of the night he introduced himself to me. It’s just light brown, but that’s about the only ordinary quality about Aaron. He’s tall—in fact, at first I thought maybe he was older than me. He’s my age, though, and he acts like he’s fifty. It’s like the Giant Alien Overlords sucked all the childhood out of him and left behind a twelve-year-old adult. It’s not that he doesn’t smile or joke. He just has … purpose.

  He’s also better at picking locks than me. He can find his way into the tiniest keyhole, his hands steady and precise. But that isn’t why he’s good. It’s his patience that makes him better than me. He can sit in a turn and twitch the pick a millimeter, feel for the movement, then guide the tool through a different path, until boom! The lock springs free, and the door opens.

  “I should’ve gone with the rake,” I say, angry at myself for not springing the hall closet upstairs that particular afternoon.

  “I’ll give you an easier one next time,” he says, punching my shoulder a little too hard.

  I punch him back harder. “Man, don’t be a—”

  “A what?”

  Broad shoulders and an argyle sweater emerge from a door behind us that I swear to the Aliens I didn’t even know was a door.

  “Uh …”

  “Dad, this is Nicky. From across the street.”

  “Nicky from across the street,” Mr. Peterson says, pinching an end of his curled mustache like a cartoon villain. And he looks like he could be a villain, with his wide eyes hooded by thick eyebrows and forearms bigger than my legs. If not for his unmistakable dad uniform—violet-blue sweater, brown pants, high socks—I’d be halfway across the street by now.

  He didn’t ask me a question, but he’s looking at me like he’s waiting on an answer.

  “Uh, we were just …”

  Picking locks in your house.

  Fighting.

  Cursing.

  Mr. Peterson leans over and puts his hands on his knees, large shoulders framing the face that’s now six inches from mine. His carnival mustache is practically touching my cheek. I can smell spearmint on his breath.

  “Well, Nicky from across the street,” he says, and I clench my teeth together to keep them from chattering.

  He leans in even closer, and I think I’m going to faint.

  “How would you like … to stay for dinner?”

  He pauses and waits for me to process what wasn’t the threat it sounded like, and then his mustache lifts to reveal a row of brilliant white teeth. He leans back, tilts his head, and bellows a laugh that shakes the hallway I nearly pee myself in.

  I start to laugh, too, because I have no idea what else to do. I feel Aaron grab my arm and drag me down the stairs, muttering something about “Don’t know why you have to be so weird” and shoves me down the hallway so I can gather myself and wonder if he was calling his dad weird or me.

  I start to head down a different hallway before Aaron redirects me. Just one more rabbit hole to fall through in his winding house.

  In the kitchen, Aaron’s ten-year-old sister is wielding a seriously sharp knife over a yellow onion while Mrs. Peterson smokes a cigarette with her back turned. Aaron told me his mom teaches first grade at Raven Brooks Elementary.

  “Cripes, Mya, give me that.” Aaron lunges toward the cutting board and catches the handle of the knife just as Mya begins to pierce the wobbly onion against the wood.

  “Mom asked me to,” she says defensively, but she looks relieved.

  “You know I’m a crier,” Mrs. Peterson says, exhaling a stream of smoke through the kitchen window screen.

  “I have freakishly strong eyes,” Mya says, her pride returning after being stripped of her duties. She’s Aaron’s polar opposite, with light red hair like her mother’s. She shares her mother’s small frame, too, with stubby little legs that make her look younger than she should.

  Aaron slices the onion into fine rings and sets the knife and cutting board in the middle of the kitchen island while Mya wipes the onion skin from where it got caught on her watch.

  “Thanks, baby,” Mrs. Peterson says, stubbing out her cigarette and planting a kiss on top of Aaron’s head, then one on my head, and I turn away when my face gets hot, and for some reason, Mya’s face gets red, too. Mrs. Peterson lets me call her Diane, but it feels so weird I’ve just stopped calling her anything at all. I guess she’s pretty, but she reminds me so much of my mom it’s nuts.

  I’ve tried to get Mom to invite the Petersons over for dinner, but Mom’s formal about stuff like that. “They should invite us first,” Mom says, and that’s that.

  “Hamburgers for dinner tonight,” Mrs. Peterson says. “You boys planning on sticking around, or are you robbing banks this evening?”

  I turn to face the wall again because I had a dream last night that I cracked a bank vault, and the rush I felt was so strong I felt a little awkward when I woke up. I’m pretty sure that’s not using my powers for good.

  “Who’s robbing banks?” Mr. Peterson says, emerging once again from whatever kind of shadow a hulking guy in argyle can hide in.

  “Oh,” Mrs. Peterson says, peering into her mixing bowl. “We might not have enough hamburger if you stay, Nicky. Aaron, you’d have to run to the store for some more.”

  “Batty Mrs. Tillman stopped selling meat, remember?” Aaron says.

  “Oh, that’s right. I keep forgetting that,” says Mrs. Peterson.

  Aaron turns to me with a wicked smile. “We could get you a tasty bulgur-wheat-and-tofu burger, though. Maybe a cocoa-powder granola bar for dessert.”

  “Whatever, you love those bars,” Mya says, curling her lip.

  “It’s true,” Aaron says, leaning toward me. “They make you fart.”

  Mya dissolves into giggles.

  “A lot.”

  “What’s the verdict on dinner?” Mrs. Peterson asks, bringing us back on topic. “You boys in or out?”

  “We’re eating at Nicky’s,” Aaron says, and when I look at him, he widens his eyes.

  “Right. At my house,” I say, not much better at lying than Aaron is.

  Mrs. Peterson examines us from across the kitchen island. Mya swoops in to save the day, though, bringing us back to a forgotten topic.

  “Everyone thinks that Jesse James was the best bank robber there was, just because he was a show-off, but he couldn’t have done any of that without his brother, Frank. People always forget the siblings.”

  “I’m sure you could rob a bank just as successfully as your brother, Mouse,” Mrs. Peterson says, lining the patties into perfect rows on the cutting board. She holds a meat tenderizer high above her head and brings it down with startling strength, moving from patty to patty with unsettling enthusiasm.

  Mya rolls her eyes, but I can tell she likes when her mom calls her Mouse, just like I don’t mind that my dad still calls me Narf. My parents claim that’s how I used to say my name before I could say Nick, which is weird because it doesn’t even sound the same, but whatever. It stuck, so now I’m Narf, and from some of the nicknames I’ve heard out there, it could be a whole lot worse.

  “And I’m sure your brother wouldn’t dream of taking credit for your accomplishments,” Mrs. Peterson adds, winking at Aaron.

  She brings the meat hammer down on the patty again, and I jump before I
can catch myself.

  “Remember, family makes you stronger,” Mrs. Peterson says. “Isn’t that right, honey?”

  Mrs. Peterson turns her head to the side to address her husband, but her eyes never meet his. Mr. Peterson just stands there for a second, surveying his family across the kitchen island before moving to the sink to wash his hands.

  “Not necessarily,” he says with his back turned to us all, and from the way he says it, I can tell that’s all he wants to say on the subject.

  Either Mrs. Peterson doesn’t notice or she doesn’t care. “Oh, don’t be a grump. You don’t really mean that.”

  Mrs. Peterson flashes me a smile and rolls her eyes, which might be convincing if her hands weren’t shaking so hard she has to set down the meat tenderizer.

  Mr. Peterson scrubs his fingernails meticulously at the sink. I sneak a glance at Aaron, and he’s watching his dad, too. Mya’s moved to the other side of the island, and she’s fidgeting with the ties on one of the barstool cushions. I’m waiting for the punch line, for Mr. Peterson to whip around and bark that insane laugh from under his mustache, but he doesn’t turn around.

  Mrs. Peterson tries a joke. “Well, I’m afraid you’re stuck with us, darling. We’re Petersons to the bone.”

  Now Mr. Peterson does turn around, so fast that the towel in his hands makes a whipping sound in the air.

  “You know what’s so interesting about bones, Diane?” he says with a smile that’s way different than the one he cracked in the hallway upstairs. This one bares both rows of his teeth, and they don’t part. He just talks right through them.

  Mya moves a little closer to Aaron. I think I do, too.

  “Not all of them are necessary.”

  Mya reaches for Aaron’s hand, and he squeezes hers back.

  “It’s true,” Mr. Peterson continues, even though no one contested it. “It’s remarkable what the human body can survive without. Pluck one bone out, and the body keeps on living.”

  Mrs. Peterson is shaping the hamburger patties, and she’s been working on that same patty since her husband started talking; I don’t think she’s thinking about hamburgers anymore. She closes her eyes, and I want to close mine, too, but I’m afraid to look away.

  “There’s just one bone you can’t live without … the funny bone!”

  Mr. Peterson runs to Mya and scoops her up by the waist, and for a panicked second, I think he’s actually going to hurt her. But she starts giggling immediately, and her giggle turns to a frantic laugh, and I see that he’s not hurting her at all; he’s tickling her ribs.

  “Where’s that bone? Where’s that funny bone?” he says, suddenly playful, and I think I misconstrued the whole scene, until I look at Aaron and Mrs. Peterson, who are sharing a look I can’t quite understand. It’s solemn, though, nothing like the exchange Mr. Peterson is having with Mya as he throws her over his shoulder and begins to spin her around.

  “Let’s go,” Aaron says to me under his breath, and I don’t argue.

  Once we’re outside, we don’t say a word until we’re at least three blocks from our street and halfway to the train tracks on the other side of the woods that border Raven Brooks. The rain from earlier has stopped, but the ground still squishes when we walk.

  “Where’re we going?” I ask Aaron when I feel like it’s okay to ask him anything at all.

  “You’ll see,” he says, but doesn’t look at me. “There’s something I want to show you.”

  The factory should be fenced off. Maybe it was at some point, but it sure isn’t now. And we shouldn’t be able to walk right through the front door, but we do.

  “I used to love Golden Apples,” Aaron says, and his eyes get all dreamy.

  I wait for an explanation, but all I get is a look of shock.

  “You’ve never had Golden Apples?”

  “I’m going to need you to stop saying ‘Golden Apples,’” I say. “It sounds like something my grandma would make me eat.”

  I shake a crooked finger at him and try on my best old granny voice: “Eat your Golden Apples so you grow up big and strong, deary.”

  “These wouldn’t make anyone big or strong. They were candy,” Aaron says. “I don’t know what they put in those things, but I wouldn’t sleep for days after I ate one.”

  “Guess that explains why they stopped making them,” I say, but Aaron doesn’t respond. He just looks away.

  The old Golden Apple factory doesn’t look like much. I mean, it’s an abandoned factory in the middle of the woods that miraculously only we seem to know about, so that’s pretty cool. But besides the still-operational conveyor belt and overall creepy atmosphere that comes from any abandoned place, I can’t figure out why Aaron was so stoked to show me the factory. It’s virtually empty, and I’m starving. Plus, my parents would have been so happy that I’ve made a friend, they probably would have fallen all over themselves to feed us. Dad would have busted out the Suzy Q’s for sure.

  Maybe Aaron just wanted to get away from his house; I know I did—away from his dad, anyway.

  “C’mon,” Aaron says, waving me up a ramp and toward a back door with an unlit EXIT sign over it.

  It’s not an exit, though. Instead, the door leads to a hallway filled with more doors to the left and the right, each with at least two locks bolting them shut. A lockpick’s dream.

  “Whoa,” I breathe, and Aaron nods.

  “Each one leads to another door, too,” he says. “All locked.”

  I stare at the corridor like we’ve uncovered a secret stash of Golden Apples.

  “I’ve only made it through half of them. They’ve all got different brands of latches and padlocks. Here, I’ll show you my favorite room.”

  Aaron beckons me to the middle of the corridor and fishes his tools from his pocket. Like me, he always carries his case. I hardly know what my pocket feels like anymore without it.

  With his signature smoothness, he springs the first lock easily—a simple lever handle lock with a clutch. The door opens to a musty-smelling office, its furniture still haunting the room, waiting for its occupant to return. It’s windowless, and the light switch doesn’t work.

  “None of ’em work,” Aaron says. “I think the conveyor belt runs on an old generator or something.”

  In answer to our need, Aaron scoops up a heavy old flashlight from the top of a nearby filing cabinet.

  “Found this baby on the first day,” he says, illuminating his face from under his chin like he’s about to tell me a ghost story. Then he twitches his eyebrows up and down. “Follow me.”

  I hear scurrying against the walls, and I know it’s rats. I mean, it was a candy factory. I just pray to the Giant Aliens they keep to the walls and vents.

  “What?” Aaron asks, his voice taunting. “You have a thing about rats?”

  “I have a thing about rabies,” I say.

  “Hold this,” Aaron says, handing me the flashlight. Then he fishes out a hook pick and leans his ear against the door. This is when I know Aaron is really at work; it’s like he’s listening to the door’s heartbeat. I don’t even bother asking why he locks the doors after he’s sprung them open. It’s because each time is like the first time, and there’s no feeling like that.

  With the tiniest flick of his wrist, the pin clinks, and the door groans open.

  Inside is a treasure trove of broken machinery.

  “I had a feeling you’d want to see this,” he says, and I hardly know what to say.

  There’s this cartoon that I used to watch (okay, that I maybe, possibly still watch) with a ridiculously rich duck. He has so much money that he keeps all his gold and jewels and coins and bills piled in a room-sized vault, and he swims through the treasure like it’s water. That’s what I wanted to do when Aaron opened this door.

  The secret office behind the regular office was probably considered a junk room, a kind of elephants’ graveyard where electronics journeyed to eventually die as new hardware was invented to replace them. Maybe the tech
guy at the Golden Apple Corporation figured he could make a buck selling those old monitors or keyboards or security cameras for parts. But the factory shut down, and the already-useless machines slept behind a locked door, guarded by an empty chair and another locked door.

  “Dude, say something so I know you’re not having a stroke or something.”

  “You smell like rat poop,” I say, because it’s the only way I can tell him no one has ever trusted me with treasure.

  “Yeah. You’re gonna want to scrape your shoes before you get home,” he says, and I think he understands that “thank you” would be embarrassing.

  I take what I can carry: the motor from an old vacuum, the fan from a CPU, a keyboard, and about five extension cords.

  “I’ll bring a bag next time,” I say to Aaron, but he’s already walking ahead of me, out the hallway and back onto the factory floor. He locks the door behind him so no one else can get in easily and vandalize our secret place. Before I know it, we’re tromping over the wooded path that leads into the trees and away from the train tracks. Then he pauses, and I turn to see what it is he’s staring at.

  There, just over the tree line, is a red-and-gold seat, rocking and creaking on a mild breeze, attached to the top of a large metal arc.

  “Is that a Ferris wheel?” I ask, already pushing past Aaron to cut a path through the overgrowth.

  I’m expecting to find a clearing full of other confection-colored rides and ticket booths—one of the millions of county fairs that pop up on Main Streets or in open parking lots during the summer months—but what I find instead is a ghost town.

  The Ferris wheel cars are paralyzed, moved only by the warm breeze that blows by. The wheel itself is covered in so much graffiti, I can’t even tell what color it used to be. And not the cool kind of graffiti that’s left by daredevil street artists. The ugly kind of graffiti that’s meant to erase whatever’s underneath. I see the opening to a fun house that looks more horror than fun with its apple-shaped head and its wide mouth with bared teeth. I see a charred concession stand that’s missing its roof and a collapsed stage still encircled by tiered cement seats. There’s a carousel of vandalized animals prancing across a motionless grate. There’s the top curve of a roller coaster track cresting above the tree line, a lone car perched at the apex.